Season Nine Revisited (Part Two)

7. The Two Mrs. Nahasapeemapetilons

• Moe’s rictus grin as he walks across the stage to a sea of scornful women’s faces is great on its own, but even better with the weird knockoff “Stayin’ Alive” music. Also, I’d like to think the Sea Captain would be a catch for some woman in Springfield. The man owns his own restaurant and lives on a cool houseboat! What more do you want?
• “Sold to the five desperate chicks!” Kind of rude of Krusty to say, since one of the women is his secretary Miss Pennycandy.
• This episode sort of re-frames Apu as a shy bachelor, whereas we’ve had previous examples of him being kind of a stud (dating Princess Kashmir in “Lisa’s Pony,” banging that one girl at the BBQ in “22 Short Films About Springfield.”) He seems to get back into the groove fairly quickly, so maybe he had just been out of the dating pool for a while. I wish there was more focus on Apu’s feelings through the episode, him talking about why he loves being carefree and single, as well as him separating leisure time from his grueling work hours… there’s weirdly not much Apu characterization in this episode that’s ostensibly about him.
• Homer growling suggestively at Apu opening a note from his mother… don’t care for it. It’s a joke off of him just reading a love note from one of Apu’s dates, but it plays so weird.
• “Is it me or does your plans always have some horrid web of lies?” “It’s you.” This really feels like the first of many, many, many zany Homer schemes over the Mike Scully years. When he innocently suggests that Apu tell his mother he’s already married, he feels more like a normal guy throwing out suggestions, but escalating it to pretending Marge is Apu’s wife and his attitude to the ruse makes it more ridiculous.
• Very nice touch that Apu rolls out a Krusty the Clown sleeping bag next to Marge’s bed, seemingly having borrowed it from Bart.
• I really like Lisa’s innocence in not knowing what Apu’s mother’s “dot” is. A modern show would have Bart ask that question and Lisa would chastise him for being culturally ignorant and give a long explanation about it, but here, Lisa just doesn’t know, because she’s an eight-year-old who doesn’t know the specifics of every culture on Earth. We also get this great exchange between Apu’s mom and Bart (“Surely you know the background to your father’s heritage.” “So long you have no follow up questions, then yes… we do.”
• Like I said, not a whole lot of Apu in this Apu show, because the second act is dominated by Homer living it up at the retirement home. It’s all fine material, I guess, but it just kind of becomes the wacky Homer show in the middle of what should be an Apu episode. Also, when he leaves the retirement home, Apu and Marge just let Homer back into the house when Apu’s mother was literally just about to leave, which is stupid and makes no sense.
• There’s a Homer line I hate, when Apu confesses to his mother, he judgingly reacts, “He lied to his mother…” This kind of tsk tsking attitude toward characters who are just saying and doing things that Homer pushed them into would reoccur a whole fucking lot over the next few seasons. Also included are jokes about his complete ignorance over stuff he himself started (“Oh right, the fake marriage thing. How’s that going?”) Homer really is pretty insufferable through most of this episode, and this behavior would only continue to get more flagrant as time goes on.
• Apu’s mother just stays at the Simpson house and expects the wedding to be held in their backyard, with no real explanation, despite hating the family that just bamboozled her. As Lisa says, why is she still staying there? Well, I guess they wrote that joke into the episode to wallpaper over the complaint, but as we will see time and time again, making a joke about a shit thing in your script doesn’t change the fact that it’s still shit.
• “No pansies for me!” “It’s the tradition in India.” “Alright, it’ll cover the gravy stains.”
• They make a meta joke about it, but why isn’t the elephant at the wedding just Stampy? They could’ve had a scene where the Simpsons get him from the wildlife reserve, or at least just have one line explaining how the hell they were able to get an elephant in the first place.
• The ending is kind of strange, in that it almost feels like the writers thought that making fun of arranged marriages would be too obvious, so their subversion was to make it seem like the marriage would actually work? They do the best they can; Manjula’s Fried Green Tomatoes question is clever and her interplay with Apu, what little there is, is sweet, but there’s no real emotional investment I can muster about Apu finding domestic bliss in an episode where he fought tooth and nail to avoid it. It’s more like him going, “Yeah, maybe this will work, hopefully.” As with almost all changes that would occur in the Mike Scully years, this character development doesn’t really amount to anything. He’s got a wife, and later kids, but Apu doesn’t change at all after this, other than he occasionally will do jokes about his nagging wife and screaming eight children are driving him to want to kill himself.
• Simpsons Archive retro review: “This was, ‘without a doubt,’ as the CBG would say, the worst episode this season. Everything from the stupid premise to the tired, sitcom-standard gags were excrutiatingly unfunny and painful to watch; I probably cracked a tiny smile once. And, once again, Homer’s antics were much more grating than they could ever be amusing. Fortunately, this has been Richard Appel’s only real clunker; let’s hope he hasn’t totally lost it.”
  (note: Appel’s next, and final, episode was “When You Dish Upon a Star.”)
  

8. Lisa the Skeptic

• The boating scam set piece isn’t bad. A casual opening scene of Homer being wanted by the police doesn’t bode well for the future, but here, it’s just for 235 unpaid parking tickets, and Homer’s petulance and obliviousness to the whole scheme is pretty good (“Lousy cops. Lucky for you, I’m double parked!”)
• There’s a good amount of self-acknowledgement of Lisa’s rabble rousing, with her “Who wants to complain with me?!” and Kent commenting on her thirteenth appearance on her program. Her staunch, humorless position she takes through the whole show grows a little bit tiresome though, to be honest.
• It’s so weird how Phil Hartman’s death lines up right as the show started to tumble downhill. As such, his few appearances in season 9 (and one in season 10) feel weird to me. Lionel Hutz or Troy McClure showing up used to be such a reliable staple of the show’s high bar for quality, so them popping up even in mixed bag early Scully episodes feels a little off. Not to say he doesn’t provide bright moments, this is Phil Hartman we’re talking about. Hutz gets a solid line here (“It’s a thorny legal issue, alright. I’ll need to refer to the case, ‘Finders vs. Keepers,’”) and the character gets an entertaining, unintentional swan song next episode in “Realty Bites.” 
• Homer dragging the angel away chained to his car in an incredibly small amount of time in plain view of an entire crowd of people standing in front of it is a pretty huge cheat.
• “I’ll just leave it in here for a few years and let it appreciate in value.” “It’s probably a million years old, Dad, I think it’s as valuable as it’s gonna get.”
• A good chunk of act two involves the mystery of what the angel is, a lot of it playing out with suspense music (like when Lisa takes the sample for analysis) without many jokes. Why does it feel so serious?
• The Marge/Lisa emotional core of the show is a little interesting, but it definitely feels like something that would have benefitted with a lighter touch carried through the whole episode. Instead, Marge drops the bomb on Lisa that she believes in angels, and they have a way-too-serious dialogue about it, culminating in both of them saying incredibly hurtful things to each other (“My poor Lisa, if you can’t make a leap of faith now and then, well, I feel sorry for you.” “Don’t feel sorry for me mom, I feel sorry for you.”) Marge telling her daughter she feels sorry for her? That’s cold.
• “Science is like a blabbermouth who ruins a movie by telling you how it ends. Well, I say that there are some things we don’t wanna know. Important things!” This episode reads like patient zero for Ned Flanders’s insanely stringent religious stereotype he would devolve into. As is the case with most of these “first” episodes, it works in this “science vs. religion” episode context, but not in future examples.
• The best part of the show may be the Pope reading his newspaper in a flimsy lawn chair (“Your Holiness, there is word from America. They say an angel has foretold the apocalypse.” “…keep an eye on it.”)
• The ending as a concept is peak Simpsons, that the shopping mall owners would play on the townspeople’s emotionally-charged faith for a marketing gimmick, and said townspeople would be instantly won over by it is just perfect. I’m even willing to forgive the magical pulley track carrying the angel that clearly wasn’t there before the reveal. One big missed opportunity is we don’t get any final scene with Ned or Lovejoy, and how they react to being shoved off their pious high horse.
• It’s a pretty random guest spot, but Stephen Jay Gould is good for what little he has. I kind of like that he’s inexplicably an asshole, but it does feel weirdly unmotivated. Him shaking down a little girl for money is good (“I didn’t become a scientist for financial gain. Whatever little money you have will be just fine,”) but his ending flatly telling Lisa he never did the test (presumably after she paid him) is funny in how randomly cruel it is, but doesn’t make much sense.
• Simpsons Archive retro review: “There was something curiously unsatisfying about this episode. Maybe it was Lisa’s irritating dismissal of the townspeoples’ faith, seemingly without justification for doing so. Maybe it was a childish fantasy, but she never gave us anything to back up this claim. Then, too, there was the annoying ‘look! they’re hypocrites!’ stuff, like with Moe voice-controlling the tv. Not that it wasn’t funny. Some of it was. But in past episodes, they have managed to take a serious issue (faith vs. science) and treat it with respect and humor. Here they just sort of hit us on the head with it.”

9. Realty Bites

• The opening bit where Homer thinks it’s Saturday is pretty great. I’ve certainly fallen victim to fake Saturdays in the past…
• Homer driving Li’l Bandit like a maniac, him abandoning Marge on the side of the road… we’re not even halfway through season 9 and he already feels like an entirely different character.
• “Trying is the first step toward failure” is a late game all-time series quote.
• The kids play-acting as a couple to help Marge study is pretty adorable (“We should have lived together first…”)
• Ah, our introduction to Gil. Funny that he shows up in Lionel Hutz’s last big episode, and would eventually sort of take his place. He would certainly get a bit overused as we got into the Al Jean era, but I like Gil more than I don’t, and he’s pretty good in his first outing (“I brought this wall from home!”) We also get introduced to Cookie Kwan, who is a bad character and I have nothing further to say about her.
• Never before has lumber seemed more enticing.
  
• We get our first (and only?) appearance of Sideshow Mel’s wife Barbara, and man, she’s quite the stunner! And she’s got her husband’s teal hair. She must really dig thespians.
• Homer goading Skinner about his dead high school sweetheart feels very sour. I dunno, it’s different from the tonal dissonance about him reminiscing fondly about Vietnam, or even the more exaggeratedly tragic flashbacks like the one from “I Love Lisa,” this is just sad.
• “The truth” and “the truth” is a grade-A Hutz scene (“It’s time I let you in on a little secret, Marge. The right house is the house that’s for sale. The right person is anyone.”)
• Poor Lenny. At least this scene became fodder for a lot of great shitposts.
  
• Marge being unable to hack it in real estate because she can’t stretch the truth is a pretty good premise, but it feels like there’s too many scenes of her about to lie before she decides not to, when we already get the idea. Also, her big moral dilemma about telling Ned about the murder house is pretty overbearing. The overdramatic music cues started to creep in during season 8, and now they’re being used in full force. Also, why is the Flanders family moving in the first place? It seems like a thing they’d at least make a joke out of, but they don’t even bother.
• The Flanderses lying motionless on the floor covered in “blood” marks is pretty stupid. If you’re going to do a “fakeout” gag like that, it better have a damn funny explanation, or have some kind of twist, but “we were painting a room red and we got tired and passed out” isn’t it. Todd’s “red room” bit is good, though; they should have just had a scene where they were all in the same room painting and done that joke.
• Homer fighting Snake is fucking dumb. Snake’s allegiance to his beloved car is a nice character flourish (“Premiiiuuummmm! Duuuuuddee!”), and I also like how he and his cellmate are able to easily eavesdrop on the police auction from their cell, but this B-plot just sucks, and how it literally collides with the A-story in destroying the murder house is even worse.
• The very ending at the unemployment office is really bizarre. Marge’s line feels weirdly demonizing (“Three hundred dollars for doing nothing? I feel like such a crook.”) It comes off kind of heartless, hitting even more so given how countless people got fucked out of their jobs last year. Then we end on a freeze frame of George H.W. Bush picking up his check… what’s that about? The man’s been out of office for over five years, what is this a commentary on?
• Simpsons Archive retro review: “Dan Greaney, often Simpsons’ best writer, turns in a story that is at worst mediocre. Haven’t we had enough Marge episodes where Marge gets some job to spice up her life that she ends up failing at? That, in addition to the fact Marge fails at the hands of her own sense of honesty, makes this episode look like ‘Springfield Connection’ rehash.”

10. Miracle on Evergreen Terrace

• Busting the car heater, parking across three handicap spots, posing as a cashier to steal Christmas gifts… Jerkass Homer is out in full force immediately. It’s funny how the first two examples also happened in other episodes (“The City of New York vs. Homer Simpson,” “The Springfield Connection,”) but both of those instances had greater character or plot motivations; here, Homer’s just being a dick because that’s who he is now! Also, Homer’s reply to Marge asking why they waited until last minute to do their Xmas shopping (“You know me, Marge, I just love the hustle and bustle!”) is pretty telling. Homer is a lazy oaf who would love nothing more than to just sit on the couch watching TV, but he’s now Captain Wacky, searching high and low for his new scheme/crazy adventure.
• The kids watching the televised yule log in front of the real-life fireplace is a great quick gag, one I recall they copied verbatim in a recent episode, except they literally have Lisa explain the joke for the audience (“You know, we have an actual fireplace, and we’re watching a fire on TV! Isn’t that funny? Do you get it?”)
• Homer falling from the roof while decorating is an easy compare and contrast with “Simpsons Roasting on an Open Fire.” The more climactic and painful fall clashes with the simplistic, almost gentle tumble from the very first episode. I do like that Homer comes back into the house to call everyone outside, completely nonplussed by his accident, but the kids laughing in good nature at Homer’s small fall in “Open Fire” is much more adorable than them laughing at him here.
• I always liked this little animation of empty-bladder Bart leaving the bathroom (“How sweet it is!”)
  
• The tree on fire looks fantastic. I just love the fidelity of the old cel animation fire effects, I don’t know why they can’t create that great glow effect as convincingly with digital tools.
• “Cheer up. We’ll catch this guy.” “Uhhh, Chief?” “What? You can’t rule it out…”
• Kent Brockman gets a handful of great lines throughout the episode (“Is your husband or lover here, ma’am?” “Absolutely devastated? …absolutely devastated. The words of a heartbroken mother.”) I also love him cordially thanking the family at the end of his last broadcast, making it crystal clear he’s just doing his job and doesn’t actually give a shit.
• A remorseful Bart on Christmas is definitely reminiscent of “Marge Be Not Proud,” but in that episode, the conflict was much more relatable: a kid who disappoints a parent and has to make good. A bit too teevee-y? Perhaps at times. But it didn’t feel phony, has a satisfying emotional payoff, and is consistently funny throughout, never descending too deep into treacle. Here, for most of the middle chunk of the episode, Bart is racked with guilt over the ridiculous tree-destroying accident he pulled, so there’s nothing else to really grab onto. All you can do is count the minutes until the inevitable confession.
• It’s weird that the Crazy Old Man is the owner of the TV shop who shoos away the two orphans (“Come back when you get some parents!”) He was a well established resident at the Retirement Castle at this point, was this just a weird production mistake that they used his character model by accident?
• “Simpsons Scam Springfield/Angry Mob Mulls Options” is a great newspaper headline/subhead.
• The Simpson family impromptu traveling to Los Angeles so Marge can be on Jeopardy! for barely a minute of screen time doesn’t bode well for the ever shrinking reality this show has left. Luckily, Alex Trebek (RIP) is great in his small role. I love him rubbing his mustache after running the family out of the studio, and the fantastic ADR line from one of his goons (“They ain’t gettin’ the home version.”)
• I feel kind of mixed about the townspeople robbing the Simpson home ending. I like that it’s a cruel “twist” that isn’t a cloying and sappy happy ending, like how basically all episodes end nowadays, but it still feels pretty silly. What is Apu going to do with Santa’s Little Helper and Snowball II? Or Comic Book Guy with pants full of silverware? The people of Springfield are prone to riot and loot if provoked, but here, it comes off as almost pointlessly vindictive, which I guess is part of the point, but it doesn’t really work satisfyingly for me.
• Simpsons Archive retro review: “I know these characters, but not from OFF.  The characters seemed to be caricatures of themselves in this ep. Trite plot, lack of humor, Bart-must-be-the-center style all contributed to the grade. The writers have sold out, yet again. I haven’t seen an ep like this since season 1. It also seemed as if the episode started in about the last minute — i.e. the entire ep could have been condensed into act I. All in all, a big disappointment.”

11. All Singing, All Dancing

• “Gump Roast” is handily the worst clip show, but this might be the most disposable episode of the entire series. If I want to hear any of the songs from the show, I’ll just listen to them off the CDs, or off YouTube nowadays. There’s no appeal to me having them all in one episode, and the framing device is pretty bad. Snake the hostage taker/attempted murderer doesn’t feel appropriate, or funny, to sustain an entire episode. The only saving grace is the first few minutes, the movie night set-up stuff is all good (“Did you get ‘Waiting to Exhale’?” “They put us on the ‘Waiting to Exhale’ waiting list, but they said don’t hold your breath,”) and of course, “Paint Your Wagon” is a tremendous sequence, but after Homer ejects the tape into the wastebasket, the episode completely tanks. Not much more to say about this one.
• Simpsons Archive retro review: “I have to register my disgust at the utter lack of humor in last night’s episode. As a general rule, I am not a big fan of the Broadway-style singing engaged in by the Simpsons on occasion. However, I tolerate it as a necessary part of watching the best show on television and occasionally have a laugh at a cleverly worded lyric. But whoever the writer(s) is/are that insist upon this inclusion of non-funny, non-necessary musical filler should be drawn and quartered. Does anyone really feel that the musical numbers are necessary to the show? Perhaps once in a while, but not every show, and certainly not a whole show dedicated entirely to singing. Does Fox/Groening, etc. get some kind of feedback from some mythical audience that requests this piffle? To quote  Lisa, ‘Do they really expect us to swallow this tripe?'”

12. Bart Carny

• The opening with Marge trying to get the kids to do chores is actually pretty damn solid: Bart and Lisa’s “ding ding ding”s (and Homer running out for the ice cream man), talking about chopping their own hands off to avoid doing work, and Marge gloating in getting the upper hand when the carnival rolls into town, only to get undermined immediately by Homer. Marge gets the knife dug in even deeper at the carnival when Bart excitedly wants to go on the Yard Work Simulator (though she unnecessarily explains the joke, “When I ask you to do yard work…” when a simple frustrated murmur would have sufficed.)
• The Tooth Chipper is great, but definitely makes me wince. Between this and Homer chewing the tire bolts in “New York,” this is not a good season for my weird visceral reaction to dental mishaps.
• It’s not very clear why Homer deifies the carnies so much. I guess it would be okay if it were funny in any way, but it’s not. He’s slowly settling into being generally bothersome by default.
• Of course the Rich Texan would own Hitler’s car. Also, when Bart says while driving it, “Out of my way! I’m Hitler!” he seems to be doing kind of a Nazi salute?
• Homer butts in and pleads to be a carny with Bart, and the Rich Texan lets him because why not. What about his job or Bart going to school?  Also, maybe I’m overthinking this, but how could Homer and Bart doing grunt work at the carnival be enough to cover their debt in totaling an irreplacable antique car? How long are they in Springfield? None of these questions deserved answers, I guess.
• Agnes browbeating Skinner during the ring toss game to the point he switches to the knife prize is a dark joke I can get behind.
• Wiggum trying to get a bribe off Homer feels wrong; maybe it’s just me, but I consider Wiggum to be stupider than Homer. Also, he carts the ring toss game away, but isn’t the entire carnival crooked? Why wouldn’t he go after the Rich Texan as the owner? These details wouldn’t matter if the show were funnier; instead, this moment is enhanced with dramatic music, so I end up thinking about how this stuff makes no sense more clearly.
• I most certainly like how pissed Marge is at the start of act three as she grabs Homer by the collar and hauls him into the other room to chew him out for bringing two dirty strangers home. It’s a far cry from later seasons where she’s just a blank Stepford wife who puts up with all manner of crazy crap from her man child husband.
• The sunken “sister ship” is another great dark joke (“Went down with eighty-eight souls just last week,”) but it’s partially ruined by dumbass Homer and Bart taunting the shark. Marge daydreaming about a glass-bottomed car is a great bit though (“I can’t help but wonder what we’re missing!”)
• The Cooders squatting is pretty damn boring. I don’t know how you’d make the last act work better, but Homer’s hula hoop trick is a pretty damn satisfying conclusion. It’s just clever enough that I believe Homer could have come up with it, and them laughing through the mail slot, with their laughter cut off when the flap closes, is a great bit of karma.
• I wish Jim Varney was in a much better episode, but he gives one hell of a solid line reading for, “We were beaten by the best, boy.”
• Simpsons Archive retro review: “Awful, awful first act, followed by very good, very funny second and third acts. What, was this episode written by John Swartzwelder or something? Bingo! While the laughs from later acts partially redeemed the ‘setup’ act, they didn’t entirely.”

13. The Joy of Sect

• The pay-off of the citizens of Springfield coming to see the home team return just to boo and riot is pretty great, as they proceed to turn their entire plane over. A truly hilarious final touch that I don’t know if I really noticed before is the inflatable ramp that unfurls after the plane is upside-down, causing the poor suckers trying to go down it to immediately fall to the ground.
• Homer repeatedly asking the Movementarians about the free weekend felt like a poorer imitation of his questioning of each letter in “VIP” from “Mr. Lisa Goes to Washington.”
• “Remember when those smooth-talking guys tried to sell me a timeshare vacation condo?” “You bought four of them! Thank God the check bounced.” “So I beat the system!”
• I’m fascinated by cults, so this episode has kind of a soft spot for me. They do a solid job presenting the Movementarians as a functioning pastiche of different famous cults. I love how act one is how all of the traditional manipulation tactics used by many cults just don’t work on someone as thick as Homer, and the usage of the Batman theme to finally permeate his psyche is excellent.
• “Church, cult, cult, church. So we get bored someplace else every Sunday. Does this really change our day to day lives?”
• Mr. Burns the God is a completely isolated diversion from the main story, but it’s still memorable all the same, and worth it if for nothing else the quote, “Ahoy hoy, lowly mortals!” One joke I don’t quite get is when Smithers tells Burns he’ll handle creating the religion’s logo after he throws out several copyrighted options (Special K, Mickey Mouse ears), we see the final version is a giant B inside of what is clearly a Christmas tree. Is the joke supposed to be that Smithers also picked a pre-existing symbol? 
• I like how Marge just gets more and more angry as act two goes on. The woman puts up with a lot of shit on a weekly basis, but she certainly has her limits (“Homer, you know I always try to put the best face on everything, but there’s no face on that damn bean!!”)
• Lovejoy being a little bit too ready to burn down the church is a great scene (“I never thought I’d have to do this again…”)
• Willie working with Marge, Ned and Lovejoy to reprogram the other Simpsons is a great usage of a side character, having them interact with other characters they normally wouldn’t in a whole new situation, and it turns out quite well (“I made some Rice Krispie squares for our hungry deprogram-orinoes!” “You ruined the atmosphere, you daft pansy!”)
• It’s so silly, but I love the trick with the hover bikes, and even better that Ned’s weird paper comb thing to make the noise is also used by the Leader at the end.
• The ending is pretty solid, if a little bit long, but I like the double fake out where even though a single drop of beer hits his tongue, it seems like Homer is still brainwashed, but then he goes to reveal what’s inside the forbidden barn, which is actually the foretold spacecraft. Of course we never think it’s real, but it still works really well. It’s also great that the beer thing is set up from the very beginning when the Movementarians tell him that alcohol isn’t permitted.
• After having watched hundreds and hundreds of awful new episodes, I was wondering if I would be a little more forgiving to the Mike Scully era of the series, but halfway into season 9, that really isn’t the case. I certainly would take any season 9-12 episode over season 32, but the fatal problems that start creeping into the forefront here and get progressively worse aren’t any more palatable. 
• Simpsons Archive retro review: “This episode can serve as sort of a litmus test for ‘Simpson’ fans. People who like the older shows will give a ‘C’ or lower, while the ‘New shows rule’ crowd will perhaps give an ‘A.’ I’m in-between, so I’ll award a ‘B-.’ The show’s best sequence, curiously, is also the most superfluous, but it’s generally funny when taken on its own merits.”