(originally aired December 16, 2001)
So here it is. Having run seasons 3 and 4 with Mike Reiss, and been a core member since the show’s beginning, Al Jean takes over as show runner. He’s remained in the position to this day, over ten seasons now, whereas all previous show runners had two, and Mike Scully having four. Now, a changing of the guard really does a series good; a Dave Mirkin show has a different feel than a Bill Oakley & Josh Weinstein one, each run having a different strike at a tone. Hell, even Mike Scully shows have a distinct feel to them. What I get on the whole from Jean’s run is a general airless quality, a stagnation, if you will. There will be some alright episodes, and some terrible ones, but many of them will fall in the painfully average territory. This first outing definitely qualifies, though there are more specific things I dislike than like here. We start with Homer helping Bart build a model rocket, which ends up careening off course and crashing into the church. Are there any repercussions to this? Is Homer held responsible to pay off the massive amount of damage? Nope! We’re at the end of act one and my hope for change from Jean is fading already.

Who will step up and save the church? Why, Mr. Burns… of course? He intends to run the house of worship like a business, with Lindsay Naegle assisting, selling ad space and product placement in the church. Why the hell is Burns involved in this? I have absolutely no clue. It would work so much better to just have it be Naegle alone representing some conglomerate company, then the church can be like a subsidiary of Big Business, Inc. or something. All the Burns stuff is painful here. As I mentioned in “A Hunka Hunka Burns in Love,” when they’re not writing Burns as pathetically limp and feeble, he’s cartoonishly evil Burns, who does despicable, undermining things simply because he’s eeeeeeeviiilll. The new sensationalized church couldn’t be more sacrilegious, and it’s enough to cause Lisa to break down and leave in a huff, vowing never to return. She goes on a spiritual quest to find a new faith, finally landing upon Buddhism, with thanks to Lenny, Carl, and special guest star Richard Gere, who is looked upon in the holiest of lights. I guess at this point I really need to stop complaining about celebrities continuously showing up in Springfield to be fawned over for no reason, since it will never, ever stop. Ever.

What pulls this episode below being just average is the bitterness of the third act. Marge is concerned for her daughter’s soul, and enlists the help of the church to get her back to Christianity. I get where Marge is coming from to some degree, but in a lot of scenes she just comes off petty, almost cruel to her poor daughter. Eavesdropping on her prayers, insisting it’s just a phase, tossing out freshly made Christmas cookies in the garbage in front of her face, it all feels very mean spirited, and very un-Marge behavior. Then in the end, it’s not Marge who learns a lesson, but Lisa, who tells the family that she can still worship with them, but in her own way. If that’s what you were going for, what not make the episode more like “Lisa the Vegetarian” and have Lisa be more militant with her new faith? Instead Marge is clearly in the wrong, and remains stubborn and closed-minded until the very end. It kind of bummed me out, which is definitely not a good thing for your Christmas episode.

Tidbits and Quotes
– Homer enlists the college nerds to help assemble the working rocket. Then he proceeds to force them, and Milhouse, to leave during the launch, which really rubbed me the wrong way. He’s supposed to be friends with them, but now he’s a big jerkass, get those fucking nerds out of here after I’ve exploited their hard work.
– Nibbles the hamster from “Skinner’s Sense of Snow” makes a triumphant re-appearance. And his “wife” is dressed like Jackie O. Whatever.
– Nice bit between Lindsay Naegle and Lisa (“The old church was skewing pious. We prefer a faith-based emporium teeming with impulse buy items.” “I feel like I want to throw up.” “Then my work is done.”)
– Why is Burns wasting his time monitoring Lovejoy’s sermon? Doesn’t he have a nuclear fucking power plant to run? I honestly just don’t understand why he’s in this episode at all.
– I like the dramatic nature of this heated exchange between Lovejoy and Lisa (“Lisa, it’s still the same basic message, we’ve just dressed it up a little.” “Like the Whore of Babylon?” “That is a false analogy.” “No, it’s not. It’s apt. Apt!”)
– As a cartoon villain, Burns announces he’s keeping all the church profits for himself, laughs manically and attempts to disappear in a puff of smoke. When he doesn’t disappear as he intended, he just tosses the stack of money on the table and leaves. Would Burns ever do something like that?
– The fact that Marge and the other churchgoers are so petty in their attempts to win Lisa back really puts a sour spin on the ending. Lovejoy outside the window waiting for Lisa to take the candy cane comes off as creepy, and meanwhile Lisa is the one who makes a realization at the end, not anyone else. It’s the complete opposite of where it feels like they should have been going.
– All the Lenny/Carl/Gere stuff is pretty limp. We also get what I believe is the first Moe committing suicide “gag” of the series. He had his head in an oven at the end of “Grift of the Magi,” but that was for the purposes of the It’s a Wonderful Life parody, but this episode started this hilarious new character trait of Moe wanting to kill himself. Comedy gold! Now, even suicide can be made funny (I can think of several examples from “South Park”), but this show just doesn’t have it in it.

(originally aired December 2, 2001)
I guess the writers just love neutered Burns. It’s astounding how he barely even resembles his former self anymore: whimpering like a puppy, completely out of sorts with everything, and without any contempt for the common man. And any episode featuring Burns smiling more than he scowls is of no interest to me. This episode is garbage like the last two, but a few isolated great lines kind of elevate it, but saying this is the best of the three is not high praise at all. Following a completely disposable opening involving Homer writing fortune cookies, Mr. Burns seeks out true love. Why’s that? Because his fortune said so. Burns is a stubborn, joyless old codger who I’m sure decided a long time ago that he was better off alone. But now he’s off to find the woman of his dreams! Weeeeeee! More lazy, lazy writing. There could have been a more streamlined and sensible reason for Burns to want to settle down with someone, but fuck that, we’ll just slap on this tangential beginning and have Burns act completely out of character. That works.

Burns finds his lady love Gloria, a meter maid voiced by Julia Louis-Dreyfus, a woman who cannot be any older than forty. So, what is the love connection here? Why on Earth would Gloria go out with a man over sixty years her senior? I wish I could have an answer for you, but it’s never addressed. I can’t even discern any personality traits for Gloria. Who is this woman and why does she love Mr. Burns? When the big climax happens and Burns is passionate enough to burst through a cabin up in flames to save her, there’s a giant lingering “WHY,” since we know absolutely nothing about Gloria and don’t care about her. This episode is actually strangely reminiscent of “Dumbbell Indemnity” with Moe: a blank slate of a character falls for one of our less desirable regulars, Homer assists in their love life in some capacity, the police get involved and both finales revolve around a burning building. It’s worse here though, as it’s an even bigger stretch for a woman to be involved with Mr. Burns. The only explanation that would make sense is if she were a gold digger. That would work. You could even have it be a big Smithers story, where he sees her for who she is, and maybe he has to acknowledge that Burns is happy with her regardless and not expose her true intentions. Something more interesting than whatever the fuck we’ve got going on here.

So it turns out Gloria’s ex-boyfriend is the lowlife criminal Snake, which totally makes sense given that we saw she was a cop earlier. Not to say this can’t happen, but there’s absolutely zero dialogue addressing this fact. It’s as if the writers just forgot, or just didn’t give a shit. Snake ends up kidnapping Gloria and Homer, and Burns has to save the day. When we get to the point where Burns is talking about how much he loves Gloria and that nothing is stronger than the human heart, I realize that Mr. Burns is basically dead. Honestly, this is it, how much more could you betray this once fascinating and hilarious character than this? The episode ends with he and the Simpsons walking into the sunset. That should not happen. EVER. The man who once vowed to spend every waking moment to make Homer’s wishes go unfulfilled has now enlisted him to help with his social life twice now. This isn’t Burns. In “Homer vs. Dignity,” he wasn’t a softie, but he was like some kind of cartoon villain, gleefully pranking people and being generically evil. So this is Burns now: either a clueless old pushover, or Snidely Whiplash. Might as well kill him off at this point.

Tidbits and Quotes
– George Takei returns as the waiter at the Chinatown restaurant, and is completely wasted with maybe thirty seconds of screen time. Why didn’t they have him be the manager? He had more lines. Or why not both? In fact, have him voice every character in the episode. I’d love to have seen that.
– The fortune cookie plot really makes no sense to me, I can’t even be bothered to pick it apart to analyze it. The only bit I like is that faux Woody Allen has a tiny wastebasket to match the tiny paper he’s using.
– The split-second we see of Smithers’s complete lack of interest in Burns’ “womanizing” just makes me wish this episode was more about he and Burns’s relationship. He basically disappears in the second act for no reason at all, why not focus on him more? But no, we’ll just have him moan in terror at the sight of tits and asses and get him out of the episode.
– The interplay between Gloria and Burns is painful, every line feels so forced and unnatural. I don’t get any sense of why these characters like each other at all, let alone are in love. The only bit I like on their date is when Gloria comments, “I really feel safe with you. It’s like going out with my brother.” Burns immediately thinks, “Yes! It’s going great!”
– We need Homer in the scene as Gloria is dropping off Burns at night. But how do we get him there? “Stop that dog! It has my gum!” Well done, raises all around!
– Nice exchange after Gloria and Burns bust a rug on the dance floor (“I gotta admit, you can really shake it.” “Oh, yes, it’s totally voluntary.”)
– “Put my hand on her knee. …I said ‘her.’ And I said ‘knee.'” So Homer put Burns’s hand on his genitals. What’s with all the Homer gay jokes?
– The bit in the montage of Burns and Gloria sucking face at the movies is disgusting. Honestly, this story makes absolutely no sense. The whole age issue is completely swept under the rug. If it had been more of a focus, and treated in a slightly more serious light, I could maybe buy this, but this episode could care less about being anything but completely bargain basement.
– My favorite line in the episode? “Can I have some ice cream? I finished my pizza.” Homer’s been dragged around by Burns the entire episode, so in that shot, he’s like a kid, looking around aimlessly, not caring about what’s going on. I don’t know why, but I laugh. I also love Burns announcing he’s about to “expel some urine.” I used to announce it that way myself for a while.
– The Pistol Whip dream of Homer’s is pretty good, as is this line from Burns (“I don’t understand. She was my sexy young fiancée, he was my sexually virile best friend, and they just drove off in my Bugatti Sexarossa. How could this ever have happened?”) And Wiggum commenting on Lou setting his sniper sights on Homer (“That’s a sweet shot, he’s tied to a chair!”) See, there are some good jokes here. It’s just everything else that’s absolute shit.
– The ending with Gloria going back to Snake makes no sense. I guess that’s one character trait I can give her: fickle. Oddly enough Gloria would reappear every now and then, still with Snake. Like, she’d just randomly show up for a line every couple of seasons. Why bother? Why pay Louis-Dreyfus to come in for one line of a character nobody cares about?

(originally aired November 18, 2001)
My word, I thought “The Parent Rap” was bad, but at least it had some semblance of a story with a beginning and end. This episode has a completely unrelated opening and ending, all completely out of nowhere, and a middle filled with a bunch of random elements that are both dumb and make no sense. It’s perhaps the messiest episode we’ve seen so far. Our opening features Bart digging a hole. Yep, that’s it. The family becomes increasingly worried about his behavior, then we get some bizarre Chinese satellite monitoring nonsense, and then it’s revealed that it was all a story Homer was telling at the bar (“Eventually, I become king of the Morlocks.”) Aside from the fact that none of what we just saw actually happened, this has got to be the strangest first act we’ve seen yet, but honestly, I was more interested in finding out why Bart was digging that hole than I was with anything that happened in the rest of the episode. How did they come up with this? And why did they think it was funny, or made any sense at all as a story Homer would tell? Three minutes in and I’m already annoyed.

Moe finds he’s lost his love for bartending and decides to take a sabbatical to his old college Swigmore University, and of course he leaves Homer in charge of the bar. Now, Moe attending bartending school works as a quick joke, but as it went on, it kind of bothered me more. I’m sure Moe never dreamed about being a bartender, and as such, he’s not a very good one. Instead he shows up at the college and is looked on as a valued alumni. Moe’s just some creepy sleazebag who opened his own shitty bar, now he’s some kind of campus hero. Moe’s old professor informs him that a renovation to his workplace may be in order. So Moe’s is torn down to make room for “m,” a post-post-modern club to cater to the most pretentious and pompous clientele. A joint that looks like it came with an incredibly high price tag, one I’m sure Moe had the funds to afford. Or wanted built in the first place. Right. Homer and the others feel out of sorts in these new surroundings, and eventually have a falling out with Moe. This leads Homer to open up his own bar in his garage, as at this point, he never goes to work anymore ever and can do such a thing.

After realizing he’s sold out, Moe goes to make amends with Homer, only to be surprised to find his makeshift bar. When he tells Homer that he can’t operate a bar in a residential area, he counters that it’s actually a hunting club, and when Moe informs him that all such clubs are required to actually go hunting, Homer insists he’s going to shoot a turkey the next day. So our ending involves Lisa and Moe trying to keep Homer from shooting a turkey. I have no idea how we got to this point. Maybe the writers felt like they wanted to do another Thanksgiving episode but couldn’t figure out a story around it, so they decided to cram it in here. There’s literally two minutes of the episode left and we’re completely off the rails with this random-ass ending. R.E.M. appears for some reason, and we get an incredibly forced attempt at a sentimental ending where Homer and Moe make up. The level of laziness has reached an all-time high with these last two episodes, it’s absolutely staggering. Perhaps once we wade through these Scully holdovers, the series will stabilize a little bit, but I’m not getting my hopes up.

Tidbits and Quotes
– “That’s odd. He’s outside, digging.” “Probably digging for drugs.” “There’s no drugs out there.” “No… of course not.” THIS IS LIKE THE THIRD FUCKING TIME THEY’VE DONE THIS JOKE. WRITERS, PLEASE STOP.
– I honestly don’t even know what to say about the hole plot. I’m almost curious to hear the commentary, but I don’t have the DVD set for this season. But I’m sure they don’t address it at all, or mention it briefly and laugh about how stupid it is.
– I like how Moe decides who runs his bar by way of a literal pissing contest (“Oh, don’t look so proud. That was wind-assisted.”) Also good is Homer’s lack of understanding of Moe’s business (“Hey, what are you doing? I gotta pay for that!” “No, Moe, you’ve got it all wrong. People buy beer from you.”)
– If I may do a quick compare and contrast, think back to the first act break of “Homer the Smithers,” which also featured Homer being left in charge of a job he has no experience in. In that episode, Homer is befuddled by his new responsibilities, and the one question he has time to ask Smithers, he doesn’t get an answer to: what to do in case of a fire? Then we see Burns’s office is on fire. Just his luck. In this episode, Moe is out the door two seconds before there’s a giant explosion. He goes back in to see the bar in ruins, and Homer very cavalierly says, “I thought you had to go.” In the days of old, misfortune and bad luck befall Homer, and he tries to sort it out in his own dim, stupid way. Nowadays, Homer causes his own messes, and either disregards them, or belittles those who call him out on it. Which of these two sounds better as our lovable protagonist?
– I like the saloon doors at Swigmore U, but the whole set piece still bothers me, like I said earlier. Also, having Moe’s professor kill himself felt like too much. This show, especially the state it’s in now, is far too silly to pull off comedy this dark, especially making as grim as someone dying of cancer drown themselves funny.
– Homer attempts to fix the skipping jukebox like Fonzie by hitting it with his fist, and he ends up breaking the glass and bleeding profusely from his hand. Like, a copious amount of blood. This is one of the earliest instances of gross cartoonish violence being used in the series proper. When did this show start crossbreeding with the Treehouse of Horror segments?
– I feel the crazy ultra-hip bar could have been good fodder for jokes, but it just doesn’t work here. The only thing I care for is Moe’s explanation of the place (“It’s po-mo! …post-modern! …alright, weird for the sake of weird.”)
– So apparently Homer has the technical prowess to construct and program a working sentient robot. …okay.
– Being the great main character he is, we see that Homer is forcing his children to stay up until all hours of the night cleaning glasses and slicing lemons. Child abuse is funny!
– Homer somehow got in contact with R.E.M. and got them to perform in his garage. And they believed his dumb lie. Whatever, who cares, fuck you.
– This is a really small thing, but when Homer’s hunting his target, he does a really quick roll on the ground before getting back into his prepared stance. When did he get some nimble that he would do a roll like that? It’s just more sacrificing character traits in favor of whatever the fuck is happening in the scene, however stupid or ridiculous it may be.
– My God, I thought the “Three mistrials later” from “Children of a Lesser Clod” was bad. This makes that hand wave look brilliant. We have a still shot of Moe’s Tavern restored, with this ADR (“How’d you get the bar back to normal so quickly, Moe?” “It’s a snap when you use certified contractors.” “Like the ones found in your local yellow pages?” “Exactly.”) Astounding. They didn’t even bother to write an ending explaining what happened, so they just threw this together at the last minute.

(originally aired November 11, 2001)
There’s a few more season 12 holdovers after this, but this feels like Mike Scully’s last hurrah: the last episode of his production run, and he co-wrote it. The last episode he had a writing credit on was also a premiere, “Beyond Blunderdome,” and it was garbage, and hey, so is this one! It’s just one insultingly stupid plot turn one after another, which cranks it up to eleven at the third act when absolutely nothing makes sense, and worst of all, none of it is funny. Things start out fair enough when Bart and Milhouse end up accidentally taking off with a police car. They end up in court, but thankfully Judge Snyder is a big ol’ pushover, with his handwaving belief that “boys will be boys.” The bit with the Simpsons talking about how court time is quality family time since they’re there so often is a bit conflicting to me: they’re clearly not an average American family anymore, but to be fair, how can they be after twelve years on the air? I’m on board with the episode until Judge Constance Harm takes the stand, a boring Judge Judy-style no-nonsense judge who doles out unique punishments, in this case ordering Bart and Homer being tethered together, citing Homer’s negligent parenting as the root cause of Bart’s behavior.

This plot immediately makes no sense. How is Bart expected to go to school, Homer go to work, change clothes, do normal everyday functions, do anything? But all of this can be excused if there’s humor to it, but all we get is Homer screaming about terror cobras or some shit. I’m shocked that they actually addressed that Homer works nights now thanks to this new arrangement, but nothing interesting comes from it. Things come to a head when Marge and Homer are about to have sex with Bart in the room until Marge reconsiders. Why was she considering it in the first place? This leads to a fight between Homer and Bart, and Marge, at her wit’s end, cuts the tether. But not so fast! Homer looks at one of the tether ends and sees a live video of Harm “through the magic of fiber optics.” Okay, let’s just say that Marge cut the rope right where the video screen was, that’d be dumb enough, but this is a live video, where she can both hear and see what’s happening, and her anger can set the rope on fire. The dumbness is off the charts. Severing the tether could have triggered some kind of alarm for Harm and she could have phoned them, sent police to their house, anything but this unbelievably stupid thing.

Harm now has Marge in her sights, believing that she is a bad parent too. When Marge refuses to admit to that fact, Harm has both her and Homer put in mobile stocks, which is even more dumb and inconvenient. They manage to break free in order to enact revenge on the judge, in the form of draping her houseboat with a banner reading “BIG MEANIE.” I’m not entirely sure what the purpose of this is. I suppose it’s Marge’s softball vengeance, but this is our third act, there should be something big going on. It’s as lame as George Bush’s “Two Bad Neighbors” banner. Homer and Marge’s plans are stymied by Harm’s freaking guard seal. Then Homer chucks a cider block, attempting to hit Harm, but ends up plowing right through the hull of the boat, sinking her house. So let’s see, Homer basically has an attempted murder charge, destruction of property, and I’m sure many other serious offenses here. But forget about all that, because Bart has a random, poorly set-up speech to make about how his parents are good and how everything is his fault. But before a harsher sentence can be reached, Snyder reappears so we can end the episode with no consequences. When your characters can do anything and get away with it, and weird impossible stuff can happen without much of an explanation, it makes your show… kinda stupid.

Tidbits and Quotes
– Wiggum has a Miranda Rights Teleprompter on his dash, which he puts to good use upon arresting Bart and Milhouse (“You have the right to remain… silent? That doesn’t sound right…”)
– I really like the pathetic charade Bart puts on with his innocence routine, played against the incredibly lenient Judge Snyder. Thinking it’s basically a done deal, Homer is anxious to wrap things up (“I’ll bring the car around.”)
– Jane Kaczmarek plays Judge Harm, best known at the time as the mom on Malcolm in the Middle, using basically her normal voice playing a Judge Judy parody, and it’s really not that funny. But I guess the writers thought differently as she kind of became the new permanent judge from the next several seasons. I’m sure we must have seen Snyder come back, but I was surprised (and disappointed) the next few times we see a court scene and she’s there.
– All the Homer and Bart stuff in the second act is boring and stupid, with some pretty lazy dialogue to boot (“We’re sure learning a lot about each other!” “Yeah, this tether has some pluses!”) Then we get the Moe’s scene, which has an incredibly dated joke about George W. Bush’s daughters, where we see Homer keeping his son outside in the cold for hours on end, and Moe inexplicably robbing Homer at gun point. Hilarious!
– Lisa mentions that the tethering has been quite beneficial, in that Bart might be on the honor roll this year. Really? Well it would have been nice to see that, it would give an interesting twist to this plot that the unusual punishment is actually working. Instead it’s all just dumb jokes.
– At the beginning of act three, we see Lisa confront Bart about feeling remorseful for their parents being punished for what he did, but it’s so quick and meaningless that it still makes his turn at the end feel incredibly random.
– To escape the stocks, Homer and Marge use Ned’s buzz saw. Of course now, we see that Homer’s entire arms fit through the stocks, when before it was just his hands. But whatever, who cares, fuck you.
– It’s such a lame joke where you see ‘BI’ on the banner, then it’s revealed as ‘BIG MEANIE.’ Oh my God, I thought it was gonna say ‘Bitch!’ How edgy! Come on.
– Honestly, this really is one of the worst endings we’ve seen thus far. If that cinder block had hit Homer’s intended target, Harm would probably have been killed. Whether Homer had intended that or not doesn’t matter, and in the end, he still ended up destroying Harm’s house. And what happens in the end? Absolutely fucking nothing.