British TV series The Avengers, and the song playing when Homer is sitting and watching things go by while he is waiting five days for his gun is "The Waiting" by Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers. Petty rarely let his music be used on television, but, being a fan of The Simpsons, he allowed them to use it. Reception In its original broadcast, "The Cartridge Family" finished 26th in ratings for the week of October 27 – November 2, 1997, with a Nielsen rating of 10.5, equivalent to approximately 10.3 million viewing households. It was the third highest-rated show on the Fox network, following The X-Files and King of the Hill. The episode received several positive reviews, being included in the Herald Sun's list of the top twenty The Simpsons episodes. It was also named the fifth best episode in the show's history in an article by The Florida Times-Union. The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette also praised the episode, calling The Simpsons "the only sitcom in memory to treat gun control with any fairness". On the other hand, the episode has been criticized by several outlets. Although the fictionalized NRA stresses the importance of responsible gun ownership, the staff nonetheless received several complaints from the real National Rifle Association about the portrayal of the organization in the episode. Ian Jones and Steve Williams criticized the episode, calling it "a messy, unfocused lampooning of gun culture". Warren Martyn and Adrian Wood, the authors of the book I Can't Believe It's a Bigger and Better Updated Unofficial Simpsons Guide, found that it was "one of the most politically unambiguous episodes ever", but that "[it] is very dull and the plot isn't sustainable". Anna Leszkiewicz in the New Statesman later pinpointed it as the moment Marge should have left Homer, saying "Homer has proved himself to be a violent, unstable, controlling, reckless husband". The episode was not initially aired on the United Kingdom satellite channel Sky1 due to scenes of flagrant gun misuse, yet was aired several times on BBC Two in an earlier evening timeslot. The episode has since been aired in daytime slots on all channels which have broadcast The Simpsons in the UK, albeit with partial editing. The episode was included on a 1999 UK VHS release titled "The Simpsons: Too Hot for TV", which included several other episodes that were deemed to be too raunchy for airing on television. A DVD