Join the Army and See the Opposing Army : The Case of the Missing Simpsons Freeze-Frame Joke

If I were to label anything in my life as my third-parent, the title would go to The Simpsons. Our Favourite (fictional) Family’s importance in my life could be ascertained by any outsider if they were to see my collection of tapes of The Simpsons that I meticulously recorded on VHS over the mid-to-late-90’s. Altogether I had 22.

One of my favourite parts of the show was background signs, and my favourite was a poster that read “Join the Army and See the Opposing Army.” Earlier this year I wanted to make that poster my desktop wallpaper, so I planned on taking a quick screenshot of the DVD frame; I figured it was a 3-minute process—how wrong I was. I couldn’t recall the episode that it was from. I was quite certain it was a sign though, since it was referenced in a DVD-commentary I heard once, though not when it was on-screen. It was also in the book that I’ve read more than any other in my life, The Simpsons: A Complete Guide to Our Favorite Family, which had a section on sight-gags and showed the poster (though the poster’s accompanying episode number was omitted from the section). I remember also that back when I got the book I thought, “I’ve seen that poster, but it was a different colour than in the book,” but that is where the differences ended.

The poster from "The Simpsons: A Complete Guide to Our Favourite Family"

My subsequent Google queries resulted in about 40 references to the slogan: mostly message boards where it was cited as some users’ favourite sight-gag; a couple editorials that referenced it, (including one that alleged it was in a Treehouse of Horror episode); and one website had the entire script from Season 7’s Treehouse of Horror episode, which stated that the sign was in an advertising agency’s office, hanging on a wall. I couldn’t see the poster on my first pass with the DVD. I thought to myself, “maybe it wasn’t even in the show, and maybe I invented the memory from what I saw in the book.” But with references to it by various other people, in addition to my own memory of it, I decided to re-watch the episode, and I noticed what was likely part of the sign behind Lisa Simpson as she was sitting in a chair!

"AND SEE THE… Y!" is clearly visible.

I wouldn’t anticipate the show reusing satirical signs in multiple episodes. The jump-to-conclusions conspiracy-theorist within me immediately postulated the scene was edited by Fox for the DVD’s release. Further digging revealed that the DVD set was compiled and released during a time when the Fox News Channel was receiving criticism for its pro-war bias and freedom of the press was a notable hot-issue. I can only speculate though.

This scene starts out rather abruptly; maybe there was a lead-up to this scene that was cut out of the DVD release. The script mentions additional dialogue in this scene about an atomic octopus.

Unfortunately, my tapes that had the episode on it were destroyed in the horrible tape-eating weekend of 2000, where 5 tapes were destroyed by 3 different VCRs over a 2-day period. To make matters more difficult, every copy of the episode I could find online had been ripped from the DVD-release. My memory is usually quite good, but maybe it’s misleading me, maybe the sign appeared somewhere else in the series, or maybe it was cut from the DVD-release by the DVD editor altogether. I probably won’t ever know, but I won’t devote any more time to it, since an hour of searching and a blog post borders on excessive as it is.

Tags | Essay, Popular Culture, Satire