727. Meat is Murder

Original airdate: May 15, 2022

The premise: Krusty’s empire is bought out from under him by Gus Redfield, former burger-store-owner-turned-billionaire whom Krusty ruined in the past. Gus seeks out Abe Simpson, his former partner, wanting to give him a seat on the board of his company, populated by his selfish children with their own agendas.

The reaction: This is another one of those episodes where the premise is largely carried by a guest character (or characters, in this case), but there’s not a whole lot given for me to actually care about these newbies. The big twist at the end involves all these characters we just met, while Lisa and Abe just sit there and react, and I’m doing the same, wondering what I’m supposed to be feeling. But before that, we have a ton of set-up to do. In a flashback to fifty years ago, we see Krusty, coming off of a flop set at a comedy club, stopping at “Worth-A-Try Burger” for a bite, only to be impressed by the food, so much so that he agrees to help do promotion for them. We later find that when Krusty tried to take a larger cut from the restaurant, they told him to get lost, so he set up his own competing Krusty Burger, eventually becoming the only game in town, and leading to the media empire he controls today. In present day, Gus Redfield reemerges, the former owner of Worth-A-Try, now an insanely wealthy business tycoon, who enacts his revenge by buying out the entire Krusty conglomerate. Then it’s revealed that Abe was Gus’ right-hand man, who he reunites with and offers to go into business together. So finally with the episode almost half over, we get into our story: Abe is worried he’ll screw up this new opportunity, so he takes Lisa with him (affectionately referring to their team-up as “Grampsa,” in a pathetic, mewling attempt at sentimentality that’s repeated twice.) Homer and Marge just let the doddering old man take their daughter on a private helicopter to God knows where, where Gus introduces them to the fellow board members, his spoiled, mooching children. I don’t know how much of this specifically parodies HBO’s Succession, but I don’t care since I haven’t watched it, and this material should be able to stand on its own. Gus’ daughter tries to warm herself up to Lisa, pledging she wants to take control of the company to make it more eco-friendly, in a charade they thankfully don’t keep up for long like it’s genuine, as we see she’s looking up research of Lisa’s greatest interests to best con her into taking her side so she can convince Abe to vote her way. So the board meeting to overthrow Gus results in a tie, with Abe as the final vote, who bucks outside influence and stays true to his old friend. Then Gus reveals this whole thing was a set-up, bringing in Abe as a ringer vote to maintain control and finally be able to relinquish his children’s control of the company. All I’m doing is describing this incredibly involved plot because I don’t know what else to really dwell over. Like I said, the entire premise is focused on the lives and business aspirations of four new characters that aren’t very interesting who have little connection to the Simpsons at all. Meanwhile, Abe’s worry about “the Simpson curse” plaguing him to make the wrong decisions doesn’t really hold weight since I don’t even know what’s at stake. What even does this company do? What does Gus want to do with full control outside of firing his kids? What will Abe get out of this? Who cares? In the end, Abe plays up his senility to make his vote invalid, resulting in a deadlock that doesn’t really defeat Gus, just putting him in a squabbling limbo as Lisa and Abe leave and go home. In the end, I don’t know how to even react to the episode on the whole since it felt like nothing that happened mattered, what little of it I understood. I’m kinda just checking my watch for this season to come to a welcome close.

Three items of note:
– So how the hell old is Krusty? Fifty years ago, he looks and sounds exactly the same as the present. In “Day of the Jackanapes,” Krusty claims he’s been in show business 61 years, which always felt like a weird line, but maybe if he’s considering being a class clown in Hebrew school as a kid, he could be in his 70s. I guess the same could be said here, if you think Krusty could be in his 20s in the flashback, but it’s still curious. I suppose the joke is that with all his clown make-up on, Krusty has remained age-less. Also, it seems like they’re doing a little tribute to The Founder, the movie recounting the life and times of Ray Kroc and how he fucked over the original McDonald brothers for their franchise. It’s never really been delved into, but I always assumed Krusty’s media empire was built on his TV show and all the merchandising tie-ins all sprung from that, but this episode seems to imply that Krusty Burger was where he had his initial success and everything else followed. None of these are really complaints, it’s just interesting stuff I noted.
– There’s an awful lot of great voice talent wasted in this episode: John Lithgow, Krysten Ritter, Seth Green, Paul F. Tompkins… Lithgow, especially, getting the most screen time as Gus. The character’s plan was to act flighty and borderline senile to give the impression that he could be overthrown by his children via a boardroom vote, but I never got that impression from the dialogue he’s given prior to the reveal. That’s a shame, since I feel like Lithgow definitely could have given a great performance with that kind of role, but he just wasn’t given the material to support it. Instead, he does an unfunny riff on Willy Wonka‘s “Pure Imagination” and shouts a lot. Cool.
– The other Rayfield board members include a guy from Shark Tank, Angela Merkel and TikTok’s very own Charli D’Amelio, someone I know nothing about and am not in any rush to change that. I’m reminded of when they had Justin Bieber on in the heat of his popularity and fans were up in arms for what amounted to an incredibly brief cameo, complete with a “warning” at the bottom of the screen announcing when he was going to appear. Here, I’m sure some fans will be similarly annoyed, but her appearance is no more pointless than any hundreds of other celebrity cameos I can name. I’m more curious how this booking happened; Justin Bieber was, at the time, a very identifiable celebrity even the older writing staff would have known about, but D’Amelio had to come from either one of the writer/producer’s teenage children telling them about her, or the result of researching who’s a hip young celeb that the kids like is who we could book on the show. Was this an attempt to get younger people to tune in? I really have no idea.