secrets now that they know he is Mr. X, and his fame soon plummets. To boost his popularity, Homer begins posting outrageous stories on his webpage. Regaining his fame, Homer celebrates by going to a Kwik-E-Mart which turns out to be fake, and he ends up being kidnapped. Homer wakes up on the "Island", a place where the inhabitants are people who have been exiled from society for harboring dangerous secrets. Homer learns from the organization's leader, Number Two, that a story he wrote about flu vaccinations containing a mind-control serum is true; the mind control drug is calibrated to drive people into a frenzy of shopping, which is why flu shots are administered shortly before Christmas. While Homer is trapped on the Island, he is replaced by a doppelgänger who looks identical to him but speaks with a thick German accent and wears a dark tie. Number Six, who is trapped on the Island for inventing the bottomless peanut bag, tells Homer about a makeshift boat he spent thirty-three years making, which Homer steals and escapes the Island with. When he gets home, Homer tries to contact the police through his computer, only for the computer to be hacked remotely by Number Two. Homer is attacked by his doppelgänger but then defeats him by kicking him in the crotch. Marge and the kids are happy that the real Homer has returned, but then a fake Santa's Little Helper spouts a gas that drugs the entire family. The episode ends with everyone in the family enjoying their strange, new life on the Island. Production "The Computer Wore Menace Shoes" was written by John Swartzwelder and directed by Mark Kirkland. It was first broadcast on the Fox network in the United States on December 3, 2000. Originally, the episode was about Homer becoming Matt Drudge, the creator and an editor of the news aggregation website the Drudge Report, of which Swartzwelder is a fan. At that point, the episode was called "Homer the Drudge". The chalkboard gag was written by staff writer Don Payne, and the couch gag was conceived by producer Laurie Biernackie. The third act of "The Computer Wore Menace Shoes" is a pastiche of the 1967 science fiction television series The Prisoner. In order to "get the feel" of The Prisoner, the writers watched its opening sequence, which summarizes the story of the series. Kirkland, who had seen