Original airdate: March 24, 2024
The premise: When Luann Van Houten directly tells Bart he’s a bad kid, Marge kicks into mama bear mode, doing whatever she can to get back at her, with the two fighting to get their sons the best seats at an upcoming concert. Events of the episode are mirrored throughout with a parallel story about the primordial Simpson family’s attempts to survive against an attack by a giant blue-haired wolf.
The reaction: Genndy Tartakovsky’s Primal is a goddamn masterpiece. The adult swim series helmed by one of the greatest modern legends of animation is an absolutely incredibly piece of art, blending gorgeous visuals, stellar animation, and simple, yet emotionally resonant storytelling, chronicling the adventures of a simple caveman and his dinosaur pal traversing a dangerous prehistoric Earth. If you haven’t seen it, please stop reading this bullshit right now and go watch it. It’s gotten widespread acclaim by critics and viewers alike, with obviously a lot of love from the animation community. As such, we get an episode-long ode to Primal, with this episode’s story running alongside flashbacks of the Simpson family in B.C. times, with cavewoman Marge facing similar trials and tribulations as her modern-era counterpart. Here’s the thing, though. Doing an episode-long imitation of Primal, even as a tribute, feels like a pointless exercise. The caveman sequences have some nice designs and animation, but it’s certainly nowhere near the level of craft as what it’s paying homage to. So why would I want to watch at least 40% of an entire episode of a lesser version of something I love? The Primal stuff is fine, I guess, but what am I really getting out of it? There’s no real jokes in those sections, nor any kind of parody element to it. Past segments like “Steamboat Itchy” or “Amendment to Be” were loving tributes to older animation, but built off the source material to either incorporate it into the show’s universe or make jokes about the source material. This episode feels more in line to the awards clips we saw in “Angry Dad: The Movie,” minutes-long recreations of The Triplets of Belleville and Wallace & Gromit that were more interested in gushing about how great these other animated works are, rather than do anything interesting or funny with them. The story itself is just kind of whatever. Bart and Milhouse destroy an old catapult on a field trip to the history museum, with the only real punishment being Luann uninviting Bart to going to a big concert with Milhouse, telling the boy on the phone “you’re a bad friend and you’re beyond hope.” The ensuing episode has Marge and Luann continuously trying to one-up each other in screwing out the other’s kid, but strangely absent from the episode is any sort of interaction between Bart and Milhouse about all this. When Homer manages to score VIP tickets to the show, Bart sways Milhouse’s guests away from him, but does he even care that he’s being kept away from what should be his best friend? It isn’t until the very, very end we kind of get a moment like that between Milhouse and his mom (“I know Bart’s a bad influence, but he’s the only kid who wants to influence me. He’s all I got!”) I just couldn’t help but think back to “Homer Defined,” a thirty-plus-year-old episode that tells so much more about the Bart-Milhouse relationship in a mere B-plot than this entire episode does. Two boys who basically became friends because no one else wanted them, and despite the lop-sided nature of their relationship, they’re better off together than they are apart. If there’s anything more to dig into about this partnership, this episode clearly isn’t interested in delving into it.
Three items of note:
– I was kind of thrown off from the start to see all of the boys wearing pants inside the history museum when they typically wear shorts. Later on, when we see them outside with the melting snow, it clearly being winter, it finally made sense to me, but it was weird seeing so many characters wearing their typical shirts but atypical bottoms for so long with no explanation.
– It feels like in recent seasons, the Van Houtens have kind of morphed into semi-antagonistic forces on the show. A few times, Kirk has been thrown into the role of the bitter, disenfranchised white guy rallying against change, while Luann has been amongst the regular gaggle of Springfield women to take sniping shots at Marge for petty reasons. I feel like an episode about two best friends who have to navigate their respective parents not getting along could be kind of interesting, that feels pretty relatable, but this episode isn’t really about that at all.
– The tipping point of Marge’s rage comes from her barreling into the concert to get Bart and the other boys to their VIP seats. She tricks some guards, throws the boys over a fence, tosses them in liquid butter to slide under a velvet rope into the front doors… this all ends up being very disconcerting to the boys (Nelson included), to the point that Bart pleads with his mother that they just want to leave. To me, this feels like stuff that Bart would think is really cool, but I guess they need him to initiate Marge’s character arc, as he delivers the clumsy line, “Why don’t you ask that lady what she thinks?” He points to the convenient mirror so Marge can see what she’s become, leading to her come to Jesus moment. Bart follows this up with, “I can handle bad, I can’t handle losing the one good parent I’ve got.” This felt kind of weird this episode considering Homer actually was a great parent this time around, getting the VIP tickets in the first place. But whatever.
Me Blog Write Good 
At this rate, I’m more than interested in seeing a show tackle The Simpsons on a meta level regarding a cultural entity that has existed long past its sell by date than I am seeing The Simpsons itself, given it feels like they ape the popularity of Current Thing to stay relevant.
Tbf, is “Primal” really a “Currently Thing” nowadays? It’s literally been a while since the series ended, so it feels a little unfair to call the episode doing this here when it’s not even like it’s a trend (not even in an NFT type situation).
Sometimes you have to accept that writers aren’t always going to parody x thing because it’s “popular” and they just saw the show recently and thought it was cool to do something with it (literally the same logic behind “A Serious Flanders” that was only born because Selman binged).
Idk, it just feels very unfair to reduce everything to that
Given the general length of time it takes to produce an episode of The Simpsons, I think it’s more than safe to reduce it to such.
This episode isn’t actually about Bart and Milhouse?
I mean, not gonna lie, but this seems like a really shoddy piece of criticism, Mike. You haven’t really judges this episode on its own merits (or lack thereof), spending half of your review talking about Bart and Milhouse’s relationship, which the episode clearly and consciously isn’t about. You also argue that the Primal-inspired sequences don’t measure up to the animation quality of the source material which, like, obviously. It was never going to and that seems like an unfair standard to expect it to live up to. It does an effective job of contextualising and mirroring the primal instincts that underpin Marge’s escalating feud against Luanne while serving as a nice little tribute.
Look, you and Agony are of the No Homers type of Simpsons fans that are eternally optimistic about the show and feel like any criticism about it is some kind of an attack, but the issue about the episode is that when modern Simpsons insitigates on certain characters only to deviate away from them, you cannot fault the person from saying “then why did I have the bowl, Bart? Why did I have the bowl?”
The usage of Luanne in this highlights how they don’t really know how to examine Marge episodes since, as I said in Iron Marge, Marge has exactly zero friends thanks to a lack of character development and an emphasis on the rest of the women of Springfield being pigeon holed as catty stereotypes. I know that you’re going to defend this writing as transformative and groundbreaking but it just leads us nowhere as ultimately in an episodic series forever stuck on a treadmill, does it matter?
Just gonna jump in and preemptively remind all parties involved in the comments to please be civil to each other.
I think it was more that the episode felt odd to me that there was zero element of the Bart/Milhouse relationship in it, evidenced by the scene where Bart lures the other boys away with his tickets, not even acknowledging Milhouse at all. Like what does he think of his mom’s feud?
And yeah, of course I’m not expecting Primal-level animation out of this show, I’m certainly not looking down at it for that. But like I said, it seemed pointless for so much real estate of this episode to be devoted to a less-visually enthralling version of a better show, as backdrop to a story I personally didn’t find that engaging.
Hi GindyDraws,
Firstly, I am eternally optimistic about the show, but I certainly do not feel like “any criticism about it is some kind of an attack”. I have liked exactly four episodes this season and found the other 8 to be mostly shit, which I have verbalised in no uncertain terms on NoHomers. Secondly, I have not – and will not – “defend this writing as transformative and groundbreaking”. Where exactly am I giving you this impression? How have you extrapolated this from my comments?
Sometimes I wish that I was more optimistic about the show these days like others are. Because when I see episodes like this being praised to heaven and back I don’t think ‘oh, it must actually be a great one!’ but rather ‘oh, it’s probably another episode that most are making sound better than it really is…’ which is honestly the sentiment that I’ve had since Selman began showrunning and we began getting a taste of his own unique flaws (mainly the very hacky kind of dialogue that’s very unnatural or the overall feeling of being the same kind of hokey sitcom that this show used to mock).
And when you combine that with me already being iffy about seeing a Van Houten being portrayed as the antagonistic force having already disliking this trend since Livin’ La Pura Vida and usually finding myself of similar opinions as what’s posted here, I’ve decided that this is another episode that’s probably not even worth my time.
This sounds like Hell.
So we all thought The Simpsons was getting bad, when it was really just morphing back into Life in Hell! You’re a genius, Matt Groening!
0/10, not funny, didn’t laugh.
Also, correct me if I’m wrong, but I don’t think Groening has had any involvement with the series whatsoever in many years.
“0/10, not funny, didn’t laugh.”
Good, I captured the modern Simpsons vibe perfectly lol.
Aww I don’t think there’s anything wrong with being optimistic about modern Simpsons, I thought this was a solid episode. @GindyDraws your comment seemed very mean-spirited to @vyrnnus.
Anyway Mike I don’t agree with some of your critiques these days but I still enjoy reading them, it’s like a routine for me to come here after each episode lol
“it’s like a routine for me to come here after each episode lol”
Me too! I might disagree with Mike occasionally, but I appreciate the time and effort he devotes to this blog.
My one observation from this snoozefest:
the wolf looks like it’s from Dora The Explorer.
I want to give some context for me loving Modern Simpsons. Let’s look back to that season 14 episode where Marge rapes Homer. I describe it as such because that was such a disgusting joke but that’s all we remember it for. But before that Marge being mugged, her agorophobia and her family helping her was so amazingly done in my opinion, managing to balance seriousness and humor that only classic Simpsons could do so well. I feel like these days we’re finally getting some good character-based episodes without the need to throw in Family Guy-esque shock value humor. I’m thinking of Pixelated and Afraid, Lisa’s Belly and A Mid-Childhood Night’s Dream. I rank those as great as season 2 episodes like Lisa’s Substitute, where the humor wasn’t laugh out loud but the emotional moments were there.
My only hangup with your assessment is that lots of the greatest emotional episodes of the show’s past WERE laugh-out loud funny. “Substitute,” “I Married Marge,” “Mother Simpson,” and so many others were just astounding in their ability to have those heartstring-puling moments without ever letting up on the comedy. As for me, I certainly would take an episode like “Cave Mom,” or any of the other recent episodes you listed, over almost any episode from the Al Jean era, but I just don’t find myself engaged enough in the stories they’re telling, and there’s usually very little humor in them. Certain fans DO find these episodes funny in addition to their stories, and others personally like episodes that lean more heavily on the drama and the emotion, and that’s all well and good, but I just find it more impressive when a comedy is able to have its cake and eat it too with balancing humor and emotion, as this show, and many others I love, have done so well in the past.
Lisa’s Substitute and I Married Marge were very dry in their approach to humour in my opinion, not quite laugh out loud funny but more exhale out the nose funny, but the emotional beats hit, just like those modern episodes I mentioned,. I know this is all subjective. I’m just glad we can all have this argument nowadays! We’ve had a lot of stinkers prior to the recent seasons
I find my issue with simpsons these days is that when they tell a joke there’s just no pacing to it anymore. Bart and Milhouse break a museum thing happens in half a second and then next scene.
This would have been a scene in the old days and now it’s just a visual gag told from marges perspective I guess, but then there are later scenes marge isn’t present for so it’s just inconsistent.
Homer wakes up from his nightmare and rushes out It’s a me I am the Wario wah and the scene changes right as hes finished. It’s jarring
And when did they start putting a sound effect on marges hair rubbing against door frames. I hate it.
You know I’m no art critic, but I know what I hate, and I don’t hate this.