Original airdate: February 25, 2024
The premise: Lisa develops extreme anxiety thanks to Homer’s out-of-control driving, but finds a surprising therapy through go-kart racing, which she takes a real liking to. While she burns up the track in the junior league, Homer finds himself incredibly worried for his daughter’s safety for once.
The reaction: This episode’s first act felt like a charming throwback to a bygone era where Homer’s overly reckless and violent behavior consistently caused real damage and stress to his loved ones, which is very good and normal behavior for your likable protagonist to have. Lisa has developed an eye twitch and crippling anxiety as a direct result being thrown around every which way in the backseat while Homer skids and speeds around town like he’s in a Fast & Furious movie. They go to family therapy about it, where Homer’s driving is cited as the primary cause of this trauma, prompting Homer to storm out and immediately crash his car like an insane maniac. As the episode develops, I understand what they’re trying to go for with this opening. The therapist recommends a form of exposure therapy in putting Lisa in control of a vehicle for once, and Lisa takes to go-karting like a duck to water. As she gets better and better and enters a championship race, Marge finds herself completely unfazed for once, while Homer is surprised to be the one filling the worrier position, who then attempts to bar Lisa from continuing to race. Lisa directly calls out the hypocrisy of her father’s insane driving causing her problem to begin with, and only now is he worried about her safety, which Homer jokingly dismisses, but it is a valid point that feels like it needed to be fleshed out a bit more. Marge is her typical worrywart self in the beginning, except her fear is completely justified considering how insanely dangerous her husband’s driving is, putting their children’s lives in real jeopardy (she never takes Homer to task about this in the slightest), and when the switch happens between her and Homer, it’s done in the most obvious, tell-not-show manner where Homer just says out loud that one of the two always has to be the worrier, and now he is that one. Maybe Homer could find himself really grappling with this strange new feeling, understanding things from Lisa or Marge’s perspective about how they felt in the beginning, and working through it in an interesting and funny way. But instead, they do an ending where Homer ends up saving the day thanks to his reckless driving, managing to brake-check in front of Lisa’s sabotaged go-kart to get it to slow down. A resolution where somebody’s harmful vice ends up saving the day is definitely a fruitful comic idea, but I’m really not sure what to make of the ending when it’s followed up by a sweet resolution between Lisa and Homer where she tells her dad “you’ve made me feel safe,” and then all the other go-karters crash behind them since they’re in the middle of the track. It’s all meant to be a goofy-ish ending, but as this is a Matt Selman show, there’s also that element of an attempted emotional ending, but it all just doesn’t work for me. They treat Homer’s actually dangerous driving with just enough severity at the start that I just can’t circle back around to handwaving it as a joke in the end and Lisa being totally cool with her dad almost killing her.
Two items of note:
– I love Matt Barry. I mean, everybody does, he has the voice of an angel. He gets a ton of dialogue as the F1 race announcer, but unfortunately, his dulcet tones can’t really elevate the mediocre jokes they give him to try and sell. And ultimately I inevitably think of the many other sports announcers this show has done over the years and how much funnier they’ve been. On top of that, you also have the obviously comparison to “Saturdays of Thunder,” which also has the “Homer bungles his relationship to his child” story angle to it as well, and this episode just doesn’t even deserve to be mentioned in the same sentence as that masterpiece.
– There’s a B-plot, kind of, where Bart gets chummy with the temporarily relocated rich kid frontrunner of the sport, some Italian kid he buds up with to mooch off of him. It’s all very boring, and just an excuse to trot out some hilarious stereotypes, like his “secret weapon” being a gelato stand straight from his hometown. Then the two have a falling out and have a fraught argument all in Italian, because funny, I guess.
Me Blog Write Good 
If you have to ask me what’s the biggest problem with modern Simpsons, it’s gotta be how everyone talks as if they are delivering exposition as opposed to trying to speak like actual human beings. This is the problem of 60+ year old comedians who are drastically disconnected with the modern world beating down what little creativity any fresh blood have because they have to get their tired shtick in. The idea that a character is saved by another’s negligence is a rather tiring trait of this show, as well, like they enjoy playing with people not learning lessons.
Ironically, I wasn’t thinking about Saturdays of Thunder with this episode because that would have been too easy for this dessicated corpse of a series. I was thinking about Bob’s Burgers and the time the kids got into go karting with that crappy bumper car only for Tina to betray them with a professional unit and Louise to try and defeat her with the very crummy set she left behind. It’s a different premise but had similar beats and was written by people who didn’t feel like they were trying to get out of the office at 4pm every day.
I think this crappy kind of unnatural dialogue intercut with the other crappy kind of dialogue where they explain jokes in an “unironic” way that feels ripped from FG is more of a Selman problem which he enforced upon the writers rather than a problem that they developed on their own.
I actually liked act 1 a lot. Its focus on Lisa’s mental health felt surprisingly human in a way that I don’t think this show has really ever treated it since the classic era (last year’s “Bartless” being the only exception that comes to mind). It’s a shame they threw out that very human beginning immediately afterwards so they could focus on much less interesting and generic tropes.
I feel like Matt Groening’s shows have gradually polished their humanity out of them.
Sounds terrible.
Yeah, all the best stuff was used up in the first act, barring possibly the Mario Kart parody in act 2 which was better than any of the plot relevant parody stuff.
Since it turns out that, unlike other programs in the Sunday night animation programming block, The Simpsons actually did get screwed over by the strike (oops, lmao) it’s probably going to be a while before new episodes are in the pipeline.
You going to take a breather or use it as a chance to talk about other things?
The next episode airs on the 24th. Not sure if I’m gonna watch it though as it’s another one where one of the Van Houten parents takes on the antagonistic role (in this case, Luanne) which is a trend that I’ve not liked since it’s earliest roots in Livin’ La Pura Vida.