Original airdate: March 12, 2023
The premise: Kirk fights to have an embarrassing historical blunder by his great-grandfather, former Mayor of Springfield, not to be taught in school. In his crusade, he gains a cadre of followers who rally behind his “feelings over facts” mindset. Meanwhile, Homer takes advantage of this new town furor by selling branded merchandise to appeal to those who support or oppose Kirk’s new movement.
The reaction: We’ve had a couple episodes where they’ve tried to place Kirk in the spotlight, and each time it’s felt wrong to me. For the longest time he was the show’s go-to for pathetic divorced dad jokes, then they had him get back together with Luann, but the dynamics still remained the same, only they would make Kirk stranger and stranger. I remember “There Will We Buds” featured him asking Homer what’s the weirdest place he’s banged Marge with their kids in the car, and that he pays prostitutes to listen to him cry or something? He’s just a fucking weirdo freak. As such, I guess he kind of fits the role of this episode, the unremarkable schlubby guy who doesn’t want the truth of the past making him feel bad, so he fights to censor it. Yes, this is our critical race theory episode, and it’s a boring, painfully on-the-nose affair. For some reason, the school is spending a huge chunk of its curriculum teaching about Kirk’s great-grandfather mayor, who built an enormous gazebo that spectacularly collapsed due to being poorly built (leading to Kirk’s decrying the teaching of “critical brace theory,” an incredibly sweaty pun). His focus is primarily on silencing talk of this one event, but he attracts similarly minded folk who don’t want any of bad history dwelled over. We also get a group of counter-protestors, both parties of which creating obnoxious public scenes against each other. Through this, we get an episode’s worth of groan-inducing obvious dialogue (“My history, my choice!” “The past never happened!”) Things take a wild turn in the third act, showing Kirk as the new “super-superintendent,” but he’s basically like Springfield’s dictator, with Soviet-era banners of him all over town and his followers in literal Nazi uniforms goose-stepping, as he’s banned all books from the school. It’s such a crazy left-turn, considering we’d only seen Kirk give a shit about the teaching of one historical event that personally involved his family. I guess he’s gotten drunk with power, but it never really feels that way. Also it’s just crazy. There’s an attempt at an emotional center with Marge feebly acting as Kirk’s buffer as a member of the school board, and her pleas with Homer to stop fanning the flames with his new business venture, but what little of that is here is too scant and sickeningly earnest. The Old Jewish Man quotes, “Those who forget history are doomed to repeat it,” and Homer’s final message is about always believing science… it all feels incredibly preachy, with the most basic satirical bent that just isn’t that interesting.
Three items of note:
– “Weird Al” Yankovic appears for a couch gag, which amounts to him just standing in front of the couch playing his accordion as the family watches. Also they re-did his caricature for some reason, even though he’s appeared twice on the show before (both in his 80s look and his “modern” look). In this appearance, he’s got that weird design that feels like it was done by a commissioned artist who draws couples as Simpsons characters, where they just draw someone with a circular or ovular face and include a little overbite on them. Why wouldn’t they just re-use his design from “Three Gays of the Condo”?
– It feels like Milhouse should have had a bigger role in this episode. He’s despondent hearing about his loser ancestor, which is what motivates Kirk in the first place, then later when Kirk makes a scene at the school meeting, he says he’s proud of his dad. Then he becomes a part of Kirk’s mob, passionately repeating all his father’s nonsense. But after that, he’s just gone, and we don’t see him in the third act after Kirk’s rise to power. There’s not even a joke about how Kirk did all this ostensibly for his son and just completely lost sight of that.
– In the third act, for one scene, we see the Simpsons are now living in an expensive estate, which I originally thought was because they were juiced in with Kirk, but after looking back, I realize because it says “Copper Point,” it’s because Homer’s business was so damn successful I guess he got super rich. Like, I get it, and it plays into Marge’s plea to him (“What does it profit a man if he gains the world, but loses his soul?”), but it definitely feels weird that our main characters getting obscenely wealthy just happens and we don’t even dwell on it.
Me Blog Write Good 
Bad Writing 101: Change a character’s traits to fit the story.
Which is actually something that’s been going on for some time now, with a few cases being from Selman episodes (like last week when Homer was reduced to being as equal of a disciplinarian as Marge).
To be fair, that wasn’t the first time Homer was a disciplinarian. He banned Bart from watching the Itchy and Scratchy movie way back in season 4, although Bart’s misbehaviour in that episode was far more serious.
AKA: Al Jean teaches you writing.
Except that this was a Selman ran episode.
I know I really present the case that I hate Al Jean to the point I can’t even tell a Selman episode apart anymore, but it shows the weakness of Matt Selman’s episodes.
Aah. Yeah, I’m someone who’s also always viewed an episode by Jean or Selman as interchangeable quality wise, and the latter’s appear to get worse now that he’s given a majority of a season’s worth.
I’ve been working my way through the modern Simpsons seasons (currently on 31) thanks to a mix of morbid curiosity, sunk cost fallacy, keeping up with this blog, and a fondness for dissecting bad writing as I see it. At times I got the impression that as bad as the show was before then, Season 33 and 34 would at least be something to sort of, kind of look forward to.
Episodes like this destroy that scant hope.
It’s not just because they’re bad, although they are. It’s because they’re bad in many of the same ways this show has consistently been bad for decades. On the nose dialogue, limp or nonexistent humor, incoherent stories and pacing … it’ll never change. It’ll never change! Ever since season 9, always the same! Couldn’t keep its dignity out of the cash drawer! But not our Simpsons! Couldn’t be precious Simpsons! Stealing precious time! And THEY get to be on the air? What a sick joke! I should’ve stopped watching when I had the chance. And you, you have to stop watching! You …
… I apologize. I lost my train of thought.
Remember when the most important priority of this show was being funny?
“But the show is good again, guys! We swear!”
If the show fails at humor, I can understand them trying to appeal to drama, but if the show fails at drama, then… why does it exist? I can get the premise of Kirk not wanting people to know that his ancestor was an idiot, because practically everyone treats *him* like an idiot and he still wants one small piece of dignity to hold on to, but the writers can’t help being cute and sniffing their own anuses at the same time with this “hot button” topic. Also doesn’t help that, for decades, Kirk was written to be extremely pathetic; even animals thought they were above him and they’re usually depicted as stupid, so to present him as this fascist dictator is way out of left field.
The fact that Kirk has always been pathetic and underestimated is precisely what’s incisive about it though. Kirk is an allegory for all the people in our society who we ridicule, dismiss, and ignore for their viewpoints (valid or otherwise) which fuels disaffection, displacement, and extremism among them. Kirk’s role in this episode is, therefore, *extremely* true to life. I mean, we live in a world where the likes of Marjorie Taylor Greene are elected to Congress.
Regardless, the show had firmly planted him as a character that nobody took seriously, and while I can understand the concept of using real life parallels, it can’t work because the show spent ages using him as a punching bag. I get you’re an apologist for the modern episodes but look at the cynical side.
There’s also the side effect of just how in the hell are they going to expect us to buy a sympathetic portrayal of Kirk again after being used as a parallel for one of the worst humans that ever existed (even with the excuse of not viewing it as canon)?
Yeah, I don’t really see how I can ever view kirk as just a lonely sad sack wishing for respect now that I’ve seen what happens when he does get what he wants: a Nazi dictatorship. You can’t just be history greatest monster one day and a lovable loser the next.
Well that sounds awful.
Snore….