Original airdate: February 19, 2017
The premise: When Bart throws away Lisa’s new beloved hat, a physical manifestation of guilt begins to eat away at him. Meanwhile, Homer is revealed to be an idiot savant at chess, having played with his father as a kid.
The reaction: How to even begin with a plot that’s razor thin? Bart slights Lisa in the worst possible way that leaves her extremely depressed and him wracked with guilt. So what happened? We start at the beach, where Bart sees a totally badass temporary “Bad to the Bone” tattoo, but is saddened to find it immediately washes off in the water. This causes him to cry. Yep, that’s right. The very first episode of the series featured Bart yearning for a real tattoo, and now, almost thirty years later, he bawls like a baby when his temp tatt goes bye bye. Embittered, Bart takes his anger out on Lisa, tossing her beloved new sun hat out the car window. We’re told how much Lisa loves that hat because a Beach Boys song plays every time she thinks of it, and she’s absolutely devastated when she finds it missing, so much so that Bart starts hallucinating a gremlin version of himself to represent his guilt. All over a hat. This might have worked if this was like a last straw kind of deal on Lisa’s part, or was part of a larger story, but no, it’s just all about a stupid hat. The conflict reminded me of “Bart vs. Thanksgiving,” but I won’t even scratch the surface of that, because it’s not even worth comparing the two. Two thirds in, Bart comes clean, but nothing he can say or do will get him back into Lisa’s good graces, despite getting her multiple gifts. What, was that the only sun hat in existence? He can’t find another one? Lisa meanwhile is so unbelievably melodramatic (“I’m truly sorry, Bart, but it’s a wound nothing can heal.”) Even when Bart manages to retrieve the hat, it’s not enough (“Your best bet is to forget me and start fresh with Maggie.”) But then she reconsiders and everything’s fine. I just don’t get what I’m supposed to feel in this episode. How much can I possibly give a shit about a fractured relationship born from a missing hat?
Three items of note:
– We get our second couch gag from Robot Chicken. While their first wasn’t exactly transcendent, it definitely feels it compared to this. Homer leaves “set” looking for the sailboat painting above the couch, walking in live-action space onto the sets of a South Park knock-off, a California Raisins knock-off, and finally into the room of the Seth Green Robot Chicken nerd who has taken the painting. It all feels extremely pointless. Why, in the year 2017, do we have “parodies” of a two-decade-year-old series and pop culture mascots that have been dormant for twenty-five years? I just didn’t see the point of the segment, other than to kill precious, precious seconds, of course.
– The B-plot takes up about half the episode, and I really don’t give a shit about it. Homer played chess with his dad after Mona left. Abe the gruff, uncaring working stiff interested in chess? Please. But they’re softened his younger character so much over the years, this is no different. At least here it’s implied that he only did it because he liked to beat Homer. I think. Whatever. This culminates in Homer having a rematch with his father, but in the end, he throws the game to spare his father’s feelings. The ending was clear as day when the game began, and in case you couldn’t tell by the visuals of Abe looking defeated and Homer appearing conflicted, Homer’s brain tells you so (“Isn’t a father more important than a victory? I’ve never really known either.”) There’s a shit ton of exposition lines this episode, but it’d be redundant to bitch more about that than I already have.
– Storytelling is not just in the toilet, it’s clogged deep within the pipes of said toilet, but there are certain moments that just astonish me. We’ve established that Lisa is completely over the moon about this dumb sun hat, and that she’ll be crushed to discover it missing. Bart throws it out the car window on the way home from the beach, then we cut to nighttime where he already feels guilty about it and the guilt monster appears. Then we cut to Lisa dreaming about the hat, feeling at her head and discovering the hat isn’t there. She then frantically runs to the car to search for it. So, she loves this hat so dearly, but upon returning home, she didn’t think twice about it being nowhere to be found before she went to bed? Maybe we could have seen Homer carrying her to bed still asleep or something, I dunno. But why do I have to fill in these narrative gaps? Stuff like this might seem small, but it’s glaring to me how little care goes into these stories, which gets more surprising that the bar for content just gets lower and lower.
One good line/moment: BLANK.
Me Blog Write Good 
I’m glad you didn’t compare this to “Bart vs. Thanksgiving” because that would have been like donating sand to the beach. I couldn’t get into this episode at all. The conflict was just way too stupid. At least with “On a Clear Day, I Can’t See My Sister,” it made sense as to why Lisa was pissed with Bart and wanted him out of her life. And you know what the sad part is? I’m using one of the worst episodes I’ve ever seen as a positive example.
I feel like Homer becoming a talented chess player would have been a great subplot in season six or seven. Not too sure how it would have been improved, but I wouldn’t have Homer’s ability be tied to him having problems with his father.
“I feel like Homer becoming a talented chess player would have been a great subplot in season six or seven.”
I agree with you that this could have been a good plot. In fact I believe most of the plots they come up with in these post-classic episodes could be good, but they just keep fucking them up.
Blank? But what about Patton Oswalt as Bart’s Guilt? He was nicer here than his annoying character in “The Day the Earth Stood Cool”.
I love Patton, but he was barely in the show and had nothing to work with. At least in “Cool” he actually had a character.
Patton Oswalt’s inclusion, in my opinion, garners negative points.
Agreed, popcorn. Ironic he plays a manifestation of guilt.
I have a good feeling most of these episodes from now on will yield a ‘BLANK’ in your ‘One good line/moment’ section.
“Why, in the year 2017, do we have “parodies” of a two-decade-year-old show and pop culture mascots that have been dormant for twenty-five years?”
Because it’s Robot Chicken, you have to have piss-poor parodies of 80s-90s pop culture in it.
No joke, the couch gag was written by RC writer Tom Root, so he shoulders most of the blame here.
I don’t see an issue with the opening one bit. Most people who watch Robot Chicken know those characters. That would be like asking why they bothered to do an opening that homages 80s crime shows.
As for this episode, I agree that it is a load of crap. At least it’s far more memorable than some of the other episodes though.
I’d argue the big difference is laziness- the RC crew just used very thin parodies of both franchises (and SP has, for the most part, moved on from just “Oh look, we can make kids swear non-stop!”, which is what they were mocking here).
The other couch gag at least had an interesting concept, even if the final “gag” was pretty bad.
The parody of South Park the actual writers did a few seasons back was bad for the same reason. An “oh my god they killed kenny” joke? Great parody of 90s South Park. The childrens show Arthur beat you to it.
I’d hardly consider Robot Chicken lazy since they are doing that all by hand. They probably could only do what they had the license to do.
I was trying to come up with something more out of character than voluntarily playing chess for Homer and Abe, and the only thing I could really come up with was ballet. But even then maybe they’d do ballet to meet girls or because Homer thought it was the thing with the Shriner bear in the tiny car…
‘I enjoy all the meats of our cultural stew.’
Don’t forget Homer was a gymnast for a brief period in high school. Abe was extremely critical of this.
Oh yeah, the chess thing made absolutely no sense to me. It was like the writers said, “Hmmmmmmmmmmm, we haven’t done anything with chess before and since it is popular in Harry Potter, we should do something with it.”
That’s exactly how it works in the writing room. If I remember correctly it was Matt Groening that once said(around season 20+) that The Simpsons is as fresh as ever, remarking that they have thousands of ideas to explore cause there are so many things that the Simpsons family have not done yet, and many places that they still havn’t gone to. Yep, The Simpsons is a retard Sunday morning cartoon(at this point, an insult to them).
Where are you getting Harry Potter out of chess?
Surprised nobody mentioned that Bart’s personified guild looks a lot like Hugo. Only thing missing is a bucket of fish heads.