746. Fan-ily Feud

Original airdate: April 23, 2023

The premise: Homer unintentionally invokes the wrath of the fan army of a huge pop singer, which includes Lisa, and later Bart, making his life unbearable. His only salvation comes from another rival pop singer, who he teams up with in starting an all-out fan war.

The reaction: If you’re a comedy based on social satire and you find yourself still on the air after three decades (a very narrow category, I know), you’re going to have to be tackling a pop culture landscape that seems weird and scary to you. As I inch closer and closer to Homer’s age, I found myself just as dumbfounded as him when the episode began and we learned about the rabid fan army of Ashlee Starling, and then later when her sort-of-faux rival “U.N. Ambassa-Diva” introduces herself and describes her public rivalry (with both characters being voiced by musician Jade Novah, a woman I’ve never heard of.) I understand these concepts from reading about them online, but they just feel so alien to me going into depth about them, especially seeing them on The Simpsons. But this show kind of has to brush up against modern youth culture with Bart and Lisa every now and again, and it helps now that they have a new younger bunch of writers in recent years to help them navigate those waters. Homer makes the mistake of badmouthing Starling on camera (though he was merely repeating what Bart had told him, who immediately throws him under the bus afterwards), invoking the unmitigated wrath of Starling’s mega fans. We find out Lisa is among them, seemingly totally fine torturing her father in exchange for actually belonging to a community. The beginnings of the targeted campaign against Homer start well enough: glitter bombing him, throwing an effigy of Ashlee off a bridge onto his moving car, all over-the-top extremist behavior that felt rightly absurd. Then Homer finds himself randomly stumbling onto the billion-dollar production studio of U.N. Ambassa-Diva, who wants to use Homer’s targeted status against Ashlee with her own devoted army. I just didn’t know what to make of a lot of this from this point. Mega-celebrities cultivating a diehard fan base that will literally physically harm dissenters is a fascinating concept, as is the parasocial relationship aspect of such fandoms, like Lisa’s rallying war cry (“We aren’t just fans of Ashlee, we are Ashlee!!”) Devoting one’s sense of self so deeply to a celebrity and the values and status they project is also very fertile ground to plumb, but the episode doesn’t really dive into that much of these topics. Instead, somehow, the episode culminates in Homer getting his own “anti-diss” track produced, singing about how much he loves his family, and that ends the family strife between everyone. There’s some runway to the climax being about the family needing to mend fences, but the plot line feels too far removed from the Simpsons to seem emotionally charged enough to justify a two-minute song of Homer crooning about his beloved family. Maybe if there was greater focus on why Lisa idolizes Ashlee so much contrasted with her own father, and there was more investment from Marge outside of her basically being tricked into “betraying” Homer, it could have worked a little better, but it came off as a very outlandish and weird episode that has this very forced emotionally supercharged button at the end of it.

Two items of note:
– I was kind of caught off guard how much I really liked the brief plot beat of Lisa bonding with Bart over pranks. Their little moment in the kitchen together was actually really sweet, but then I was bummed they abruptly (for comic effect) cut it off with Lisa telling Bart he’s out of the group. Apparently he wasn’t excited enough to meet the prank group leader’s dog “Greg” (“That’s a man’s name!”), which I totally get. People who give their dogs normal human names are weirdos. Lisa keeps Bart at bay by threatening to give his prank book to Homer, exposing him. They try to set up that the entire family is at odds with each other, leading up to Homer’s song mending fences, but Lisa is really the primary instigator in the episode. Again, I wish they developed her motivations more to compensate for that.
– The third act contains two pretty long music videos that drag on for so long. The first is from Ashlee Starling, who had invited Marge out to dinner to “thank” her, but actually she was just digging for dirt about Homer. The very next morning she has a full length music video produced, a “bad boyfriend” song that’s all about Homer and Marge, as it opens with actors recreating the ending of “The Way We Was” (the video is even titled “The Way You Were.”) It’s a song just about Marge’s criticisms of Homer, stuff we’ve been hearing over the course of the entire series, but stretched out over a minute-long song. And it’s not funny? Like we get the joke of it, and the motivation of Ashlee using Marge, but it just keeps going. At some point twenty years ago, the show lost its magical ability to make songs that were both funny and fun to listen to. What’s the last truly great song they’ve done? Then there’s Homer’s love ballad, produced by U.N. Ambassa-Diva, seemingly filmed at the Simpson house (or I guess they built it on a sound stage), with individual chunks of the songs about each of the family members. It also ends on a clip montage of great family moments of the entire series (no idea how Ambassa-Diva got any of this footage, but whatever). So they’re really pushing for this to be emotionally satisfying for people watching, as it ends with the family practically tearing up over watching it, but I dunno… I just don’t care? Homer loves his family. We know that. We’re almost at episode 750, how many more times do I need to hear about how much Homer loves his family? This stuff works for some fans, and that’s fine, I guess, but I just don’t need to see them jam down this particular button anymore. The episodes of recent I’ve responded to best have been the weird genre-breaking ones (“Lisa the Boy Scout”) or episodes exploring side characters in a satisfying way (“Portrait of a Lackey on Fire”) specifically because they’ve shown me something I haven’t seen before. I know the family will love each other no matter what. I’ve been watching them for over thirty years. I saw some positive response to “Pin Gal” that it was satisfying seeing there be no emotional conflict between Homer and Marge because of Jacques, as a reaffirmation of their relationship being stronger than ever. Not that I wanted that either, but it just made the episode feel kind of free of any stakes. It was a similar issue in the mostly beloved “Pixelated and Afraid,” the episode starts off with Homer and Marge completely complacent in their loving relationship, but that kind of robbed the episode of having any kind of emotional arc of the two rediscovering their love for each other. For emotional resolutions to have weight, there needs to be actual believable conflict, and sometimes it feels like they go soft on that front lately.

I’ve also finally, after years of hemming and hawing, bit the bullet and shelled out for a personal plan to rid the site of ads. The little banner ads were relatively unobtrusive when I first started the blog, but it feels like in the last year or so, they’ve just gotten worse and worse, to when I look at the page and it just feels like a fight to actually read anything. I apologize if this was particularly bothersome, but now you’re finally free! You can also now access the blog directly at meblogwritegood.com as well. Hooray!