Original airdate: March 19, 2023
The premise: In his attempts to save the failing Barney’s Bowl-o-Rama, Homer takes Marge to the lanes, surprised to see how proficient she is at the sport. The new potential owner proposes he’ll preserve the bowling alley if Marge can beat a challenger of his choice. To prepare her for the match, Homer hires the best bowling instructor he can find, much to Marge’s horror: Jacques.
The reaction: “Life in the Fast Lane” was a pretty hardcore episode of television, especially at the time for a brand new animated sitcom in 1990. An unappreciated housewife in great turmoil about potentially having an affair, and her husband’s stymied, almost defeatist reaction when he suspects something may be up. We get our happy ending as lovers reunite, of course, but these are incredibly heavy and raw emotions that you really don’t want to see carried out in the coming episodes. But now, over seven hundred episodes later, we get the return of Jacques, in another “sequel” episode mining classic characters for nostalgia points while doing absolutely nothing of use with them. The specter of Jacques looms over the first half of the episode, as all of Homer’s involvement with the Bowl-o-Rama fills Marge with secondhand anxiety, recalling her past almost-infidelity. Upon finally going to the alley, she impresses Homer with her talent, which gives way to our conflict where the potential buyer agrees to give Marge a chance to save the lanes. And so then we get Jacques, who Homer unwittingly gets to help train her. So, hey, Jacques’s back, as is Albert Brooks for the first time he’s ever re-voiced one of his characters. Even as we got deeper into the more terrible seasons of the show, Albert Brooks would make a random appearance every so often and get a few token laughs from me, like as Bart’s weight loss instructor, or even Russ Cargill from the movie. But he made a random appearance a couple seasons ago that I don’t remember laughing once at, and even here, returning as a classic character, he just has nothing to work with. Jacques was such a rich character, so hysterical in his interplay with Marge, but here, they literally can’t think of anything for him to say except joke about his accent and him being French. That’s basically it. Such incredibly lazy writing. They pair Abe with Homer who flat-out tells his son that Jacques is wooing his wife, leading Homer to confront Jacques at his apartment, only to find it completely filled with photos and paintings of Marge. So I guess Jacques is like Artie Ziff now, where he’s built his entire life obsessing over this incredibly brief period of his life that he interacted with a main character. Marge was just another in a long line of lonely, unsatisfied women Jacques was hoping to bang, what makes her so special? Hell, they scope out Jacques’s Facebook page and find countless photos of him being sweet on other women. Does he bring them home to his apartment with his enormous Marge shrine and they’re cool with it? It’s just an absolutely tremendous lack of imagination. In the end, Marge has to bowl against Jacques to win the game, and I couldn’t give even less of a shit. It’s kind of strange, it seemed like they stopped doing these kinds of episodes, bringing back old characters for nostalgic reaction. The last time they did this (kind of) was Santa’s Little Helper’s original owner, who they had show back up so every character could call him a piece of shit for abusing animals, just so you absolutely knew that he was doing something bad and you should not like him. Speaking of, where’s Santa’s Little Helper’s mom, who the Simpsons rescued from him? Haven’t seen her in a while. Anyway, who cares, this episode sucks big time.
Three items of note:
– Homer, Lenny, and Carl gather at Moe’s to mourn the impending closure of the Bowl-o-Rama, all wearing their Pin Pals shirts, reminding me of the recent “Team Homer” semi-sequel “Singin’ in the Lane,” where they became the new de facto team, effectively jettisoning Apu and Otto. What an absolutely awful episode that was.
– The emotional resolution of the episode has Marge tell Homer that nothing happened between her and Jacques, but that he disappointed him, and she was upset. Then we get a weird thought bubble montage of the countless times Homer has done awful shit, including his Vegas marriage and lusting over Maude Flanders’s chest. The ultimate take-away is that Marge has stuck with Homer, and will continue to stick with him, no matter what insane crap he pulls, because this is a TV show and they’ll never split up ever. Granted, Homer’s wild antics have been restrained in recent years, so why even bring up all of these old memories if you’re operating with this newer, slightly more sane Homer? Their reconciliation isn’t sweet, it’s not romantic, it feels reminiscent to the early Al Jean era of Marge forgiving Homer because of the status quo, not for any specific believable reason. The incredibly raw and real emotions present in “Life in the Fast Lane” are non-existent thirty-three years later, replaced with empty sitcom pablum.
– I was really bummed hearing how unfunny Jacques was here, so I was happy to see the “Life in the Fast Lane” outtakes were up on YouTube, an Easter egg on the season 1 DVD, with Albert Brooks ad-libbing up a storm against Julie Kavner. They’re so wonderful, especially the ending where the crew finally breaks and laughs at Brooks’s brilliant improvising.
Me Blog Write Good 
It’s incredibly disappointing when an Albert Brooks appearance on this show falls flat, because for a long time he seemed immune to the series’ decline. As mentioned in this review, his appearances in “The Heartbroke Kid” and The Simpsons Movie are up there with his stuff from the classic era. It makes sense considering a lot of his material is supposedly improvised – the declining writer’s room has less involvement with it.
Maybe Brooks’ comedy is on its own, slower, separate decline, I dunno. Are there any hardcore Albert Brooks fans reading this blog who can weigh in on that? If it is declining, though, I guess that’d only be natural since he’s been doing this stuff for over forty years now. Crazy how time works.
If Hank Scorpio ever comes back, it’s going to be disappointing, guys. I honestly think any surface-level request of the show is going to be that way. The writing rot runs too deep, the show is too stuck in its ways, for much to happen. The recent transition of Matt Selman taking over from Al Jean is probably the most The Simpsons can evolve in its current iteration … and if that works for you, that’s great, but for me, it feels like the show just went from terrible to mediocre.
However, I don’t understand why you should continue watching the show then if it doesn’t offer you any kind of pleasure anymore and you yourself have admitted that you will never go out of your way. What is the point then? Completism?
Partly completionism, but it’s also that for as much as I complain about the bad writing and don’t get any enjoyment out of the show on a surface level, I think it’s instructive to watch its flaws play out.
You learn a lot about what works in writing, comedy, pacing, etc. by watching a show like this flub those things, especially when it has a direct comparison to the classic era on how to do them properly. I do enjoy the show on that level. Most people aren’t watching it like that though, so I can’t deny that it is failing in the way most people experience it. What I find interesting is why it fails.
Also, it is nice when an episode does turn out to be straight-up enjoyable so I still do root for it in that sense. I’ve just given up expecting that in any regular capacity. As for why I’m writing this, I really enjoy this blog and started leaving comments recently because I’m trying to participate in discourse instead of lurking. That’s all there is to it, really.
Glad you decided to participate, Aidan! The quality of your comments are high and I very much enjoying reading them.
“So I guess Jacques is like Artie Ziff now, where he’s built his entire life obsessing over this incredibly brief period of his life that he interacted with a main character.”
I had that on my bingo card.
I’d known this episode was on the horizon for a while, and I’ve had distinctly mixed emotions about it. “Life on The Fast Lane” is my 3rd favourite episode, Jacques is my favourite one-off character and as far as I’m concerned Brooks’ ad-libbing with Kavner is still one of the richest, most beautiful things ever to come out of the series. The prospect of Brooks reviving the role was an exciting one for sure (as a Jacques fan, I am kind of automatically thrilled that he got to be the first of Brooks’ characters to have that honor), but I also had my doubts as to how they would characterise him in this day and age. Jacques becoming Ziff 2.0 is indeed how I figured they might take it.
The reality is that LoTFL (which had an incredibly gutsy premise for a cartoon back in 1990, but handled it with a restraint, nuance and sensitivity that still packs a punch today) is the kind of episode they could only really have pulled off in the show’s germinal era, when it was more subdued in tone and had a greater interest in understated drama. The last episode that feels like it’s even remotely in the same vein is “A Streetcar Named Marge”, with everything else from Season 4 onward already seeming worlds apart. So I couldn’t possibly expect this episode to hit all the same notes as LoTFL, although I would hope for Brooks at least to be an engaging presence (besides, I was kind of curious to see how comfortably he’d slip back into the voice after 33 years). If it doesn’t actively taint my memories of LoTFL, I’ll consider that victory enough.
Is that Barney’s picture I see on the Wall Of Fame?
Because sure, that random (and I’m assuming former) employee really belongs there!
I understand that you don’t want to bring up Julie Knaver’s voice all the time but the contrast with the season 1’s outtakes must be pretty terryfying.
The first laugh less Brooks character I can recall is the awful talent agent (I think that’s the term) who manages Cletus’ career. Some of his riffing (like when he had a black client) came across as insensitive, almost racist. Like the sketchy jokes your Uncle tells at a thanksgiving meal and you have to smile and say pass the potatoes while inside you’re screaming with embarrassment and disappointment.
Anyway this episode was okay. No where near as dull as Singin’ In The Lane and I’m actually enjoying this subdued, sweeter Homer to the jerkass version that plagued the show for so many years. It’s not classic caliber, but it’s alright. I didn’t hate watching it.
It’s adorable watching the show desperately doing things to get people to pay attention to it.
And here you are. Paying attention to it. You hypocrite.
And that’s really the worst part.
This isn’t the own you think it is.
Lol well it’s actually Mike’s blog I’m paying attention to. He deserves as much traffic as he can get for putting up with this tripe.
This episode is causing controversy on social media because Homer doesn’t recognize Jacques, even though Marge already told Homer about the time she almost cheated on him. Ordinarily, this sort of contradiction would bother me (the worst example for me is the episode where Homer accidentally kisses Milhouse, who says it’s his first kiss, as if Samantha Stanky never happened), but this episode doesn’t because on this occasion, the show has an out.
The episode in which Marge told Homer about Jacques was a clip show, and the most half-assed one at that, so it’s easy enough to say clip shows are non-canon. In fact, we know for a fact two of them are non-canon – The Simpsons 138th Episode Spectacular is one of the gimmicky meta episodes the show likes to do every once in a while (The Simpsons Spin-off Showcase and Behind the Laughter are other examples), while Gump Roast is one of the very few non-Halloween episodes in which Kang and Kodos appear.
Yeah, I thought about “Another Simpsons Clip Show” while watching this, but after “Gump Roast,” I’m totally fine with treating all clip shows as non-canon. And even if you can’t accept that, you can easily assume that Homer just forgot Marge told him about Jacques, like who cares? I really don’t care that much about continuity anymore, especially concerning episode going on thirty years old.
It was so half-assed, they used the same piece of recycled animation twice in one episode.
You don’t have to go all the way to Another Simpsons Clip Show, since Homer knew in the episode itself that Marge was on the brink of having an affair with someone at the bowling alley. He never met or learned anything specific of the other man, but he was painfully aware that that’s why she was going there every evening (as were Bart and Lisa), and why she had that glove squirrelled away inside her drawer. ASCS actually ignored that for the sake of Homer’s “stop seeing this Jacques” response, but the series has been haemorrhaging is own continuity from early on; it’s an issue that I can’t really get hung up about any more.
Wonder if the person who wrote “Dear Abby” as “Stuck In A Love Triangle” claiming to be torn between her* husband “Gene” and bowling instructor “Franco” is going to try and submit a follow-up letter based on this episode like they did with “Life On The Fast Lane”.
*The actual individual (or individuals as the case may be) who posed as Marge for that prank letter never came forward, so neither I no or anyone else can be 100% sure it really was a “her”.
What a bizarre episode this ended up being. It’s a Jean episode but feels as though Selman had some uncredited involvement from the use of that hipster douche from The Day the Earth Stood Cool to the animation being more fluid in parts. But at the end of the day, it’s as boring and tepid as many episodes these days regardless of who’s name is on it and part of why I gave up on being a regular viewer after The Many Saints of Springfield.
Speaking of that episode, this is likely to age as well as that one will where people who are thinking very favorably of it right now might come back to it in a few months and see it wasn’t as good as it was the first time when the initial fear of this being a marriage crisis episode made them lower their expectations more than usual. Though considering my expectations were about the same as for most episodes these days, I didn’t have this benefit.
I still think that agent from Yokel Chords is the worst use of Albert Brooks on this show to date, but Jacques’ return here wasn’t much better from being downgraded to essentially Artie 2.0 and once again them not having the guts to just say “No!” to Albert and stop his ramblings which made the already tspid episode drag at points.
Having rewatched Life in the Fast Lane right before seeing this one (which was probably was a mistake), this makes what’s an OK episode at best look like something from the peak of the classic era! Or at the very least, that episode had actual funny jokes (“FOUR ONION RINGS!”).
“Albert Brooks is back, for the first time he’s ever re-voiced one of his characters.”
You are actually wrong about that. He actually did return to voice Jacques and Hank Scorpio, in small cameos previously.
Oh yeah, Hank Scorpio had that random quick reappearance in an opening title. When did Jacques reappear with dialogue?
In “The Heartbroke Kid” in the re-creation of the opening credits, where Jacques always makes a silent cameo as one of the people Bart skates by. When a fat Bart runs over his foot, he drops his bowling ball and yells “Be careful!”.
I remember that! Wow, very nice memory on your part.
I haven’t seen this episode…. is it really that bad?
Turns out it’s a Jean show so it probably is.
I liked some of the scenes with Jacques, and I am genuinely chuffed just to see him again. I would that say A. Brooks has still got it. HOWEVER, a factor that made a massive difference this time around (and gives an uneasy window into how LoTFL might have gone down in lesser hands) is that they really overdid it with his improvisations. In LoTFL, those improvisations were what made his chemistry with Marge feel so alive and appealing, but if you listen to the outtake material on the Season 1 DVD, you’ll find that Brooks sometimes has a tendency to ramble on to the point that he has Jacques come off as kind of…demented? That’s all very good and hilarious in the context of an outtake, but it would have dramatically altered your perception of the character were it included in the episode itself. The show had a good understanding back then of where to draw the line. Here, they frequently had him ramble on to that very degree – to a point, this all played into PG’s modern-day depiction of him as a mentally unhinged stalker (none of the Home-Wreckers could handle rejection, it seems), but that in itself just spoke to the episode’s woeful lack of nuance. Unfortunately, Al Jean has ever had a strong grasp of nuance, even in his best work. It’s something that has always rubbed me the wrong way about him, and something I knew going in was liable to kneecap this episode.
I won’t say it’s THAT bad, but this episode having the same issue as The Many Saints of Springfield where lower than normal expectations from some fearing this was gonna be a marriage crisis episode make it look/sound better than it really is. And in a few months time I wouldn’t be surprised if a few of those people look back on the episode and see that it wasn’t as good as it was during their initial viewing.
I’ll say that I’d take this over at least five of the season’s other episodes (including One Angry Lisa, which was also Jean), but it’s about on-par with The King of Nice for how not good it was.
I just watched it and it was…. boring. Very very boring.
Hahahaha. Literally laughed when I saw your screenshot. No way they brought him back. I can’t believe this is a real episode.
“Homer, Lenny, and Carl gather at Moe’s to mourn the impending closure of the Bowl-o-Rama, all wearing their Pin Pals shirts, reminding me of the recent “Team Homer” semi-sequel “Singin’ in the Lane,” where they became the new de facto team, effectively jettisoning Apu and Otto.”
Well, Apu has been lost to Cancel Culture, and the writers only remember Otto even exists when they need to make a quick, cheap drug reference.
Artie still being obsessed with Marge twenty years later didn’t bother me. Jacques, on the other hand… come on. I doubt he would even remember Marge’s name.
Wait, so how long before the events of this episode did Marge first encounter Jacques? Since the characters haven’t aged, in universe it must have been like a few months ago lol