738. Game Done Changed

Original airdate: December 4, 2022

The premise: When Bart discovers a glitch in an online game to infinitely farm in-game currency, he enlists a team of kids to rake in the fake cash to be converted into real dollars. Principal Skinner catches wind of their scheme, but is quickly won over, hoping to use the money to convert Springfield Elementary into a magnet arts school, creating an unlikely partnership between he and Bart.

The reaction: As a decrepit old man, I barely know a thing about Roblox. The impetus for this episode clearly came from a writer’s room fascination with watching their kids play modern video games that are weird and foreign to them, and I can definitely relate to that. Later in the episode there’s a segment of a YouTube video hosted by two young girls commenting on “Boblox” game news, and I felt like I was a thousand years old. Credit where credit is due though, from what I know about these kinds of games, and the online culture surrounding them, the stuff that’s here feels pretty true-to-life, especially against some of this show’s more out-of-touch moments when they reference modern pop culture. Bart is stuck playing “Boblox” on the family’s ancient computer (“Why’s the flat screen so thick? Is it also a microwave?”), and with Milhouse playing the game, they discover that he can sell his character skin (specifically a mohawak) for in-game money, but because the computer is so old, the game glitches out and they still keep the skin. So Bart formulates a money-harvesting scheme, with the school as their home base, since their computer lab has technology even more antiquated than his. I’m surprised that I can actually go along with this premise so far. Ultimately, the story is about the Bart-Skinner team-up, which I always find a charming pairing, since they’re usually sat a mutual, uneasy stalemate when they have to work together. Seeing them amicably banter, teaming up to intimidate Martin to keep him in his place, attempting to shake down a competing school from their racket, it’s all pretty cute stuff. One thing that hurts the episode though is lack of stakes. Skinner agrees to help Bart in order to fulfill his dream for Springfield Elementary to become a magnet arts school, something he explains in song appeals to him since standardized testing (currently in the toilet at the school) would no longer apply to him. It’s a believable motive for him, but after it’s mentioning in the first verses of the song he sings, the rest of the runtime just has him namedropping references to famous musicals. Meanwhile, Bart wants to get rich just because. Yeah, he’s a greedy little kid, and he fantasizes about mooning the town from a private helicopter, but having no specific outcome in mind, even something as small as wanting a new game console or something, makes the episode feel kind of aimless. When he has to talk Skinner down from taking drastic action at the end of the episode, it doesn’t feel as meaningful since Bart isn’t really giving anything up to stop him. Meanwhile, Skinner wants his arts school, but him snapping and being seconds away from bulldozing his competition school would feel better if he was motivated by wanting to escape being a shitty academic principal, not that he already bought the costumes for Seussical. But besides the ending, the storytelling here is honestly pretty solid. The gifted school Bart and Skinner go toe-to-toe with (Limitless Frontier Horizons: A School for Progress) is a nice set piece, the Boblox CG animated segments are pretty adorable and well done, and there’s a few good lines scattered throughout, more than I can normally say. I can’t say I liked the episode on the whole, but I definitely liked a lot of parts of it. Bart’s final speech to Skinner felt very cloying (par for the course with joke-free emotional resolutions in Matt Selman shows), but they had some good chemistry in their team-up prior to that. A little more characterization of Skinner and his wants and this could have been this season’s “Portrait of a Lackey on Fire.” It’s kind of interesting given this is the second Ryan Koh script in a row, and how much (much) better this is than “When Nelson Met Lisa” (an Al Jean joint.) I’m not on the Matt Selman gravy train, but his episodes definitely don’t feel as tired and borderline phoned in as Jean’s.

Three items of note:
– For some reason, a lot of the “Boblox” sound effects are from Super Mario Bros. They’re so recognizable, they use the Koopa stomp, Mario’s jump, the coin ding, even the “time’s running out” music sting. Nintendo owns those sound effects, did Disney have to pay for those? It seemed really strange that they just used some of the most iconic audio in video game history rather than have it all be their custom sound effects.
– It’s not really a B-plot, but there’s a running sort-of storyline where Marge interacts with Maggie within the Boblox game, and is startled to see her “talking” in emoji speech bubbles (“We’re having our first conversation! This is amazing! I’m talking to my baby!”) It is incredibly cute, and honestly kind of a clever idea, showing how kids are adapting to new technology earlier and earlier as new parents more often than not will shove an iPad in a kid’s face to shut them up (as Marge herself describes earlier). The end button of this “plot” where Ned walks into the Simpson living room to see the Simpsons (sans Bart) glued to their tablets in the dark is pretty good too.
– So Skinner’s secret dream is to be principal of a magnet arts school, something he expresses with his very own song. It’s not really funny, but more importantly, a little hard to listen to, as it’s performed by a 78-year-old Harry Shearer. A lot of his voices have gotten lower register and slightly less expressive over the years, so hearing this character talk about their fondest hope for life, but sound so monotone definitely felt off. I also felt like they should have dipped the music down a little, since there were parts of the song I had trouble hearing him, he was singing so low. Julie Kavner’s gotten a lot of shit over the last couple years for her Marge performance, something I feel bad being a small part of, having talked about several times before. I’ve always tried to be as diplomatic and impersonal as I can when discussing it, but at the start of this season, I saw some really scathing remarks on Twitter about Kavner’s voice and it really bummed me out. These actors can and should be performing these characters as long as they’d like to, but ageist or not, their maturing voices can definitely be distracting, or even detrimental at points (they gave Marge a song a couple seasons back in the episode where she runs for Mayor, and I felt as bad as I do now with the Skinner song. Maybe just no more songs?) There were actually a lot of times in the first act that Bart felt very low register, and Marge is, well, she’s as she’s always been as of late. Even after almost thirty-five years, none of the cast feels like they’re sleepwalking through their performances, which is to their immense credit, but their aging voices is most certainly something you just need to make peace with if you want to continue watching. The fact that there’s only a handful of times over the last decade that I feel like their matured voices have “hurt” a moment in the show is not a bad stat, honestly.