Original airdate: December 13, 2015
The premise: Bart’s life is chronicled from boy to man, exploring his strained relationship with Homer and his attempts to get out of Lisa’s more accomplished shadow.
The reaction: This is like if a flashback show and a future show had a baby, and it was a well-intentioned, but bland and meaningless mess. Bart’s upbringing is marked by the influences of two people: Homer not giving a shit about him, and everything he does being eclipsed by Lisa’s great successes. We start with the former, seeing li’l Bart continually ignored and cast aside by his father. We also see he has a much greater relationship with Abe, which is kind of sweet when we see it carry on into his adolescence. There’s even a somewhat illuminating moment between teenage Bart and Homer (who is smoking a bong with Wiggum for some reason.) Homer opens up about how he had Bart at such a young age and he always felt unprepared for the responsibility, as we have seen in the past. It’s a sweet, honest moment, but it’s basically just him saying this outright (tell, not show strikes again), and ultimately ends just repeating the same refrain of him undermining Bart. Meanwhile, from kid to adult, Bart always finds himself unfavorably compared to Lisa, who even ends up eclipsing him at his own high school graduation. Lisa blows up at him, sick of being blamed for his misery for their whole lives. She tells him he’s a great artist, though the only hint we saw of that is briefly seeing him do simplistic boardwalk caricatures, so we end with seeing Bart having his own bike repair shop, and he’s also a mural artist. There are scenes and moments here that might have actually felt somewhat impacting (if they were better written), but it would have helped if the episode had actually felt like it went through a progression. We see Bart grow up over twenty years, but each time jump he’s still dealing with the same problems, and explaining how he’s feeling exactly the same over and over and over again. It’s like watching an episode trapped in a time loop.
Three items of note:
– Like I said, Bart’s relationship with Abe was pretty sweet, especially him hiding out from the cops as a preteen after a night of shenanigans. It would have helped if Abe had actually imparted some wisdom that would have pushed the plot further, but instead that happens in a thought bubble after he’s dead, just flat out telling Bart what he should do. Finding out that Abe is dead also could have actually been a sweet, affecting moment given how much he meant to Bart, but instead, it’s treated as a “joke.” More like a fake out, as we see teen Bart bike past the retirement home to the neighboring cemetery, then he does a trick off another headstone and lands in front of Abe’s grave.
– If I can give this episode a little credit, this is the first time we’ve seen Bart, Lisa and the other kids in town as teenagers and it actually feels like they’re older. I remember in “Future-Drama” where you see a crowd shot of all the high school kids and it just looks like they pasted the kids heads onto teenage bodies. Milhouse’s maturing over the years was neat to see, Martin actually had a deeper voice, unlike previous appearances, and we get a disturbing line from Sherri after Bart thought he was making out with her twin (“The further we go, the more you’ll know the difference.”)
– Obviously the episode is based upon Boyhood, and it’s filled with small references to the film. The most prominent is during the party, some kids are tossing saw blades at the piano and a photo of Homer, a reference to the film where a bunch of kids are tossing blades into a piece of drywall. I remember watching the movie thinking something terrible was going to happen, like a kid was going to get seriously hurt or something, but it didn’t. Later in the film, he’s texting and driving after having told his mom he wouldn’t, and nothing happened there either. Boyhood was fascinating as an experiment, seeing these actors grow up as you watch, but ultimately it kind of felt like not much really happened to justify watching it. I guess it’s more similar to this episode than I thought. Plus, I couldn’t think of another thing to bring up, so there you go, my mini review of Boyhood.
One good line/moment: There were actually a few small moments here that I liked. Of all the future characters, I really enjoyed the brief appearance of a sad Disco Stu sitting alone at the boardwalk (“I used to think disco was coming back. Now I’m just Stu. Nothing Stu.”)
Me Blog Write Good 
I’d say it was the first time since Lisa’s Wedding that we actually saw the whole cast of kids actually grow up.
Every other one put next to zero effort in doing it, pasting the child heads on adult bodies and giving them the exact same voice as they were in 4th/3rd grade.
I’m talking about full episodes devoted to them growing up, not snippets or brief dream sequences
I actually thought this episode was kind of clever.
This is my favorite episode of the season, and among my Top 10 of the HD era. Obviously that’s not saying much, but it’s definitely something I can sit through and enjoy for the most part. I’m glad you at least had several positive things to say about it.
Better than “Holidays of Future Passed,” but still overrated.
How is it overrated when no one talks about this episode?
I really don’t see how Sherri’s line is anywhere near as creepy as her and Terri getting knocked up by Nelson. Nevermind Nelson’s often mentioned to be older than the other kids and basically it’s a pair of 17-year olds being impregnated by a guy likely in his twenties but for some reason everyone’s okay with that?
Really, it’s baffling that everyone acts so disturbed by this moment when they’re at least around the same age in Bart and Sherri’s case. That and it feels remotely in character for either of them as opposed to F-D trying to play it both ways with Lisa and Nelson and him apparantly not being into them at all but still got them pregnant for a braindead explanation-joke. (geddit? They had twins because they’re twins. And he left them because that’s what happened to his dad. GET IT!? DO YOU GET IT!?)
On that note, this probably is my favourite future-ep in spite of the Lisa-worship. It was and still is a pleasant surprise for an episode I dreaded before it aired.
I absolutely hated this episode, even within the near-two decades of absolute detritus we’ve seen since the show was last tolerable.
There were so many interesting ways they could have parodied the concept of this film, but they failed in all regards. You have essentially addressed everything I would bother to mention (and credit to you for continuing to bother with this waste of space, legacy-ruining mess), but the one thing which truly bothered me was the idea (I say idea, but it was outright said repeatedly, as no plot point or emotional nuance can go without someone narrating it) that Abe was in any way a more committed or competent father figure, or role model than Homer.
Homer’s a dope but at least he cares (and sporadically tries); the vast majority of the flashbacks to Homer’s childhood show Abe to consistently be negligent and feckless. Maybe the characterisation of the classic years has been decimated so much that it is no longer valid, but usually when they’re going for saccharine, this is what they tend to veer back towards.
Absolute fucking crap… also it wasn’t funny… at all.
Wow. Thanks for pointing that out. I only saw this episode once. I mean, it’s possible that Abe learned to be a better father figure to Bart and learned from his mistakes with Homer, but gosh. The problems of character derailment on The Simpsons pile up more than I thought. Luckily, I didn’t care much for this episode because it’s a growing-up episode that later seasons throw away.
Even when The Simpsons tries to be something it isn’t in Brick Like Me and Barthood and has a semi-creative setup…it doesn’t work for me because The Simpsons still wants to be something it isn’t (and in this case aging the characters is never permanent), but it also clearly doesn’t work for Mike because 2010s The Simpsons can’t change its lazy writing that way. That reminds me a lot of Shrek 2 after Shrek and Donkey drank the Happily Ever After potion.
Donkey: Let’s face it. You are a lot easier on the eyes, but inside, you’re still the same old mean, salty, cantankerous, stanky, foul, angry ogre you’ve always been.
Shrek: And you’re still the same annoying donkey.
Donkey: Yeah.
“Boyhood was fascinating as an experiment, seeing these actors grow up as you watch, but ultimately it kind of felt like not much really happened to justify watching it.” I couldn’t agree more with you on that. The writer of the film clearly just wrote each part of the script separately with the times, and not much happens to resemble an actual plot. I don’t even remember those parts you just mentioned with the drywall or the texting and driving, because they are SO forgettable when nothing bad happens from them that could have happened.
I thought Lorlei Linklater, the girl, was really the only entertaining part of Boyhood after watching it for the second time yesterday. Other than that, I agree that not much happened to justify watching Boyhood.