Season Seven Revisited (Part Two)

7. King-Size Homer

• What a beautiful pan. Who cares that it makes no sense spatial-wise that all these rooms are directly next to each other, I love it. Also great is Burns’ absolute befuddlement at Homer just appearing in his office, with great, understated reads by Harry Shearer (“Can I help you?”)
  
• I like that Homer’s starting weight is 239 pounds, the weight he got down to by the end of “Brush With Greatness.” In fact, I now consider this episode to be a direct sequel to that show, where after Homer’s personal triumph of losing weight, he gleefully chooses to gain it all back and then some.
• “Assal horizontology” is a term I wish I had more cause to actually use in real life. Also, I’ve searched up and down Los Angeles for Hollywood Upstairs Medical College, but sadly, I cannot find it.
• I love Ned’s guest appearance in Homer’s work-from-home fantasy as a haggard victim of the rat race (“A crazy guy shot a bunch of people, and the subway ran over my hat!”)
• I really like the first act twist; as would be expected, Homer is almost at his goal weight, and a hail Mary Play-Dough donut from Maggie pushes him over… but his gut was on the towel rack, revealing he was actually heavy enough already. Even better is the towel rack gag was set up earlier, so it doubles as a great callback too.
• Another great newspaper headline. I also love that drawing of Burns for some reason.
  
• I used the “To start, press any key” audio bite as the Windows start-up sound on my PC when I was younger. Boy, was I clever!
• Morbidly obese Bart and his washin’ rag would go on to launch a thousand shitposts. I love that it’s yet another dark future for Bart that he for some reason thinks is awesome, like him being a drifter or get horrifically mutated by an experimental cola.
  
• I love Marge’s presence throughout the first two acts and how she eventually creeps her way into the foreground of Homer’s story. During Homer’s rapid weight gain, she timidly brings it up, but is quickly dismissed by Homer. This drives her into the background, hoping this crazy episode will fade out on its own like it usually does (“Normally your father’s crackpot schemes fizzle out as soon as he finds something good on TV. But this season…”) Later, when Lisa confronts her mother to do something, Marge is hesitant, not wanting to hurt Homer’s feelings, in one of the greatest crazy lines in the whole series (“Your father can be surprisingly sensitive. Remember when I giggled at his Sherlock Holmes hat? He sulked for a week and then closed his detective agency.”) When she finally does get Homer’s ear, she’s understandably upset and things do get a little sad, where she admits not only does she fear for her husband’s health, she finds herself less physically attracted to him. It’s genuinely affecting.
• I absolutely love the bit where Homer cockily brags to Marge about “tripling his productivity,” using the mocking moniker “Miss Doesn’t-Find-Me-Attractive-Sexually-Anymore,” his pettiness completely blinding him to what an awful label that is to both her and himself.
• Homer being bored working from home, distracted by the dog, the mail, anything to pull him away from the computer, definitely reads differently after ten on-and-off months of me working from home.
• Homer’s incredibly fast ranting at passing motorists, and then the ice cream truck driver, feels reminiscent of the raving homeless man from “Bart Sells His Soul.” Dan Castellaneta is really great at talking incredibly fast, it seems.
• The rising action of Homer making his way to the manual shut-off switch plays as very dramatic, but it still feels like it has real weight. By the end, there’s not much in the way of jokes as Homer climbs and tries to balance on the ladder as the tension ramps up, but it still works after Homer vowed at the end of act two to actually give a damn about his job, and now he has to put up or shut up on his promise.
• You might think why Homer didn’t just get more liposuction to make him into a slim man, but I absolutely buy that Burns would only pay to have him returned to his “normal” size.
• Simpsons Archive retro review: “This was an OK episode, not very outstanding by OFF’s usual high standards. Did they really make fun of FDR’s disability? It was better social commentary on the way people are granted disability freely, IMHO. The animation of the fat Homer was not all that pleasant to look at. C-.”

8. Mother Simpson

• I love the bit where without thinking, Lenny picks a bird’s nest with eggs out of a tree and tosses it in the garbage. Just not even paying attention.
• Great drawing of “Homer” getting stuck in the turbine, up for barely a second before he disappears inside.
  
• We get a rare moment of Marge actually expressing anger at her sisters over their treatment of Homer, when they present her with his tombstone (“Get out of here, you ghouls!”) It’s not shown often, but Marge isn’t an idiot, she must be hurt by her sisters’ treatment of her husband, as we briefly shone a light on in “Homer vs. Patty & Selma.”
• The animation of Homer and Marge left in the dark after the power is cut is fantastic. With just the eyeball animation, everything still feels very expressive.
• I’ve mentioned it before, but Homer’s upbringing really was pretty awful, all in the hands of how absolutely cruel and uncaring Abe was. Him telling Homer that Mona died when they were at the movies is so incredibly awful; in the blink of an eye, li’l Homer’s life changed forever, doomed to be raised by a man providing him nothing but insults and disencouragement. When Marge asks him what “good reason” Mona had to leave him, Homer solemnly responds, “I guess I was just a horrible son and no mother would want me…” That might be the most devastating line in the whole series, Homer really has some deep scars from his childhood, and for good reason.
• I always found it odd that Marge addresses Mona as “Mother Simpson” when they all finally confront her. I guess they never really firmly establish her name is really “Mona,” we only see that as one of her many other aliases that Lisa discovers. But to me, when I hear it, I just think, “Hey, that’s the title of the episode!” I also like how when Mona talks about her radicalization in the 60s, Marge asks, “So where did your newfound sense of irresponsibility take you?” Of course that’s how Marge would frame any form of protest; it definitely feels in line with her awkward bra burning in “The Way We Was.”
• I definitely say “Now there’s a [blank] you can set your watch to!” in an approving way just like Abe from time to time.
• I really like that they show Wiggum as campus police in the flashback. Considering he’s probably a young college student and Homer’s a kid, that would make modern day Wiggum in his late forties, which feels right. It’s definitely a lot more interesting than future flashback shows where we see every citizen of Springfield is exactly the same damn age so they can make Springfield Babies-type jokes.
• I get that the point of Mona going back to help Burns is to show how she’s incredibly kindhearted, she would even lend a hand to her enemy, but… come on, that’s an incredibly rookie move for an anarchist. Which she was. So that checks out too.
• The back-and-forth between Abe and Mona is just wonderful, just incredibly passionate performances by Castellaneta and Glenn Close. 
• It’s great that we see Wiggum quietly in the background for most of the investigation in act three, which explains how he was able to tip off Homer before the cavalry arrived, retroactively explaining why Wiggum wasn’t quick to volunteer any information himself to the feds. Very well done.
• The ending is still a killer, just absolutely tragic and beautiful at the same time. When I last watched this episode, my mother had just passed a few months prior, and now nearly ten years later, it still hits just as hard. I feel you, Homer. I feel you.
  
• Simpsons Archive retro review: “C-plus – I just stared at the screen for 22 minutes in sort of the same way that Homer stared at the sky at the end.  On top of that, the ‘Lisa is just like Grandma’ bit was stressed a little too much.”

9. Sideshow Bob’s Last Gleaming

• This is my favorite Sideshow Bob episode in that it really perfectly illustrates the character. A pompous thespian through and through, Bob’s true nemesis is idiotic lowbrow culture, personified by the “chattering cyclops” that is television. It stings even greater considering he was once an active participant in such moronic programming (“My foolish capering destroyed more young minds then syphilis and pinball combined!”) The final straw comes from overhearing a moronic FOX sitcom with a familiar guest star: accomplished stage actress Vanessa Redgrave. Bob is practically in mourning hearing a respected performer reduced to appearing on TV’s “bottomless chum bucket.”
• “I renew my objection to this pointless endeavor, informally now and by affidavit later… time permitting.”
• Lisa’s excitement about seeing the first female stealth bomber pilot is really a fantastic joke (“During the Gulf War she destroyed seventy mosques, and her name is Lisa too!”) It’s funny on its own how Lisa is childishly enraptured by this trailblazing woman who she shares a name with, conveniently overlooking her horrific actions, but it’s also a tremendous slam on the celebration of a non-cis white men breaking into notable or high rank positions overshadowing any of their actual terrible actions (see: most of the Obama administration.) Of course, this is also a joke that would never, ever be done with modern era Lisa.
• I love how Bob’s scheme unfolds, creating an inconvenience for the colonel solely to hear his voice and speaking patterns, allowing him to mimic the colonel in order to access a restricted area of the base. Like his showboating to the schoolkids in “Sideshow Bob Roberts,” Bob once again puts his performing abilities to work, affecting the voice of a dimwitted Southern recruit to egg the colonel on, then Kelsey Grammer does his best R. Lee Ermey impression as he chokes his way through one of his slightly distasteful exclamations (“Get moving or I’ll tear you up like a Kleenex at a… snot party!”)
• Speaking of Ermey, he’s great in this episode. He’s doing the schtick you expect him to, but any character whose dialogue includes “I’m going to come in there and corpse you up!” is aces in my book. I also like the scene later in the bunker where his Garfield-related expression is met with awkward silence, and he sheepishly says, “Sorry, my wife thought that was gangbusters.”
• I love the animation of the fighter jets hovering in front of the Tyranno-Vision (great name) to watch Bob.
• “American Breast Enthusiast” has got to be the classiest porno magazine ever.
• It makes absolutely no sense, but I love how Bob is able to shoo away the helium, allowing him to speak in his normal tone.
• Another great childlike moment from Lisa where she escapes the air force base and excitedly tells her mother about all the exciting things that happened. Modern-era Lisa would seriously urge to push onto capture Bob with some kind of pithy remark or something stupid.
• Fantastic animation of Bart’s book bag getting promptly run over and nonsensically set on fire.
  
• This episode kind of feels like a spiritual sequel to “Krusty Gets Busted,” as they’re both about Bob’s utter disdain toward mindless pop culture, perfectly represented by Krusty’s loud and moronic antics. It’s appropriate that Krusty is the last TV man standing, the man who made Bob suffer for so many years, thwarting him once again. Enough is enough for Bob, in his last ditch effort, vowing to kill the awful clown. Of course, this builds to a hilarious anti-climax as the Wright Brothers plane pathetically bumps into the broadcast cabin, foiling Bob almost instantly.
• Simpsons Archive retro review: “‘That was a well-plotted piece of non-claptrap that never made me want to retch.’ ‘Sideshow Bob Roberts’ aside, I never like Sideshow Bob episodes. They’re appealing, but just not funny. This one had too many FOX swipes and not much plot development, and the conclusion was rather hasty. My Grade: D+.”

10. The Simpsons 138th Episode Spectacular

• This is definitely the best clip show, both in watchability and the creativity of the concept. Not only is most of the content material never seen before on TV, there’s also the brilliance usage of Troy McClure as host, filling his fourth wall-breaking role perfectly. He would reprise such a role one season later in “Spin-off Showcase,” but sadly, never again.
• I love the characterization of Matt Groening as a reactionary right-wing crank, angrily shooting at trespassers in his office and injecting conservative Easter eggs into the show (NRA4EVER!)
  
• It’s kind of crazy that after all these decades, there’s never been an official release of the Tracy Ullman Simpsons shorts. I’ve seen them all, but the bulk of them are low-quality TV rips of The Tracy Ullman Show reruns on Comedy Central. It’ll most likely never happen now; a complete shorts collection would have made more sense as a limited DVD release than a feature on Disney+ at this point. Also, they’re basically a bizarre cultural artifact rather than something I’d watch for legitimate entertainment; you watch a few of them and you basically get the idea.
• The second act is the only section featuring actual show clips. It does its best to package them in a unique way with Troy reading viewer mail, but I still end up skipping through them. It’s a clip show. It is what it is.
• I always laugh at Phil Hartman’s gravely serious read of “You’ve got some attitude, mister.”
• I like the faded color and scratchy film effect put onto the deleted scenes, like they were locked in a vault for decades and unearthed. As for the clips themselves, robotic Richard Simmons from “Burns’ Heir” is the one most people probably remember, but all the clips from “Treehouse of Horror IV” are just great, and I wish they didn’t get cut (especially the set-up and payoff of Lionel Hutz’s free pizza guarantee.) It’s  also kind of funny that we get a cut scene from “Mother Simpson,” an episode that had just aired two weeks prior.
• It’s so great how purposefully bad the fake “Who Shot Mr. Burns?” ending is. Smithers’ elongated groan at getting a 5% pay cut for shooting his boss is so damn funny.
• “Who knows what adventures they’ll have between now and the time the show becomes unprofitable?” HASN’T HAPPENED YET, APPARENTLY.
• Simpsons Archive retro review: “Please. Not another clip show! This one was better than the others, in that the writers made it pretty obvious that they (and Troy McClure) hate doing this sort of thing. The Robotic Richards Simmons clip is the ONLY thing that saves this from the garbage dump. Overall, a D-.”

11. Marge Be Not Proud

• The Bonestorm commercial is just glorious, with the savage reindeer inches away from goring the poor children to Santa bazooka-ing the game cartridge into the game console, almost shattering it.
• This may be the most genuine Marge quote ever: “If loving my kids is lame, then I guess I’m just a big lame.”
• I don’t know why, but I love that Comic Book Guy halts Bart’s reaching hand for the cash register with a Sharpie. He could have just said “ah ah ah” and stopped Bart, but the little extra action makes the scene feel more alive.
• Milhouse screaming for his mom to eject Bart from the house (twice) is a great character moment. As we saw with “Bart Sells His Soul,” the moments where Milhouse can actually get one over on Bart are few and far between, but when an opportunity presents itself, he’ll easily take it.
• Don Brodka is such a hilarious character, ironically because he’s completely humorless (“Don’t smart off to me, smart guy.”) The gag where he calls the Simpson home and leaves a message, despite it seeming like he was actually talking to someone, is absolutely spectacular. Even better considering, I think I remember from the commentary, Bill Oakley and/or Josh Weinstein talking about how they vainly tried to explain the concept of the joke to guest voice Lawrence Tierney and he just didn’t understand it, but the way it turned out, you’d never realize that.
• Troy McClure’s shoplifting video might be in my top 5 infomercials/tapes: the fact that the production is openly a legal requirement for McClure (“I’m here today to give you the skinny on shoplifting, thereby completing my plea bargain with the good people at Foot Locker of Beverly Hills,) and the very origins of the very first thief (“Oh, Shakazaramesh, will you ever learn?”)
• I absolutely love that in Bart’s vision of Brodka, he says “cat-feesh” instead of “capiche,” which is a great callback to Bart’s earlier not understanding him saying “capiche.” So of course, his memory would screw it up. It’s a really neat subtle detail.
• Another great touch I never really noticed before is when the family arrives at the Try-N-Save. Bart worriedly inquires if it’ll be a quick in-and-out trip (“So we’re just going to do this photo and get out, right? Badda-bing, badda-boom?”) The rest of the family talks about all the stuff they want to do in the store, and Marge caps it off, “We’re going to have a great day! Badda-bing, badda-boom, right, Bart?” Marge clearly doesn’t understand “badda-bing, badda-boom” normally punctuates something done quickly, but she uses it anyway as a means of wanting to play off of Bart. Between this and her giggling at Bart’s hug earlier, it all does well to build her up for her eventual disappointment when Bart’s thievery is exposed at the end of act two.
• It’s a quick little scene, but I like how annoyed Lisa is at the photographer messing with her hat before the shoot.
  
• I love the bathroom scene with Bart and Lisa, where Lisa explains how Marge processes things differently and this latest escapade has clearly cut her deep. But when Bart asks her to clarify further, Lisa gives a childlike shrug. In later seasons, Lisa would just flatout explain to Bart (and the audience) what Marge is feeling and how he should make it up to her exactly. Here, she’s just a kid who doesn’t have all the answers, and that’s wonderful.
• I gotta say, that giant marshmallow that absorbed all the hot cocoa looks absolutely delicious. I’m with Abe, I want a slice.
• This episode is decried by Dead Homer Society as the “one bad episode” in the classic era, for leaning heavily into “after school special” territory, playing the morality play and Bart’s redemption mostly straight through the whole thing. I understand the criticism, and also, having seen a decade-plus worth of new episodes since I’ve watched this one, I understand how this sort of serves as a harbinger of things to come. Especially in the last six or seven years, we’ve seen episodes that play emotional moments 100% straight, with very little subversion or uniqueness laid on top of them. The third act of “Proud” is sort of like that, but I think what separates it from the bullshit that airs nowadays is, aside from having more actual jokes, the characters still behave like real people, and the conflict is rooted in something that feels incredibly relatable: deeply disappointing a parent and how much it can screw you up as a kid. That genuine emotional core holds strong, and makes the ending where Marge and Bart reunite pay off beautifully. 
• Lee Carvallo’s Putting Challenge. That’s it.
• Simpsons Archive retro review: “No characterization, forced continuity, and worst of all – forced emotion. In other words – one of the biggest pieces of tripe to come out of the Gracie Films offices since ‘Radioactive Man.’”

12. Team Homer

• “They’re really socking it to that Spiro Agnew guy! He must work there or something.”
• When Moe inquires where Lenny, Carl and Barney are, Homer answers that they’re spending time with their mistresses? What?
• I love how stupidly simple the riot caused by Bart’s shirt begins (“His shirt makes a good point!” “I’m with the shirt: homework rots!”) And of course the desk bursts into flames when the kids knock it over. I’m always a fan when something just randomly lights on fire. Also absolutely wonderful is Chalmers’ incredibly slow evaluation, just milking the time before the crowd of kids inevitably rushes by to ruin everything (“I am going to give this school a perfect ten! I’ll just write the zero first… now, a vertical line to indicate the one…”
• In hands-down the funniest Vietnam-joke from Skinner, he explains he spent three years in a POW camp eating nothing but a thin stew, but upon returning to America, his true anguish came as a result of not being able to create the dish (“I came close to madness trying to find it here in the States, but they just can’t get the spices right…”) It’s such a genius bait-and-switch.
• This feels like the first major instance of fleshing out Apu and Moe. It’s weird since they’ve both had their own episodes, but seeing them and Homer bouncing off each other in a normal setting like a bowling alley allows new characteristics to shine through, like Moe’s crippling insecurity (“Buenos noches, senorita!” “What’d he say? Was that about me?”)
• Martin (proudly) and Lisa (begrudgingly) model the school uniforms, and I like how you can kind of infer that they roped the two smartest kids in the school (or maybe they’re in student council or something) to have to do this little fashion show. Also great are the two different types of giant boxes carter into the auditorium: Mr. Boy and Mr. Boy for Girls.
• Homer’s “suckiest bunch of sucks who ever sucked” speech is great, but I also love Lisa’s annoyed “We are not wieners!” after he hangs up.
• I only know what colorfast clothing means from this episode, I’ve never heard it used in any other context. I could barely understand what Chalmers was screaming about for the first couple times I watched it. He excitedly follows Skinner to find Agnes in the park (“This I gotta see!”) although I’m not sure what the spectacle would be. Agnes screaming and collapsing into a heap because her dress turned tye-dye, I guess?
• Surely somebody has made that lobster harmonica at this point, right? If so, I want one.
• Simpsons Archive retro review: “This was a middle-of-the-road so-so episode. They’ve done worse, but they’ve also done better. Some good laughs, some really good meta-humor involving the competing teams. The school uniform subplot didn’t really go anywhere. A perfectly average C.”