"King-Size Homer" is the seventh episode of the seventh season of the American animated television series The Simpsons. It originally aired on Fox in the United States on November 5, 1995. Oakley had Greaney come to Hollywood to write it, and when Greaney showed the first draft to the staff, they liked it, so Oakley hired him. Greaney really enjoyed working on the episode because Homer is constantly happy and goal-oriented in it, instead of being a slob who is "eating all the time". There was a discussion about what Homer would wear when he became fat, and they decided to go with a muumuu.
Homer has a dream in which he is standing at the foot of a mountain with 300 pounds as the goal at the top. A pig wearing a tuxedo appears next to him in the dream, and motivates Homer to reach the top of the mountain. This scene was inspired by the cover of the "Sweetness and Light" issue of National Lampoon magazine.
Cultural references
The plus-sized clothes store is called "The Vast Waistband", a reference to Newton Minow's speech "Television and the Public Interest". In the store, two mannequins wearing similar outfits and riding on bikes are shown. These are based on Billy and Benny McCrary, the world's heaviest twins who weighed over each. They received fame after appearing in The Guinness Book of World Records in a picture that depicts the twins riding their Honda motorcycles. They would appear again in the same season in the episode "The Day the Violence Died".
Reception
In its original broadcast, "King-Size Homer" finished 45th (tied with Grace Under Fire) in the ratings for the week of October 30 to November 3, 1995, with a Nielsen rating of 10.0. The episode was the third-highest-rated show on the Fox network that week. Kimberly Potts of AOL Television named the episode the seventh best episode of the series. Michael Moran of The Times ranked it as the tenth best. "King-Size Homer" appeared on The Star-Ledger<nowiki>'</nowiki>s list of the ten best episodes on The Simpsons that represent the comic and emotional scope of the show.
The Herald Sun put the episode at ninth place on their list of the top twenty episodes of The Simpsons, and highlighted the scene in which Homer is seen "commandeering an ice cream truck in a frantic dash to the nuclear plant to avoid an impending meltdown". Emily VanDerWerff of Slant Magazine named the episode the show's fifth best, stating "while there are a lot of funny jokes in this episode (including Homer's fingers that are too fat to dial), the best thing about it is the sight of Homer, weighing well over 300 pounds, dressed in a muumuu and a 'fat guy hat.' The climax is a little forced and cartoon-y...but Homer's weight gain works so well visually that the episode gets away with a lot more than it might."
Dave Foster of DVD Times said: "The glee to which [Homer] takes to the challenge and the enthusiasm which Bart brings to the project show these two really do connect when the situation is oh so wrong, and the method in which the writers tackle the not-always-so-obvious downsides to such a disability are both adult and astutely amusing." Jennifer Malkowski of DVD Verdict considered the best part of the episode to be during Homer's shopping trip to The Vast Waistband. The website concluded its review by giving the episode a grade of A. DVD Movie Guide's Colin Jacobson enjoyed the episode and called it "one of the series' more cynical episodes", and said that it "pours on the laughs". He continued by saying, "It's amusing to see Homer's pursuit of obesity, and it exploits his idiocy well. It lacks the expected mushiness about the plight of fat folks, though it does make a point about sensitivity in an understated way."
The authors of the book I Can't Believe It's a Bigger and Better Updated Unofficial Simpsons Guide, Gary Russell and Gareth Roberts, wrote: "this isn't one of the best episodes. Homer's at his most irritating and childish here—you really want Marge to beat him up." They added that Homer's antics with the computer, such as the scene in which he tries to find the any key, and Mr. Burns running exercise classes are the highlights of the episode. Screen Rant called it the best episode of the seventh season.
When The Simpsons began streaming on Disney+ in 2019, former Simpsons writer and executive producer Bill Oakley named this one of the best classic Simpsons episodes to watch on the service. Later that same year, Consequence ranked it number nine on its list of top 30 Simpsons episodes.
Erik Adams writes that any review of the episode "threatens to devolve into a laundry list of out-of-context quotes. (A few, because I’m not a complete killjoy: 'I wash ma-self with a rag on a stick!' 'I don’t want to look like a weirdo—I’ll just go with the muumuu.' 'To start, press any key.’ Where's the ‘Any’ key?') The episode rushes into a save-the-day finale that's at odds with what comes before it, but Greaney's first effort is still a Simpsons classic."