(originally aired January 9, 2000)
This episode has a weird presence to it, for one reason or another, nothing really felt right for the whole running time. It’s kind of hard to explain. From the opening set piece to the main thrust of the story to the random ending, it was all so off, like some novice writer took his stab at writing an episode without really understanding the series. At the start, things just feel so lazy as the show attempts to jump into the skiing opening by acknowledging how random and abrupt the transition is. It doesn’t work. The first act is pretty much laugh-free, save for the famous “Stupid sexy Flanders!” bit, which is immediately made irritating as Homer gets hit in the crotch repeatedly while screaming at the top of his lungs. Hey guys, volume does not equal funny.

So the crux of the story is Lisa filling in for Marge in keeping the house together, but realizing it’s more hassle than she thought. Now, this whole premise doesn’t work for two big reasons. Firstly, it’s an egregious example of having Homer and Bart being partners in crime rather than father and son. Call back to “Bart After Dark” and their hilarious lazy and awkward escapades at having the house to themselves. Here they’re two big kids, horsing around at the hospital and Homer laughing derisively at his daughter’s request to turn the TV down. Homer is a man child for sure, but not to this degree. Second, I feel this role doesn’t exactly befit Lisa. It’s sort of reminiscent of “My Sister, My Sitter” where she wants to be viewed as more mature, but this is a bigger leap. Episodes like “Homer Alone” and “Marge in Chains” have shown how the house goes to shit without Marge, where we see that Lisa is just as much a kid needing her mother as anyone. Lisa the authority figure just feels like her flimsy adult-child characterization she’d be saddled with later on.

To get back at her father and brother, Lisa makes them think they have leprosy by applying fake oatmeal and poster paint sores on their body. I can buy this a little bit, like you could use the joke that Homer and Bart don’t bathe to explain why the sores stay on. But when Flanders takes pity on them and sends them to Hawaii, all good will evaporates. How could these trained professionals not see it’s just fucking oatmeal? It just felt so silly, and not in a good way. This whole episode is filled with either big dead spots with no laughs, or stuff that makes no sense and feels out of character. Like “Take My Wife, Sleaze,” despite its laundry list of problems, I can’t say I hate this one, but I certainly rue and lament it.

Tidbits and Quotes
– Even the Itchy and Scratchy feels wrong. It’s way too long with too light of a payoff.
– The skiing opening is pretty much a dead zone. I like the name Mt. Embolism, but all the other material just kind of laid there.
– I hate Homer and Bart at the hospital, but I do like this exchange (“You’re wasting thousands of dollars of interferon!” “And you’re interfere-on with our good time!”) Also, what happened to Hibbert being a competent doctor? A bone in Marge’s leg piercing her brain? What?
– Homer is not only a complete child but in full idiot mode here. Having him talk into that candy phone like it was real was pretty aggravating in that’s what they felt was a great joke.
– I like Tress MacNeille’s grizzled Lucille Ball voice. The sequence was kind of silly, but it has the only few laughs in this show (“Lucy Macgillacudy Ricardo Carmichael. And I think there’s some more.”)
– I guess it’s kind of neat they got the AOL guy to voice the Virtual Doctor. Kind of. A little. …not really. Though I do like that it’s from the creator of “Sim Sandwich.”
– Apart from “stupid sexy Flanders,” the only other golden bit occurs when Bart and Homer claw through Ned’s mail slot like zombies (“Braaains… braaaiins… use your brains to help us! Your delicious braaiins…”) There’s a few other amusing bits there too, with Ned being upset Maude saw Ben Hur without him, and urging his boys to get him the alcohol-free alcohol.
– It involves more Homer screaming and yelling, but I really like the performance of Dan Castellaneta singing “Aloha Oe” punctuated with needle lacerations. And the Hawaiian version of the end theme is pretty great. At least I can give the ending that.

(originally aired December 19, 1999)
I don’t know if any personal nostalgia is taking over, but as rough as this season is, there’s still quite a number of iconic elements in it. Funzo is one of them, the result of tireless market research cobbling together every conceivably dumb want a kid could ask for in a toy. It’s an abjectly pandering, soulless corporate money-making machine, and as such, Funzo is creepy as hell. This is a pretty solid Christmas show, taking a look at the capitalist side of the holiday, aping on the then-recent frenzies over toys like Furby and Tickle Me Elmo. Our path to get here is a bit silly, but it kind of works. Bart ends up with his ass in a cast and Skinner is forced to finally make his school handicap accessible. And by ‘forced,’ I mean bamboozled by Fat Tony and his goons, who construct ridiculous ramps all around the building which instantly collapse upon its grand opening. While it feels a little dumb that they’d seriously make it out of bread sticks, and Skinner is a bit too wimpy in not raising complaints earlier, it’s the level of stupid that is ridiculous, but doesn’t go too far as to not be funny.

In order to pay off the mob, Springfield Elementary must close its doors. But before long, they reopen, thanks to the efforts of Kid First Industries, who aim to engage kids by talking about their favorite toys and why they love them. I really like this conceit; similar to how junk food and soda companies want their products and brands present in schools, this is the next step: completely usurping children’s education in order to do market research to make their dumb toys sell well. Lisa eventually discovers what’s going on, just in time for Kid First to get out of dodge and use their ill-gotten information to unleash a new toy unto the world. Enter Funzo, a precocious Furby-like creature who boasts everything a kid could want, regardless of any purpose to the toy itself. The marketing campaign is quite aggressive (“Funzo! Funzo! Funzo! If you don’t have Funzo, you’re nothin’!”) The toy of course is a humungous hit, with the two Kid First heads eating up the footage of people getting trampled at local stores trying to get their hands on the new hot toy.

As if this isn’t bad enough, Bart and Lisa are shocked to find that the Funzo dolls are literally wiping out their competition as it proceeds to destroy all their other toys. A visit to Kid First ends up being fruitless, so they’re left to resort to other measures. They enlist Homer to sneak into everyone’s houses on Christmas Eve to confiscate all the Funzos and destroy them. Their plan goes off without a hitch, until the arrival of security guard Gary Coleman. He initially appears as a superfluous cameo, but he gets a fair share of great lines and I love how the plot is “resolved” as he and the Simpsons have a long discussion over the corporate hijacking of Xmas, before coming to a sound conclusion (“Lets just agree that the commercialization of Christmas is, at best, a mixed blessing.” “Amen.”) This is a pretty great episode, with a thoughtful core topic, lots of great bits, and kind of a heartwarming ending, as holiday story cliches fly hard and fast, including one to explain how the school ultimately reopened. And especially compared to the last Xmas show, this one is pretty golden.

Tidbits and Quotes
– Not sure why Marge has a box of wigs in her closet. I like Homer’s thought process upon walking in on Bart and Milhouse (“What’s going on?! And I want a non-gay explanation!” “Uh… we’re drunk. Really drunk.” “Oh, thank God.”)
– Bart’s butt cast is pretty silly, but I do like the family laughing at hearing Hibbet say ‘coccyx’ (even Marge), and the medical interns vigorously taking notes staring at Bart’s ass. And good thing Hibbert installed that viewing window, how else would he… relieve himself?
– I do think Skinner is a bit too wimpy, but Fat Tony’s got some great lines here (“Do we really need all those ramps?” “Who’s to say? Does a peacock need all those feathers?” “Look, you’re getting a little philosophical for me.” “I suppose so. They say it happens in the autumn years.”) We also get the great line, “I don’t get mad. I get stabby.”
– Great speech from Skinner at the groundbreaking ceremony (“This is a proud day. Now when people ask if we’re in compliance the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1975, I can say, we are closer than ever before! To inaugurate our ramp system, here’s the first of what I hope will be many disabled students, Bart Simpson!”)
– I love Milhouse’s explosive enthusiasm of describing his dream toy (“Its eyes should be telescopes! No, periscopes! No, microscopes! Can you come back to me?”)
– It’s great how the name that Lisa gives off the top of her head ultimately becomes the name of the toy. It shows just how little thought the company is willing to put into these things. Also great is the role reversal of Lisa having to write on the chalkboard as punishment for doing math in class. Bart eats it up (“Lisa’s in trouble. The ironing is delicious.” “The word is ‘irony’.” “Huh?”)
– Classic bit from Krusty as he signs off for the season (“So, have a merry Christmas, a happy Hanukkah, a kwazy Kwanza, a tip-top Tet, and a solemn, dignified Ramadan. Now a word from my god: our sponsor.”)
– I love the ridiculous accessories you can get for Funzo: Funzo’s dream fortress, Funzo’s lower back pain chair, Funzo’s European Voltage converter…
– More great Springfield mob mentality as Lenny breaks through the glass store door with a giant candy cane and the masses rush to get their Funzos. Lindsay Naegle, watching on a security feed, says she’d like it more if there were some trampling. Cut to Moe getting stampeded over (“Ow! Now why would you wear cleats to a store?!”)
– The best line of the show comes from Coleman, pulling up to bust Homer, Bart and Lisa (“Well, what do we have here? Looks like the biggest rip-off since Webster!”)

(originally aired November 28, 1999)
To me, there are two different kinds of bad episodes. The first type elicits a great negative response, that the content is fundamentally egregious and terrible; episodes like “Kidney Trouble” or “Beyond Blunderdome” are examples of this. But then there are episodes that don’t garner such an angry response, but are filled to the brim with awfulness. This is one of those episodes. Why shows like these go in the latter column are varied, but in the case of this one, as with others, is that I feel that there is a nugget of a good idea buried in here somewhere, but absolutely nothing is done with it. We open with the family going to a retro ’50s diner, a set piece that is wholly disposable, and only needed so we can get Homer on a motorcycle. Bart teaches him to ride it, another useless sequence that makes no sense, and before long, Homer is inspired to form a motorcycle gang, acting like a street punk and being an overall nuisance toward the townspeople and his family.

When we get to seeing Homer, Lenny, Flanders and others standing out front of the Kwik-E-Mart flipping pennies, I have to wonder just exactly what the fuck is going on in this episode. Is this Homer trying to live out a cool life he’s seen on TV? For what purpose? I don’t know. The plot turns when it’s revealed Homer has accidentally named his group Hell’s Satans after an existing biker gang, who are none too happy about it. As retribution, they crash at the Simpson house, making it a total filthy wreck. Now, part of me kind of likes this idea. I love John Goodman as the leader Meathook, and Henry Winkler giving a more subdued performance as his right hand man Ramrod. Some of their reads are genuinely funny (“Mrs. Simpson! I killed my pencil!” “Broke. You broke your pencil.” “I… broke him.”) But it takes so long to get to this point, almost the halfway mark. The diner, teaching Homer to bike, Homer’s dumb gang antics, all of this worthless material that could have been shaved down to move the story along.

Things come to a head when the bikers leave and take Marge with them, but ultimately she ends up nurturing them, helping them write their resumes and to use words instead of violence. Then Homer comes out of nowhere and starts beating the crap out of everyone. Now, here’s where I see the fleeting potential. If they had built up Marge’s relationship with the bikers a bit more, and expanded this a bit further, it could have been kind of neat. She reforms them into model citizens, and meanwhile we could have seen Homer getting increasingly more rash and angrier searching for his wife. In the end, he’s a total monster, beating the shit out of the now docile bikers. A nice role reversal. But instead, the bikers revert back to their old selves so them can have a showdown. A showdown that ends with them swordfighting with fucking motorcycles. For God’s sake… So, yeah, as I said, almost nothing in this episode works at all, but I still don’t hold as much ire toward it as other truly terrible shows. Rather than white hot rage, it’s more of a groan of disappointment. Uggh…

Tidbits and Quotes
– I like the opening with the Guinness World Records show. It’s not so much a parody as it is an accurate depiction of what it was.
– Some of the newspaper headline regalia at the diner is pretty great (Study: Teens Rarely Pregnant, We All Agree: Conformity Is Best).
– The scene with Jay North is kind of neat, I guess. Matt Groening told a story way back when of watching the Dennis the Menace show, and being ramped up at seeing the little hellion he was in the animated opening title sequence, and being disappointed that the show never lived up to that level of mischief. So Bart acts as Groening here, completely disinterested in the genuine article. North’s a great sport about tit.
– The Alan Gins-burger and Polio Dog have nothing on the Eyeball Stew and the Baby Guts from “Itchy & Scratchy Land.”
– I guess Homer and Marge’s ridiculous dance routine kind of parodies the resurgence of bombastic swing music, but it feels kind of uncomfortable seeing Homer swing Marge by her hair. That must hurt. Also it’s not funny. That also hurts.
– I like Bart laughing at his father not knowing how to ride a bike, then graciously accepts his request for him to teach him. But the montage itself is lame. Homer’s pants and shirt get caught up in the chain, the motorcycle slips up and has enough momentum to fly up and crash into the Simpson roof, just a bunch of shit that makes no sense whatsoever, but hey, who cares, it’s a cartoon, right?!
– I hate everything about Homer’s gang, except for Moe suggesting their name be the Christ Punchers, and Ned’s flustered response (“I don’t think you understand my objection…”)
– There’s a lot of neat animation in this episode, particularly with Meathook bursting through the Simpson house on his bike and riding up onto Homer and Marge’s bed.
– Part of me feels they pushed how dumb the bikers are a little too far, but that kind of makes it absurd in a good way. Goodman and Winkler’s performances also help (“Haven’t any of you ever had a dream?” “Yeah, I had a dream! I was in this beautiful garden, pounding the crap out of a shopkeeper!” “No, no, I mean the dream of a good job, a loving family, and a home in the suburbs.” “Aw, man, to get all that you’d have to kill, like, fifty people!”)
– There’s a lot of weird out-of-place sex references in this episode: Homer telling his kids to order a Korean love bride, the bikers wanting to bring Marge to an orgy… it just doesn’t feel right.
– Honestly, I’m still reeling from Maggie pulling Homer to shore two episodes ago, but now not only do we have Homer and Meathook holding up motorcycles and using them as swords, but Marge manages to throw one up to her husband to use. I mean, seriously, this is way too far. Don’t give me this bullshit, it doesn’t make any sense. You’re not that kind of cartoon, it doesn’t fit here.

(originally aired November 21, 1999)
At a glance, this appears to be a season of sweeping change. Maude Flanders gets bumped off, Barney takes a vow of sobriety, and in this episode, Apu and Manjula wind up with eight kids. You would think this would open the door further down the line for some interesting story opportunities. You would think. In actuality, we basically see no real follow-through with any of these stories, other than that Maude is still dead and the octuplets are still around. I think this could have been a great in to do more Apu stories, but if this show has illustrated anything, it’s that the writers are hopelessly dependent in that a minute of screen time can’t go by without seeing a Simpson, more often than not Homer. The family are ever present in this episode, sometimes for reasons that don’t make sense. The series was originally about one family surviving in the world, and now it’s slowly being that everyone else’s lives seem to revolve around the Simpsons.

Apu and Manjula decide it’s finally time to have a child, but find it’s much more difficult to conceive than they thought. So who does Apu consult about this? Homer, of course. Is he the only man he knows? What about Sanjay? He’s nowhere to be seen. But no matter, Homer is a bastion of good advice, cooking beans inside the can and ripping the hood off Apu’s car. These things aren’t so much funny as they are clinically insane. Due to taking an excessive amount of fertility drugs, Manjula gives birth to eight children, who don’t take long to drive the couple into an exhausted and irritable lot. The best scenes in the episode are, surprise surprise, when we see just the two of them dealing with the situation, running themselves ragged (“I just had the most beautiful dream where I died.” “Oh, no, you don’t. Not ’till they’re out of college.” “Listen, I’ll die when I want to.”)

Apu and Manjula’s domestic hell seems to be at an end thanks to zoo owner Larry Kidkill, who offers the two stay at a beautiful nursery in exchange of being behind glass for the public to see. They’re initially pensive, but eventually accept. Things seem to be going fine until they find that their children are being used in an over-the-top stage show “Octopia!” I don’t exactly know what to make of this third act twist. I get the appeal of the show of just watching cute little newborns, but it all just seems so, so bizarre. I feel this would have worked so much better as a more emotional, down-to-earth story, and somehow what we got is Apu and Homer breaking his kids out of a zoo. Then Homer gets attacked by cobras and yells and screams a lot. How we got to this ending confuses me more than it annoys me, but it absolutely doesn’t work. I really like the idea of this episode, and it has its fleeting shining moments, but there’s just way too much focus on the Simpsons (namely stupid, stupid Homer) for what should have been Apu’s story, as well as too much weird nonsense, like Butch Patrick showing up. A promising, but ultimately disappointing episode.

Tidbits and Quotes
– I like the idea of making fun of IKEA with SHOP. Too bad none of the jokes really worked. Makes me hungry for some Swedish meatballs though.
– I like Apu’s rationale for deciding to have kids (“I have noticed that this country is dangerously underpopulated.”)
– The pregnancy test, for some reason, works like a Vegas slot machine. Apu and Manjula get two babies… and a lemon (“All that sex for nothing!” “Well, that is a pretty grim assessment.”)
– I like the demanding, fickle nature of the media, hoping to squeeze stupid sound bites out of Apu and Manjula and lavishing them with gifts, until they rescind them all when they find out about the next “freak show”: the Shelbyville Nine (“Would you say that you’re on cloud nine?” “We’re on cloud nine!”)
– Apu lying on the floor with his eight bottle harness is wonderfully disturbing (“Welcome to my nightmare…”) I also like when he goes off with Kidkill, no questions asked (“But you don’t even know who he is!” “Who cares, there’s only one of him!”)
– Great quick line where Kidkill calls the octuplets “the eight wonders of the third world.”
– It’s really dumb, but I always liked Homer mixing up chloroform with Colorforms.
– The ending really doesn’t make any sense. Why would Kidkill immediately accept the offer of Homer, this stranger he’s never met, into losing the octuplets? It’s just ridiculous. Homer writhing in pain being bitten by cobras and a mongoose as the show’s big finish is pretty disconcerting. This is their version of a hilarious finale now.

(originally aired November 14, 1999)
Normally when you’re writing an episode, you should make it around one story, one concept, one core idea. This show is very disjointed, but even stranger is there is some groundwork for the final act put into the first, but the middle portion of the episode is so disconnected and irrelevant that it doesn’t even matter. It’s just such a mess structurally. Things are pretty aimless at the start with Homer blowing off steam after work going bowling, with a crowd slowly emerging as he gets closer and closer to bowling a perfect game. For him, it’s a release after a particularly bad day, but it’s less satisfying to us as the audience since all the bad things that happened to him were his fault. Classic Homer was an unlucky son-of-a-bitch who fate spat in the face of repeatedly. Here, Homer oversleeps, runs his car through the median and molests his boss’s face repeatedly. Then he’s punished and made to eat barrels of toxic waste. Nothing wrong with that. Nope. Totally makes sense.

When Homer gets his perfect game, the episode shifts gears to be about the fleeting nature of fame, particularly of the flash-in-the-pan variety. Homer has his brief moment in the sun, but is unable to step away. I really don’t know what to make of this second act, every single scene is truly bizarre. I get that Springfield is an easily impressed podunk town, but why are they this amazed about a guy who bowled well? Also, we just jump from random set piece to random set piece. From giving a talk at Bart’s class, we immediately go to Springfield’s answer to Hollywood Squares, with Homer as the center square. And placed over Ron Howard, no less, in his second guest appearance for some reason. From then on we’re just burning through celebrities. Homer tries to do a walk-on during Penn & Teller’s show and almost gets crossbowed, one of the only funny scenes in the show (“I’m gonna kill you!” “He’ll do it! I’m not the first Teller!”) Then he watches TV at home where Pat O’Brien and Nancy O’Dell tell him he’s old hat. Why have them on the show? Hosting “Access Springfield”? Not only does it make no sense, but was it really necessary? All just to raise the guest star count, I guess.

What’s a man to do when your popularity is waning? Commit suicide, of course. Think back to “Homer’s Odyssey,” where Homer wanting to jump off a bridge was a tough pill to swallow, but at least it made sense and the episode was building toward it. Time and again we’ve seen that Homer feels he only has worth if he can provide for his family, and when things seemed impossible for him to do that, he gave up. Here, he thinks his life has peaked and he makes a snap decision to jump off a building. No consideration to his family, nothing. Then he’s saved by Otto bungee jumping and everything’s okay. Brilliant. After that, he decides to devote his life to his kids, but when he finds himself too out of his depth with Bart and Lisa, he settles for Maggie, who has a not-so-great view of her distant father. Now, this technically was set up earlier in the episode how Homer ignores the baby and the effect it has on her, but there’s nothing in the rest of the show that built toward his realization that his kids could give his life meaning. The only prompting was him running into Ron Howard and his kids, it was more random than anything, much like most of the content here. This is the most scatter-shot episode ever, with no focus, no ideas and no clue where to go. There’s a few funny lines, but that’s about it.

Tidbits and Quotes
– In art school, I leaped at the chance to see Koyaanisqatsi basically because I knew it from this episode in the fast-motion sequence of Homer oversleeping. It was… interesting.
– Homer pulls out Burns’s dentures, who regenerates a new pair complete with a cash register sound. He escapes and hides in the reactor core, where Burns proceeds to strangle him through the mounted gloves, and kick him with the mounted feet, which makes no sense. Then Homer is forced to eat nuclear waste. That’s a trifecta right there, the show is officially a goofy cartoon that can do anything.
– Lenny and Carl at the bowling alley have a lot of great material: ‘POO’ and ‘ASS’ on the scoreboard, Lenny’s banana split (“I paid 7.10 for this split.” “Will you at least call it a banana split, you dumbwad?” “Hey, spare me your gutter mouth!”), and Lenny dumping his pills in the trash seeing a “psychotic” Homer get strike after strike.
– I don’t quite see why Marge isn’t upset that Homer lied to him to get out of bonding with their daughter. Instead, she and the kids just stand at the sidelines at the bowling alley, telling them to not disturb their father.
– I don’t understand the Springfield Squares bit. Why is the Capitol City Goofball there? And really, if you’ve got Ron Howard, you make him the center square. And Itchy & Scratchy are real? Somehow? Whatever. I do like this exchange though regarding Howard (“Homer, you can’t just ride one accomplishment forever. Why do you think I stopped acting and became a director?” “I don’t know, because you weren’t cute anymore?” “Hmm… I’ll agree.” “Circle gets the square. Goodnight, everyone!”)
– More dumb cartoony shit where Homer somehow inhales the ‘300’ balloon. He didn’t even inhale that deeply, it just plummeted down his throat.
– Otto was conveniently bungee jumping off the building and managed to catch up to a falling Homer, which defies gravity, and for some reason his cord was long enough to descend through various underground levels below the city. So if they hadn’t gone in that manhole, Otto would have smashed his face into the pavement. Was that the aim? And I love that Homer gets hit with the manhole cover before he pops back on the surface, just one more opportunity to see him get hurt.
– Speaking of which, his Teletubby bit makes no sense either. He’s got the TV chained to his neck, sometimes holding it with one hand, which is ridiculous as that thing must weigh a fair amount. Then the TV seems to work without being plugged in, and electrocutes him somehow. Okay?
– I don’t even feel like commenting about Maggie saving Homer’s life at the end. The commentary yields no answers, as usual. But the episode can barely be bothered to explain it, they just crammed in a quick Hibbert line (“When a parent’s life is in danger, a child can summon super-human strength.”) No joke, no response, no questioning. Honestly, if you’re going to pull this kind of shit, at least have characters acknowledge how it makes no sense. By this point though, I’d been so dulled by the rest of the episode, this is just the cherry on top of the shit sundae. …oh, but I will say that I thought Maggie looked very cute in her little swim suit. At least I have a positive note to end on. …before she pulled a two hundred and eighty fucking pound man to shore. WHAT THE FUCK.