Original airdate: November 15, 2020
The premise: Lisa and Marge are swept up in the true crime podcast craze. Wanting to get in on the lucrative new news market, Kent Brockman starts his own podcast series based on a recent unsolved crime: the disappearance of a retired TV actress who fell off a cruise ship. The number one suspect? Her new boyfriend, Abe Simpson.
The reaction: This show has had a handful of mystery episodes, but for the most part, the mystery itself isn’t so much the focus as the characters around it and how they’re dealing with things. By act two, this entire episode becomes about whether Abe actually killed his new girlfriend, which of course there’s no chance that he did, but the episode isn’t really about that, it’s how sensationalist journalism can sway public opinion, and even affect the case itself, this time via true crime podcasts. We start off with showing Lisa obsessively addicted to listening to them, which leads to Marge getting swept up in it herself, which was pretty sweet seeing them share a common interest. Meanwhile, Kent Brockman is shocked to find how popular this new medium is, and decides to get in on the craze, chronicling the latest hot story: the cruise ship disappearance of an old soap opera actress, with her new beau Abe Simpson being the chief suspect. It’s logical that a large part of this episode is either listening to podcasts, or hearing people talk about podcasts, but I didn’t find any of that material that interesting or funny. Besides., the basic jokes about podcast ad breaks and tropes about sound design, it’s just Kent talking about the case, and it just wasn’t that engaging. This seems like it should be a Kent-centric episode, but it doesn’t really feel like it. In the end, when he discovers the truth that the actress isn’t dead, he eventually exposes the truth, rejecting the siren call of flashy faux journalism, but it really felt like a limp climax without much build-up. In act one, we see him returning home to find his four (!) kids listening to podcasts, further fueling his desire to switch careers. Maybe he could’ve had a conversation with one of them? What about their mom? Is she Stephanie the weather lady? Something new for us to learn about Kent, maybe? Instead, we don’t really get anything to grab onto since Kent has to share so much screen time with Marge and Lisa, who just keep fretting about whether they believe Abe is innocent or not after listening to the latest podcast. Their crisis of faith after having their minds warped by true crime podcasts is kind of the slow burn through the episode, but I feel like if they were suspicious of Abe from the start, and Homer and Bart were the clear-headed ones for once and had to try to exonerate Abe, that could have been something. Instead, Dr. Hibbert just shows up at the end with the evidence that solves the case, and that’s that. There were a couple of smirk-worthy moments, but I found the episode mostly pretty boring, and a squandering of a potentially interesting Kent Brockman story. In other words, it’s easily the best of the season so far.
Three items of note:
– This episode was written by David X. Cohen, writer from seasons 6-9 and co-creator of Futurama. Seeing his name definitely perked my interest, but as I say over and over, it doesn’t matter who the credited writer is, it all comes out of the same homogenized tube in the end. There’ve been other Futurama writers who have been credited to lousy Simpsons episodes: Jeff Westbrook, Bill Odenkirk, J. Stewart Burns…
– Yeardley Smith guest stars as herself, hoping to get Kent to pull back from stoking the flames of an active investigation, appealing to him as one true crime podcaster to another. I actually had no idea she did a podcast, “Small Town Dicks,” and would have to guess that most viewers probably didn’t know either. It’s a short scene that comes off as a cute inside joke between the staff and Smith., but I could be wrong, do any of you listen to her show? Anyway, it’s notable that this is the first time a voice actor has “officially” played themselves. Harry Shearer played “himself” as Spinal Tap’s Derek Smalls in “The Otto Show,” and Dan Castellaneta effectively played himself as the voice actor for Angry Dad in “I Am Furious Yellow,” but I don’t believe he was ever named. Am I forgetting something else?
– Judge Snyder and Dr. Hibbert make appearances in this episode, but they both still sound like Harry Shearer. Alex Désert is credited at the end, and this episode is after “Undercover Burns” in production order, so I’m not quite sure what happened. Maybe they recorded this episode earlier?
Me Blog Write Good 
There was one scene I remember in an episode around season 17-18 where Homer goes “Hey look, that’s Dan Castellaneta of the Tracey Ullman Show” and then laughs at him. But I don’t think he got any lines there.
Castellaneta tells Homer to stay in the tram car he’s in or else he’ll get hurt, Homer laughs at Castelleneta and then gets hurt. I think it was the episode “Homer Simpson, This is Your Wife.”
Tress MacNeille was mentioned by name twice in “Apocalypse Cow”, once in the tape that Lisa hid under Bart’s bed (Anguished Animals by Tress MacNeille) and when Homer was on the killing floor he says, “Hey, that sounds like Tress MacNeille!”
I’m shocked that the family (especially Bart) isn’t wearing AirPods in that screenshot. Zombie Simpsons continues to be one of the most out-of-touch cartoons…
Oh fuck off. People still use ear buds. If you’re going to nitpick, at least find something somewhat worthy of nitpicking. We all know that if they were using air pods, you would’ve said “wow cringe zombie simpsons trying to be cool”.
AirPods are pretty expensive, it feels more “realistic” that they’d all be using earbuds to me.
Yeah good point actually. The Simpsons aren’t wealthy by any means. They probably wouldn’t have the money for AirPods.
They’d have a snappy “parody” name, though. Like “EarPods.” Because the writers are super-clever.
Onto the actual episode, I quite enjoyed it and I’m glad you were able to at least somewhat enjoy it as well.
Well, at least you actually enjoyed a few parts of the episode. That’s a first in almost a year IIRC.
I laughed at one line: Chief Wiggum’s “rude.”
And at least this seemed like a realistic career turn for Kent, though of course his “arc” was way too rushed.
I swear there was an episode in which a Simpson was accused of murder and it turned out that the “victim” was still alive, keeping himself sane by dribbling a basketball as much as he could in an hour and then trying to break that record.
“Bart the Murderer”, and the “victim” was Skinner
But of course they wouldn’t remember that they already did a similar story two-and-a-half decades ago.
Either that, or they just didn’t give a shit.
Oh. I thought it was called The Principal Who Couldn’t Stop Dribbling A Basketball.
I often hear it said that the statute of limitations for stealing from yourself is 7-10 years, so reusing that plot point nearly 30 years later isn’t a real issue IMO.
The only reason I knew about Yeardley Smith’s podcast was because of her AMA on Reddit. And when I read an article about her appearing on the show as herself, I was interested in seeing what she did (even though I thought it was weird). Then I realized the episode was about true crime podcasts and I was like, “Okay, that’s why they’re having her voice herself. I bet the episode was her idea.”
I wonder what it would be like if they had John Swartzwelder write another episode. Would anyone be able to tell it was him?
It’s pretty sad that the best episode so far is “mostly pretty boring, and a squandering of a potentially interesting Kent Brockman show.”
In a normal series, this would be the worst episode.
So am I the only one who couldn’t suspend their disbelief when told Abe’s girlfriend swam to Mexico? That was easily the biggest flaw to me, a nonsensical solution to the mystery of how/why she faked her own death.