Original airdate: February 26, 2023
The premise: Carl finds himself attracted to a beautiful woman, but in courting her, he realizes he needs to discover his own lineage, and the true identity of his birth parents.
The reaction: In recent years, the show has decided to divert focus onto some lesser developed denizens of Springfield, and while this is a fruitful vein to tap for new stories on paper, there are also definitely characters that I’m totally fine with not exploring further. We’ve got episodes fleshing out Cletus, Sarah Wiggum, Shauna, and now we get our second Carl Carlson episode. “The Saga of Carl” feels like so long ago, I can barely remember anything from it other than Carl was adopted by Icelanders. Now we get to learn about his birth parents. Was anybody asking for this? Lenny and Carl are just Homer’s work buddies, I can barely tell you three characters traits about them. Here, we’re expected to care about Carl suffering a serious crisis regarding his racial identity, but I just don’t see why I should care because he’s not a character I care about. He’s… Carl. Of Lenny and Carl. Out bowling, he meets a black woman, Nyima, who he immediately hits it off with, and she invites him to her soul food restaurant on “their” side of town. Carl quickly feels out-of-sorts, having never been connected with black culture, and when he feebly attempts to put up a “blacker” facade to Nyima, she quickly calls bullshit and tells him to figure out who he is. Throughout the episode, Carl has been wearing a large belt buckle with a cowboy on it, much to the mockery of others. “Well, big ol’ mystery belt buckle, it’s been a long time,” he says to it before putting it on. The show has done this a lot in the past in its more story-driven episodes, where it will tease something near the start of the episode, and hold off on the reveal until later for no real reason other than just to prolong it. Multiple people react to the belt buckle, but Carl never speaks up about it. It’s finally revealed that it’s the only item he has of his birth parents, so why did he never say anything about it? In the end, it’s special guest star Henry Louis Gates, Jr. to the rescue, as Carl goes on his PBS show Finding Your Roots (I’ve never heard of him or his show before), where he digs into Carl’s past and finds one of his ancestors was an escaped slave who fled on horseback, resulting in a long lineage of black cowboys, including Carl’s own father, the owner of the belt buckle. And I dunno… I just don’t care? I can maybe see a scenario where I give a shit about a Carl episode, but this just feels so far removed from anything Simpsons-y to me. This episode was written by Loni Steele Sosthand, who previously wrote “The Sound of Bleeding Gums,” who in that episode took inspiration from her deaf brother, and in this episode, it seems like she’s pulling from her experiences being biracial but white-passing, and not feeling “black” enough. Also, according to a Salon article she wrote, her husband hails from Texas, and he comes from a long line of black cowboys, so it looks like she just took all that and imprinted it onto Carl. Writers pulling from their own lives and putting them onto the page is always a good thing, but I don’t know how strongly this show can tackle the subject of black culture and lineage in America considering I can count the show’s recurring black characters on one hand. I can’t even say that the character of Carl doesn’t feel “black” enough because I can’t barely tell you anything about him. They don’t even make a comment about how he only hangs out with “white” people like Homer and Lenny, since nothing in the episode ties into what little we know about Carl. He might as well have been a guest star in his own episode, he felt so alien to me. Ultimately, I think in order for me to care about a character’s history, I need to actually care about the character as they are now. Outside of drinking at Moe’s, what does Carl do on his downtime? What are his interests? An episodic day in the life of Carl Carlson would be much more interesting to me than two whole episodes delving into his family tree.
Three items of note:
– Alex Désert was basically the first replacement voice actor we had to get used to, with Carl seeming to pop up a lot more in the last couple of years. After an early adjustment, he’s been doing fine in the role. It’s not an exact match to Hank Azaria, but he mostly has captured the tenor of Carl’s voice. But here, where he has to carry entire scenes and has pages and pages of dialogue, it makes Carl feel like a completely new character. Also he goes through a couple of wardrobe changes, and it almost feels like his design is slightly different? Like his head shape felt like it changed in his early scenes with Nyima. In any case, it was a little bizarre. Carl was barely a character, and now he feels like a totally new character, and by the end of it when he’s talking with a guest star I don’t know, it felt like I wasn’t even watching The Simpsons anymore.
– Recurring guest actress Dawnn Lewis voiced Nyima, so just like Tress MacNeille’s Maya, she could theoretically appear again as Carl’s canonical girlfriend. But just like with Maya, I’ll believe it when I fucking see it. Also, Moe, Comic Book Guy, Carl… it seems like the shortcut to trying to flesh out these side characters is just give them a girl to fall in love with. Solid.
– I feel like if the show wanted to be really bold, they would hire an Indian writer and voice actor and do the return of Apu episode. He’s basically the only POC character who has an actual personality and backstory, so we have a vested interest in him, so just have him come back, reframe the character going forward, be a little meta about it, why not? The show has apparently been mulling its options about whether or not to bring Apu back, but if they’re intent on writing POC stories with the show’s incredibly limited non-white cast, Apu is your best bet. As to whether it will actually happen, I feel like the old guard of writers are probably against it, since making that episode could be perceived as an admission they did something “wrong” with the Apu character, and most of them probably think the “controversy” is bullshit and people just whining to whine (including Matt Groening, who did a bummer of an interview saying as much.) But in the right hands, it could be an interesting story, and a redemption for a character we all know and love.
Me Blog Write Good 
I’ve noticed Modern Simpsons constantly acts like its audience is heavily invested in it, that its audience really cares what inane things happens in its paper-thin plots. But the show itself rarely earns that investment. So here it assumes we’ll care deeply about Carl — AKA cardboard cutout #82 of Zombie Springfield, at this point — and be invested in this belt buckle mystery. We’ll just automatically care.
I don’t care and I doubt anyone but the hardcore No Homer’s type fans do. You have to earn caring. Whereas it sounds like the main feeling this episode left you with was apathy. The opposite of love.
Modern Simpsons, being immortal, seems to have forgotten that most people don’t care about it.
Let me preface by saying I don’t mind this sort of thing when it’s sincere, but in this case it really does seem like The Simpsons’ main usefulness to Disney is being a cog in their “stories matter” machine, something that loses meaning the more they insist on it. This episode seems like the ultimate proof of that. They’ve got POC in the cast and they’re going to flesh them out, damn it!
And that would be fine. A lot of what they’re doing in general would be fine IF they were able to do it and still be the edgy, funny show it used to be. They clearly can’t handle both so now they’re turning it into this dramedy that’s supposed to mean something. They really seem to be molding the show into something that appeals to younger millennials and Gen Z, even if it completely pushes away the show’s older fans.
If you explore certain pockets of the internet (such as Youtube) you’ll find this approach seems to be working. A lot of the younger generation is treating the last few seasons as the second coming of the show and are embracing whatever it is the show thinks it’s doing now.
The overwhelmingly positive sentiment keeps tricking me into checking out recent episodes, but I keep coming away with this frustrating feeling that I don’t even know this show anymore. I watch recent episodes and then compare it back to what the series was 30 years ago and it hits home how much has changed. In 1993 the show was reveling in its joke-a-minute golden years. Unless there was a really good reason to get serious, the show was as irreverent and wacky as it could be. Unfortunately, The Simpsons is now part of the Disney family in a way other FOX TV acquisitions are never going to be, and there are Maggie Simpson shirts to sell to preschoolers, damn it!
A lot of people have been treating the past few seasons of the show as a resurgence largely because more and more episodes have been run by Matt Selman to the point where since last season it’s been labeled as the “Selman Era”. But I’ve always been of the mindset that he’s never been much better than Jean and most times his episodes (even the ones labeled as the “Best” of a season) are the same quality wise as something Jean was putting out during his final few years of running most episodes.
Hell, this was actually the first episode I flat-out skipped altogether as I didn’t care for the first episode to focus on Carl (Saga of Carl), and everything I’ve heard/read about this episode both before it aired has pointed to it not being terrible, but also not worth actually watching if you weren’t a fan of the latter as it’s more of the same.
“I watch recent episodes and then compare it back to what the series was 30 years ago and it hits home how much has changed.”
Surely this goes without saying? 34 years is a freaking long time and things invariably change, sometimes dramatically. The same could be said for us all, right?
Comparing new Simpsons with episodes from the 1990’s is an exercise in inevitable disappointment and dissatisfaction. We all know the show has changed and is, largely, unrecognisable from what it was in the 90’s. It’s not as as funny, as edgy, as timeless, as culturally significant. Does this mean it instantly qualifies as intrinsically worthless? Consider this: as people get older, they inevitably discover that their faculties deteriorate. Their bodies are not as strong, their reflexes not as quick, and their minds not as sharp as they once were. Do we claim that life becomes meaningless as a result? Like us, The Simpsons will never be able to recapture the glory and vitality of its youth. Yet even in its advanced age, it still flashes of creativity, humour and warmth that make it worthwhile. Mike himself would agree based on his reviews for Lisa the Boy Scout and THOH XXXIII.
Look, I understand that you lament the death of The Simpsons as it was, but to expect or demand it to conform to increasingly antiquated standards is, frankly, unreasonable.
You could get every classic-era writer (Vitti, Stern, Swartzwelder, O’Brien, and others) back together again working 12+ hour days on scripts and it *still* wouldn’t be what it was, I guarantee it. That show is gone. If you’re going to compare new episodes to classic episodes, they will *always* lose. What purpose does that serve except to make you dissatisfied if not unhappy? Why bother tuning in at all anymore?
If you’re going to watch and comment on the show, I suggest you do so on its own terms. Failing that, walk away and pursue other more worthwhile pursuits?
Haven’t we done this dance before? Why is it Mike often says the exact same things I just did and I don’t see you taking him to task for it?
I have though? For example, I wrote a lengthy post on the ‘Pixelated and Afraid’ page last year directly responding to Mike’s review of the episode with counterpoints of my own. To his credit, he’s expressed on multiple occasions now that he understands the show has changed and that it’s great if there are people out there who enjoy its current approach. It’s just not usually to his tastes. That humble concession makes a world of difference.
I agree that if you want to enjoy Modern Simpsons, you have to take it on its own terms. It’ll only very rarely win a comparison with the classic era. B-Boy, I actually really enjoyed reading your No Homer’s thread where you abridged the series for that reason – it creates a version of the show that’s easier to meet on its own level.
But there’s also completely valid reasons to watch Modern Simpsons even if you don’t care about that. For instance, I think it’s interesting to watch how “The Simpsons” changed/changes over its absurdly long life, and it’s instructive from a writing/comedy perspective to compare it to the classic years because those seasons’ successes are made clearer by the newer seasons’ failures. Plus, watching newer episodes gives me a better appreciation for Mike’s MeBlogWriteGood analysis/snark, which is always enjoyable. Mike Russo could be watching it for any of those reasons or more.
I think both perspectives can coexist. The audience isn’t obligated to meet the show on its level, and the show isn’t obligated to meet the audience on theirs either. But the show exists if people want to interact with it, for whatever reasons they may have.
Thanks for your kind words, Aidan, and I see your point. Mike Russo is certainly entitled to watch The Simpsons for whatever reasons he chooses!!
Comparative analysis has its place for the reasons you specify, but I think my point is that it can’t be the *only* method one employs especially in the case of The Simpsons – a show with an extraordinary legacy and unprecedented longevity. I think people can get so stuck in what the show *was* that it blinds them to what it *is*, resulting in a blanket dismissal that overlooks even its relatively modest successes and triumphs. ‘Pixelated and Afraid’ is perhaps the greatest example – some viewers were unimpressed because it was a ‘jokeless’ and ‘boring’ episode with drama played almost entirely straight. Sure, this is true and it’s pretty much antithetical to the relentless laughs and bite of classic Simpsons, but it feels unfair to dismiss the episode for those reasons alone given the craftsmanship is terrific nonetheless (I would radically argue that the *verisimilitude* of the story/characters is what ultimately makes for a successful episode of The Simpsons, not its comedy).
Basically, I just think that comparisons need to be counterpoised by other allowances and considerations otherwise opinions come across as dogmatic.
Our favorite media have run so long that we are no longer the intended audience for it. We’ve officially become sad old people.
B-Boy, I have a question that I want to ask you. Do you think that if classic Simpsons, the Mike Scully and the Solo Jean years never existed and a completely new show with the same type of stories, writing and comedy as Season 33 and 34 were released, would you still like the show? I could be wrong about this but I feel like nostalgia is the only thing that is keeping this show around. This is subjective but when I look at modern Simpsons as its own show, in my opinion, it is outclassed by its modern contemporaries in terms of humor, drama and satire by a country mile. I feel like the nostalgia of seeing the characters that we grew up still kicking, secondary and tertiary characters we love get side stories and the iconography like Mr. Burns Nuclear Power Plant, Springfield Elementary or the Simpsons family house is the reason why the show is being renewed for Seasons 35 and 36.
To give you an example, If the episode Pixelated and Afraid were released as this hypothetical new show without the Simpsons characters, Homer and Marge, without the attachment of legacy characters, and without the existence of Classic Simpsons, would you be more critical of the episode and compare it to other shows or would you still see it as a fantastic episode?
“…would you be more critical of the episode and compare it to other shows or would you still see it as a fantastic episode?”
I don’t know if I would be more *critical* of it exactly (I maintain that it’s an objectively well-crafted piece of animated television), but I would certainly not derive as much emotion from it and I think it would be unreasonable to expect anything otherwise.
I was one of the few people who hated that episode as was for being a boring slog that felt twice as long as it truly was (by the time they got lost in the forest, it honestly felt like there was only seven minutes left).
I also feel nostalgia is the only thing that’s keeping this show around still despite the quality seeing very little improvement compared when the show first moved to HD nearly 15 years ago. Sometimes you get a decent episode or two, but not enough to convince me that the show has been going through a “Resurgence” like many have been saying since last season.
This might sound like a cheat, but I cannot answer this question honestly. My many years of familiarity with the show and its characters undoubtedly colours my perception and enjoyment of it, but I cannot divorce myself from that no matter how hard I try. I mean, you’re right, the show continues to persist on the back of its legacy which is immense.
Would I still like some of the newer episodes if they were transplanted into a different show? I honestly do not know. I’m not sure episodes like ‘Pixelated and Afraid’ (sorry to keep using this as an example) even *could* be transposed into another show because it’s the kind of story that consciously draws from The Simpsons’ longevity to derive all its meaning and profundity. To quote an esteemed user from NoHomers:
“It may not be THE Homer and Marge story to me, but it’s a very unique one that could only really impact knowing them as long as I have, to me they feel so much older than whatever age they internally are now, and it’s interesting to see the show for once inhabit that sense of age, that these aren’t two cartoon characters floating around performing roles as husband and wife, they get to be people. I’m going to choose to appreciate that.”
All I know is that, at the end of the day, there are occasions when a new episode of The Simpsons will make me smile, laugh or even tear up; when I walk away from it with a sense that I have absorbed something meaningful from it. Isn’t that what matters in the end?
I liked this one. I thought it was very cute seeing Carl in love (a plot that hadn’t been done before with him but I could see how it might seem repetitive when compared with Moe or comic book guy getting girlfriends in their spotlights.)
It wasn’t very classic simpson-y but it had 2 jokes I really laughed at (Moleman and wolf castle) and I genuinely believed Carl was having an identity crisis, Alex and dawnn both gave great vocal performances. So it got the emotional part down for me even if a bit more humor would have been cool.
And Homer was actually nice to Carl and a good friend! Been enjoying the new non jerkass Homer.
To echo some of the statements on here, while there is a budding consensus online that the show has some sort of resurgence, I feel like its that of a younger generation that thinks the show’s direction into more sentimental content is a good thing. Personally, I feel like it’s not the role of The Simpsons to delve into, as David Mirkin put it in one audio commentary, “happy horse-shit”.
The show was perfectly capable and has shown its ability to delve into emotional moments, but at the same time, was aware that its first and foremost a comedy, so it knew when to let a moment sit and when to bring things back down with a joke or something uncomfortable, like in “Principal Charming” where Skinner loses the love of his life only to rediscover his original passion… then it cuts to Selma stuck in a go-nowhere date with Barney at Moe’s.
I think the difference between a Matt Selman episode and an Al Jean episode is that while Jean will phone it in 100% of the time due to his best material already having been nothing more than a cavalcade of pop culture references back in the day, Selman seems to want to try. The problem is that Selman doesn’t understand that sentiment has to be earned. Characters have to be developed over months and years in order for us to care about them. I’m perfectly happy with more Lenny and Carl episodes because, well, it’d be nice to see them more. What I don’t need is an episode about who was Carl’s biological ancestor since it’s not like see Carl enough to give a shit about that detail. It sounds confusing to go “well, I want more characters in the show, but I don’t want to see their nuances… at least not at first”. You’d like to be able to get familiar with the characters beyond set dressing before you start trying to figure out who they are; otherwise its just pandering.
This reminds me of one of the few mixed reviews for Pixelated and Afraid where the reviewer points out that it’s a bit weak on Homer & Marge’s side since while all lovey-dovey and whatnot, they don’t really act like their normal selves as they lack a lot of their individual characteristics.
Selman has honestly never really been that much better than Jean. Of All the episodes he’s run ever since beginning in Season 23, The number of ones that I consider worthwhile are under 10. Everything else ranges from OK at best to as bad as Jean’s worst.
If it’s Tyler’s review you’re referring to, I’m not sure I’d call it ‘mixed’.
“I feel like its that of a younger generation that thinks the show’s direction into more sentimental content is a good thing. Personally, I feel like it’s not the role of The Simpsons to delve into, as David Mirkin put it in one audio commentary, “happy horse-shit”.”
I don’t think this is entirely accurate. It’s just that the show has failed so thoroughly to be a good comedy or satire for so long that a shift away from that into more drama-oriented storytelling has been a welcome reprieve for fans of all age brackets. I’d love it if the show was as funny as it was 2+ decades ago, but it isn’t and I’m not sure it can be so I’d much rather what what we’re getting from Selman than…whatever the **** it was the show was doing in, say, seasons 22 to 25.
The style of writing that The Simpsons pioneered in the ’90s is no longer in vogue for animation. Joke-a-second comedy is out. Freeze-frame gags are out. Ruthless satire is out. What’s in is slower serialized drama about sweet-natured characters who the audience wants to be friends with. We don’t want to point and laugh at the world’s problems anymore, we want to solve them.
Let’s see…. I kind of liked the horse riding bit.
The rest? Great for a sleeping pill, but not so great as a piece of entertainment.
Did you enjoy Saga of Carl? Because it seems as though this episode will only appeal to those who did.
I on the otherhand skipped it because I was one of the few who didn’t like the aforementioned episode. And so far everything I’ve been hearing points to me not missing anything.
Saga of Carl? I literally almost fell asleep watching that one.
“Did you enjoy Saga of Carl? Because it seems as though this episode will only appeal to those who did.”
Huh, I thought there was a user
who said they didn’t like that episode… And another user who did like that episode, but didn’t enjoy that one as much. Strange.
This felt like a fanfic lol. Which it is, I guess.
You’re right, Carl looks different. And why is that face on his shirt humanized/realistic? What is going on?
It’s one of the founders of the Black Panthers. Carl gets a makeover at a black-owned boutique, but then humiliates himself on his date by not knowing who’s on his shirt.
Everything about this episode sounds interesting…..if it was done on a show that could actually accommodate it, like the Proud Family reboot for instance. In fact, I think they already used some of these story elements in the first season.
A while ago, I watched an interview with Raven-Symone where she was going over her career highlights. When Raven’s Home came up, she mentioned that the producers asked her if she wanted to be queer on the show. She said no, and when she asked why, the producers said it was because she was queer herself. She said just because she was queer, doesn’t mean that Raven Baxter should be, because she never showed anything even hinting at that kind of sexuality in the original series. She mentioned that the producers were interested in having her character start dating and it didn’t seem like something she wanted to do. The whole point is that there needed to be some separation between herself and the character.
I say this because what Raven did goes against what a lot of shows are doing now. Writers take from personal experiences all the time. It’s part of what gives them material for stories. Even simple things like going to the bathroom can spark something. But this specific writer had very specific experiences, and injected them into the show. That’s not to say it can’t work. But it can’t work on The Simpsons. It could work on South Park or Family Guy. But because Carl is one of the few black characters on the show, he gets this very specific story because the writer went through it. Years ago, either Bill Oakley or Josh Weinstein mentioned that Greg Daniels pitched a story about racism, but it was rejected because the writers thought the topic was too incendiary for the show to handle. If the show in its prime was uncomfortable with tackling race-related stories, why would they be able to tackle them now? And as you pointed out, Mike, the one character that they could actually tell these stories with is pretty much dead. Not everything you go through lends itself well to television. Especially to a show like The Simpsons.
I want to amend my comment at the top of this review, because I wrote it before watching the episode and now that I’ve seen it, I think it was outright mean in a way this episode doesn’t deserve. Kinda silly to change things now but fuck it, it’s the top comment, I’ll feel better if I follow it up.
Post-Classic Simpsons has a tendency to act like its characters most minor, mundane shit deserves a spotlight focus and dramatic music cue all the time, be that a joke that lingers too long or an entire focus episode. It feels like a corporate institution taking its audience for granted, thinking that all that matters is to drown the audience in product. Doesn’t matter if that product is any good, the audience eats this crap up regardless! So I assumed that’s all this episode would be.
That’s not it, though. This episode is … I mean, it’s not great … but it does feel like it comes from a genuine human place. Does it fit The Simpsons? Well, no, not really, because it feels like the only way Sosthand could tell this story was through a character who never had much substance and in a setting where every character had their substance absolutely gutted on top of that. But it feels like an earnest effort. No, I’m not emotionally invested in this belt buckle mystery like the show wants me to be. I know the payoff will be pretty much the first thing you expect. Carl’s ancestor had a cowboy buckle because he was a cowboy? What a shock!
But I think my comment’s tone was misguided. it was wrong to act like some monolithic entity called “modern Simpsons” produced this episode and tell it to fuck off. Instead I’m increasingly seeing post-classic Simpsons as writers struggling against an institution. They aren’t enemies, but the inherent creative impulses of writing are being withered away by the rigid structure of The Simpsons itself. Modern Simpsons, being immortal, is extremely set in its ways. But I get the feeling a lot of its writers – particularly the newer, younger ones – could do good things elsewhere. Their stories deserve better than a dismissive “I don’t care”.
The cynical corporate institution stuck in its ways can still fuck off though.