778/779. O C’mon All Ye Faithful

Original release date: December 17, 2024

The premise: Illusionist Derren Brown comes to Springfield to trick the town into regaining its Christmas cheer, which is kicked into overdrive when a hypnotized Homer believes he’s Santa Claus. Meanwhile, Ned has a crisis of faith when he renounces his belief in God.

The reaction: Seven years after their first attempt at a double-length episode with “The Great Phatsby” (holy fuck was it really that long ago?), the show takes another go at it, this time with a Christmas special exclusive to Disney+, dropping thirty-five years after the series premiere “Simpsons Roasting on an Open Fire.” It’s a comparison I won’t dwell on, but the first episode of this series really set the stage perfectly for what was to come, presenting a show that would have fun subverting expectations and lampooning tired storytelling tropes, but still give you an emotional story with believable characters. Homer bringing home the perfect Christmas gift completely by accident was a fitting conclusion for our new protagonist, dim and down-on-his-luck, but someone who still managed to make a holiday miracle happen nonetheless. This new special is written by Carolyn Omine, who has gotten a fair amount of praise for recent outings like “The Way of the Dog” and particularly “A Mid-Childhood’s Nice Dream,” episodes that wear their hearts on their sleeves and told very introspective, emotional stories, sometimes at the expense of humor. The latter half of this special dealing with Ned’s faith is certainly in that storytelling mold, and parts of it actually were a little interesting, but like my previous critiques of those past Omine episodes and others, it got a little too saccharine and sweet for my tastes. But let’s set the stage to start off. Derren Brown, a British magician I’m not familiar with, performs a giant social experiment in Springfield, making Mayor Quimby believe the town has won an award for Most Festive Town in America, forcing him to put up decorations everywhere to raise everybody’s spirits. Separately, Brown targets Homer, who is stuck in a mental spiral believing he’s a terrible gift giver, and hypnotizes him into believing otherwise. Unfortunately, Homer interprets this as believing he’s the one and only Santa Claus, and eventually everybody in town, young and old, rallies behind him, thinking he’s the real Santa. For some reason? We see Homer perform one “miracle” in presenting Smithers with a thimble to give to Mr. Burns, which was actually a beloved childhood toy of his. Then we see children swarming him, giving him letters of what they want, as Homer is basically in the first gear of Tim Allen’s transformation from The Santa Clause, wearing a red jacket and with his beard now a fuzzy white. Then we see that everyone actually believes Homer is Santa. But what’s the deal here? They try and make a joke about it later when Derren explains that mob mentality made everyone see Homer as a cult-like figure (leading directly into Ned’s crisis of faith moment), but why is that exactly? We never see Homer giving gifts, or spreading cheer, or doing anything worthy of the Santa distinction outside the moment with Smithers. This is a problem that’s plagued this show for a while now, where the plot quickly chugs along through story beats regardless if they’ve set up why characters are acting and reacting in certain ways. With double the runtime, you’d think there’d be more effort to have this story make sense, but I guess not. Once Homer’s broken out of his spell, he decides he can still spread cheer as Santa anyway, with Ralph as his helper elf, building his own toys and attempting to deliver them himself. When that proves to be a bust, he ultimately vows to settle on creating a good Christmas for his family. The thrust of this story kind of gets lost when the Flanders plot takes over the special, with it feeling kind of like an aimless detour when we cut back to Homer and Ralph. We don’t actually see Homer make good on his promise (unless you count getting Marge the “Sexy Sudoku” book he previously rejected in the beginning of the special,) so the plot felt like it just kind of petered out. I guess we also had him magically give Derren Brown a gift based on information there’s no way he would’ve known about, just like Smithers and Burns, but it turns out it was just a mistake. Does that count as subversive? I dunno. Not really. The resolution with Ralph just feels too sugary sweet for me to keep down (“I’m different ’cause the time I spended with you!” “Awww, I’m different too.”)

The bigger storyline of the special is Ned Flanders renouncing his faith; at the town hall meeting where Derren describes the town’s delusion over a mythical figure who’s not real, the comparison becomes too great for Ned to ignore, resulting in him rejecting God. It all feels incredibly sudden, but during a rooftop discussion with Marge, he explains that these feelings have been brewing for a good long while. What just and loving God would take away two wives from such a devoutly religious man, after all? This scene is actually genuinely affecting, as Ned explains his two rituals he created after both his wives passed: leaving notes on his bathroom mirror for Maude every morning, and continuing to randomly text things to Edna’s number. This sweet attachment to the past was sadly shattered when Ned receives a “Ha!” text back, believing it to be Edna responding, but a second “Ha!” sadly reveals that her number was actually re-assigned to Nelson (wow, an actually clever and affecting re-appropriation of two catchphrases! Impressive!) Unfortunately, this loss of faith based upon incredible personal loss is never brought up against after this point. I understand that conversations about dead loved ones isn’t exactly the funnest ground to make jokes around, but if you’re going to write this story about a man grappling with his beliefs after suffering so much himself, you might as well dig into it as far as you can go. After this, it feels like we get sidetracked by other tertiary related business, some of which is fun, to be fair. Lisa exposing Rod and Todd to a toy catalog turns them into excitable, almost rabid secularists, reminding me of their sugar-fueled mania from “Homer Loves Flanders.” But what are their thoughts on losing two mothers? Again, I understand this is depressing shit, but I believe it can be handled in a way that feels emotionally true and could still be amusing. All these years later and I’m still bitter about that episode that opened with Todd being sad that he couldn’t remember his mother’s face, and the writers proceeding to do fuck all with that incredibly emotionally rich idea, in one of the worst episodes of the entire series. But whatever, that’s neither here nor there. Marge finds herself incredibly worried for Ned, wanting him to convert back as quickly as possible, calling in the kids to help move things in the right direction. It’d be interesting to see this episode examine her faith, why she believes what she believes and why Ned should too, but we don’t really get any of that. Her dogged insistence that Ned stop his foolish secular talk and get back to worshipping the right God just ended up reminding me of her worst moments of barely tolerating her daughter’s Buddhism (which we get a little taste of towards the end of this special.) But in the end, Ned is reborn thanks to an underwater bathysphere ride with Professor Frink, as he exposes him to the absolute beauty of nature (“I think that God is revealed in the orderly harmony of nature.”) This section of Ned being brought to tears by a glowing aquatic creature that Frink laboriously sets up, and him rising to the water’s surface in a plow yoke, tying back a Buddhist story Lisa tells about the incredibleness of the statical unlikeliness of our very existence, is the stuff that works least for me. It’s literally the type of stuff this show would make fun of in its heyday. I’m on board for an introspective story about Ned and his fragile state of being, his trying to rationalize a benevolent almighty creator who is still responsible for so much suffering, but I still need this shit to be funny. Or at the very least interesting. Again, tying Ned’s feelings back to those of his children’s, or of Marge’s, understanding their perspectives, would have made this feel like a more personal story, but throwing Professor Frink in at the last minute was an odd choice. Even the revelation that the whole scenario was set up be Derren Brown to “help” Ned see the light isn’t enough to cut through the treacle, especially since he only did it to placate Marge’s plea to him to do something. So all in all, this was a mildly sweet special that breached some interesting territory, but as usual with this show, it seemed content to skate by digging into specifics with our characters in favor of generalities about the subject. I want these characters to talk more about their lives and their perspectives! Two days ago, we got an episode that was seemingly about the frayed relationship between Homer, Marge and Patty & Selma, but that seemed like it barely breached that subject either. If this special had more scenes like Marge and Ned on the roof, they might have been cooking with a little bit of gas. Ah well.

I’d say happy holidays and a happy new year, as I assumed this was the show’s big 2024 sign-off, but I just saw there’s actually going to be new episodes for the next two Sundays, so I guess we’ll keep plowing forward then!