(originally aired September 18, 2005)
Another curious episode that doesn’t seem clear on what it’s supposed to be about, so in place of a concrete story, we have a lot of isolated segments and time filler, none of which are actually funny or entertaining. Construction of a stamp museum starts up behind the Simpson house, leaving them understandably upset and they start a protest. In the end, the museum is moved to the site of Springfield Cemetery, which is relocated directly behind the Simpsons. Beyond the odd fact that all of this is being built in a residential area, how the fuck did they move the whole goddamn graveyard? They couldn’t have dug up all the bodies, but if they did, it could have made for an interesting show. I guess there’s a bunch of rotting corpses lurking under the stamp museum now, which would make for another interesting show. But here, it’s that Lisa is frightened to sleep in her room, which apparently is the only room that faces the graveyard, which is absolutely not the case, since we’ve seen Bart’s room face out that way a hundred times. We go through the whole freaking episode before the very end when someone gives a very simple solution to the problem: have Lisa close the goddamn curtains. Simple as that.

A frightened Lisa sleeps in Homer and Marge’s bed the first night, which elicits a very cold response from Marge. Rather be understanding of her daughter’s fears, she lectures her in that she’s going to have to sleep in her own room. Even after she and Homer spend the night in Lisa’s room to see it’s not so bad, and they see how insanely spooky it is in there, she still has this unusually condescending attitude toward her, very unlike the nurturing overbearing mother she normally is. Then for some reason this leads to the two of them going to see a psychiatrist, who diagnoses, with little information and without Lisa actually there, that an inattentive upbringing led Lisa to suppress her childhood fears, and she has to learn to properly deal with them. What’s all this about? For some reason, no one seems to understand how an eight-year-old girl would be frightened by a creepy as hell graveyard sitting outside her window. Lisa vows to conquer her fears by staying a night in the cemetery, and ultimately she does. And that’s the end. The story is so aimless and empty, and we get stuff like them visiting the stamp museum and extended TV parodies to fill in the gaps. A very perplexing, confused episode.

Tidbits and Quotes
– Another thing modern Simpsons uses and abuses: the music montage. In place of writing a normal sequence of events, we’ll just move right past it with a gag-filled montage. Here, it involves Marge sabotaging a construction vehicle causing it to burst into flames with the driver in it, and Homer practically nude jiggling and riding a mower. Entertainment at its finest! Also, one of Homer’s new catchphrases seems to be a long, extended moan, that is also annoying as shit.
– I did smirk at Marge’s unusual hostility toward Sesame Street‘s Count Von Count (“Go back to your own country!”) But it’s odd that I think about it now, as she’s the first person to express worriment about the graveyard, and yet she still exhibits no sympathy toward Lisa?
– The visit to the stamp museum is completely unnecessary to the story. The only thing it does is introduce the Wild Things… sorry, I mean Wild Beasts. Does it count as a parody of you’re just stealing the actual thing and changing the name?
– Homer and Marge return home from a party and openly badmouth the other guests. Lisa overhears this and inquires why they’re badmouthing people she thought were their friends. This sequence lasts long enough that I thought it was going to have some bearing to the plot, but nope, just more killing time.
– I guarantee they had this Itchy & Scratchy cartoon lying around and just shoved it in this episode. But why place it right at the climax? It’s so shitty too. Cats is so boring that Scratchy kills himself! Again, pot to kettle, guys. Pot to fucking kettle.
– We haven’t seen Dr. Nick in a long while. I thought was delightfully morbid of him to impersonate Dr. Octopus with severed arms (“Bye Lisa! And remember, you have a check up next Thursday!” “We don’t go to you anymore! We have a better doctor!” “Oh, congratulations!”) Then Wiggum is doing a manhunt for him in the cemetery… man, this episode is basically eighty percent filler.
– The only good thing in this episode is the direction. There are a lot of great shots of the spooky cemetery, and some cool camera moves and shots in Lisa’s dream.

(originally aired September 11, 2005)
What is the worst episode ever? It’s a question as subjective as choosing one’s favorite episode, and not one I want to waste much time delving into. But to give my thoughts quickly, I think the most egregious modern episodes are the marriage crisis shows. Homer and Marge’s relationship used to be so endearing, as Homer acknowledges how lucky a fat, dumb schmo like him is to have landed a prize like Marge, and he would always try his dardnest to prove his worth as a provider for her and the family, only to be sabotaged by fate, or his own gross incompetence. Now, these episodes normally involve Homer being a flaming asshole and driving Marge away, and the two inexplicably getting back together in the end for no reason other than twenty minutes are up. I’d always considered this to be the worst of that type of show, so could this be my worst episode ever? I dunno, but it sure feels like a contender. Homer is incorrigible from beginning to end: exaggeratedly moronic, selfish, arrogant, and unbelievably stupid. Every single scene he’s in, he irritates the shit out of me. We start with him falling for a football betting scam, even though Lisa flat-out tells him it’s a scam, blindly borrowing money from Fat Tony to cover his bets. Since he can’t pay up, Homer agrees to let them film an X-rated movie in his house. Marge finds out, is mortified, and immediately leaves, without the kids, strangely enough. I guess she’ll let Homer explain what was happening in there.

Marge ends up south of Springfield and calls Homer on a pay phone. At this point, both characters have commented on how this happens all the time. Marge seems depressed and resigned to the fact that she’ll come back home and this cycle of Homer’s jerkass behavior will continue over and over again. Which we know it will. Whatever happens at the end of this episode, this will happen again and again and again, so from this point, things feel completely sour. Marge joins forces with Caleb, a rugged activist devoted to protecting the manatees. Meanwhile, Homer is searching for Marge, and ends up at his country cousin’s house, characters we’re just now meeting in the third act. They don’t even have names, and the joke is that they’re bright, affluent people, but Homer belittles them by calling them stupid rubes, and is condescending to them the whole time, despite their hospitality, and them saving his ass in the end. Homer stops some jet skiers from tormenting some manatees, which they’re doing for some reason, then invokes their wrath when he insults them. Seeing Homer get pummeled is the best part of the whole episode. After putting up with his douchebag behavior for so long, it was quite satisfying to see. Eventually he’s saved, he’s battered, brain-damaged and vomiting profusely, and Marge couldn’t be happier, somehow. The gag is that Homer mirrors the manatees, this big, dumb stupid animal that Marge needs to take care of, but the sadness surrounding the joke is overwhelming. Homer’s like this destructive tumor Marge is saddled with, endlessly getting into shenanigans that place his life and the family’s well being in jeopardy, and Marge goes back to him every time. Their marriage has de-evolved into a form of an abusive relationship, and it’s perhaps the worst thing modern Simpsons has done. If not the worst episode ever, then this is definitely in the top three. I can’t be bothered to rank that shit.

Tidbits and Quotes
– Homer is irritating from the start. Hearing Lisa explain the football predictions form to him kind of reminds me of her rock analogy in “Much Apu About Nothing,” but there, Homer just couldn’t understand it, and here he’s just flat out ignoring his daughter’s warnings. He then later lies to his wife’s face, and manages to absolve all her niggling doubts with some empty sweet talk. What a wonderful guy.
– Santa’s Village is a dead set piece. Storytown Village was a believable and wonderfully shitty amusement park. Here, everything is way too dilapidated and run-down that it’s just more dour than funny, and in case it wasn’t sad enough, it ends with Bart mentioning “Santa” being taken away in a body bag.
– I can’t get over how awful the scene of Marge on the pay phone is. It’s her stating why these types of episodes are awful, but in a completely straight, un-ironic fashion. That and they just pile on more of Homer being a dick, showing him eating the apology chocolates and whining to her about how to write a check.
– Caleb introduces himself to Marge, revealing his passion for protecting manatees. What’s the first thing out of her mouth in response? “What if by harming a manatee, you could save two manatees? But before you answer, consider this: the manatee you have to harm is pregnant.” I can’t think of a more unnatural line than this. Someone tossed this shit to Julie Kavner like a grenade and she has to figure out how the fuck to say this kind of line and make it sound right. No one fucking talks like this.
– It’s amazing how Homer just gets worse and worse as the show goes on. His treatment of his country cousins is the most deplorable though (“Do you folks want to see a quilt that’s been in our family for five generations?” “I warned you he was an idiot!”) He openly insults them at every turn, and for some reason tells them that Marge is dead, at the dinner table with the kids sitting there. If all of this wasn’t random enough, then we find out the family connection: their dogs are related, as we see Santa’s Little Helper and his country brother with a straw hat and a fucking hayseed in his mouth. And on top of that, we have a stolen joke from “Who Shot Mr. Burns” (“We don’t have an outhouse.” “My recording studio!”)
– I honestly could pick this episode apart scene by scene, there’s that much wrong with it. The weird rhythm between Homer and Caleb’s confrontation, Bart randomly pointing out the manatees, the bizarre reactions from the jetskiers, the fucking awful ending with Burns and Smithers… This episode is absolutely dreadful from the first frame to the last. Maybe it is the worst episode ever. But even if it’s not, it’s still total fucking garbage.

(originally aired May 15, 2005)
Here’s another episode that I really have no idea what it’s trying to say. It’s supposed to be satirizing Catholicism, I guess, but ultimately all I see is a show clumsily lifting elements from older episodes. The first act involves Bart getting expelled, just as he was in “Whacking Day,” except here, it happens during a big medieval fair at the school, and the big prank isn’t actually caused by Bart, he just takes the blame. The school is so damn poor, how do they have the funds to put on this elaborate fair? And why? What is this for? Anyway, Willie enacts revenge or something and Bart takes the fall, but I’m not sure why it’s constructed like this. The only way this comes into play is much later when Bart warms up to Father Sean because he believes he was innocent, but they could have played that ten different ways and it wouldn’t make a difference. Is it to make him seem more sympathetic? Even despite his prank in “Whacking Day,” Bart’s plenty sympathetic. He’s just a rambunctious kid who ultimately didn’t mean to ram Chalmers in the ass. …boy, that sentence doesn’t sound very good, does it?

The only place that will have Bart and is cheap enough is a Catholic school, and it isn’t long before he’s swayed by the faith, through ultra-violence religious comic books. Homer goes to straighten things out, but ends up converting himself thanks to their pancake dinners and bingo. Marge teams up with Lovejoy and Flanders to reclaim her son and husband to the “right” religion. So it’s kind of like “The Joy of Sect,” but where the Movementarians were actually a despicable, untrustworthy cult, the Catholics… well… we won’t get into religious discussions here, but for the purposes of this episode, they’re definitely not negatively portrayed. Marge wins Bart over with material possessions, just like in “Sect,” here with paintball instead of hover bikes, but it feels so clumsy. In “Sect,” Bart was brainwashed, while here, Bart seems to be truly invested in his faith, then drops it as a goof, then comes back and delivers one sentence of a resolution, and everyone’s minds are completely changed. One line that’s surely been said a million times over stops the conflict between Christians and Catholics. I’m not sure what the point of this show is… another episode where I’m just confused more than I’m annoyed.

Tidbits and Quotes
– The show finally takes a shot at Dubya with Homer prattling about what America’s next great war will be (“Anything’s possible with Commander Cuckoo-Bananas in charge!”) Not funny, yeah, but it’s strange that after so many shots at Clinton, we have basically nothing at George W. Bush’s expense. I remember on a commentary, Al Jean mentions that they never did many jokes about Bush because public opinion of him kept changing “every six months or so” that they didn’t want to do it. Well, one, I recall that opinion of him was quite low for most of his presidency, so I don’t know what that was about. And two, if you wanted to take a crack at him, what do you care about public opinion? What’s with the show and its lack of balls now?
– This is a nice running bit between the teacher nun and Bart, who’s been forced to pose like Christ on the cross and hold heavy books in his hands (“Now think what it would be like if you nails in your hands.” “Well, I guess they’d help me hold the dictionaries up.”)
– With not much material to work from, I think Liam Neeson did a good job as Father Sean. I like his recounting of how he got his faith: face down in the gutter after a brawl with his father, St Peter appeared before him (“‘Sean, you wanker,’ he says, ‘Repent of your wicked ways or sod off!’ And he gobbed in my face and turned back into a street light.”)
– I’m really not sure what this show’s stance on Catholicism is, or if they even have one. The montage of Homer and Bart’s new faith is indicative of that. We see Bart using a rosary, he and Homer rejecting meat on Friday, more pancakes and bingo… like, is that all? Oh, and of course they make a priest molesting kids joke. I knew they couldn’t resist it.
– Marge’s Heaven daydream is so long, and ultimately just more time killing. And if that’s her worry, then why isn’t she just as concerned with Lisa’s move to Buddhism? Couldn’t she have had a line or something where she was concerned of being the only Christian family member left?
– The entire last act echoes so closely to “Sect,” but the tone is completely different. Marge, Flanders and Lovejoy feel so unbelievably petty, trying to force Bart back into Christianity. Though this is a great line from Lovejoy (“We’re here to bring you back to the one true faith: the Western branch of American Reformed Presbyterianism.”)
– “It’s all Christianity, people! The little stupid differences are nothing compared to the big stupid similarities!” That’s all it takes to stop the entire conflict. Everyone is completely swayed, and Father Sean alerts all to abide Bart’s message of peace. But first, a line from Flanders (“He’s right! Can’t we all get together and concentrate on our real enemies: monogamous gays and stem cells?”) Then he mentally notes to re-bless his hand after shaking it with a Catholic. I hate Flanders now. And if there’s one character that shouldn’t elicit a hateful response, it’s motherfucking Flanders.

Season 16 Final Thoughts
Another season, same old shit.
In fact it’s actually getting worse in that episodes are becoming more and more forgettable. Normally with these season round-ups, the worst episodes stand out to me, but now I have to go through the list and remember which ones annoyed me off the most. It’s all becoming just a big wash, but thankfully there’s only four more seasons of this banality left to do.

The Best
“The Heartbroke Kid,” “A Star is Torn”

The Worst
“She Used to Be My Girl,” “Mommie Beerest,” “There’s Something About Marrying,” “On a Clear Day I Can’t See My Sister,” “Mobile Homer”

(originally aired May 15, 2005)
I forgot that FOX had these three weeks of double-episode Sundays. I guess they ran out of time and had to cram as many episodes possible into the season. I mention this only because I can’t think of a way to open this review. To raise some extra money, Flanders opens up his spare room for rent and takes in two college women as tenants. Unbeknownst to him, they are actually softcore webcam girls, using his home as their new studio. When Homer finds this out, he makes it his mission to inform the whole town about it. I wouldn’t say Homer working to humiliate Flanders like this is entirely out of character, but it’s kind of uncomfortable to watch. I also find it’s a bad sign when Homer spends most of the running time smiling and laughing. He chuckles when he shows Moe the smutty website, then we cut to an exterior of the church with him still laughing, then we see him at a pew playing with a bobblehead Moses. Homer used to be downtrodden, and dare I say humble, and that’s why we loved him. Now he’s just this giggling moron who fucks things up for everyone, and we’re supposed to like him?

When Flanders finds out the truth, and that the town has been mocking him behind his back, even his “best friend” Homer, he is crest-fallen. He ends up moving to Humbleton, PA, a town as saccharine sweet and wholesome as the Humble (Hummel) figurines they produce. Meanwhile, the Simpsons’s new neighbor is a hardass coach who berates and abuses Homer. He’s arrogant and abrasive, sure, but on the whole we see he’s no worse a neighbor to Homer as Homer was to Flanders (“By the way, I borrowed some gas from your car.” “But I siphoned that gas from Flanders!”) So Homer goes to Humbleton to beg Flanders to come home. This is usually reserved for Homer-Marge episodes, but this is another episode that ends with Homer’s pleas to not be out of love or respect, but to beg the other person to put up with their bullshit and do absolutely nothing to change his own dickish ways. And Flanders accepts! For some reason! Then he comes back and is shocked to find Homer’s ripped the organ out from the church and put it in his backyard. That’s our craaaaazy Homer! I don’t understand how any character tolerates him anymore, I really don’t.

Tidbits and Quotes
– Jokes feel so clunky now. There’s an NPR radio contest to give away tickets to some foreign film, and Lisa frantically calls in, thinking there will be many, many others doing the same. Then we see the broadcaster, after prattling on for a few more seconds, stop dead in her tracks (“Holy crap, someone’s actually calling!”) As well as a giant red flashing “INCOMING CALL” sign. So laborious and so obvious. Compare this to “Radio Bart”: Homer watches the Superstar Microphone commercial and hears supplies are limited. “Limited?!” He frantically dials and asks if there are any left. Then we see a disinterested employee with an entire warehouse full of boxes, shot at a bit of a low angle only to emphasize how many he has. “Yeah, a couple.” It takes half the time, and even if we can predict the joke, it’s still funny for other reasons.
– Flanders takes a bath in a bathing suit. Why? “So I can’t see my own shrinky-dink!” I sometimes think what characters would be like if they were created at this point down the line. Flanders would be some kind of celibate weirdo who’s afraid of his own dick. How did he have two kids if he can’t look at his own fucking penis?
– The satire at the beginning is so lame. Foreign films are weird! And of course Lisa eats it up as a pretentious liberal arts student, and not an eight-year-old girl (“It’s Albanian, but the producers added subtitles to make it commercial.”)
– I like Milhouse’s incredulous reaction to the dirty website (“Two girls? Who would want that?”)
– Homer fesses up to Flanders, who then presumably boots the two girls as soon as he finds out, and then all of a sudden there’s a huge crowd there hooting and hollering as they go. Why do all these people care exactly?
– When the writers get stuck in a corner where they have to make the family angry at Homer, and perhaps then he’ll realize he did something wrong, the solution is to make him brain dead (“You’ve totally humiliated the best friend the Simpsons ever had.” “You’re right. But you know who the real victim here? Ned.” “That’s what we’ve been trying to tell you!” “Oh, yeah.”) Then Homer finds Ned’s note that he left and cries to the heavens (“He’s gone! And it’s all someone else’s fault!”) Wonderful.
– Humbleton is boring and weird. If they were so viciously against Ned’s mustache, enough to make the front page of their newspaper “Hair Fuhrer,” why don’t they kick him out? And why doesn’t Flanders leave, given so much scorn?
– Jason Bateman, a funny guy and a great talent, is wasted with two lines over ten seconds of a stupid TV parody. I think this is right off of Arrested Development too, and the thought of that being cancelled while this garbage is still being aired makes my blood boil a little bit.

Also, after a brief hiatus, I’ve kicked my DreamWorks blog back up again, starting with the fantastic Kung Fu Panda. I don’t know if anyone even reads it, honestly, but I’ve mostly just been enjoying watching these movies over again. Which is most than I can say for this crap series.

(originally aired May 8, 2005)
For an episode about the apocalypse, this episode feels rather meek and unsure of exactly what it’s trying to say, or what it’s trying to be. It’s another one of those “stuff that happens” episodes, where there’s a somewhat coherent story, but no real emotional undercurrent or meaning to it. After seeing a Christian scare-tactic film, “Left Below,” Homer starts fearing the seemingly inevitable apocalypse. Through an absurd and baseless calculation, Homer deducts that the end of the world is coming the following week, and makes it his mission to warn others. By another ridiculous contrivance, everyone believes his nonsense, including the family, and head out to Springfield Mesa to await the rapture. Of course it doesn’t come, and everyone decries Homer for it. Homer then realizes he made a mistake in his equation, and goes out alone for what he believes to be the accurate rapture… and he was right. Seemingly. But he realizes Heaven just isn’t Heaven if his family is suffering, and creates enough of a ruckus to make an exasperated God undo the apocalypse and put things back as they were.

The people of Springfield are a gullible bunch, so I can buy them following Homer on his absurdly unfounded holy crusade, but here it doesn’t feel like it adds up. The predicated “stars falling from the sky” coming true as a blimp full of celebrities crashing to Earth is a cute gag, but as the basis of the entire town suddenly believing Homer, it comes off as flimsy. So in the end, Homer goes off to Heaven, or does he? I don’t think it actually happened; like “Homer the Heretic,” Homer only bears witness to God in his dreams. Ultimately the point of all this is that his satisfaction of being right is no consolation for the loss of his family. But the episode really wasn’t even about that. We feel for Homer in some regard, but none of his actions of trying to save everybody were really targeted toward his wife and kids. Earlier he admits it’s self-serving for him to warn people about the apocalypse, that hopefully that will count as his good deed to get himself into Heaven. Then when he regains consciousness with Marge and the kids there, he quickly excuses himself so he can go get a beer, so the family angle is deflated immediately so we can have a Last Supper at Moe’s sight gag to go out on. A serious, meaty topic contained within an empty, purposeless outing.

Tidbits and Quotes
– I guess the Baha Men must have recorded another song when they were in for “Large Marge.” But that was almost two seasons ago. I bet they just thought of the brilliant “Who Wants Their Hair Cut?” song, and then left it aside with a note to write it in to another episode. But here it makes no sense. Bart and Lisa get botched haircuts and try to avoid Skinner and other kids on a field trip looking for great snapshots. So I guess they just skipped school? Lisa wouldn’t stand for that. They and Homer hide in the movie theater, and then I guess just sit down at a screening, presumably without paying. Seamless transition.
– “Left Below” starts out well enough (newspaper headline: Permissive Lifestyles on Rise, Bible Mocked), but it gets too heavy-handed in the end. I guess that’s the point, but it felt like a bit much (“Why did I put my faith in science and technology?”)
– I’m surprised they bothered to explain how Bart and Lisa got their hair back. Marge keeping their hair snippets in the freezer to make them new weaves felt like just the right amount of disturbing to be amusing to me.
– For an episode about divine retribution and the end of days, Flanders is curiously absent in this episode, save for one shot where Homer tries to keep him away from his apocalypse planning session. Then later he ditches Abe. The episode is apparently about Homer wanting to save his family, but he leaves his father to die horribly. Great guy, huh?
– Another instance of Marge saying, “I’m so proud of you, Homey!” for no reason whatsoever. Why does she believe her husband’s complete and utter bullshit all of a sudden?
– I guess Homer’s so dumb, he doesn’t even know what the planet Earth looks like. The man’s been to outer space, I think he would remember it.
– Homer blowing up the Heaven concierge’s head is extremely similar to a bit from the comic Johnny the Homicidal Maniac where Johnny does the exact same thing. I’m not saying that they stole it… but I think they stole it. It makes no sense for Homer to want to do that.
– The only stuff I really like here are all the bits with God, His big office and pointing to His traumatized son. The idea of Him wanting to placate Homer just to get him out of His hair is also funny to me. There’s also more uncomfortable handling of Homer’s drinking: God Himself tells him He’s concerned about his alcoholism, and the one favor Homer asks of Him is to reopen Moe’s so he can go get hammered.