Original airdate: April 21, 2024
The premise: When anonymous Moe’s patron Larry dies at his bar stool, Homer, Lenny, Carl, and Moe feel guilty that they barely knew the guy, and to make things right, they go on a road trip to scatter his ashes at his beloved Serenity Falls.
The reaction: The barflies Larry and Sam are very (very) little-known characters from the classic era, basically background extras thrown into the other empty seats at Moe’s to fill in the setting. They’ve maybe had two or three lines between them in the entire series, and we only know their names thanks to the Mount Lushmore gag from “Fear of Flying” where we see everybody’s labeled caricatures on the wall of Moe’s. So if a fictional character that was barely even a character dies in the woods, does anybody care? That’s kind of an interesting question. It’s a similar conceit that “Uncut Femmes” tried to tackle, taking a character who was relatively anonymous to our main cast, and showing they have a greater internal life than they thought. Here, the Moe’s gang have to confront the fact that they’ve barely known this poor guy they’ve been around for years now, and now he’s dead. “We spent a million hours with this guy, but he never felt like one of us,” Homer reflects. Unfortunately, these ruminations don’t last long, as the episode derails past the halfway point as Homer accidentally discovers a bunch of sapphires alongside Larry’s ashes in his urn. Concluding that their departed “friend” was a jewel smuggler, Moe convinces him to keep it a secret from Lenny and Carl so they can split the earnings between them. But then they’re figured out, and a cop somehow tracks them down and “arrests” them, but he’s actually working for Fat Tony and he’s gonna take ’em out… like, why on Earth did they take things in this direction? Larry being a criminal doesn’t mean anything. The Moe’s gang devolving into squabbling is supposed to stand in contrast with the high regard Larry held them in, as evidenced by his mother’s eulogy, but it doesn’t feel like it gels together. This could have been a great opportunity to do a straight, honest story with these four characters talking about their feelings about each other, and why they never opened themselves up to this poor guy who might as well have been wallpaper in their lives. There’s one interesting scene where they talk about their conflicting views on the afterlife, but immediately after that is when Homer discovers the sapphires and it’s all downhill. The episode also ends with some of the most annoyingly on-the-nose dialogue this show has given us in a while (“This whole stupid trip where we were driven apart, and then came back together with a much deeper bond, was for nothing!”) This one was a real bummer; the concept felt like it had real potential to be both a great meta joke in humanizing this absolute nobody of a background character, while also being very emotional in how we might turn a blind eye to these regular fixtures in our lives and what that says about us. Instead, most of that was entirely blown off in favor of random shenanigans for the back half. Kind of a shame.
Three items of note:
– According to the Simpsons Wiki, the only notable line from Larry is him catcalling Marge entering the bar at the ending of “Bart Gets Hit By a Car” (“A chick! Yow!!”) I understand why Sam is never mentioned, but it is a little weird, since the two of them are pretty synonymous as being those two random guys in the background at Moe’s to me. He also actually got a real, honest-to-God exchange with Homer in “Lisa the Greek” that I forgot was him (“What you got riding on this game?” “My daughter.” “What a gambler!”)
– This episode unavoidably reminded me of the King of the Hill episode where Hank is tasked to flush his father’s ashes down the toilet supposedly once used by General Patton. Granted, it’s a much different situation, as the deceased was a fully fleshed out character we all knew very well versus Larry the blank slate, but by the end of the episode, it felt like the journey was actually about something, and we see how Hank and his friends were emotionally affected by it. Here, it all just feels like empty, going through the motions storytelling, propped up by the aforementioned on-the-nose dialogue, as well as a weird musical interlude with lyrics just hammering the point home about how Larry was lonely and excluded. Why not have the characters just talk about how they’re feeling? Why does the dialogue have to feel so obvious and manufactured?
– Over the end credits, we get a series of frame grabs from the episode set to violin music. Is this supposed to be a reference to something? I have no idea.
Me Blog Write Good 
All I’m asking for is sincerity. Like, really, I am. It probably doesn’t seem that way, because I make plenty of snarky comments about episodes that seem to come from a genuine, human place, but that genuine, human starting point isn’t the problem. It’s the execution being so inhuman and formulaic. Maybe one writer or show runner is really passionate about a given episode, but that almost never comes through in the final result. It feels like everyone else in the writer’s room just sighs and reluctantly executes on those passionate ideas in the most milquetoast, lowest effort way possible. If only 10% of the people who contribute to something are sincerely trying to express something, 90% of them aren’t, and what comes out feels that 90% insincere.
This episode epitomizes it. What a dynamite premise! There’s so much potential for something full of awkward pathos. Here we have people who normally live in stasis (metaphorically and literally, I suppose) who suffer loss, but have no urgent stakes in what happens next, and we just spend half an hour watching them engage with how this loss shines a spotlight on unspoken truths about life. People you think you know have more going on than you realize. People you take for granted won’t always be around. The relationships you still have probably resemble the one you lost in some way, but how much? What do you do when you have to confront these things? And of our cast, how will each of their reactions differ? This is genuinely compelling stuff, and it can become even more compelling when told in the context of characters as archetypical and familiar as The Simpsons cast, because the way each archetype reacts can comment on what that archetype represents. I bet the original person who pitched this idea saw similar potential in that introspective, quiet, human downtime, and sincerely wanted to explore these topics as a writer.
And then no one else has any connection to this story idea, and has no idea what to do with it, so they just scream “jewel smuggling! Fat Tony!” and call act three a wrap. Then the person writing it down has no investment either, and monotonously writes expository filler dialogue to get the plot across in the easiest way possible. Who cares if this sacrifices introspection, downtime and character work? That’s not a requirement to get a C+ grade on the TV Screenwriting rubric! The original writer is still in the room and is excited the story is getting made, but most of the work is being done by that passionless 90%. And their work is good enough for them! So what ends up on screen feels like mediocre, generic product, perfectly inoffensive to consume, but with all the vital humanity squeezed out.
That’s why I tend not to like these episodes.
That’s pretty much it. Like, you got a nobody in Larry who was essentially set filler in the old days they decided to ax off because they hadn’t drawn him in ages and figured it would make for an interesting story of how the established characters regarded background characters and also their standing in the universe, but no; you gotta throw in a wacky story somewhere ‘cuz you are afraid of coming off like a Hallmark Channel movie despite the fact that a good portion of Simpsons episodes these days try to do that anyway.
Honestly, there are examples where you might as well play it straight despite the times I sound like others, and this is one of them because after reading the premise I felt like they were just going to take it in a stupid direction as they themselves didn’t have the belief that a story about freaking *Larry* would be strong enough for three acts. Okay? Then have the story be instead about four people introspect their mortality and the banal task of doing an final favor of that background character and the comedy that follows of screwing it up.
But like you said, in the writer’s room, not everyone is in sync, so if one person has passion, others are checked out, so what sounds like a good idea may come off as eye-rolling so they just go “well, geez, that sounds lame, so why not throw in a diamond heist, and the mafia, and perhaps dinosaurs with lasers? Nah, the dinosaurs sound too far, even for us.”
The writers of the classic seasons could have taken this idea and turned it into something incredible, regardless if their intent was emotion or humor.
Sadly I feel like too much of the current staff is comprised of people whose writing style is far too influenced by 21st century cynical, jokey-jokey meta humor from years of watching modern adult cartoons or the last twenty five years of cable kids TV garbage. At this point no one on staff knows how to write natural dialog, because no one on TV talks like human beings anymore. Anyone see what The Goldbergs de-evolved into before they put it out of it’s misery? Characters saying exactly what they feel about what’s going on as if that’s funny in and of itself. Seriously, take a shot every time a character on that show says something along the lines of “I’m feeling such-and-such emotion due to your actions right now!” in an over the top way. You’d be dead by the end of a single episode.
Modern comedy writing is in the toilet and the Simpsons is such a great example because unlike other shows, it existed during a time where smart writing was king. Now modern writers clearly just grew up watching Spongebob Squarepants, and it really shows.
@Mike Russo If the writing isn’t what you’re describing, then it also suffers from acting like the same kind of sappy sitcom that the show would’ve mocked back in the day which I blame on Carolyn Omine considering that she was a writer on Full House (though it’s fair to say that Selman is also at fault as most of his episodes are exactly this). Episodes like these also tend to have a noticable of anything resembling jokes (whether they’re actually good or bad is a different story) and the characters acting like generic vessels devoid of any of their usual personalities and behave in whatever way the plot demands.
That’s essentially why I had no interest in watching this episode or either of the previous two because they sounded like the same trite that made me give up regularly watching the show more than a year ago.
I wouldn’t say that The Simpsons existed during a time where smart writing was king. Matt Groening hated what was on TV at the time and felt like The Simpsons could be the alternative to that. Most sitcoms at the time didn’t have the quality of The Simpsons, because it went out of its way to do things that most sitcoms weren’t. You could argue that The Simpsons directly influenced the quality of the average sitcom after that, because people realized that there was an audience for a show like that.
What’s happening now is that The Simpsons is part of a world that includes its children and grandchildren, maybe even great-grandchildren. And it has no idea how to be what it was back in the day, or even twenty years ago, so it just turned into everything else on TV. Great television is still being made, but all The Simpsons can do is admire it instead of learn from it and it will be given a pass because it’s been on for such a long time.
I do think the show was starting to turn the corner with this co-runner system, because last year, everyone was talking about how The Simpsons are back. And it seemed like people were genuinely enjoying the new episodes again. Then Carolyn Omine stopped being a co-runner and now, I wouldn’t be surprised if the show just returns to the state it was in a couple years ago.
I honestly didn’t really see any improvement with the show when was co-running. If anything, she played a part in creating the aforementioned flaws that’ve already been pointed like the crappy expository dialogue or the constant feeling of being a lame Hallmark movie.
“Modern comedy writing is in the toilet” if your only frame of reference is kids’ TV and adult animated sitcoms.
Hi! Never posted before, but I would just like to add my two cents, for what’s its worth. Maybe all of this has been said before, if so, I apologize. I just feel like those associated with the show just don’t care. They have the huge Disney deal, so they’re golden. They’re going to keep getting paid, so why put in effort? The writing is lazy. People are going to keep watching. Not one of these shows are memorable. They all blend in together. I really can’t find anything really meaningful since the early years. I really think, if they want to go on, they need to take the focus off the main characters.
Some voice actors are just too old, and the voices no longer match the person. If the character was aging, then fine, but that’s not happening. Maybe focus on Bart and Lisa when they’re older and have to deal with their kids. Bart, with a little Bart could be funny, how he would react to having a disruptive child as he once was. Something, anything. The show needs to grow. I just don’t think they care.
just my opinion.
The crazy thing is, as lifeless as these current episodes tend to be, it feels like the people in charge care far, far more about what they’re making than they did 10 years ago. Seriously, if you want to see the epitome of going through the motions, try to watch an average episode from the mid-20s Simpsons seasons. At least Season 35 has some lively animation and some decent episode concepts.
Thats hilarious. The show is so out of ideas theyre doing a hidden emotional depth to Larry the barfly episode. If it was 1997 and someone told me the show would still be on the air 700 episodes later, then yeah, i wouldve predicted something like that happening.
On the plus side, this season is short because of the WGA strikes. And possibly next season too.
It also says a lot about how people are writing commentaries about the death of an incidental like Larry, yet fail to even account for the fact that the biggest piece of dialogue he ever spoke was, “Hey, this stupid machine took my money!” from Simpson Tide.
To be fair, it was cut from syndication so I get why it’s forgotten.
Hi! My name is Cassie, and I’m a reporter for Yahoo Entertainment.
I’m doing a piece on Larry the Bar Fly’s death, and I was wondering if you would be interested as providing some insight/a few quotes for the piece?
If so, I’d love to email you over some questions! Is there a way I can get in contact with you?
Thanks very much!
-Cassie.
Now that I have had time to let this stew, I don’t hate the idea a lot, I just hate the execution. Larry is found dead *days* after a heart attack (and it’s not the first time Moe disregarded a human life; he was going to put a health inspector in the dumpster), and they just forget Sam even exists (there’s a joke about Barney out in some impoverished village building a well that explains his absence), and an episode to explore him naturally becomes a generic “guys dont get along” beat and the mob gers tossed in.
As someone who struggles with depression and isolation, seeing people who actually have social lives and friend circles can be difficult; as such, the idea of *being* Larry is miserable. Having no one around you and being forced to develop parasocial relationships is a nightmare concept for someone with mental health struggles. None of those guys truly cared about him. They begrudgingly took the responsibility and only showed interest when secondhand compensation was involved.
Obviously, the criminal aspect removes some sympathy but from a writing perspective that felt more like a random complication they talked on for the heck of it.