Inside a restaurant, the Simpsons celebrate Bart’s very first “A”on a test. Bart recounts how, a week earlier, he inadvertently found himself trapped in a classroom where Mrs.Krabappel and Principal Skinner were fooling around. Horrified, Bart turned his attention to a poster of the solar system and memorized all the planets…leading to his “A ”on an astronomy test. When Bart’s tale ends, a waiter informs the family that Homer’s credit card was rejected. The family attempts a getaway, but ends up serving as a Mariachi band to pay the bill. Broke and embarrassed, Homer approaches Mr. Burns and asks for a raise. As Smithers is out of town, having written a musical about the Malibu Stacy doll, Burns hires Homer as his “prank monkey”…and pays him to hurl pudding at Lenny.

As time passes, Burns pays Homer to pull off more pranks: plunging the Kwik-E-Mart into darkness; purchasing an expensive Spiderman comic from the Comic Book Guy and then watching Homer eat the pages. Burns then instructs Homer to don a panda bear costume and enter a cage at the zoo. As onlookers observe, a zookeeper zaps Homer with a cattle prod, and later, an amorous male panda mistakes the costumed Homer for its mate. Mr.Burns howls with laughter as Homer is subjected to humiliation. Later, Homer pulls himself away from the sleeping animal and attempts to climb over the zoo’s barbed wire fence, only to get his costume snagged. Lisa discovers her father hanging upside down from the fence.

Homer tells Lisa that he has been humiliating himself for fistfuls of Mr.Burns’cash. Lisa urges her father to put an end to the degradation. She convinces him that he could earn back some dignity by brightening the lives of those less fortunate. Homer embraces the idea. He carries a basket of cash into a department store and announces his intention to purchase toys for needy children. The store manager, Mr.Costington, is so impressed with the generosity that he allows Homer to play Santa Claus in the upcoming Thanksgiving Day parade. As announcers Kent Brockman and Leeza Gibbons look on, the parade gets underway. Homer steers the float onto Main Street and begins tossing toys to kids in the crowd. Suddenly, Burns pulls alongside in his own pirate-shaped float. Burns offers Homer one million dollars to pull off his latest prank. It is so much money that Homer must wrestle with his conscience. Later, Brockman and Gibbons watch in horror as Santa hurls rancid gravy at spectators. But the Santa turns out to be Mr.Burns, not Homer. Back in the crowd, Homer puts his arms around his family. Meanwhile, Smithers returns from his trip and, upon seeing Mr.Burns holding police at bay with ladle-fuls of gravy, helps defend his boss.