(originally aired May 14, 2006)
As he has gone from goody two-shoes neighbor-eeno to psycho Christian conservative, Ned Flanders ends up the subject of greater scrutiny nowadays, even filling the role of minor antagonist. Marge staunchly opposed his ultra-violent religious films in “Homer and Ned’s Hail Mary Pass,” now Lisa butts heads with him in this intelligent design show. In another example of how this show tries (and fails) to tackle hot button issues, Flanders is shocked to find an evolution exhibit at the museum without one mention of the Bible. As such, he and Lovejoy pressure the school to teach Creationism. Seeing the two of them stand by glaring as Skinner delivers the news to the students is unsettling to watch. Organized religion was always poked fun at in the show, but never was it vilified or truly belittled in the way it’s done here. Lisa opposes this curriculum change, citing several conservatives who believe in evolution, because it makes sense for an eight-year-old to know that. When she resorts to teaching evolution in secret, she is promptly arrested for it and prepares to stand trial.
The third act becomes a shitty Inherit the Wind knock with the two representatives that not only mirror Brady and Drummond, but share their fucking names too in case you didn’t get it. The trial is a farce, none of it makes sense, and we’re never told what will happen to Lisa if she loses. What could happen? She’s just a kid. Around this, barely, is Marge and Lisa butting heads on beliefs, kind of like “Lisa the Skeptic,” but more shoddy and disingenuous. Marge finally ends up reading “The Origin of Species” and manages to help Lisa prove her innocence. Established in the trial is the missing link between ape and man, so when Marge gives her husband a bottle of beer, he hollers and thrashes it about like an animal trying to open it, mirroring said missing link completely. This convinces the entire trial, and the case is dismissed. I thought the ending of “The Call of the Simpsons” was a silly stretch, but this is just ridiculous. In the end, Lisa makes amends with Flanders, though I don’t recall them having one conversation in the whole damn show. It’s stunning how the show can’t even mock such an easy topic like intelligent design. In the past, this series managed to deride groups of all kinds, but here all they can come up with is that creationists are retarded. How biting.
Tidbits and Quotes
– The opening with Bart’s last-minute summer vacation fun, I believe was left on the cutting room floor of “I’m Spelling as Fast as I Can” from three seasons back, so rather than waste such great material, they slapped it on here. Never mind the bit where Bart watches a Men in Black type film seemed dated at that point, no one will notice a thing!
– Before Flanders becomes our maybe antagonist, Homer gets in his share of assholery, cutting Ned in line at the museum and getting aggressive when he meekly objects (“Dude, I was totally here! You calling me a liar? In front of my kids! ‘Cause I’d take a bullet for you, man! Right in the mouth!”) The rest of the line takes advantage of his wishy-washy nature, and to the back of the line he goes.
– Everything at the museum is so painful to watch. Maggie pulls a switchblade on her mother. Homer shoots himself repeatedly wearing a bulletproof vest, because it’s safe to have live ammunition at a museum, terrorizing the entire room. Bart uses a medieval body stretcher on Milhouse that audibly dislocates his bones. I could not stop cringing. After that, Flanders is stuck in the horrifying Hall of Man, full of depictions of human ancestors and fossil records. He then proceeds to yell at his kids as they ask dumb questions and do dumb things. The only laugh I got is when Raphael points out the only mention of creationism in the museum: a moving diorama of God’s finger erecting life on Earth to the tune of “What a Fool Believes.”
– Lisa and Marge’s discussion at the kitchen table is an incredibly bizarre scene. It’s like “Skeptic” where the two have differing beliefs involving science and religion, but here Lisa asks her mother point blank, “You really have to choose here between science and belief.” Then we get slow push-ins on them as Marge thinks and emotional music plays… and we end with her running outside and joining her husband bouncing on a trampoline. End of scene. What?
– Act two ends with Wiggum watching and joking as Snake stands atop the Kwik-E-Mart gunning down innocent people. Hysterical!
– Marge finishes reading “The Origin of Species” and she’s truly enlightened. What is her commentary? (“Darwin’s argument is incredibly persuasive! And his ship was the Beagle, which reminds me of Snoopy, my favorite Peanut!”) I honestly don’t understand not only how a writer comes up with a joke like this, but deems it funny enough to pitch in the writer’s room, let alone for it to end up in the actual show.
– Nelson’s disguises the puzzle piece transitions is probably a reference to something. I thought about looking it up, but by this late in the episode, I was so worn out I don’t even give a fuck.
Me Blog Write Good 
Another boring, unfunny episode of Zombie Simpsons…
Excellent review and commentary as always Mike, this episode was a lame attempt to mock religion (using logical fallacies, maybe?) and promote what the writers believe in. I am in the ID movement and most people in the ID movement believe in Evolution and some are atheists or agnostic just for the record. Also, it is not the same as creationism. We also have people that believe in Theistic (God guided) Evolution and Intelligent Evolution which the writer’s completely ignored. What a damn shame.
Yeah, this episode’s pretty offensive. It paints anyone who believes in intelligent design to be oppressive, closed-minded, backwards, and stupid. Meanwhile, the other side (Lisa, basically) is painted as enlightened, correct, and oppressed. Well, except when being heavy-handedly mocked by the intelligent design side (Darwin making out with Satan). How fair. If you’re going to do an “issues” show, at least mock all sides and let the audience decide for themselves.
The ending was troll logic as well, with Lisa winning the case because Homer resembled an ape trying to open the beer. It’s as bad as that Family Guy episode where atheist Brian convinces the religious Meg that if God truly existed, He wouldn’t have made her ugly. Ugh.
The only joke I recall liking was Ned angrily claiming there’s no such thing as storks.
Well said Ian! I agree. Also, I disliked that Family Guy episode as well, very annoying and overly preachy, like this one is.
At least the Family Guy episode (called “Not All Dogs Go to Heaven”) had the subplot of Stewie babysitting the Star Trek: Next Generation cast. And the episode writers of that FG episode tried to make the religion vs. atheism argument even-handed (listen to the DVD commentary of it). This Simpsons episode didn’t even bother.
Actually, there are religious groups in America trying to have creationism be taught ALONGSIDE (not instead of) evolution so students can learn both views and decide for themselves.
Alongside of evolution is still just as stupid as there is about as much evidence of creationism as there is for a flat Earth or Geocentrism.
As a former Evolutionary Biology major (in the Bible Belt nonetheless), when I heard about this episode (it aired right after I gave up on the Simpsons) I obviously had to watch it. I thought they missed a big opportunity. Only decent lines I liked was Skinner’s response to Ned wanting an alternative to Darwinian Evolution (“Like Lamarckian Evolution?”) and the PhD in Truthology.
I gotta admit, even in Zombie mode I never liked it when they made jokes about Homer being sub human. I hated that in Call of The Simpsons and I hated it here too.
This is one of the first shows I haven’t seen, and I have no regret what so ever.
Oh, this episode. For some reason, this is heavily featured in reruns alongside classic episodes. Even at the time I thought it was dumb, and I was 13. Really piss poor stuff. I mean, I see what they were going for, Creationism is a pretty backward ideology, but it’s just so bland.
I don’t believe in the 21st Century one could convince a school that Creationism should be taught as a science. Maybe it’s because I’m not American, but this seems really dumb. It’s pretending to be satirical whilst not satirising anything.
I think I’d already stopped watching regularly at this point and I decided to give this a try to see if they’d improved. I didn’t resume watching.
I laughed at the praying-to-the-stork bit
but that was just about it
I haven’t seen this one but must assume that South Park did it better with the Richard Dawkins episode.
I have no idea what intelligent design is supposed to be, but creationism has no business being taught in a regular school. If people want to learn about religion, that is what church schools are for. Teachers already have enough crap to deal with on their over stuff plate with standardized testing, they don’t need more crap getting in the way. Nevertheless, the purpose for elementary school is to teach children to read and facts of the world, not fiction. Fiction like the bible is for high schoolers and college students who choose to go into those realms of mythology.
Anyway, this episode is just garbage because Ned acts like an asshole even moreso than Homer and sees nothing wrong with it. In fact, he is pretty much saying, “You teach it my way or not at all!”
There is more I probably should say about this episode, but it isn’t worth my time. It’s a souless episode about nothing with no real resolution or conflict. It’s just a bunch of scenes that happens because they needed to fill in 20 minutes.
Something’s always bugged me about this episode: why does Flanders care about the science side of the museum, anyway? What happened to equating science to spoiling a movie? Beside that, why would he, or anyone, expect a science museum to have a Creationism section? Creationism isn’t scientific! And this is coming from someone who believes in Biblical Creation.