760. Do the Wrong Thing

Original airdate: December 24, 2023

The premise: Homer discovers a whole new way to bond with Bart: letting his son help him cheat at outsider sporting events. Meanwhile, Lisa applies to a prodigious summer camp and becomes more and more insufferable waiting for a response.

The reaction: Some of the earliest classic episodes of the series were morality tales, mostly of Homer or Bart doing something dishonest and learning the error of their ways by the end of 22 minutes. The show has dabbled in telling these kinds of stories in the last couple years (“Bart’s in Jail!” comes to mind), but with a much heavier hand, filled with on-the-nose dialogue and an extra level of moralistic hand-wringing. Out of sheer boredom, Bart helps Homer win a fishing competition by cheating, and when Homer is thrilled with the result, he enlists his son to help him cheat at other events, with the two enjoying their new father-son activities. Meanwhile, Lisa has her heart set on an elite summer camp at the University of Springfield, and gets more and more anxious as each day passes with no word back. These two plot lines run parallel until Homer admits to Marge what he and Bart are doing. The next scene has Lisa finding out she was accepted to Springfield U’s rowing camp, but she’s shocked to discover poorly Photoshopped photos of her rowing had been added to her application. She jumps to the conclusion this was Homer and Bart’s doing, which I kind of understand, but as the two repeatedly point out, why would they do that? The two had no involvement or awareness in Lisa’s plot, nor would it make any sense for either character to do something like that. After too long of a waiting period, Marge fesses up it was her doing, motivated by Homer’s positive spin on his actions (“You’re always saying you want our kids to succeed, then maybe not cheating is cheating them!”) I can kind of understand what they’re going for here, but as usual, everything gets too over-explained and is just kind of rushed through. Bart immediately laments the fact they corrupted his mother, which feels weird for him to say, and Homer joins in, cursing that he’s tainted the most moral person he knows. They practically flagellate themselves over this heinous act they’ve caused. This aspect of the plot specifically reminded me of “Bart’s in Jail!,” which was about Marge holding out hope for the goodness of people on the whole, with her faith in justice needing to be protected. In the end, the Simpsons are abducted and taken to the dean’s office at the university, who sermonizes to them about how their school has fully leaned into helping our next generation of young adults to cheat and get away with it. All of this is openly referring to recent scandals involving admissions decisions being manipulated through bribery and other means, most famously by Lori Loughlin for her daughter, with a large amount of it being done at the University of Southern California (cheekily pointed out by the dean’s sign, University of Springfield Camp.) It’s the final morality test for the Simpsons, specifically Homer and Lisa, who are tempted by the devil dean into continuing down the unjust path, but both ultimately decline. It’s a very basic plot told just fine, I guess, but it’s nothing we haven’t seen before, done better. Plus, this is all hinging on Lisa getting into an honor’s summer camp as a second grader? How could that possibly benefit her ten years down the road when she’s applying for colleges? What are the stakes? I remember when she turned down millions from Mr. Burns, a refusal that actually had some weight to it. Anyway, there’s not a lot here to dissect here, this was a pretty inoffensive episode that actually had some good jokes peppered throughout, but there just wasn’t anything to make me really care about the story.

Two items of note:
– I’ll give the episode some credit, there were a fair amount of good jokes throughout that I was very surprised by. The “Happy Hood” commercial, promoting a little sack with a smiley face to put over a fish’s head to feel less guilty about beheading it, was kind of wonderfully dark. Marge gets out a little mini-vacuum to clean Lisa’s dollhouse floor. One of the prizes Homer and Bart are after is an electric truck converted back to gasoline. Lots of genuinely good stuff. Way back when, I used to include a “one good moment” section in these reviews as a sign of good faith, pointing out one joke of the episode I actually enjoyed. Eventually, after quite a number of stinkers in a row, I phased that section out as many times, I just couldn’t pinpoint a single thing I liked about a lot of episodes. Things have certainly improved for the series over the last few years, and while I don’t really feel like bringing that section back after I dumped it, it definitely makes episodes like this stand out to me that actually have a good handful of jokes that I can honestly say I thought were funny.
– The ending with the dean openly admitting he embraces and endorses cheating reminded me a lot of the ending of an episode of South Park, “Crack Baby Athletics Association.” Not to go over the entire plot (I’m sure the name of the episode is bizarre enough to anyone who doesn’t know the context), but the episode is about how college athletes are unpaid, despite how much money colleges and other organizations make off of their images and careers. In the grand finale, the South Park boys confront the head of EA Sports, who openly tells them to fuck off (“We were going to help the orphans with that money!” “Well, fuck ’em! And fuck you too! I piss in your faces!”) This episode felt like it could have been better if it had just been the Lisa story, and they focused more on the USC scandal as a primary point of satire, because in the end, that final scene just made me think of how much more viciously focused that South Park episode was, which ultimately gave its conclusion a greater impact.