11. Homer the Vigilante

• It’s funny watching now that Bart’s most prized possession was his very small portable TV. I remember having one of those in my room as a kid.
• Nelson delivering his “Haw haw!” via telephone to Bart is not only a great joke, but a great example of how at this point, the show acknowledges its own running jokes by exaggerating them to the nth degree. “Haw haw!” was only a little over two seasons old, and they’re already making fun of it. Later this season, they do an even crazier version of this joke where Nelson literally has an out-of-body experience to laugh at Bart from miles away. It’s just interesting how they were already demonstrating how played out these gags are, and meanwhile over twenty years later, they will continue to come up with new variations of “Haw haw!” after the joke has already been done to death.
• Chief Wiggum erroneously reports the Simpsons’ robbery at 723 Evergreen Terrace. What was the episode that locked in their actual address? We’re midway into season 5 and it’s still not set in stone yet.
• The scene of Professor Frink’s walking house model bursting into flames is absurd enough (“The real humans wouldn’t burn quite so fast…”), but it becomes even funnier that in the next scene we see the real walking house that breaks down the exact same way. One of the show’s greatest immediate callbacks.
• “Lisa, never, ever stop in the middle of a hoedown!”
  
• I like out of all of Homer’s gang’s brought-from-home uniforms, Barney’s is clearly one from a fast food restaurant.
• This episode is another great usage of Homer as “the bad guy” in perfectly representing the average American. He and his crew quickly abuse their power, relishing in being unchecked authority figures, just like real-life neighborhood watches or absolute psychopaths who harass or even kill people in public for “justifiable” reasons. Jimbo accurately surmises this absolutely pathetic mindset (“It makes me feel like a big man.”)
• The pause after “I’d be lying if I said my men weren’t committing any crimes!” is just the perfect length before Kent finally responds.
• Sam Neill feels like an underrated guest star. I’m honestly not that familiar with him outside of Jurassic Park, and Taika Waititi’s wonderful Hunt for the Wilderpeople, but he gives a very subtle, charismatic performance. You want to let him off the hook just as much as the mush-headed people of Springfield do.
• “Professor, without knowing precisely what the danger is, would you say it’s time for our viewers to crack each other’s heads open and feast on the goo inside?” “Yes I would, Kent.”
• The Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World ending mostly works. As an homage to a movie featuring a wacky cast of easily manipulated people getting tricked by their sense of greed, it definitely fits contextually with the ending of the episode. But then you have them directly recreating the bit of Phil Silvers’ car drowning in the lake, with Bart replacing the waving kid. It’s funny on its own, I guess, but it really makes no sense if you don’t know the source material.

12. Bart Gets Famous

• “‘Today will be a day like every other day.’ D’oh! It just gets worse and worse!” This always stands out as an essential Homer quote to me, a man who enjoys life’s simpler pleasures, but is always painfully aware of his sorry lot in life. When later seasons would depict Homer as too carefree or becoming an immediate success at something, I’d always think back to this quote.
• The Box Factory may be the funniest individual set piece of the whole series. Every single line the tour guide gives is so damn good, from him talking about how the completed boxes are actually done in Flint, to talking about how the neighboring TV station films “Krusty the Klown and other non-box-related programs.” The best bit is the tour of his office. The fact that he has a yellow line painted on the floor indicates how much he’s devoted to this tour, and I love that.
• When I was younger, I had a tie featuring a mostly naked Homer saying, “You’ll have to speak up, I’m wearing a towel.” What a bizarre joke to put on a tie, and even more bizarre for a kid to wear said tie to their 8th grade dance. 
• I love the gag revealing Bumblebee Man’s real accent, as well as the first act break callback where he subs in for a disgruntled Kent Brockman. Also, isn’t he on Channel 6’s competitor station, Channel Ocho? What’s he doing filming on their set?
• Two great Homer deliveries related to the box factory: his loud, passionate “Damn you! A box!!” and his panicked build-up to Marge about their poor box boy (“I have some terrible, bone-chilling news!!”)
• It’s great that Homer’s rant about poor people is met with complete silence by the rest of the family, who just continue to have their conversation as normal
• The gag where Bart desperately tries to point his name out in the credits reminded me of how annoyed I was when I was younger when networks would squish credits to the side of the screen. I was of the belief that it’s “disrespectful” to the crew that worked on it, which is a fair point, but looking back on it, the aesthetics of having the credits on one side and a commercial on the other just looks off to me. It’s become even worse in recent days, in the few bits of live TV I’ve seen, where they have the credits play at 500% speed at the very bottom of the screen as the next program has already started. It looks like absolute shit. Anyway, I like how Nelson stands up for the hard-working crew of Krusty’s show by punching Bart in solidarity (“That’s for taking credit for other people’s work!”)
• I love how absolutely remorseless Krusty is in abusing Bart through the entire episode: overworking a child to the point of them longing for death in act two, and shamelessly exploiting his image for his own gain in act three. Then when he ceases to be useful to him, he slams the door in Bart’s face. That’s show business, kid.
• I’d love to hear the full recording of Dan Castellaneta doing Sideshow Mel’s nauseous ranting from the bathroom.
• This frame has been used for a bunch of different shitpost trends. A recent, topical example would be, “All the other networks waiting for FOX News to call it for Biden.”
  
• “Ah, Oliver North. He was just poured into that uniform.” Totally forgot about this line. I guess Homer’s man crush on Oliver North confirmed? C’mon, Homie, you can do better.
• I think they wrote the Conan bit before his new show even premiered, but it makes me happy to think how thrilled the writing staff was for their friend to get his own late night show, that they jumped at the chance to honor him at his old stomping grounds at The Simpsons. And, of course, we get the classic line, “Sit perfectly still. Only I may dance.”
  
• I like that toward the end of this goofy episode, we actually get a real emotional beat with Bart feeling discouraged that he’s just some flash-in-the-pan fad with a dumb catchphrase (also very meta as well.) I feel like later versions of Bart would make him more ignorantly bratty in his success, but I like that he has enough self-awareness to feel some shame about his integrity. But of course, he bounces back  (“I’m in television now. It’s my job to be repetitive. My job. My job. Repetitiveness is my job.”) When I’m not angrily reviewing new Simpsons episodes through gritted teeth, I cut promos and trailers, and whenever I worry about leaning on the same editing tricks or reusing the same sound effects one too many times, I always think back to that Bart quote. It’s my job. My job. My job.
• I just talked about the show making fun of Nelson’s “Haw haw!,” and here, the entire ending is making fun of all of the show’s overused catchphrases. Again, when you reach this level of self-awareness, it feels like you should be nearing the end of your run, or you need to come up with some new material. It’ll be interesting going through these seasons again and seeing how the show pushes past these on-the-nose self-aware moments of its own shelf life to soldier on, be it by breathing new life into itself (the Oakley/Weinstein years) or devolving into a dumb, goofy cartoon version of itself (the Mike Scully years).

13. Homer and Apu

• The Bite Back barking dog is so funny. I love how long it goes at the front and back end of the scene, and then you hear it again later when Apu comes under fire. Semi-related, did you know McGruff the Crime Dog had his own music album? I’d highly recommend listening to the whole thing, it’s incredible. The Alcohol song has a strong Steely Dan feeling, and I imagine would be a real chill listen to get hammered to.
• The animation of the hot dog rolling towards camera is so great, as it quickly gets more detailed and disgusting as it comes closer to view.
  
• “Sir, I was only following standard procedure.” “True. But it’s also standard procedure to blame any problems on a scapegoat, or sacrificial lamb.” “Uh-huh, and if I can obtain for you these animals?”
• At the start of act two, Homer gives a prolonged plea for his life to Apu, but in that time, Apu is just frozen in place, still with an angry scowl and gritted teeth. Obviously it’s just a held frame before he gets to speak, but it always feels weird to me, given he’s immediately apologetic and explains the bait-and-switch joke of him asking for forgiveness, despite the fact he was just staring daggers at a begging Homer for five seconds. Apu was right, many probably have died needlessly.
• Ah, James Woods. Despite being exposed in the last few years as a complete piece of shit, he’s really one of the funniest guest stars. His delivery and cadence are so good, and he totally elevates every line of dialogue he has. Him telling Jimbo not to jerk him around, having a one-sided conversation with his agent, cursing loudly about the cheese in the microwave, all great stuff.
• It’s always funny to me hearing the Simpsons talk about picking up simple grocery items at the Kwik-E-Mart when they have an actual grocery store in town. Springfield’s geography is purposefully inconsistent, but I assume the Kwik-E-Mart is within a short distance to the house that if Marge needed to pick up a carton of milk or some other food item real quick, it’s more convenient to go there than drive to the grocery store. I grew up in a suburb, so this concept might be a bit alien to me, but do people in smaller towns go to 7-Elevens or other gas station stores to pick up basic groceries? The Kwik-E-Mart is a convenience store, so I guess it could also sub in for like a local corner store, but more often than not, it feels like a place to just buy a bunch of junk food on impulse.
• Monstro-Mart’s slogan always makes me laugh (“Where Shopping is a Baffling Ordeal”)
• “That’s even worse than the album Grampa released.” Now that’s an episode I’d like to see. What a bizarre line, I’d forgotten all about that.
• “Who Needs the Kwik-E-Mart” is still one of the classic show tunes. I love Hank Azaria’s sorrowful “I doooooo” in the reprise, almost like a sad dog howling, and of course, Homer’s anger at being lied to through song (“I hate when people do that!”)
• It’s almost funny how casually Homer and Apu just up and fly to India for just a few minutes of screen time and then they go home. 
• Another praise for Azaria for Apu’s hummingbird noises. I’m always a fan of using the doppler effect for comedy, so hearing that “eeeeeee” fade in and out is incredibly funny to me.
  
• Why is the robber who shoots Apu not Snake? He’s literally held him up at gunpoint at least a dozen times by now. Maybe it felt too real to show him actually do it, and they decided to replace him with some nameless mook (“Well, Mr. Woods, your next song is gonna be number three, with a bullet!” “I’m not a singer.” “Shut up!”)

14. Lisa vs. Malibu Stacey

• My only knowledge of Matlock comes from it being referenced on this show as something old people like, so I was surprised not only to find the title character was played by Andy Griffith, but it was an at-the-time currently running series, ending in 1995. I always assumed it was an older show that seniors had nostalgia for, but now, seeing that it’s about a heroic older attorney, I totally get why such a show would be revered by the elderly.
• The moment Homer stepped on the giant piano, my brain immediately played yet another amazing Dankmus remix. Also, I have never seen Big. Does that movie hold up?
• God, I could listen to Abe’s rants forever. Act one is just full of him rambling on and on and on and I love it (“There’re sure a lot of ugly people in your neighborhood. Oh! Look at that one!”)
• This camera move is really tremendous, just capping off Lisa’s frustration. I also love before this when she’s shaking the doll in Bart’s face, there’s extra attention paid to Stacey’s ruffled hair being flung back and forth, really emphasizing Lisa’s shaking.
  
• Once again, the show is examining its own tropes and characters in showing the family getting a bit tired of Lisa’s frequent moral stances (“Ordinarily, I’d say you should stand up for what you believe in… but you’ve been doing that an awful lot lately.”) This episode is probably the pinnacle of a righteous Lisa episode, in showing her believably upset about an issue that would affect her as a child, but also realistically depicting her and those around her. Also, we get this great newspaper photo.
  
• The Malibu Stacey video calling her “America’s favorite eight-and-a-half-incher” is yet another amazing covert dirty joke.
• Kathleen Turner is another tremendous guest star, and probably the perfect person to voice Stacey Lovell (“I was forced out in 1974. They said my way of thinking just wasn’t cost effective.” “That’s awful!” “Well, that, and I was funneling profits to the Viet Cong.”) The “I’m too drunk” bit is also hilarious. I wonder if that’s actually Turner doing her own slurping drink noise.
• While Abe is doing his knee-slapping dentures-in-the-hamburger-bun bit, his sullen teenager coworker is stuck in an animation cycle of repeatedly wrapping burgers and dropping them into a bag for the drive-thru. Including the teeth burger he grabs from Abe, it’s seven burgers that we see go into the bag, which is a pretty hefty order for the drive-thru. 
• “You all have hideous hair! …I mean, from a design point of view.”
• Krusty’s VO session is one of his greatest scenes of all time, I just love how absolutely disinterested he sounds through the whole thing. Bonus points for forgetting Sideshow Mel’s name and not even skipping a beat to pick the line back up.
• The joke with Bart desperately trying to get everyone’s attention is funny in concept, like as a meta gag that he’s gone underutilized this episode and wants a spotlighted moment, but in execution, it’s kind of weird how Homer, Marge and Lovell are just kind of standing there awkwardly not saying anything while Bart goes off in the background.
• It feels very strange how much Kent Brockman’s daughter looks like him. But hey, she was right about the Berlin Wall. She’s clearly the real brains behind the family (“Though it was unusual to spend twenty-eight minutes reporting on a doll, this reporter found it impossible to stop talking. It’s just really fascinating news, folks.”)
• I really don’t know how this show manages to have its cake and eat it too in regards to having moralistic endings and undercut them at the same time without undermining the emotion, but my God, when it does, it’s just perfect (“You know, if we get through to just that one little girl, it’ll all be worth it.” “Yes. Particularly if that little girl happens to pay $46,000 for that doll.” “What?” “Oh, nothing.”)

15. Deep Space Homer

• “Union rule 26: Every employee must win ‘Worker of the Week’ at least once, regardless of gross incompetence, obesity, or rank odor.” The first scene really perfectly tees up Homer’s motivation for the episode, that a literal inanimate object gets more respect than he does. I also love the long shadow he casts upon challenging the carbon rod to an “inanimate-off.” It’s just so dumb, but I love it.
  
• Hank Azaria doesn’t do a great Tim Allen, but he’s got kind of a non-descript voice, so no matter. I also assume that “I guess it’s back to jail for me” is in reference to him getting arrested for cocaine and squealing on his dealers. Allen is also a shithead who compared being conservative in Hollywood to living in 1930s Germany.
• I love the minor joke that Homer pronounces NASA as “Nassau” when he’s yelling at them on the phone.
• This definitely feels like a better version of a Homer/Barney rivalry than “Mr. Plow.” Unlike his snow plow business, Homer actually has a specific goal in going up into space, so the friction between them feels less vindictive and more comically exaggerated (“Here I am, right on time! I don’t see Barney ‘Let’s crash the rocket into the White House and kill the President’ Gumble!”)
• “When I found out about this, I went through a wide range of emotions. First I was nervous, then anxious, then wary, then apprehensive, then… kind of sleepy, then worried, and then concerned, but now I realize that being a spaceman is something you have to do.” Julie Kavner delivers this line so beautifully, but moreover, I appreciate that even in one (lengthy) line, we establish that Marge actually had her own emotional journey grappling with her husband going off into outer space and didn’t just say “I’m so proud of you, Homie” like she would later mindlessly say in later season episodes when Homer has some new stupid dumbass job. Marge says, “I’m so proud of you” later in the episode, but it’s after Homer gains his courage back in wanting to go through with the launch, so it actually genuinely feels earned when she says it.
• Buzz Aldrin’s “Second comes right after first!” is the greatest line ever written for a guest star. Even better is the awkward pause as Homer, Barney, even the NASA staff is completely silent and not knowing what to say. The man literally went into outer space, and the fact that the writers are taking the piss out of him immediately on their stupid little cartoon show is just astounding. And if that weren’t enough, they later have the trained astronaut say, “Make rocket go now!” Fantastic.
• Great drawing of a petrified Homer after watching the too-relevant space-themed Itchy & Scratchy.
  
• Homer at the gas station payphone talking to Marge is one of my favorite scenes of the entire series. It completely grounds this otherwise absolutely ludicrous story. Homer going into outer space is still, thirty-two seasons in, one of the craziest things they’ve ever done in concept, but everything in the episode plays out “believably” within its established context. And here, they sell it even more in depicting Homer as genuinely frightened to leave the planet, just as anybody would. On top of that, Homer tearfully talking about not getting to see Mr. T at the mall as a comparable missed opportunity to not going into space is one of the absolutely brilliant bits of writing (and performing) that feels completely emotionally on point, but is so damn funny. And on top of that, you have the touch tone joke as well. Such a fucking great scene.
• Homer floating in zero-G eating the potato chips is undeniably a classic scene, it’s just so beautifully animated. I especially love how when he screams out as he floats toward the ant colony, big chunks of mushed up chips fly out of his mouth.
  
• NASA’s complete obsession over TV ratings over any actual real work feels a little different after we’ve just had four years of Donald Trump basically operating the same way.
• James Taylor is another slam dunk guest star, maybe one of the best guests appearing as themselves. Right off the bat, he openly subverts his public image (“Listen, Aldrin, I’m not as laid back as people think. Now here’s the deal: I’m going to play, and you’re going to float there and like it.”) Every bit that follows is great: editing “Fire & Rain” on the fly, then his suggestion to fix the shuttle’s dilemma (“But I’m sure you high-tech NASA people could care less about our resort-town ways…”), and then when the situation goes sour, he swiftly makes his exit.
• HAIL ANTS! (“This reporter was possibly a little hasty earlier and would like To reaffirm his allegiance to this country and its human president. It may not be perfect, but it’s still the best government we have. For now.”)
• Abe’s “Of course he’ll make it, it’s TV!” line is such a brilliant double-layered joke. It plays perfectly in-universe as an senility gag, but it’s even better as a meta joke, like yeah, of course Homer’s going to return to Earth just fine, and you’re a dope for thinking otherwise.

16. Homer Loves Flanders

• “Warning: tickets should not be taken internally.” “See? Because of me, now they have a warning.”
• It’s great how Homer is slow to anger realizing Bart easily conned him with the wig store coupon, then he immediately retreats into one of his more bizarre fantasies. He really is a sick, sick man.
  
• I love Homer’s rapid succession of “D’oh”s when he pops all of his tires driving over the road spikes. Also, for some reason, his car is green throughout the first act?
• Mr. Burns giving a pep talk to the team about the little boy he crippled is definitely a syndication cut that I can’t say that I missed.
• Homer’s nacho hat feels like it would be really cool in concept, but in reality, that thing can’t be very stable or functional. You could only break off so much of the brim before it would start to fall apart, and then you got a big basin of hot cheese right above your head just waiting to scald you. Sadly, some dreams are better left as just dreams.
• The religious sheep cartoon is so great, as is Todd’s displeased commentary (“It’s all well and good for sheep, but what are we to do?”)
• Moe reading to sick children and the impoverished is a great character detail exposing his softer side, which feels a lot more endearing than later seasons when they’d beat you over the head with how pathetic and sad he is. Watching Greta Gerwig’s Little Women, I’d be lying if I said Moe’s tearful reading of the ending of the book didn’t cross my mind before the credits rolled.
• “Can’t talk, seeing Flanders, later, sex.” I like that even Marge is bothered by how much time Homer is spending with Ned. She knows him better than anyone, that when he gets laser-focused on something, it’s really hard to pull him away.
• I love how Homer gingerly eats Ned’s food as he crawls through the window inviting himself for dinner. It somehow makes him even more aggravating than if he had just plopped himself down and started making a pig out of himself.
  
• It’s a short moment, but I love at the picnic when Marge and Lisa have their annoying brush with Maude over their Advisory Board-approved fruit punch (“I’m sorry. Our boys don’t eat sugar.” “But why would the Advisory Board give us bad advice?” “No sugar!”)
• I absolutely love the third act where Ned is dealing with the strange new emotion of actually hating somebody. Right away, he tells Homer a lie in front of his kids to get out of spending time with him, but is unable to talk his way out of rationalizing it to Rod and Todd (giving us the great line, “Lies make baby Jesus cry.”) It’s all about Ned slowly unraveling until the climax, and it’s all done so wonderfully. I also like that part of Ned’s irritation is from Homer accidentally stealing his spotlight as the town’s most charitable person, showing even more that he’s not immune to basic human pettiness.
• Of course, this episode gave us this incredible gif.
  
• Homer’s nose whistling being the final straw for Ned is just perfect, this mildly irritating behavior that just eats away at him (the sound design of it getting louder and more nasally is excellent) until he just bursts (“Stop it!! Breathe through your damn mouth!!”)
• I really love this episode, and the ending is an absolute triumph. Homer’s speech in defense of Ned is a living contradiction. We know he’ll go back to hating his annoying neighbor-eeno. In fact, it happens one minute after he gives the speech. But within the episode’s context, it’s absolutely authentic and brings about a heartfelt mending of fences between the two men that is inherently “wrong” for the show, but still feels completely right. Following this is the actual ending, which leans right into showing how the status quo has been restored, with a wonderfully bizarre tag highlighting another TV trope: a dead relative’s will forcing the Simpsons to spend the night in a haunted house. Again, it feels telling that the show is getting this meta and deconstructionist already in season 5. You can only strip the show down so much before you either have to build up something new (something the Oakley & Weinstein years attempted) or just tear it all down and cancel it (season 32 and counting!!)

Original airdate: November 8, 2020

The premise: After Marge and the kids travel to Martha’s Vineyard without him, Homer meets Lilly, a fun-loving girl from England who falls head over heels for him.

The reaction: It’s uncommon nowadays that a guest star playing a character gets a huge role in an episode. Last season Michael Rappaport played Mike, baseball enthusiast, anger management candidate, and Homer’s biggest fan, a character that absolutely baffled me as to what his motivations were. Here, we have the exact same problem. From the beginning, this is ostensibly Lilly’s story, as we meet her in England and see that all of the men are just obsessed with her, with her having a natural ability to make anything fun. In fact, she’s literally excised to America specifically because she’s too great of a person. So from the start, she’s really not so much a character than a representation of an exciting, carefree life partner, a literal manic pixie dream girl for the men of the world. Traveling to Springfield, she arrives at Moe’s Tavern, and with just one look at Homer, she’s absolutely captivated. Homer, meanwhile, is despondent from Marge and the kids leaving him home alone. Lilly is ostensibly supposed to be lifting Homer out of his funk, but she doesn’t really do anything for him. She sings him a song, they have a picnic at the plant with Lenny and Carl, there’s a pointless diversion where Homer chaperones a date with her and Mr. Burns, but Lilly doesn’t connect with Homer in any way, nor does she represent anything specific for him to connect with. For the first half of the episode, Homer is just completely oblivious to Lilly’s advances, but in the second half, he’s clearly aware of his growing attraction to her. He’s shocked to find Marge has returned home early, and finds himself captivated by Lilly’s literal siren song over  the phone beckoning him to come over, basically just telling him she’ll make him food. Moments from reaching Lilly’s door, we see fantasy muses appear around Homer’s head beckoning him to her, holding scrolls reading different words. “Kindness” and “Boobies” are clear enough: she’s definitely a very nice, attractive woman, that would be appealing to most men. Then there’s “Humor,” which I don’t recall her making anybody laugh, especially Homer, despite Olivia Coleman doing her best in performing such a dull, empty character. But the killer is “Common Interests,” which we never, ever see. She likes to drink… and that’s really it. This feels especially damning to me as I just recently watched “The Last Temptation of Homer,” an episode all about Homer grappling with his feelings for a woman who shares his greatest vices. But forget about the classic era, season 28’s “Friends and Family” introduced Homer’s neighbor Julia. Although they were never romantically involved, it was a similar story of Homer forming a kinship with another woman, and it was all over their mutual love of overeating, drinking and hating Ned Flanders. It was a terrible show, but even that episode put in the necessary ingredients to attempt to have the story make sense. By the climax of this episode, we’re expected to believe Homer is seconds away from cheating on his wife for this absolute blank slate of a woman, and it absolutely does not work for that very reason.

Three items of note:
– I honestly don’t know what they were going for with the Lilly character. As I mentioned, she seems like just a manic pixie dream girl type, but since she doesn’t really affect Homer’s life in any real way, that doesn’t really check out. We see Lilly musing to herself, longing for Homer from afar, so are we supposed to relate to her in some way? That being said, we never know why she is specifically so turned on by Homer, outside of joke lines that give little insight (“Please let me win him, even briefly. It would be like having a lover and a child at the same time!”) (Wow that line is real creepy.) But Lilly isn’t a real character. We see she’s literally sought after by every single man who sees her, even being with and turning down Hollywood’s finest like Leonardo DiCaprio. Surely this could be an easy set-up for a story. She meets Homer, who is the only man who isn’t immediately smitten by her. She could take this one of two ways: either she’s relieved that a man could actually be interested as her as a person rather than just her looks, or she’s aghast that he’s not taken by her charms immediately, making him all that much more desirable. Homer’s a big lunkhead with not much of a wandering eye, so either of these scenarios would work with him, and both premises would communicate something different about Lilly as a person. Instead, we get nothing. Sometimes it really feels like these stories are half finished and they just throw in a bunch of jokes on top and call it a day.
– As Homer is seconds from grasping Lilly’s doorknob, she’s singing “la, la, la” into the phone, which then is replaced by Marge singing “la,  la, la” as Homer’s mind switches back to the love of his life. It’s quite the contrast from Coleman’s sweet siren song to the elderly Julie Kavner’s aggressively grating voice. I know I literally just talked about it on the season premiere, but this may be the worst Kavner has ever sounded throughout the entire episode. All of the characters definitely sound different as their actors have gotten older over thirty years, but the perpetually 36-year-old Marge very much sounds like an old crone at this point. And again, I feel so awful saying this, as I’m sure Julie Kavner is still giving it her absolute all, but this is just what happens when you get older. As many times as I’ve pointed this out, I feel like this is the first time Kavner’s aging voice actually negatively affected an episode, considering what we’re supposed to be hearing is the saintly voice of Homer’s dear wife pulling him back from the edge of infidelity, but it sounds just like the angry floor buffer at the Capital City Hotel. Unless that was supposed to be the joke? It definitely feels extra-exaggerated, but it was still hilariously off-putting either way.
– The ending features a crestfallen Lilly returning to London, sure she’ll never find love again,  until she meets Homer’s British doppelgänger (“Are you married, and would you shave off your mustache?” “Yes, and immediately.”) This reminded me of the ending of “Papa Don’t Leech,” the episode featuring Lurleen Lumpkin’s reappearance. Before Lurleen leaves the Simpson house, we see she’s now with a roadie Homer doppelgänger herself, an absolute lout who mooches beer money off her. In “Colonel Homer,” Lurleen was so taken by Homer because he was genuine to her, helping her with her career with no strings attached. In “Leech,” her realistic attraction is reduced to her just being super horny about men who look like Homer. In this episode, Lilly was attracted to Homer for absolutely no reason, so it makes perfect sense that she would find happiness with a Homer clone at the end, a pointless ending to a pointless episode.

6. Marge on the Lam

• “Marjorie, please! I enjoy all the meats of our cultural stew.”
• As Homer is desperately trying to reach for the soda can in the vending machine, I like how we cut back to Lenny and Carl’s blank expressions two times, then for no real reason, they run off in terror when Homer gets stuck (“He’s done for!”)
• The opera performing at Springfield High School definitely feels more appropriate than the fancy performance hall we saw back in “Bart the Genius.”
• I really like how Homer’s protests against Marge going out alone never comes off as chauvinistic. He’s more like a little kid asking his mom when she’ll be back. As we follow him wandering aimlessly by himself in his attempts at a fulfilling night out, we see that marriage has given his life a sort of comforting structure, and without Marge, he’s lost. It’s a sweet through-line running through the episode.
• Mr. Burns talking on the phone like a teenage girl from the 50s is one of those gags that’s just so bizarre, but it only works because it goes by so quickly. Random humor works best when it’s not dwelled upon, and also in this case, only if there’s some thread of logic to the joke (Burns being an old man whose mind is stuck in the past).
  
• It goes by really quick, but I love the gag at Shotkickers where we see Willie on the mechanical bull, yelling to anyone who’ll listen, “How come no one else’s chair is doing this?!”
• Marge’s awkward dancing at the underground club is really adorable.
  
• The tone switch between young Homer’s manic glee at smashing the weather machine and his dumbly serious fawning over Marge (“You got real purty hair…”) is so funny, but also weirdly sweet. Homer may love being a craven buffoon, but he loves it even more if Marge is there with him.
• “She’s become a crazed criminal just because I didn’t take her to the ballet!” “That’s exactly how Dillinger got started.”
• Kent Brockman’s bizarre on-air breakdown gives way to another amazing “Please Stand By” card.
  
• I’ve never seen Thelma & Louise so I really don’t know how closely the Marge/Ruth story mirrors the movie, outside the famous driving off a cliff ending. I guess Ruth was sort of retro-fit to fill the role of whichever one was the live wire, but it still stays in line with what little we learned about her from “New Kid on the Block.” I definitely feel like Ruth would have been a welcome recurring character, a great instigating element to push along Marge stories. Instead, she came back only one time ten seasons later as a female bodybuilder in that episode where Marge got roided up and rapes a whimpering Homer in their bed. Sigh.

7. Bart’s Inner Child

• What exactly is Krusty doing with a normal house in a residential area? Maybe it’s just for storing hot, under suspicion items like that trampoline of his. Whatever the reason, I love how serious he is once he offloads it to Homer, and of course his amazing reappearance when he aims a shotgun right at Homer from the porch (“You just keep right on drivin’.”)
• Very nice POV shot of Homer looking down on Marge from the trampoline.
  
• The first act features Homer at his silliest, a grown man who throws down everything at the chance to make a paltry couple bucks having neighborhood kids bounce on a trampoline. Between that and the Looney Tunes homage with him throwing it off a cliff, this is one ridiculous first act. But it works within the context of contrasting Homer’s spontaneous, childlike behavior with Marge’s grounded, worrywart nature, setting the plot into motion.
• Man, I love how absolutely painful some of the sound design is in this episode with kids eating shit off the trampoline. My favorite is when Wendell’s arm just smacks down on the metal bar with an incredibly loud hit, followed by his cry in anguish. It really sells just how much excruciating pain this demon trampoline is causing.
• It’s kind of interesting following Homer’s accusation that she’s too straight-laced and no fun, Marge sits up in bed, revealing she’s sleeping in the nude, which we’ve seen her do every so often. We also get a pretty obvious reuse of animation where in the following shot of Marge, we see the hem of her nightgown, since it’s an old shot they retimed the lip sync to.
• This little strut of Homer walking in and greeting his wife with, “What up, Marge?” is one of my favorite pieces of animation of the whole series. I guess it’s meant to re-establish how carefree Homer is versus Marge, and it’s so damn charming to me.
  
• Another slam dunk from Phil Hartman as Troy McClure in the Brad Goodman presentation. His reading of “My God, it’s like you’ve known me all my life!” always makes me laugh out loud.
• I still love the joke when the Simpsons pull up to the Brad Goodman seminar and Homer recaps why they’re there. It’s one of those gags that’s so weird and makes no sense if you’re not really thinking about how it’s commenting on how “unrealistically” shows and movies are structured that characters will repeat information for the benefit of the viewer to other characters who should already know said information. As TV has evolved over the decades, some cliches and narrative devices have grown as well, but there are still tropes like this that bug me. My biggest eye roll is when shows will unnaturally recap what’s happening immediately at the beginning of a new act after the commercial break. I understand why they do it, but sometimes it just sounds weird how a character will just reiterate what’s happening for no real reason. As much as I love the show, Bob’s Burgers is a big offender of this.
• Brad Goodman may not be as memorable as Hank Scorpio, but he’s a perfect Simpsons character with a ton of great lines (“I may not have a lot of ‘credentials’ or ‘training,’ but I’ll tell you one thing: I’m a PhD in pain.” “There’s no trick to it. It’s just a simple trick!”) He’s actually kind of a more grounded version of Lyle Lanley, a sweet-talking shyster who blows into town, hawks a feel-good solution and gets the hell out with a briefcase full of cash. While Lanley was a song-and-dance man selling an extravagant monorail, Goodman is a more realistic figure, an unqualified, soothing manipulator who, as Lisa keenly observes, is “just peddling a bunch of easy answers.”
• Thanks to this episode, I always pronounce “iced cream” like Mr. Burns.
• This is probably my favorite depiction of Springfield devolving into mob violence, where we see a bunch of our favorite characters slowly get more and more at each other’s throats (“You know, you really irritate me, Skinner, what with your store-bought haircut and excellent posture!”) I also love how in this episode and “Rosebud” we see how easily the mush-brained mob can be redirected (“They’re heading for the old mill!” “No, we’re not!” “Well, let’s go to the old mill anyway and get some cider!”)
• The McGarnigal ending feels like it was a late addition, especially since the last fifteen seconds are playing over an exterior shot of the house. I wonder if they had a different ending that they scrapped in favor of a funny TV parody.

8. Boy Scoutz N The Hood

• The honey roasted peanuts scene was included as a track on one of the old Simpsons soundtrack albums, and I honestly don’t know why. They would sometimes include dialogue leading in or out of songs from the show, but this is the only track that’s literally just an entire scene of dialogue with no music. It does immediately precede the “Springfield, Springfield” song, but there’s no narrative connective tissue between the two, so it still doesn’t make any sense. But having listened to those CDs over and over again, I can recite the entire scene flawlessly decades later. Who knows what that memory space could be better suited for? I’ll never know…
• In every 7-Eleven I’ve ever walked into, I always think they’re called Squishees before remembering they’re actually Slurpees. At my high school, they had a Slush Puppy machine in the cafeteria and I’d get slushies there all the time, and they were a greater ratio of syrup to ice than Slurpees were.
• I collected the Playmates Simpsons action figure line when I was younger, and one of the final figures they produce in the last wave was Brain Freeze Bart, modeled after Bart’s Squishee-induced freakout. It was such a weird choice for a variant, since removed from the episode’s context, he just looks really strange. But I still bought him anyway.
• The face on the Toothless Joe gum packaging is power plant employee Gummy Joe. Guess it’s a lucrative side hustle for him.
• Speaking of the Songs in the Key of Springfield CD, the “Springfield, Springfield” track has an extensive intro (Apu making the all-syrup Squishee) and outro (Bart finding out he joined the Junior Campers and the opening of act two at the kitchen table.) As a kid listening to it, I thought Bart’s line “I’ve made my bed, and now I’ve gotta weasel out of it” was about him literally making his bed.
• “EGGHEAD LIKES HIS BOOKY WOOK!”
  
• Speaking of Playmates, Scout Leader Flanders was another variant figure I had. I got into collecting the figures a year into their production, so I missed out on a lot of the major characters who were older and much harder to find or more expensive. That being the case, the variant figures released in later waves were good for me to have major secondary characters in my collection. But for every interesting or logical variant like Prison Sideshow Bob or Plow King Barney, you had more uninspiring ones like Scout Leader Flanders or… Resort Smithers.
• Bart’s debt collecting badge is an amazing blink-and-you’ll-miss-it joke.
  
• I think Ernest Borgnine is only second to Buzz Aldrin for greatest sport of a guest star who just gets ridiculed and abused. He’s literally introduced walking out of the bathroom, and things just continue to go downhill from there. He’s so funny though: his petering out laugh to cheer up his camper, his quiet defeat upon finding his pocket knife is missing when being cornered by a bear, and one of the best lines of the whole show (“Hey, where are the sissy and the bald guy goin’, huh?”) And if that wasn’t enough, the last scene is him getting killed by Jason Vorhees. Rest in peace, Mermaidman.
• My favorite Sea Captain jokes are the ones that show just how incompetent and miserable he really is. This might be his best random appearance, unable to even keep an inflatable raft afloat (“Yarrr, I don’t know what I’m doin’.”)
• It’s a great touch that we see Homer wearing a map as a paper hat in Bart’s fantasy about how he’d be a screw-up, then in reality, we see Homer doing just that, and ending up having his map hat get blown away.
• Sugar-posting became its own category for Simpsons shitposting, and it’s produced some amazing content.

9. The Last Temptation of Homer

• Bart’s faculty parking lot prank is definitely one of his smartest. It’s kind of another example of how he’s actually a pretty smart kid, just not in the way most adults probably want him to be.
• “It’s ‘photosynthesis’! Damn your feeble brain!”
• The emotional journey Homer goes through in this episode is just fantastic. At first, he’s completely stunned at his immediate physical attraction to Mindy and chooses to just ignore those feelings. When he finds them unavoidable, he tries everything he can to try to squash them, but it proves to be to no avail. As we get into act three with him and Mindy in Capital City, it’s as if the fates are manufacturing everything into place to get these two together, and Homer can feel it, and it’s torturous to him. While “Life in the Fast Lane” depicted Marge as semi-understandably conflicted about choosing Homer or Jacques in the end, it’s appropriate that the flip-side episode would have Homer thrust into a possible infidelity scenario through no fault or action of his own, instead of him just being a horny two-timer. Homer definitely works best when his perversions are more innocent, like him talking about being attracted to Wonder Woman, or him dreaming about naked… Marge. 
• “Homer, what’s with you? You’re talking during a coffee break!” “Yeah, you usually just take the box of donuts into the bathroom.”
• Who knew that bar napkins were so wise?
  
• I think Michelle Pfeiffer is kind of underrated as Mindy. Not only does she do a great job emulating Homer’s vocal mannerisms (her “Mmmm”s and “Can’t talk. Eating,”) but she also plays her just as flummoxed by her crush with Homer as he is to her. The scene with her and Homer in the hotel room at the end is really so beautifully acted, with her clearly open to having sex with Homer, but not wanting to unless he did, communicated in a quiet, honest way.
• Gotta love that Ringworm ad. I feel like they wrote out “National Ringworm Association” for the end card, realized the acronym was NRA, and threw in the “The Other N.R.A.” in as a bonus joke.
• “All I’m gonna use this bed for is sleeping, eating, and maybe building a little fort! That’s it!”
• Burns releasing his Wizard of Oz monkeys in response to Homer and Mindy ordering room service is not only a syndication cut, but I also definitely saw “Another Simpsons Clip Show” more times in syndication than this episode, so my brain not only forgets the monkeys scene, but it immediately jumps to Madame Chow’s, because that’s the scene that comes next in the clip show. Anyway, the joke’s not that great anyway, so whatever.
• The “As Seen on 60 Minutes” mention on the Springfield Power Plant booth is great. There’s also a bunch of copies of Burns’ book from “Blood Feud” for sale, which is a nice callback.
• Again, I just love the end scene with Homer and Mindy so much. And it’s lit so beautifully too. I absolutely love Homer’s innocent “Well… maybe I want to” regarding he and Mindy doing anything. Dan Castellaneta effortlessly imbues Homer’s voice clearly in turmoil with himself. He doesn’t know what he wants at that moment, and you can tell just in the performance.
  

10. $pringfield (or, How I l Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Legalized Gambling)

• I love how Mr. Burns just awkwardly walks away from Henry Kissinger at his office door. He doesn’t even bother wasting energy shutting the door in his face. It’s also pretty sweet that we later hear that he walked into a wall without his glasses. That’s more karmic suffering than that detestable war criminal has gotten in real life.
• “I propose that I use what’s left of the town treasury to move to a more prosperous town and run for mayor. And, er, once elected, I will send for the rest of you.”
• Burns’ 24-hour laughing fit about the crippled Irishman is such a hilarious sequence. Him guffawing on his knees in church is one of the funniest images of the whole series.
  
• You know when you have false memories about something you remember watching, but it never actually happened? When we first see Burns Casino, after Burns mentions his new venture needs to have “sex appeal and a catchy name,” for some reason, my brain remembers a tag on that scene where someone says, “What a catchy name!” and Smithers standing next to him says, “What sex appeal!” Clearly, I am remembering this wrong, but every single time I watch this episode and get to that part, my brain thinks this imaginary scene is going to happen but it never does.
• Speaking of celebrities who are good sports, Gerry Cooney makes a pretty pathetic appearance, getting knocked the fuck out by Otto. I guess he’s known for his glass jaw? I don’t know anything about him, but I’m all for more celebrities getting punched in the face on TV.
• The Rich Texan makes his first appearance here, a character who would many seasons later get dusted off and reused ad nauseum (he shot his guns again and screamed “Yee-haw!” I love it when he does that!) But for now, he’s a great one-off character (“Homer, I want you to have my lucky hat. I wore it the day Kennedy was shot, and it always brings me good luck.” “Why thanks, Senator!”)
• Much ado has been made in the last year or so of The Simpsons predicting future events, most of which are bullshit, but the show most certainly called Roy getting mauled by that tiger a decade prior to it happening. Not the boldest prediction, but they still called it.
• There’s just so much going on in Homer’s “photographic memory.”
  
• The Rain Man scene definitely makes no sense if you don’t know the context, which is a real strike against it. Also, the punchline of Homer mimicking the Dustin Hoffman character’s autistic screaming fit doesn’t feel very appropriate nowadays. They’d have been better off cutting this and replacing it with the James Bond deleted scene, which is way funnier anyway.
• Gotta love Krusty’s herpes song. I also love how the scene just ends in bitter silence between disgruntled performer and disgruntled audience.
• “Freemasons run the country!!”
  
• The Boogeyman scene is the basis of yet another tremendous Dankmus remix. Also, if you haven’t gone to their account and binged all their remixes at this point, what the hell are you waiting for? Do you hate joy?
• Robert Goulet is a great example of an appropriately used guest star. It’s logical that he would arrive in Springfield because Burns paid him to play at his casino, and it’s funny seeing him get roped into playing in a kid’s treehouse (“You from the casino?” “I’m from a casino.” “Good enough, let’s go.”) His rendition of the kiddie version “Jingle Bells” is just lovely.
• I love the dramatic camera turn when Homer finally confronts Marge (“You broke a promise to your child!”) The whole episode has been mostly all goofs, but the effects of Marge’s addiction have been slowly building, leaving Homer a powderkeg that eventually erupts in him going wild in the casino, but when he finally settles back down (“Think before you say each word,”) the scene becomes appropriately serious, but just long enough for it to feel meaningful before the cruel hands of the status quo prevent any real change from happening (“Maybe I should get some professional help.” “No, no, that’s too expensive. Just don’t do it anymore.”)

Original airdate: November 1, 2020

The premise: In “Toy Gory,” Bart’s toys enact their revenge after being abused for too long. In “Into the Homer-verse,” an incident at the power plant results in a gathering of Homers from different dimensions. In “Be Nine, Rewind,” Lisa and Nelson find themselves reliving the same day over and over, trying to avoid death in the process.

The reaction: These are always the hardest write-ups to do, because my general criticisms of Treehouse of Horrors have been the same for years, and I don’t want to just repeat them over and over. Hell, I’m pretty sure I’ve used that sentence as my opener for the last four years at least. At least “Toy Gory” has pretty-looking CG on its side, similar to the Coraline “parody” they did a few years ago, but sadly used in service of a pretty dull story. The toys attack Bart and make him a living pull string toy, and then that’s the end. It feels like that should have been the midway point of the story. Bart basically acts like Sid from the first Toy Story, an absolute terror, ripping toys apart, but the climactic reveal of the toys being alive and confronting Sid in the movie is way more dramatic and eerie than this entire segment, so that feels like a bit of a failure. “Homer-verse” is yet another “parody” of a non-horror movie, and a pretty uninspired one. When I saw low-bit video game Homer, why couldn’t that have been Homer from The Simpsons arcade game? Have the other Homers be from other Simpsons media, or from other fantasy sequences over the course of 30 seasons? Especially since this is the 30th anniversary of Treehouse of Horrors, this felt like an appropriate opportunity to be totally meta, like all the different TOH universes are colliding (King Homer! Donuthead Homer! Grim Reaper Homer!) Instead, we get Hanna-Barbara Homer (jokes about Snagglepuss in 2020. Timely!) and Film Noir Homer, because it’s just like that movie they watched and ripped off… er, paid homage to. “Be Nine, Rewind” apes off of time loop movies, specifically the Happy Death Day films and the Netflix series Russian Doll (the segment opens with the same Harry Nilsson song that plays when time resets on Russian Doll.) Lisa and Nelson are stuck repeating Lisa’s birthday, and repeatedly kill themselves over and over trying to break the cycle. They even do the same wood chipper death from Happy Death Day 2U, except not as gleefully macabre as the protagonist in that film who threw herself in willingly, as part of a montage of her glibly accepting her death time and time again. More than half of the segment feels like them explaining the rules of their predicament and coming up with plans, and then later going to Comic Book Guy to list off a bunch of time loop movies, and the loop is broken by Nelson just randomly killing Gil? Whatever. These Halloween shows used to bum me out, but now I’ve just grown numb to how uninteresting they are.

Three items of note:
– This episode was written by writer/comedian Julia Prescott, who co-hosts the ‘Round Springfield podcast. She also co-hosts Stonecutters LA, a live monthly Simpsons trivia show in Los Angeles that I’ve gone to many, many times. Having seen her on-stage over the years, Julia is a very likable personality and clearly a super fan of the show, so I tried to go into this episode positively, hoping there would be some fresh voice to it, but alas, it felt exactly like all the recent Treehouse of Horrors to me. Just like when the show has had guest writers like Seth Rogan or Judd Apatow, something happens in the rewriting process that just homogenizes everything into a colorless slop, and I don’t know what that is. In fact, the season premiere “Undercover Burns” was also written by an outsider, David Cryan, a 29-year-old Canadian who reached out to Al Jean on Twitter to pitch ideas to him, which eventually led to him writing a freelance script. Between Prescott, Cryan, and recent staff hire Megan Amram, the hiring of younger writers who grew up creatively inspired by the show certainly feels like it would breathe new life into this old dinosaur, but as we’ve seen time and again, their episodes feel just as lame and tired as the ones written by the regular old stable of writers.
– The opening was exactly what I’d feared it would be: a ham-fisted anti-Trump election segment. Who is this appealing to? Trump is a moronic ghoul, but all the liberal comedic institutions just harp on the same “orange man bad” tropes, and now at this point, the “joke” is just literally scrolling a gigantic list on the screen of all of Trump’s transgressions and blunders over his presidency. Thinking about how they’ve done these terrible election cold opens the last decade or so, I thought even further back to “Citizen Kang,” an entire segment specifically featuring the 1996 presidential candidates Bill Clinton and Bob Dole. How was that different? Besides the humorous, subversive story (the classic “take me to your leader” demand being hung up because of the election, causing aliens to replace the candidates), the humor was derived from our political system and the election race itself, with only a few minor touches specific to that year’s candidates (Bob Dole’s unique speaking patterns, Ross Perot’s cameo.) Kang and Kodos’ perfect emulation of empty political jargon (“And always twirling, twirling, twirling towards freedom!”), appealing to the broadest possible electorate (“Abortions for some, miniature American flags for all!”) and the travesty that is our two-party system (“I’m going to vote third party!” “Go ahead! Throw your vote away!”) are all things that are still painfully relevant six election cycles later, while this Trump-Biden opening will be dated immediately.
– Dr. Hibbert appears at the end of “Toy Gory,” still voiced by Harry Shearer. It seems like “Undercover Burns” is the switch-over point for the new voice actors, and this episode, “I, Carumbus,” and the upcoming “The 7 Beer Itch” were produced before it, so everything after that I assume will have the new voices. Later in “Be Nine, Rewind,” we get our first extended listen at Grey DeLisle’s Sherri and Terri (I think one of them had a quick line last season.) I think DeLisle’s Martin is pretty good, but Sherri and Terri… not so much. It’s a very distinct voice to try to match, and DeLisle is an incredibly talented performer, but it ends up sounding like a character from The Loud House or something. It’s as good as we’re gonna get though, so I guess it’s fine. No sense creating new characters in your thirty-second season when your actors die off, what’s the point?