787. Abe League Of Their Moe

Original airdate: April 27, 2025

The premise: Abe and Moe form an unlikely friendship as the only two people in town who still care about baseball. With their powers combine, they manage to convince an up-and-coming superstar from Macedonia to play for the Springfield Isotopes, completely reinvigorating the sport.

The reaction: When you’re fast approaching your 800th script, I guess a serviceable idea for new episode ideas is to pull two character names out of a hat and see what they could be up to. I can’t even think of an exchange of dialogue Abe and Moe have had with each other. Surely it must have happened at some point, right? It’s a veritable ghost town at Isotopes Field, where sole spectators Abe and Moe strike up a kinship over their love of the game, ultimately admitting they’re thrilled to finally have one friend. It’s kind of weird that, outside of one or two quick jokes, there’s no mention of Homer being their commonality. Maybe they could bond over their shared situation of being neglected and cast aside by Homer or something. There’s just not a lot specific to their relationship. Anyway, when the two discover Macedonian superstar Aeropos Walkov is looking to transfer to the American leagues, Moe utilizes his fluent Macedonian tongue to craft a personal video making Springfield’s case, enchanting Walkov to join the ‘Topes, making Moe his translator. Interest in baseball in Springfield explodes during this new season, which is thrilling for Abe at first, but he quickly finds himself disillusioned as the stadiums get bigger, the sponsorships get more egregious, and the sport he loved starts to fade more and more. The episode opened with li’l Abe attending a game with his grandfather, something he’s thrilled to finally get the chance to do with his grandson Bart, so there’s a little something here to Abe’s story, at least. As we were nearing the end of act two, it felt weird that this was what it all seemed like it was leading up to, Abe thinking Moe sold out and lost the love of the game, and the two get into a big fight. Yeah, crass commercialism in major league sports has been a thing for many decades now, is that what we’re rallying against here? Then we immediately pivot as Moe discovers Walkov has been engaging in online betting on his own team, inspired by the rampant amount of sports betting that’s been allowed to advertise during sporting events for the past few years. I get that this is also part of advertising, but promoting Coke or a new Hyundai is a lot different than tempting gambling addicts while watching baseball. This is also when I realized they were doing their take on the Shohei Ohtani scandal, where it was revealed that his interpreter was the one betting for him. Moe of course wants this scandal swept under the rug to hold onto his power, mis-translating Walkov as he attempts to come clean. But then Moe sees Bart, who has been cripplingly addicted to online gambling, inspired by his hero, I guess? We see he’s a fan of Walkov, but wasn’t inspired to gamble because of him. I guess it’s supposed to be that baseball has entirely been tainted by this new scourge allowed to run rampant. Moe is mortified, for some reason (“Bart? Betting?! No! He’s just a sweet innocent kid, just like Walkov, and I’ve ruined them both!”) So, a couple things here. How is this Moe’s fault? We never see that Moe had anything to do with signing sponsorship deals, selling out the stadium, persuading Walkov into doing anything he didn’t want, nothing like that. It could’ve been easy to show it, have Moe use his translator powers for ill and purposefully skew the truth to Walkov for his own gains. On top of this, read that line back. Moe the amoral gargoyle inexplicably cares about Bart Simpson’s innocence? I know we’re decades away from my preferred characterization of Moe (hideous, selfish reprobate), but this makes no sense whatsoever, except this is a Matt Selman-produced show, so our ending moralization needs to be as heavy-handed as possible, regardless of character motivation or logic. So Moe gives a big speech shaming everyone for what they’ve done to their beloved sport, Walkov leaves Springfield, and that’s that. I’ll at least give the episode its due, there actually were a few jokes I lightly chuckled at (Abe desperately trying to find somewhere for “only fans” was quite good), but there’s just nothing really of note here, it’s more of the same trope storytelling and emotional plot devices we’ve seen warmed over time and again.

Three items of note:
– As we passed the halfway mark, I realized that we haven’t seen Lisa at all in this episode, but they managed to crowbar her in a brief scene where she’s teaching the elders at the Retirement Castle how to format their emails before Moe pulls Abe out to tell him about the plot. There feel like there have been a bunch of episodes this season where either Bart or Lisa are absent for the majority of the running time, which is totally fine, it’s just interesting to see how they manage to wedge Cartwright and Smith in these episodes with at least one or two lines to have them earn their paychecks that week.
– This episode’s pretty stuffed to the gills with guest stars, mostly by a lot of sportscasters and commentators who I have no clue about. Amongst the video messages for Walkov are Chris Rock (who I’m kind of shocked had never been on the show before) representing the New York Mets (“Where else can you get a sandwich at three AM and a gun at the same bodega?”) and Danny Trejo in sunny SoCal (“I have 468 credits on my IMDB, so why don’t you just be like me and say ‘YESSSSS’ to any job in L.A.?!”) I thought those were two good bits, especially Trejo, who I have a big soft spot for.
– During the press conference at the end, I was shocked to see “Matt Lauer” ask a question (as “Senior Baseball Correspondent for BetBastards.com.”) He looks just like the actual disgraced daytime host, and he had a unique voice, so part of me was seriously wondering, did they actually get Lauer to do his voice here? Later, Abe shuts him down, insulting him as “Skinny Weinstein,” so they’re taking their deserved shots at him, but why is this Matt Lauer? Did he have any connection with baseball? I guess he’s there as the absolute last straw, as we see him try to placate the crowd with Moe’s bullshit translation, but I still don’t get why it’s specifically him.