Original airdate: March 28, 2010
The premise: In one last grand gesture to attempt to save Homer’s soul, Ned Flanders invites the Simpsons to join his Bible study group to Israel, only to have his patience continuously worn out by Homer’s ignorance and misguided blasphemy.
The reaction: I continue to be amazed how characterization keeps getting bastardized this season. This episode begins with Flanders being annoyed and exasperated by Homer’s antics, which carries on through basically the entire show. The always upbeat Ned, completely impervious to any negativity Homer throws his way, is pissed off right from the jump. I could buy it if he was worn down over time, like in “Homer Loves Flanders,” but here he goes from aggravated to extremely aggravated. When he finally snaps, Homer is hurt and worries about losing Ned’s friendship? What? He hates Flanders… right? The two make up in the end, because I guess in the series now they’re just old buddies, except we have him saying “Stupid Flanders” because that’s a thing he used to say when the show was watchable. Tied to all this is our usual travel show beats of visiting every famous landmark in Israel and making a stupid joke, with references to Jewish things, like latkes and yarmulkas. Bleh.
Three items of note:
– Sacha Baron Cohen voices the Israeli tour guide, a role completely bereft of jokes. He gets a lot of dialogue too, and multiple instances of him, for some reason, telling the tourists to shut up and pay attention. This happens at least three times, I guess they thought it was funny. Singer Yael Naim voices his niece, who gets a pointless montage of chasing and fighting Bart. I thought maybe this was going to be Bart’s new celebrity-voiced love interest, but no, it’s just time killer with no bearing of the story. Also, the chase is set to Run Lola Run music? Remember when you parodied that thirteen year old movie nine years ago?
– The Homer/Ned dynamic in this show is so weird. I guess this stems back to “Viva Ned Flanders,” where Homer would be this goofy guy who gets on this guy’s nerves. But at least there, Ned was still Ned, and not constantly being irritated. I feel it could have worked if they went from zero to sixty on it, rather than Ned telling Homer how much he pisses him off right at the start.
– The ending is so goddamn terrible. Homer the Messiah speaks upon Muslims, Christians and Jews, giving them the guidance to stop all their religious wars forever: celebrate your commonalities, and be good to each other. It’s like the episode where Bart resolves the Catholic/Christian debacle with words just as cliche and hackneyed. What? But this serves as our reconciliation where Ned can tear up that he finally “reached” Homer. Whatever.
One good line/moment: Not much to go on here. Homer playing with his kids on the slip and slide was pretty cute at the beginning. I like it whenever we see him being a fun dad.
Me Blog Write Good 
This was one where the only redeemable element is the effort put into the setting and background art. Purely technical accomplishments that makes it seem like it was really taking place in Jerusalem.
However you are quite right that the characterization is completely atrocious in this one. It’s obvious whoever wrote this doesn’t know who Ned and Homer are outside of “religious guy” and “stupid guy” nor their overarching relationship. More obvious that the exec producer doesn’t give a shit at this point.
Homer’s also in full jerk-ass mode in this one is regards to being absolutely invincible in terms of having any actual consequences for his actions. Especially after the whole “messiah” bit. Wouldn’t it have been funnier and more satisfying to the Jews, Muslims, and Christians at the end of the episode to put aside their differences in collectively kicking Homer’s blaspheming ass after he gave that phoney baloney speech? I guess these days the show must have a happy ending, no matter how forced.
Well said Joe about Israel being realistically animated. Other then that, this episode felt so…. Empty.
I think I watched the first half of this one, and it was beyond horrible. Nothing funny, nothing interested, just awful storytelling. I don’t know if “the Simpsons is still better than 90% of anything else on TV” is a thing people say anymore, but that hasn’t been true since at least season 11. In fact, the show nowadays is one of the worst things on TV. If it was a brand new show, it wouldn’t last 5 episodes. Some of the worst writing on television is right here on this show.
TV has gotten better AND this show has gotten worse
Nobody says that anymore. At least nobody that anyone takes seriously. In the late 90s, early 00s, you COULD make that case. But you CANNOT make it now.
One thing I never understood about this is why Flanders cares so much about redeeming Homer. Classic-era Flanders was originally someone so nice and squeaky-clean, to the point Homer took advantage of him. He certainly wouldn’t drag Homer to something religious he clearly had no interest in. And Marge probably wouldn’t have been on board either, especially to the point of offering to pay their own way (if they did that, why does Flanders even need to be there at all?!).
Also, you’d think they’d focus more on the Jewish aspects of Israel. They made a joke here and there, but I think that would be more interesting. A much better premise would have been about the family travelling to Israel with Krusty and Rabbi Krustofsky, or something like that.
According to No Homers this is the worst Simpsons episode when they voted on it in 2011
You know an episode is bad when even No Homer’s hates it.