Original airdate: December 16, 2012
The premise: Abe spins a tale from Homer’s youth to explain his ambivalence toward Santa’s Little Helper; li’l Homer had a boyhood dog he loved more than anything, until he was forced to give it away after he bit a young and ruthless Mr. Burns.
The reaction: I’ve mentioned before about the show’s inability to marry sentimental moments with biting humor, but this episode seemed to forget it was supposed to be funny. The entire episode is Abe telling this sob story about Homer and his dog, and it all builds into one big treacly, attempting-to-be-emotional scene after another. So as we see, since he was a baby, Homer was thick-as-thieves with his beloved dog Bongo. But at a lobbying event for the new power plant, the dog ends up biting Mr. Burns, who swears revenge on the mutt. I choose to disregard the floating continuity here; the plant was just opening in Homer’s senior year in “The Way We Was,” but it really doesn’t matter. This also happened right after Mona left Abe, so is Rita in the picture yet? Why is Abe working at a smokestack delivery company and not busing tables? Speaking of “Gone Abie Gone,” where that episode cracked the door open of sympathetic young Abe interpretations, this show burst through it. Abe sends the dog to a farm out of town to save him, and ends up working for Mr. Burns for a year training his hell hounds, all while his son is bitterly resentful for seemingly abandoning his best friend. Homer, of course, has a skewed memory of this, thinking of his dad as a cruel monster. Are all the flashbacks we’ve seen of Abe being a dick to Homer just from his skewed perspective of his youth? No, because that’s dumb. We go from Homer tearfully saying goodbye to his dog, to Abe sad that his son hates him, to Homer revisiting the farm later to find the dog has bonded with a new owner, to the resolution of the story: a Christmas card of the dog sleeping with his old sweatshirt, showing he did still care. My God… it’s trying so, so hard to pull at your heartstrings, it ends up being just a big pile of bland, sterile mush.
Three items of note:
– We get a full scene of Homer playing a town-building game on his myPad, because I guess “A Tree Grows in Springfield” wasn’t enough. It almost feels like subtle cross-promotion for the Tapped Out game, which had released the year this aired.
– The flashback story also gives the show license to revisit other characters; we see Herman getting his arm ripped off, Wiggum and Eddie on patrol as dog catchers, then learn in one scene their plans to join the police force, and where Ralph’s name came from. In the present, Bart has a handy checklist of origin stories covered in a lame meta moment (“Boy, we’re filling in a lot of gaps here!”) Also, after Abe finishes his one year, Burns demands that he forever has to wear slippers and a bolo tie, so I guess the mystery of why Abe dresses like that has been solved? Weren’t these two in the war together, with Burns as a spineless coward?
– The show was short again, so we get a minute-long vignette of Burns lamenting the Mitt Romney 2012 loss and the fiscal cliff for billionaires. Are these end tag bits going to be a common thing now? It feels weird framing Burns as a modern-day Republican, and I’m not entirely sure why. I guess since he always feels like a miserly boss from the 1920s, it’s odd to hear him talk about modern immigration reform and namedrop Marco Rubio.
One good line/moment: Nothing for this one. As I said, there weren’t really a lot of jokes in here to begin with, and what was there were attempts at being meta about the flashback, or Homer and his tablet again. Yawn.
Me Blog Write Good 
Now you’re covering the episodes I remember first run on Sky One.
Interesting fact – I was born on May 19th 2002, the same day “The Frying Game” first aired. I guess I was an omen to the Simpsons.
To Surveil With Love – Season 21.
To Cur With Love – Season 24.
To Courier With Love – Season 27.
They love that name.
Knowing these titles are based on “To Sir, with Love”, a 1967 film…The Simpsons are really topical!
It would have been better if they used a parody title of “To Sir, with Love” during the classic era, but I guess they only realized their potential by the time the show was deader than dead.
I don’t even think they know they are basing titles on something. You are giving too much credit to that bunch of talentless ignorant incompetents.
Di Ed: I think it would be too much of a coincidence for the writers to give 3 titles that sound like “To Sir, with Love” without knowing.
To SURveil with Love
To CUR with Love
To COURier with Love
I think the writers knew what they were basing the titles on. But you’re spot-on in calling them “talentless ignorant incompetents”.
Aaron Grierson:
Yeah, you’re probably right.
But to me the most plausible scenario is that the first time was intentional, and then they just used the pun again and again, without even knowing the original source, but only the Simpsons “title”.
I mean, I really don’t think the modern “writers” know a single thing about arts, cinema, or even good tv; they are just a bunch of dumb as oxen modern tv fans (BigBangTheory, Family Guy, HIMYM) modern adults(yay technology rules! we’re so hip and topical), and upper class men with no knowledge of our reality(no money\job problems; marriages are only about arguing, having sex, and divorcing; every single person is a pussyfied petty whiny version of a human being; every lovers or friends relationship is empty and forced..).
Di Ed: You’re right too. My worst example I can think of is “Paths of Glory”, which is named after – get this – “Paths of Glory”. They couldn’t even be bothered to tweak a single letter or syllable, they just kept the title as is.
That wasn’t exactly the show’s fault so much as FOX’s. The title was supposed to be “‘Paths of Glory,” where “‘path” is short for “psychopath.” Apparently someone left off or didn’t even notice the apostrophe at the start of the title.
Did these terrible episodes finally break you? Been a while since you posted this.
Thinking the same too. But you can’t really be surprised that he broke down.
These two weeks have been pretty busy and my buffer ran out. I’ll be back soon; new review maybe Saturday or Sunday.
wow aaron I couldn’t have said it better:
good tv; they are just a bunch of dumb as oxen modern tv fans (BigBangTheory, Family Guy, HIMYM) modern adults(yay technology rules! we’re so hip and topical), and upper class men with no knowledge of our reality(no money\job problems; marriages are only about arguing, having sex, and divorcing; every single person is a pussyfied petty whiny version of a human being; every lovers or friends relationship is empty and forced..).
I remember when I was watching some episodes on sky one in 2013, this one started and I saw which one it was.
I ran off, picked up my beloved my phone and spent a happy half hour not watching it, once was enough.