Original airdate: February 23, 2020
The premise: Professor Frink enters the cryptocurrency space with “Frinkcoin,” making him a billionaire overnight. Aghast that he is no longer Springfield’s richest man, Mr. Burns seeks to overtake Frink’s wealth, while Frink tries to determine if his newfound friends aren’t just there to mooch off his fortune.
The reaction: Yet another episode that seemingly acts like they’re shining a light on a secondary character, but reveals absolutely nothing new about them and barely even feels interested in doing so. An entire Frink episode could actually be something worthwhile, if it actually had something to say. But we know what show we’re talking about, right? Frink tells Lisa he’s developing Frinkcoin, then we cut to Kent Brockman reporting on what looks like a press conference of Frink announcing the cryptocurrency, but I guess it’s not that, because Brockman then talks about how Frink’s a billionaire now. I know I’ve talked a lot about the Simpson-becomes-an-instant-success trope, but this is a new one: a character becoming a billionaire out of nowhere by the six minute mark. The main “emotional” thrust of the story is that money does not bring Frink happiness. Lisa urges him to indulge in the creature comforts he’d always dreamed of as a poorer man, but he’s still sad after doing that. Surmising companionship might raise his spirits, Homer is corralled into bringing Frink to Moe’s, leading to the barflies and other schlubs like Kirk and Gil to become Frink’s little posee. But Frink has no connection to these idiots. The point isn’t even that he’s enjoying being social despite the company he’s keeping, it all feels completely meaningless. When Mr. Burns tries to sew discord by telling Frink his new friends only hang out with him for his wealth, Frink replies, “Those guys are my best buddies! Fatso and Drunkie and the evil bartender!” And yeah, the others are quickly revealed to be moochers, but then we’re still supposed to care about Frink being sad and betrayed after the show expressly tells us he doesn’t care enough to remember their names? The ending revolves around a ridiculous conceit of Burns discovering an equation that will render all cryptocurrency worthless, and he leaves the dry erase board of it in the town square to wait for someone to solve it. The equation is finally solved by Frink himself, wanting to rid himself of his fortune, but his reasons for doing so are all explained by Lisa. That’s the whole episode, characters like Lisa, Homer and Mr. Burns maneuver Frink through the plot, pulling information out of him or summarizing the current situation and what he’s feeling on their own. Episodes highlighting Springfield’s less-covered citizens usually get ruined by the Simpson family shoving them out of the way and hogs the spotlight, but here, the episode is all about Frink, yet he barely seems to be in control at all. It’s weird. Like, there’s a way this could have been rewritten that it maybe… maybe could have worked with all the same plot beats, but I dunno. Rewriting season 31 Simpsons scripts? What a thankless job that would be.
Three items of note:
– Now, I’m a big dumb dummy, but I feel like I know the basic gist of what cryptocurrency is and how it works. But a quick info dump feels necessary for a show covering a topic like this. Frink helpfully shows a video hosted by “TV’s most beloved scientist” Jim Parsons, as he explains how the process works, combined with Schoolhouse Rock-esque animation to a parody of Frank Sinatra’s “That’s Life.” It feels like way too much information you don’t need to follow the simple plot, and of course none of it is funny. Parsons attempts to look cool by “jumping” a bike over multiple buses and dancing, holding up a sign reading “NOT A NERD.” Awful.
– Frink shares his office at Springfield University with a humanities professor who can’t stand him (hey, speaking of, this is the first we’ve seen Frink as an actual college professor, isn’t it? Maybe we can introduce that into the plot somehow? His love of education? What his students think about his class? Anything? No?) But his presence annoys the piss out of her, and after Frink strikes it rich, we see he’s cleared out his side of the room and he’s gone, but she can still hear his nasal whistling (“I can still hear it! He’s in Chicago, for God’s sake!”) Later we see Frink has moved into a giant new mansion, which I assumed was in Chicago. Lisa stops by to see that he’s still sad, which I guess is weird, but we’ve seen characters just appear in random places with no explanation, so I didn’t give it much thought. But as the episode goes on, characters still refer to Frink as “the richest man in town,” and now that I look back through the episode, in the establishing shot of Frink’s new mansion, we can see Burns Manor in the background. So what the fuck was that lady on about saying Frink was in Chicago? I don’t understand it.
– The wraparound device of sorts is Lisa writing her report about the man who she admires most: Professor Frink. Over the episode, they seemingly bond over not having friends, which I guess is supposed to set up the emotional payoff of Frink declaring Lisa his best friend. But it never, ever feels like it develops into anything even close to being emotionally resonant. It doesn’t help that the episode also gets slightly meta in Lisa feeling jaded about thirty years worth of stories about her where she faces inevitable crushing disappointment by the end of each twenty minutes (“Every time I get a pony or make a friend, they get the hell out of town.”) Why not write this as simple as possible: Lisa and Frink bond over being social outcasts and lovers of science, Frink gets rich, starts living a lavish, superficial life, shutting Lisa out, until he realizes he’s hurt her, and gives up his life of luxury for the sake of her happiness. Cliche? Of course. But at least it’s actually about two characters and their connection to each other.
One good line/moment: Per usual, if I wait more than a couple hours between watching the episode and writing a post about it, I have to struggle pinpointing anything I can recall liking. And that’s not a good sign. So let’s leave it at that.
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Wooo! I’m so excited! The Simpsons are finally taking their shot at Bitcoin… in 2020. Production schedules can be a bitch, eh?
I literally fell asleep while watching this episode.
I’ll take Scully Simpsons over this any day. As long as Al Jean remains in denial about the show’s quality, the new episodes will never be anything more than medicore. All he needs to do is bring in talented, guest or new writers and to stop having their scripts be rewritten into mush. If they can afford these Celebrity Cameos and Licensed Music, they can bring in better writers.
The thing is, you can bring in the best staff with the biggest budget, but if your general philosophy is shit, you should expect shit as your output. The focus now with the Simpsons seems to be “what celebrities can we bring in each week?” rather than grounding an episode on a simple idea and building said idea from there. And when you focus entirely on the exploitation and celebration of fame and vanity as Al Jean Simpsons has done rather than ridicule it or attempt to have it fly under the radar like the previous 5 eras combined (mostly… Beyond Blunderdome notwithstanding as a key example to the contrary, though it ends with Mel Gibson’s career ruined), how else can you focus on writing a script if you know during the process, inevitably one of two things may happen; it was written with a celebrity in mind, or someone will ask if we can squeeze in a celebrity? I don’t remember the last episode that just focused on the main cast without a “special guest star” appearance.
I guess Lisa forgot she GAVE AWAY the pony because it was running her father ragged. Of course, that was when this show had a soul.
On another note, if all cryptocurrency is now worthless, the economy would take a huge hit at this point. THAT could be an interesting episode, but whatever.
The thing is, the staff clearly needed an out for the show to go back to its standard format, where Frink would be poor again and Burns’s ego would be restored, and likely did not think that step through. Like I mentioned in last week’s episode about how a social commentary on how the protection of those working the low end of tech-based jobs, like industrial waste recycling or Uber drivers, should be protected from exploitation is far above this show’s punching class, so too is the ramifications of the sudden collapse of the crypto market.
Man, when’s the last time Barney was involved in a plot or subplot?
That terrible ‘Team Homer’ sequel episode a couple years back?
On a related note, I honestly believe that Barney’s degradation from prominent secondary cast member (among the first to gain both an established characterization and a deeper link to the Simpson family overall, I believe) to (essentially) a background character is one of the show’s most overlooked tragedies; classic-season Barney was extremely effective as both one of the show’s most conspicuous emblems of its scathingly critical-yet-hilarious take on the cracks in late-80s Americana and a living consequence of Homer’s idiocy (if the backstory in “Mr. Plow” is anything to go by), yet the crew seemed to tire of him (or simply ran out of idea/investment in writing his gags, given that they tend to be more than cheap drunk gags on closer inspection, chiefly via their surrounding context) by the end of season 9 and left him to collect dust until the episode where he sobers up (which had no buildup from prior Scully seasons, no legitimate consequences for the show long-term and chiefly focused on Homer behaving like a childish maniac for 80% of its runtime as opposed to actually focusing on Barney either narratively or comedically). I guess that’s all I can say here.
He is a very hated character among the show’s writing staff, as has been brought up a number of times in the DVD commentaries. In fact, when the whole concept of the “Who Shot Mr Burns” two-parter was first outlined, some writers apparently pushed hard for Barney to be the culprit, so that he could be written out of the show once and for all. With that in mind, it’s not too surprising that he was more-or-less dropped as Homer’s best friend and that the focus instead shifted to Lenny and Carl.
Oh dear Lord…not another one.
Like the Bloomberg ads, it just keeps coming back…it’s the Simpsons!
This is three episodes in a row without anything good from them. Will it be just as bad as season 28?
I do not understand this episode at all. How did Frink just decide to make up his own currency and become a millionaire from it? That makes no sense to me. I have no idea what you even mean by cryptocurrency as I totally agree with Burns when he said it was something in his crypt. I don’t even understand who Frink became a billionaire in the span of a few hours either. None of this makes any sense to me. What the fuck is happening in this episode?