The Simpsons

Part 1:
Overall, I think that the producers did a pretty good job at portraying the 1920's and Prohibition in Springfield. They gave you a feel for what it was like while also adding comedy. For the most part, I think the accuracies outweighed the fictional comedy even though, at times, the fictional comedy was a stretch. One element the was portrayed well was the bootlegging idea. The fact that there was a lot of bootlegging going on during the 1920's is true, but how they did it could have been more accurate. Another element that was portrayed well was the corruption of businesses. Many companies went out of business during the 1920's because of Prohibition and in the episode, they show a beer company that went out of business. Overall, I thought the episode was okay. It had a lot of elements of the 1920's that were portrayed well and others that were portrayed not so well.


Part 2:
I think that there were a few things that the producers could have changed to make the episode a little bit more historically accurate. One thing they could have changed is the way the speakeasy worked. In the episode, they pulled a lever to change the pet shop into the bar. That obviously didn't happen in real life, so they could have made the speakeasy be in a remote location or a little bit more believable. Another thing they could have changed was how the bootleggers smuggled the alcohol. Instead of putting them into bowling balls and having them go through a series of pipes into the speakeasy, they could have shown a bootlegger smuggling the alcohol into the speakeasy in a more believable way.