By Brandon Nolta

THE SIMPSONS, “Homer of Seville”: It’s rerun night on Fox; only AMERICAN DAD is an original episode tonight. If you’re OK with that, read on. After a pretty bizarre injury, even for Homer, Mr. Simpson makes a discovery: As long as he’s lying on his back, he has a beautiful singing voice. Recruited by the hospital to calm patients with his singing, Homer finds himself in demand all over town, hobnobbing with Placido Domingo, opening hockey games, and performing the lead in LA BOHEME at Mr. Burns’ opera house.

But, the perks of fame can be a little overwhelming for our favorite nuclear plant hazard, who finds himself pursued by lust-crazed fans. Will his marriage to Marge survive? More importantly, will Homer survive the murder attempts of the ex-president of his fan club? Just the idea of Homer singing opera is funny, and admittedly, it’s even funnier this time around. And, according to Bart, the Wall Street Journal is better than ever.

KING OF THE HILL, “Lucky’s Wedding Suit”: Lucky and Luanne are finally getting hitched, opening up the long-overdue possibility that Hank will get his den back. However, things would go better for Lucky if he had a job, so Hank puts a little friendly pressure on Dale to hire Lucky for his exterminator business. Seems Arlen’s experiencing a bedbug epidemic, and Dale’s just the man to drag it out.

Unfortunately for Dale, Lucky gets wounded on the job (well, while mock-swordfighting with Dale), and Lucky’s real career—suing employers for injury-related compensation—soon gets another chapter in its illustrious duration. The real tragedy, of course, is that Lucky’s injury delays his moving out of Hank’s home. Well, that and the fact that Dale turns out to not have liability insurance. So, who gets sued? That’s right, Hank’s employer, since Hank persuaded Dale to hire Lucky in the first place.

I would say this is the height of idiocy, but my law-student wife has been reading some of her torts homework to me lately, and believe me, there are far dumber cases in real life. Anyway … ah hell, we know how this is going to turn out. Hank’s going to get exasperated and apply some common sense like judo strikes to resolve the issue, although as it turns out, Lucky finally gets a clue. It’s even a nice wedding, in that Cotton doesn’t shoot anyone. Miracles do happen.

FAMILY GUY, “Meet the Quagmires”: As promised, another damn rerun. Peter convinces Death to let him go back in time and sow his wild oats. Peter does and, instead of banging the super-hot 18-year-old Lois, decides to hang with Cleveland and do all the fun things he thinks he missed out on. As usual, Peter neglects to think things through, and when Death returns him to the future, there’s a big surprise waiting: he’s no longer married to Lois. No, he’s hitched to Molly Ringwald instead. Decide for yourself if that’s an upgrade or a tragedy.

Anyway, Peter’s luck holds in that Brian went with him on his time traveling gig, and when Peter discovers that Lois married Quagmire instead, he and Brian set off to figure out how to set the timeline right. Where’s a DeLorean with a flux capacitor when you need one? Anyway, eventually Brian and Peter figure out where things went wrong, and despite Brian’s feeling that a present where President Gore’s got the nation running smoothly is a better place, they manage to do the time warp again and set things aright. Mostly.

AMERICAN DAD, “Surro-Gate”: Stan’s having a crisis of morality with his gay neighbors this week; Greg and Terry have decided to have kids, you see, and that just monkeys with Stan’s mind something fierce. Not to mention the fact the whole concept of in-vitro fertilization doesn’t compute for Stan. In more entertaining subplots, Steve and Roger play one too many tricks on Klaus, who swears elaborate and painful vengeance upon them. Since Klaus is a goldfish, one wonders how this could happen, but obviously realism is not one of AMERICAN DAD’s primary concerns.

Anyway, after hearing about the troubles Greg and Terry face in finding a surrogate, Francine decides to volunteer to be their surrogate mother. She does this in the full knowledge that Stan will not take it well (her first envisioning of the encounter involves wild cats, broken bottles and chainsaws, not in that order), but not telling Stan for six months seems excessive. Meanwhile, Steve and Roger are going insane with paranoia in Roger’s attic retreat, which is undoubtedly what Klaus had in mind the whole time. But, there’s an upside to all this: After Stan and Francine have their blowout fight, Stan comes around to being supportive of his wife for once … right up until he kidnaps the baby from the hospital to find her a good home. Things just go downhill from there.

By the way, is it any surprise that Klaus had forgotten about the prank Steve and Roger pulled on him? Not in the slightest.