784. The Last Man Expanding

Original airdate: April 6, 2025

The premise: A new weight loss drug takes Springfield by storm, with Marge feeling immense pressure and shame for being married to the only one left in town not to take the plunge into seemingly thin bliss.

The reaction: I feel like it’s been a bit since we’ve had one of these current event satire episodes, with the anti-obesity medication Ozempic being this week’s target, “cleverly” renamed “O-Thin-Quik.” As usual, the show is late to the party, as South Park did their ozempic Paramount+ special a year ago. I don’t remember much from it, except a ridiculous and lengthy Mad Max-esque ending sequence where the boys are driving a truck full of the drug, fending off attacks by desperate housewives and cereal mascots. But at least that’s more novel than this episode, which feels like it’s not even trying to say anything unique comedically with the premise. One of the only running jokes is everybody’s insistence that they lost weight the “right” way through diet and exercise. They do a “parody” of the famous ozempic commercial, doing their legally distinguishable riff on the “Oh-Oh-Oh-Ozempic” off of the Pilot song Magic, which I guess they were so proud of they play it in full over the credits. There’s just nothing here to bite into. The conclusion involves Luigi and his fellow unhealthy restauranteurs saving the day, desperate to get their customer base back, but it’s barely an element of the story. Early in the episode, a newly thin Wiggum tells everybody you need a doctor’s prescription for the drug, which could have been fodder for a sequence of Springfield residents faking conditions and ailments or something, but instead we just jump right to everybody in town being thin already, strutting their stuff to “Stayin’ Alive” (in 2025!!) Marge pressures Homer into taking the drug, but after learning about its myriad of potential side effects and the uncaring scruples of the corporation behind the drug (“The most enormous beta test of all time and you lab rats are paying us to be in it!”), she stops Homer from doing it. But examining the amorality of big pharma isn’t really focused on either, as immediately after this, Homer is kidnapped on Fat Tony, who plans to overfeed him and harvest his fat to plumpen the sagging jowls and deflating faces of the newly underweight population. In the end, Homer makes a big speech about how much he loves food and that’s it. Like I said, it just feels like there’s so little here to even talk about, it’s like the episode couldn’t even bother to get out of bed. It’s the Ozempic episode, it’ll write itself!

Three items of note:
– Marge, Patty & Selma are watching “The Opal Show” starring Opal, an Oprah Winfrey “parody” the show used a few times back in the 2000s. Looking up her Simpsons Wiki page, I was shocked to see she actually appeared in season 34’s “My Life as a Vlog,” which I don’t remember. If she did appear, it might have been just her, not her on her show though. Regardless, The Oprah Winfrey Show has been off the air since 2011, yet we get this big fat Oprah parody hitting every single ancient, dust-covered reference possible (a Steadman name-drop, her book endorsements, “You get a [blank], and you get a [blank]!”) The ending of the scene in particular was actually shocking; as the scene was going and it was clear they were doing all the Oprah greatest hits, I was thinking there’s no way they would do the “you get a car!” parody, but they went ahead and did it anyway. The episode of Oprah where she gave everybody a car is from 2004, over twenty years ago, and everybody made their jokes about it already. It’s almost like they were intentionally making every hacky Oprah joke in one scene, but what’s the point? It’s 2025, who is this for?
– Good to see Fat Tony back to his Fit Tony weight. I wonder if the writers even remember that they killed off Tony and this is technically a different character. Does it matter? No.
– Near the end of the episode, they make a joke where Sideshow Mel accidentally calls the drug “ozempic” before correcting himself to the joke “o-thin-quik” name. They’ve done jokes like this before where they’re doing a story about something specific they have a joke name for, and someone says the real name by accident. But why the hell not just make it ozempic? I’m not laughing my ass off at the incredibly clever joke name you gave it. Just call it ozempic. It can’t be out of fear of getting sued. It just comes off as dumb to me.

And the saga continues: This show has been long overdue for a renewal order, and boy oh boy did we get one this week. Disney has picked up FOUR additional seasons of The Simpsons, Family Guy, Bob’s Burgers and American Dad!, which is moving from TBS back to FOX. It’s a pretty huge order, but none of this is very surprising. In this current state of Hollywood where executives seem more petrified than ever to risk losing money on new ideas, we’ve seen an increased investment in “safer” projects, like things based on popular IP, or long-running successful series like the four aforementioned shows. For The Simpsons, this will bring the show up to season 40, which is absolutely insane, and ensures this blog will probably still be active through the end of the 2020s. Interestingly, the season orders have been reduced to 15 episodes each, which also feels like a new Hollywood trend of producing fewer episodes per season, so at the very least, it’ll be less stuff for me to sit through in the coming years. As I’ve said multiple times by now, I’ve long given up predicting when this show will finally come to an end, but there’s a sliver of a part of me that thinks maybe season 40 will be it. They won’t quite have hit 900 episodes, but 40’s a nice round number, Harry Shearer will be in his late 80s, and they can hopefully close out the series before any other major cast member leaves this mortal coil. But I wouldn’t be surprised whatsoever if it keeps going beyond that. I guess we’ll just have to wait and see…