Original airdate: December 15, 2024
The premise: Marge brings in help to resolve the longstanding feud between Homer and her sisters once and for all, via a new conflict mediation reality show hosted by Krusty’s no-nonsense aunt. When she determines that Marge is ultimately to blame, Homer, Patty and Selma try to give being civil with each other a shot, becoming fast friends.
The reaction: Is there really a lot to unpack regarding the Homer vs. Patty & Selma feud? Patty and Selma have always been overly critical of Homer’s many, many flaws, not seeing him as good enough for their precious baby sister, and Homer’s patience has understandably worn thin after so many years. Meanwhile, Marge is always stuck in the middle, hoping for some modicum of peace between these two tense parties every fateful family gathering. This episode (sort of) tries to repaint this dynamic for reasons that I’m not quite clear on. We start with the family doing an escape room for Patty & Selma’s birthday, which Homer purposefully sabotages, resulting in the two of them about to attack each other several times before Marge breaks them up. This was very bizarre to see, as the antagonism depicted between these three has always stayed in the realm of snide quips and rude jokes, but now they’re moments away from physically being at each other’s throats. In the episode, it doesn’t evolve any further beyond tackling or throwing cake at each other, but are they going to actually get into an actual fight? Marge is absolutely right to intervene if that’s the case. Or is she? After this latest disaster, Marge calls in the big guns: reality television, for them all to be on “The Problem is You” hosted by Krusty’s aunt Sadie Krustofski (voiced by Susie Essman), a tough-but-fair woman who examines interpersonal problems to find out just who is the guilty party. Aunt Sadie decides that Marge is to blame: by playing martyr all these years and keeping her husband and her sisters separated, she’s apparently kept them from squashing their beef and keeping them enemies. While Marge is devastated by this accusation, this idea plants itself in Homer, Patty and Selma’s minds, as they decide to hang out and see what happens, and they turn out to be best of friends; as they observe, their hateful back-and-forth insults are now re-perceived as friendly ribbing. Now, the episode ends with Marge exposing Sadie as a fraud, focused more on creating engaging television peddling easy conclusions than anything real or substantial. We’re not supposed to take this accusation of Marge being to blame as truth, so I feel like I shouldn’t even engage with that aspect of the episode. As racked with guilty as Marge is, the assessment of her responsibility really makes no sense based on everything we’ve seen with these characters throughout the series. Meanwhile, Homer, Patty & Selma awkwardly meet in secret, wanting to explore this new civil relationship they never thought was possible, without Marge knowing. At first it felt like this was going to be analogous to them “cheating” on Marge, but then when she finds out, nothing really changes after that. The point is that the three find themselves getting along great with Marge completely out of the picture. They go bowling, they go to the movies, they go to an amusement park… Those are generic things friends do, right? The problem is is that there’s nothing really specific to Patty and Selma in this. There’s not a whole lot of their classic era characterization to draw from, to be fair (smoking, boring vacation photos, being gross, etc.) I’d love to learn something, anything, about these secondary characters that would flesh them out a bit more. Maybe a secret interest of Patty and Selma’s could intrigue Homer, something that he never would have known about them if he’d actually gotten to know them better. Their obsession with escape rooms is kind of this, but that doesn’t get delved into much at all.
Ultimately their fast friendship really is only skin deep and meaningless, as on Susie’s big reunion special, Marge sits back and watches as the three of them’s bottled up annoyance with each other to explode and they’re back to being enemies again. In the end, it’s just another episode that says nothing, despite it being set up like it was going to take a look at a long-standing relationship. Homer and Patty & Selma’s animosity is inextricably tied to Marge, but with her removed from the equation, there’s just nothing there, at least nothing really explored here.
Three items of note:
– There’s a flat B-plot involving Krusty being confronted by his aunt for not making an effort to get along with his longtime crew. Like all showbiz big shots, he doesn’t know the names of anybody below the line, and has no interest in any of them before getting browbeaten by Sophie, bringing him to tears about his loneliness. He attempts to bond with Wayne the grip, who invites him to a house party he’s throwing, where Krusty has to deal with bizarre working class stuff like crawfish boils, above-ground pools, and riding a jury-rigged ATV. In the end, when Marge confronts Susie about her being full of shit, Krusty realizes that also means he doesn’t need to change and goes back to being an inattentive asshole to everybody lower on the totem pole than he. What a waste of time! Also his aunt is killed on set by a falling sign, which strangely really doesn’t matter at all.
– Homer allows his sisters-in-law into his most sacred of spaces, Moe’s, where Moe is absolutely stunned by these two goddesses entering his bar (“I’ve always dreamed of hooking up with twins! And one of them has zero interest in men?! I think I’m in love over here!”) Hey, remember Maya? Moe’s fiancee? Normally I wouldn’t give a shit that the show forgot about this stupid character, but later this production season, we’re supposed to get a Maya episode, and it’s written by Al Jean himself, so you’d think that somebody would have remembered this and maybe nixed this Moe joke. I certainly buy that Moe is a lecherous pervert who would still openly fantasize about other women even if he was engaged, but the whole Maya “storyline” is supposed to be softening for Moe. But it ultimately doesn’t matter. Marrying Comic Book Guy off hasn’t changed him one bit, I don’t expect any differently with Moe.
– One of the pet peeve powder kegs that explodes at the end involves Patty & Selma’s hatred that Homer only cuts his fingernails on one hand, which we see up close as he clinks his long nails against a water glass. We also see him cutting just one hand’s worth of nails earlier in the episode. Very, very rarely do we see fingernails on characters, and the only ones I can remember are painted nails on women. But seeing Homer’s stubby fingers with yellow nails on them for multiple scenes is very bizarre, especially when they appear and disappear from shot to shot depending if they’re needed.
Me Blog Write Good 
Another shit-tastic episode that only exists so online “news” sites can write click bait articles titled “After 36 Years, The Simpsons Reveals The Secret Reason Why Homer Doesn’t Like Marge’s Sisters”.
I don’t mean to sound rude but did you watch the episode? Can you tell me why you felt so negative towards it?
To quote myself from NHC:
Y’know, I’ve always wondered exactly what underpins the antipathy Patty and Selma have always had for Homer. Oh, sure, Homer can be loud. Obnoxious. Rude. A bit gross. Marge certainly could have done better. But that alone has never adequately explained the fervour of their contempt and this episode made me realise something. It occurred to me right at the end when their uneasy truce once again boiled over into open, undisguised hostility. My God, they’re similar, aren’t they? Their complaints are essentially identical – the specific details differ, but at the end of the day they find each other physically revolting. And loud. And obnoxious. And rude.
Huh.
It’s classic projection. Patty and Selma loathe themselves and they see themselves in Homer. So they hate what they see. They hated Marge marrying Homer because he reminds them of themselves. They wanted Marge to leave him or sometimes tried to set her up with someone more conventionally attractive and successful because they wanted her to do better than settle for someone like them. And jealously. Never underestimate the power of trying to live through someone else vicariously. I’ve seen this play out in real life in my own family. Two people who are so similar in the worst ways that they simply cannot co-habitate. It’s no one’s fault and nothing will change it.
Unless they change, of course, but ain’t nobody ever gonna change on this show!
Arguably, the biggest failing of the episode is that it chooses not to make this explicit. I think this could have been a stronger episode had Marge, in her anger, realised this and vented it to Sadie. Hell, perhaps she’s always been conscious of this and the reason she’s never tried to do anything about it is because doing so would mean openly admitting that ‘Homer and Her Sisters’ are similarly distasteful and objectionable but she loves them anyway! That would be kinda awks. But also compelling. Alas, I think the Krusty subplot was an unnecessary distraction despite the thematic connection (consequently shortchanging the A-plot), stopping a good episode from potentially becoming a great one.
If you couldn’t tell, I liked this episode. It was snappy, it was fun. Hell, it was occasionally funny (the Moe stuff had me in fits). It was certainly insightful, prompting me to think about this particular relationship in a new way. Also, golly, there was some fantastic animation in this – very expressive with some lovely recurring visual motifs. Two episodes into the new production run and the show is significantly livelier relative to the conspicuously underwritten, underdeveloped post-strike holdovers.
I love this take. Marge married her sisters, that’s genuinely really interesting! And it feels true to everything else in The Simpsons despite never being highlighted before. I really wish these episodes got a couple more rewrites before being shipped out, because this show gets so close to greatness sometimes only to miss the mark.
“I certainly buy that Moe’s an enormous lecherous pervert who would still openly fantasize about other women even if he was engaged, but the whole Maya “storyline” is supposed to be softening for Moe. But it ultimately doesn’t matter. Marrying Comic Book Guy off hasn’t changed him one bit, I don’t expect any differently with Moe.”
Jean and Selman episodes effectively exist in different universes. Selman, whose episodes characterise Moe much closer to his classic era self, chooses not to acknowledge Maya’s return. Jean, on the other hand, has written a sequel to The Wayz We Were airing at some point within the next 6-12 months.
That’s true and understandable for everyone who knows about it. It’s still a problem for the writers, though, because most viewers don’t know the difference between Jean episodes and Selman episodes. They just want to watch The Simpsons, a show they recognize and generally like the current season of. If you have to follow the production of episodes on No Homer’s to understand a decision, it’s alienating for 95% of the audience. That’s probably the best argument for not producing Jean and Selman episodes in the same season if they’re going to be this different.
Watching this episode, it hit me that this is perhaps the perfect metaphor as to the show’s inherent problem- after literally 35 YEARS (almost exactly, on the 17th), the show clearly knows it HAS to expand its boundaries and not just repeat the same plots over and over. To that end, I was genuinely engaged with this plot to an extent I hadn’t felt in YEARS… and then they decided to snap it all back to normal AGAIN. Really, after 3 and a half decades, why NOT shake up the status quo? Why NOT give a potential area of interest a try? Why NOT try to play it all for drama? I couldn’t help but think of the Always Sunny arc where Dennis finds out he has a kid- where not only did this get played out with just as much drama as comedy, but showed his struggle so realistic you legitimately weren’t sure if he WASN’T going to leave permanently. This, by comparison, was like if they just had him leave for 2 minutes and decide to come back because “the script said so”. Sure, it’d work for the show, but it’s obvious SO MUCH MORE could be done there. It’s as if the show WANTS to break free and do something different, but is too scared to imagine the fan response, so they just did a basic outline and decided the rest would just be Member Berries once again.
I’ve said for a while that The Simpsons’ decades-long history would be more interesting if the status quo was allowed to change. I stand by that, but “interesting” doesn’t mean “better”. The signature writing flaws of post-classic Simpsons – weak humor, generic storylines – would still be there. It would just show up in more varied forms. It’s a band-aid solution, and I’ll take a band-aid, but I’d rather take something better.
With that in mind, I think this episode should have still reset, but handled it with more care. We started with an exaggeration from the status quo, so going back to it can still feel like progress. Homer and Marge’s sisters could go back to hating each other, but the increased hostility from the start of the show has defused and it’s clear both parties understand each other a bit better for the time they shared. I think all the writers had to do was make that a bit clearer and this ending would have stuck the landing. Like many classic episodes, returning to the status quo would itself feel meaningful.
That’s really what I want to see at the end of the day. The Simpsons staying The Simpsons, but with good writing again.
Haven’t watched this episode nor do I plan to, but this reminds me of that stepbrother episode from a few seasons ago where despite how well received it was, I didn’t find any reason to care because I just knew things were gonna reset by the end of the episode. And they did in one of the laziest ways possible where it’s all off screen!
But at least that episode had a slightly more interesting subplot versus this one where the subplot is as uneventful as the main from the sounds of it.
This feels like the most Patty & Selma a season has had in forever. Is it just me? I thought they’d been semi-retired because of how tough their voices were but they keep showing up this year, so I guess not. Honestly, I’m down for it. They got a lot of development in the classic era only to be consistently neglected afterwards, so if the current show can tap into that it might actually make for some good episodes.
Character-focused stories are the most viable future for The Simpsons, if you ask me. They only have two challenges to overcome: writing the cast as people making in-character decisions instead of hamfisted joke/exposition machines, and making the characters & stories feel specific to these people instead of vague, generic outlines. These last few seasons have improved quite a lot on that first point, so the second one is the main issue I hope to see worked on.
On a similar note, I’ve seen it be mentioned how it feels like we don’t really see much of Barney anymore either. His appearance in Simpsons Wicked stood out because it feels like forever since I’ve last seen him (which is even more so than most since I stopped regularly watching every episode nearly two years ago so maybe there’s one or two appearances he’s made that I’ve not seen because those episode weren’t worth watching).
They’ve been downplaying his role in the series since Season 6, more or less. The DVD commentaries make it clear that he was an unpopular character with the writing staff.
This sounds like shit.
P.S. Happy 35th anniversary to The Simpsons.
Of those 35 years, only the first 8 are good.
I’d say the first 10 years were good, but only the first 8 were mostly consistent.
Everything past that has been hit or miss, though unfortunately more of the latter over the last 15+.
There are a few passable shows in season 9 but they’re mostly 3G and 4F holdovers.
By season 10, the show had pretty much completed its conversion into Zombie Simpsons.
Has Moe forgotten that Selma at least HAS been in his bar before, when Homer was trying to set her up with Barney back in season 2?