Police Cops

Nobody snuggles with Max Power, Marge. You strap yourself in and feel the Gs.

We’ll go design first on this one, as it’s a fairly obvious point of reference. And that is garish, 1980s buddy-cop masterpiece Miami Vice. I don’t think there’s a person currently alive on Earth who can look at the combination of turquoise and magenta and not think of Don Johnson driving a Lamborghini whilst wearing sunglasses during the night time. Then also the palm trees. But no, wait – that’s a cactus, right? You are correct. The reason for that being…

In The Simpson’s episode ‘Homer to the Max‘, Homer ends up changing his name to Max Power (which he gets from a hair dryer) due to the folks at FOX’s new Vice-esque show ‘Police Cops‘. The programme’s pilot includes protagonists Lance Kaufman and Homer Simpson – the latter of which (aside from sharing Homer’s name) is a scarf-tossing, too-cool-for-school action hero. Unfortunately for Homer, when the series properly airs, the character has been turned into a bumbling fuckwit. He visits the writers pleading for dignity but upon leaving the meeting, immediately walks into a cactus. Which the writers then put directly into the next episode.

So Miami Vice plus cactus. That’s all you really need to know. That, I believe, is the end of that chapter.