Original airdate: February 13, 2011
The premise: When Marge discovers her hair stylist has been covering up her grayness for years, she decides to embrace her age and go full gray, much to Homer’s dismay. Meanwhile, Moe recruits Homer to be his wing man to help him get girls.
The reaction: The A-story was pretty empty, so let’s get that out of the way first. “Secrets of a Successful Marriage” already revealed that Marge dyes her hair, but I guess they added a line in here that the blue dye gives her memory loss? What? So Marge goes full gray, the other gossiping biddies give her shit for it, and she gets insecure. That’s about it. We don’t even get to that plot until a third of the way in. We also have some time-killing scenes after that where the boys tease Bart about his mom and he ends up in therapy, but that doesn’t amount to anything. The rest of the episode is Moe getting help from a swindler pick-up artist and utilizing Homer as his wing man to pick up girls at clubs. Like, hot, trendy clubs with young looking girls, who I guess exist in a dumpy town like Springfield? And here’s the kicker: it works. We see a couple moves that Homer pulls, all of which are bullshit gross pick-up artist 101 maneuvers: have the wing man go after the less attractive (fatter) friend, taking out rival competition by revealing something embarrassing. This all couldn’t be easier to make fun of. But they don’t. It’s played completely straight, and we see Moe scoring with girls. And Homer too. When Marge confronts Homer at the end, he has a throng of ten girls surrounding him, captivated by his every word. Why? Why?! For God’s sakes, why. It’s completely nonsensical. I don’t even know how the two plots are even supposed to connect. We don’t see Homer making excuses for why he’s been out so late to an inquisitive Marge. Marge finds out when two super skinny girls walk into a shop talking about what a great catch Homer is. It’s all very confusing.
Three items of note:
– There’s a gag here that almost works regarding the Simpson children’s hairlines. Bart ponders exactly where his head stops and his hair begins. Alright, good joke. But then it just goes on and on with Lisa nearly having a nervous breakdown over it, and it just kills the gag. Per usual, there are a lot of needlessly elongated segments in this show: Homer opening the door to Moe’s again and again, the slooooow dripping of the blue dye as Marge makes her decision, Gil’s scene at the supermarket, Homer envisioning Bond villains for some reason, the very ending with the Maggie and Gerald cupids that kiss (which felt kind of gross to me).. if you’ve got a gag that maybe kinda works, the writers will make sure they run it for at least twice its length.
– Dr. J. Loren Pryor from “Bart the Genius” makes a reappearance, sounding nothing like his original voice. He appeared in a few other episodes, and I remember he also showed up randomly in a more recent episode as well. Anyway, I don’t blame Shearer for not remembering, or caring, what Pryor sounded like. Would you?
– Speaking of elongated jokes, the ending is such a slog. We devote an entire minute to a sequence showing Marge’s transformation into a witch. She crashes her cars and frazzles her hair, tears her dress, her shoes curl up, she ends up with a broom, cats follow her, and just in case you didn’t get it, the Wizard of Oz Wicked Witch motif cues up as well. And Mr. Teeney appears as a flying monkey. Yeah, with wings. It’s just so, so laborious. Fifteen seconds in, I get the joke. I get it. She’s the visually unfavorable comparison to those hotter younger girls. But I guess they’re just so desperate to fill time that they can stretch stuff like this out as long as they need to.
One good line/moment: The sleazy pick-up artist’s seminar is held at the Springfield Airport Motor Lodge. In the establishing shot, a landing airline swoops by, knocking the sign over. It was quick and unexpected, and I was actually amused by it.
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To this day, this still ranks as the #1 Worst Episode according to the Worst Episode Ever podcast.
I still think framing Marge for drink driving is the show low point. How can anyone ever do anything but loathe Homer after that?
There are many horrible, shit, empty episodes in ZS history, but I remember this to be one of those episodes that insult people’s intelligence. I don’t want to watch it again to exactly remember why though.
Okay while this episode is pretty craptacular, compared to several others this season I didn’t think it was too bad, which of course is a pretty low standard for zs but hay.
I liked the doctor’s translation of Willy’s self profile into romance language, and one joke did amuse me. This was where Marge asks Homer how she looks and he tells himself “Just close your eyes and pretend she’s a bond girl” whereupon the Judy Dench as M appears with a “scream from homer and a very dry kiss me double o seven!”
Okay, this episode had all the usual crap, sequences that are too long, forced jokes, yet more silly gay references wingmen metaphors that are so lazy the writers can’t even think of more dialogue “like me from now”
not to mention the god awful idea that homer is any sort of catch anyway, and the down right cruel mocking of the poor fat girl (I actually felt quite sorry for her really). But I wouldn’t say this is the worst episode ever! there are certainly worser ones, albeit there are many that are much much better.
Well, I thought this was an okay episode, even though I agree with you about Bart being put in therapy amounting to nothing. We don’t all have to like the same stuff, but I still think you need to stop nitpicking “needlessly elongated segments” if you don’t want your own blog posts to become just that.