Original airdate: December 22, 2024
The premise: The Pin Pals (at least this newest incarnation) are on their way to a state championship in Capital City when their helicopter goes down on a snowy mountain, leaving them missing, presumed dead to everyone back home.The reaction: I feel like it’s been a while since we had an episode that came off as this absolutely pointless, and it’s a story about our beloved characters almost freezing to death on a goddamn mountain! We start out learning that the Pin Pals have become town-wide heroes for getting into the state championship, whose members now include Homer, Moe, Carl, Ned Flanders, and some guy named Fausto. This is now the third variation of this team that we’ve seen, as it seems Lenny and Barney have been booted from the roster since last time (although Barney is in the episode as their helicopter pilot. We see he has his own bowling ball with him, but makes no mention of being officially on the team or not.) And what’d poor Ned do to get booted off the Holy Rollers? It makes no difference. The team is flown to Capital City via helicopter, for some reason, and it ends up going down over what I assume is the Murderhorn, thousands of feet above the ground, basically dooming them all to die. Now, as this is almost the eight hundredth episode of this silly comedy program, I know that nobody’s really in danger or is going to die. So what’s the point of this story? It’s an incredibly thin Homer-Ned plot, and I mean really thin. When Ned takes it upon himself to carry an unconscious Fausto, Homer ponders internally about how generous he is. Then later he asks him to lead them in prayer. Then later when Fausto dies, they hug it out, and then they proceed to do some hilarious banter about the Wizard of Oz standing in front of their fallen friend’s dead deceased corpse. A guy just dropped fucking dead in front of them and nobody seems that freaked out about it. It’s all just so they can make what I assume is an Alive reference with Moe discussing the logistics of eating his corpse. Later, when everyone has collapsed in the snow, nearly at death’s door themselves, Homer jolts back to life thanks to smelling Marge’s cooking and manages to get his friends down the mountain himself, making him a town hero when he gets back. What am I to take from this? Did Homer learn to be selfless thanks to Ned? Not really, though I assume that was the intention. Despite having an enormous crisis of faith less than a week ago, Ned is fully back on the God train, much to Homer’s snickering at the beginning. Is the episode about Homer’s spiritual awakening in any way? No, not that either. It’s a story line with the highest stakes, but it doesn’t feel it at all, with the characters stuck on the mountain content to go from “funny” bit to “funny” bit until they almost die in the snow. With no clear emotional journey for anybody, the whole affair feels aimless and lacking in any impact whatsoever. Al Jean wrote this episode, and he’s been busy lately, penning last season’s “The Tell-Tale Pants” which I barely remember, and he’s got two scripts coming up next year, one of which will feature the stunning return of Moe’s possibly-still-fiancee Maya. The man has devoted most of his adult life to The Simpsons, and in its earliest years, was responsible for so many amazing moments in show history, indisputable facts of which he will always have my utmost respect. But that makes it all the more disheartening just how terrible so many of his recent solo scripts have been (“Daddicus Finch,” “Mothers and Other Strangers,” “The Many Saints of Springfield,” and now this). If No Homers can be treated as a sample size of the loyal fan base as it is now, Matt Selman and the episodes under his supervision are the new life breathed into this series, while Al Jean is like an anchor pulling it down every time one of his episodes comes around. I’m not in either man’s camp, but I certainly would be hard pressed to think of the last Al Jean-produced episode that I thought was new or notable, let alone one the man actually wrote himself.
Three items of note:
– I assumed that Fausto, being the one to seemingly die in the story (he’s revealed to be alive in a credits scene. Who could possibly care?), was created for this episode, and maybe some kind of parody of someone who dies in Alive or a similar-type mountain survival story, but he’s actually not a new character. He first appeared in season 18’s “The Wife Aquatic,” and according to the Simpsons wiki, he also was in last season’s “The Tipping Point.” It’s possible that he was just a stock character in a crowd shot, though. What an out-of-nowhere pull from the character library.
– Patty & Selma visit Marge to “comfort” her, telling her to get ready to be an eligible single woman real soon, and show her AI-generated pictures of Homer’s horrifically decaying corpse (“Some of these we had even before the crash.”) Remember last week when they and Homer were friends briefly? I guess you could say that Marge is out of her mind with worry and grief, but she barely reacts to her sisters showing her these pictures. But even Marge has her limits with Patty & Selma’s horrible treatment of her husband. In a similar scenario of Homer’s supposed death in “Mother Simpson,” showing up at her doorstep with a tombstone for her husband finally sets Marge off against her sisters (“Get out of here, you ghouls!”) But nowadays, who cares? They could put out their cigarettes in Homer’s eyes and Marge would just give a mildly discontent murmur.
– Speaking of “Mother Simpson,” Glenn Close returns for the seven millionth time to voice Mona. Al Jean must have an enormous chub for Glenn, huh? She’s always reappearing in his episodes. Here, Homer hallucinates his mother telling him to join her in the next life, which turns out to be Hell (“They are very hard on former left-wing radicals in the afterlife.”) Okay? It’s not explicitly saying Mona’s in Hell, since this is all from Homer’s slowly dying mind, but what’s the point of this scene? Homer’s mom lusting over Che Guevara and Machiavelli in the pit of eternal fire? I really think Al Jean was envious that “Mother Simpson” was done outside his tenure on the series, and he continuously has brought her back to create new wrinkles in the character, like a previous recent episode that he wrote where we learn that Homer knew since he was a teenager that his mother was alive, and that Mona popped by to see him when Bart was born and then disappeared forever. Also, in flashback, we see that she was always a bad mother, being more focused on eco-terrorism than caring for her own son. Great rewrite, Al! Thanks!
Me Blog Write Good 
Ha ha! That Homer guy sure loves food!
You know, it’s a shame that the best way we have to talk about these episodes is by the names of their showrunners. I actually have a lot of respect for Al Jean. I do. It would have been easiest for him to semi-retire like a lot of classic Simpsons guys (including his old writing partner Mike Reiss) and just consult on the show once a week while working less constantly on other things. He definitely would have enough money from producing classic episodes and his reputation would be sterling, we’d all love him. Instead he stuck it out as the main producer for multiple decades and the fanbase hates him for it. That kind of sucks, honestly.
And yet I can’t blame anyone for it. The episodes he’s worked on are terrible. Consistently so. When he’s always putting out this abysmal crap how else are we to refer to that trend than “Jean episodes”? I’ve certainly had choice words about those in the past. I’ll certainly have choice words about them again. It’s a shame the line between this fully deserved creative criticism and ragging on the man himself is so thin. It’s so easy for one to turn into the other.
But fuck me does he ever bring it upon himself, artistically. These shows are fucking horrible.
Writing “Lisa’s Sax” by himself gave him the confidence to do it on his own. Then when the chance came to leave Disney and return to The Simpsons, Mike didn’t take it, but Al did. He genuinely loves working on this show and it’s probably changed his life in ways we’ll never understand. He also realized that the show needed someone experienced to be in charge after Mike Scully left, and he was more than willing to take on the responsibility again.
The guy worked on the movie and continued to be showrunner at the same time. Most animated shows stop production entirely because of how much work goes into a movie, or they get new showrunners because episodes still have to be made (SpongeBob), but Al has been married to The Simpsons since day one. You would think he created the series, not Matt Groening. It’s been on the air for 36 seasons and there are only two (five and seven) that his name isn’t credited on. That’s insane.
If I could compare it to something, The Simpsons is like the WWE. Al Jean is Vince McMahon and Triple H/Nick Khan/the whole TKO regime is like Matt Selman and the co-runners. The new direction isn’t perfect, but it represents change that the organization desperately needed. When the old man comes back, you’re just reminded that the product has been stagnant for over twenty years and you know exactly why.
Unless Al Jean gets caught up in a scandal or dies, he’s going to continue working on The Simpsons, so every once in a while, you’ll continue getting episodes like these.
Well, every Al Jean episode is going to be dogwater. Man has this rigid belief that The Simpsons must abide by a specific template of “Homer is fat/here’s what was popular when we wrote the script 15 months ago/obligatory guest star” formula just kills the show dead, but Al absolutely refuses to leave. He’s gonna do this show ten years after he’s dead.
That said, Selman episodes like Bottle Episode tend to run the gambit, whereas you know a Jean episode is guaranteed to be shit.
Which are there more of now: Mona Lisa pun titles or The Man Who Knew Too Much puns? Even the episode’s name is a lazy, dull reference from before most viewers were born, why does it keep getting recycled?
Don’t forget “A Star Is Born”. How many times have they used that one now?
Still better than Singing In The Lane, right?
It’s been said a thousand times before but the charm of the Simpsons was a down on their luck family struggling to get by never managing to succeed no matter how hard they try (if they bothered to at all). And any success comes with its own nightmares.
Bart becomes the I didn’t do it kid and grows to hate the limelight.
Homer successfully gets his hand out of the toaster only for it to end up back in there again.
Homer forms a bowling league team that wins a tournament only for his boss to take all the credit and winnings.
But now in this modern era anything anyone in the family attempts they instantly become overnight sensations with no downside. Maybe one of them has a shitty attitude that brings everything back to status quo or maybe they just give up from boredom.
It’s unrelatable and tiring.
So when this episode opens with Homer’s barely recognizable bowling league team being celebrities, (getting the Micheal Jackson treatment for craps sake), I have already checked out.
And then the timing of the jokes is so weird. Moe’s phone rings and Bart is calling and Moe thinks its one of his pranks so he throws his phone away. And then it cuts to the family ringing more people trying to get hold of Homer with Marge looking out the window mournfully.
No the better joke would be to start with the family calling people etc, Bart manages to get through to Moe but he thinks its a prank and yells obscene things and then throws the phone.
Undercut the tragedy with comedy not the other way round. It feels weird the way they did it.
Also is Lisa a robot? She has two lines that make her sound unnatural:
‘Leave my family alone.’ Instead of the more emotional ‘leave us alone.’ Does she not in this moment see herself as part of her family? Does she now feel like the sole guardian of her worrying human unit?
‘Here’s the ending to your eulogy. Thank God for Homer Simpson.’ Not ‘my dad’? Is she that estranged from her father that she can only refer to him by his full name in public?
Meanwhile Bart proudly calls him his dad. Which feels wrong for Bart but his dad did just come back from the dead so he’s allowed to be caught up in his emotions briefly forgetting his disrespect for his old man.
It would be a character arc if this show was written competently.
In these Al Jean episodes I’ve noticed a writing pattern (as you do once you’ve seen literal hundreds of them) where the writers are putting in the work, but not on making a believable story or characters or original ideas. They’re putting in the work finding the 1000th variation on about fifty joke templates that comprise the entire show. They’re frying their brains trying to come up with the best new way to joke that Homer is fat instead of on anything interesting.
It’s like Al Jean has the writers play an extremely tired game of Mad Libs instead of actually writing good television, because that’s the sort of autopilot that happens when you’re running the same series for thirty years.
*35 years.