Original airdate: May 23, 2010
The premise: Moe discovers an impressive talent: being able to scathingly judge things, to hilarious effect. The crowds love him, eventually leading to him being on American Idol. Meanwhile, with Moe gone, Marge finds herself smothered by Homer being stuck in the house all the time.
The reaction: Wherein the Simpsons staff willfully presents and takes it in the ass in the name of FOX synergy. Way, way back, the show did an X-Files crossover, but its focus was on telling an interesting story, managing to skewer and honor the sci-fi show in the process. Here, it’s just Moe does American Idol. The show even already did a sort of Idol parody when Krusty had his Star Search rip-off in season 16 or something, and even that had a helluva lot more teeth than this. We have all our judges and Ryan Seacrest do voices, and the show feels even more dated since Ellen and that other broad aren’t on the show anymore. But their characters are just themselves doing the things they do in real life, and such cutting jabs like making fun of Simon for always wearing a black shirt! And Ellen dances a lot! Ooooooh! No satire about themselves or the show, it’s just whorish cross promotion, as plain and simple as can be. Since there’s not enough plot to fill with that, we have the Homer-Marge thing… like…… whatever. I’m reminded why I’m ending this blog with this episode.
Three items of note:
– So two shows ago we had Moe’s being the hippiest bar in town, and now we’re back to people being so disgusted with him, they’d rather burn the chair next to them than allow him to sit next to them. So forget inconsistency from show to show, we can’t get consistency within the same scene. Moe heckles Krusty twice, to big laughs from the crowd. Then when Moe is offered to get on stage, everyone applauds wildly. Boy, what an easily swayed group. The scene ends with the crowd cheering his name and Moe scoring with Lindsay Naegle. What?
– The agent listing off all the fake reality show names probably took up a good chunk of time in the writer’s room. Time well spent, guys!
– I’m pretty sure Homer’s “They charge you for parts and labor! Pick one!” joke has been done a good four times at this point.
One good line/moment: Nothing.
Me Blog Write Good 
So, are you going to do that retrospective, then?
I hope Mike does that! Anyway Mike if you see this, congrats on a blog well done. Too many plotholes, inconsistencies, lame jokes, boring premises, bad writing, not creative, stupid cross promotions and other general nonsense and stupidity going on these days Gets worse every passing season btw. Hopefully the series will end in a few years time. Maybe not.
Yeah, the retrospective will be up Monday, and then one final (?) entry on Wednesday.
“One good line/moment: Nothing. Fuck this episode, and this show.”
I dunno, I kinda laughed at Ralph Wiggum and the really long censor beep. It isn’t clever or anything, but I found it somewhat amusing.
Well this blog was enjoyable to read while it lasted. I’m looking forward to the retrospective post.
By the way have you considered reviewing the theatrical Maggie Simpson short “The Longest Daycare”? It’s actually pretty good, it’s all pantomime, has some good visuals and is only 4 minutes long.
It’s currently up on Fox’s Animation domination youtube channel if you want to view it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zoO0s1ukcqQ
Well said Joey.
This is the first episode that struck me as completely and entirely unfunny.
It took you to 464? I reached that point about 200 episodes ago
Man, look at that crowd. Hundreds of people, sitting in 3/4 turn, staring eternally at nothing.
On a side note, I can think of two ways Classic would have handled this.
– Do not do American Idol. Combo Star Search, X-Factor, and all those other overhyped talent shows into a single entity, give that entity an evocative name (42 Minutes of Fame, maybe?) then treat that entity like a piece of LCD garbage viewed by apathetic upper-lower-middle class people. The program plays occasionally, as an adult version of Itchy and Scratchy.
– Cast Simon Cowell, and only Simon. Have him play the bad guy in an otherwise normal plot, make a few references to his American Idol time, and have him suffer a humorous pratfall. Cast him in the credits as Myers Scowler. The episode is overhyped by Fox, but the fans warm up to it when they find Simon’s character actually got in a lot of good lines.
Sad news to report…. TMZ has reported that Marcia Wallace has passed away at 70.
What, you are done already? I just found out you started back up and now I find you are done again.
I’ve never seen this one but its very existence is contrary to everything The Simpsons was about in the 1990s.
“Even in the thought bubble I gotta buy band candy?” was kind of funny, but otherwise it was dull.