Much Apu About Nothing as Fat Tony. The title of the episode is a parody of William Shakespeare's play "Much Ado About Nothing". Since airing, the episode has received mostly positive reviews from television critics. It acquired a Nielsen rating of 8.2, and was the fourth highest-rated show on the Fox network the week it aired. On an ordinary day, a brown bear strolls onto the streets of Springfield, frightening the town. The bear is eventually subdued by the police. Homer convinces Springfield that something needs to be done to protect them from bears, and the town takes their complaint to Mayor Quimby, who
Much Apu About Nothing succeeds as a savage satire on the scapegoating of immigrants. Homer has never been so frighteningly dumb, although he does come through with a rousing liberal speech." The episode is "The Simpsons" creator Matt Groening's third favorite episode of the show. The episode received a negative review from Dave Foster of DVD Times. He considered "Much Apu About Nothing" to be one of the season's most "tiring" episodes, "mostly because Apu is not a strong enough character to focus an episode on no matter how much writer David Cohen develops him". Foster commented that the episode deals with a political