Original release date: June 17, 2026
The premise: After Homer ruins couples date night, Marge gets drunk and ponders what life would be like if Homer were a different person, as seen through three dream sequences mostly parodying recent hit movies.
The reaction: The first Disney+ special episode “O C’mon All Ye Faithful” tricked me into thinking that these streaming-only releases would be at least somewhat unique in some form or fashion from “normal” episodes, but as we would see going forward with “The Past and the Furious,” “Yellow Planet,” and now this, I really don’t get what the point of these “Disney+ Special Presentations” are. Surely no one is holding onto their Disney+ subscriptions solely because of these streaming-locked episodes? Plus the newest seasons of the show ultimately end up on Disney+ anyway, so what’s the sense in putting these out as specials if they would’ve ended up on the service anyway as regular episodes in a season? I just don’t understand it. Anyway, this is a trilogy episode blown up to double-length for reasons I haven’t the foggiest as to why. A drunken Marge wishes Homer could be something other than the obnoxious, inconsiderate dope that he is, and has three separate fantasies of alternate versions of Homer, or rather, two movie parodies and one sort-of historical flashback. Segment one is Homer in Top Gun, the renegade maverick who is forced to come down to Earth and open his feelings up to hired therapist Marge. Segment three is Homer in Joker, a societal dreg who loses his mind after being pushed too far past to the brink thanks to his hero, late night host Krusty the Clown. And then in jail he meets Marge-ly Quinn, so we mix in a bit of the smash hit sequel Folie a Deux. Both of these segments are terrible. It’s standard procedure with these movie parodies where they stick to the most obvious jokes (Tom Cruise is short! The foreign adversary in Maverick is non-specific! Batman can’t appear in the Joker movies!”) Plus Homer-Joker falls down the famous stairs from the movie, then we see it played again on Krusty’s show, then he falls down some other stairs. Scintillating commentary. That movie did have stairs in it! Segment two is by default the best section, depicting a 60s Mad Men-esque world of ad man Homer, miserable in his post-war rat race life until he meets free-spirited Marge bartending a party, inviting him into her carefree, off-the-beaten-path lifestyle. There’s some minimal lip service paid to the existential ennui and enormous psychological burden men carried after WWII returning to “normal” lives, but it really doesn’t amount to anything, and feel cribbed from other source material that can actually dig into the matter, like Mad Men. But moreover, I really don’t understand how these three stories are related to each other, and what Marge is even processing. She wishes Homer were brave like Maverick, responsible like 60s Homer, and always smiling like Homer/Joker, but none of these character traits stand in contrast to Homer’s bad behavior in the episode, except “responsible,” I guess. It really just feels like they wanted to do their parodies of Top Gun: Maverick and Joker, and then couldn’t come up with a third movie, so they whipped up some Mad Men shit and called it a day. I remember always finding it hard to do write-ups on trilogy episodes since they are what they are and there’s so little to really dissect about them. They read as such lazy efforts to me, as the parodies are always skin-deep, and they never attempt anything inventive playing off the source material. Apparently the next two Disney+ specials are going to be parodies of The Talented Mr. Ripley and Black Mirror. Alright, I can’t wait!!!
Two items of note:
– The opening title sequence is interrupted in the grocery store as Marge sees a peculiar bottle of soda with an omega symbol on it. From there, she enters a trippy bizarre alternate reality grocery store, before reality phases into live action, as a man in a Otto suit builds an artistic representation of a couch gag. This sequence was done by Meow Wolf, an artistic production company, and the animated segment is a reference to their long-running Las Vegas installation Omega Mart, which I’ve wanted to go to for many, many years now. I guess I can’t help but respect it for being such an insular reference to something so specific (Matt Selman is apparently a big fan of Omega Mart), and the Meow Wolf Otto section is genuinely pretty cool. As we’ve seen over many years, the times the show has farmed out couch gags to fans or guest artists, they always end up pretty interesting. And then the episode starts and my interest starts to plummet. Can’t we make The Simpsons public domain so fans can just make crazy shit out of it themselves?
– The fantasy sequences try to use some more “painterly” backgrounds, but they all come off looking like bad Photoshop filters. There are a couple shots that look alright, most of which coming from the second segment, but most of it comes off as incredibly half-baked. However, credit where it’s due, there is an actually wonderful sequence in the 60s segment where it gets very stylized as Homer and Marge hit the town, with them jumping through different colored locations in a very caricatured look. It’s a very fun piece of work on its own, I only wish it actually meant something in the grand scheme of the story.
And one more thing:
Somehow, Charlie Sweatpants returned! After lying dormant for five years, Dead Homers has risen from the grave, and I couldn’t be more pleased by his return. He’s slowly but surely getting back into the blogging groove, and I await to see what he’s got cooked up. He’s also been working on a book about the American Revolution, which I’m very intrigued by. Go check it out!
Me Blog Write Good 
Man, these Disney+ specials are just making my depression worse than it already was.
Good to see Dead Homers is apparently back though. That was unexpected but a pleasant surprise nonetheless. If only it were enough to rid me of my depression.
Would anyone object if I said this is the most mediocre Simpsons episode?
It’s nicer than what I thought of this episode where in terms of the ones referred to as the 800th, I thought it was just as bad as the Skinner one and I really hated that one.
The “D’ohker” segment felt like it was at an unusual framerate or something. Very offputting in a way I don’t think was intentional.
The Top Gun segment was really poor in comparison to Family Guy’s recent-ish attempt, though it pains me to make the comparison (and their Top Gun parody wasn’t good either). I’ve been laid up recovering from surgery and so wanted a show to binge; Family Guy has surprised me a couple of times each season with a genuine laugh, which is a better batting average than The Simpsons these days. It helps that it was never really good to begin with so the quality feels more consistent and I’m less disappointed by an awful episode than I might otherwise be.
Anyways, would highly recommend visiting Meow Wolf if one of their sites is close to you. It’s a lot of fun!
Yeah, the Top Gun parody really did feel like something I’d expect from FG’s own crappy anthology episodes in terms of how terrible and ‘meta’ the dialogue was. The overall vibe I get from the episode like they wanted to outdo them when they learned they were doing THREE anthologies in a single season and wanted to try and outdo them.
And I too though FG’s own Fat Gun was pretty bad as it was essentially an entire anthology segment stretched out to a whole episode when there’s a reason why they’re normally kept at 7 minutes!
The problem with the public domain these days is that the first instinct is to make a schlocky horror film. Although I think once the initial cash grabs die down people who have had enough time to marinate their ideas can show off their ideas.
I feel like the impetus for the Joker set was the writers laughing at the idea of someone falling down the stairs and wanting to use the joke. So they used it again and again.
Honestly, I think the Joker bit exists because the writers are the type of people who think Arthur Fleck is a sigma masculine badass, or something. Because why wouldn’t Marge want her husband to be more like a depressed murderer?
I’m basing that off that terrible Breaking Bad reference they did years ago, where Homer screams “I AM THE DANGER!” and Marge swoons for him, as though that isn’t the exact opposite of what happens in the show.
idk, I think it’s most likely the writers were like “hey what pop culture things can we plug our characters into this time,” since that’s much easier than writing original stories
I didn’t even realize this came out. Brilliant release strategy, Disney!
This wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be, had a few laughs with the Top Gun parody (especially the ending for therapist/wingman Marge.) It probably could have been shortened to a regular 3-shorts anthology if they’d just had him fall down stairs once. 2/5 not the best or the worst, but am unlikely to watch again.
(side note: I wish one of the fantasy Homer’s had been chubby at least, 50’s alcoholic Homer could still have worked if he was bigger. I enjoy chubby men and I thought maybe Marge did, too.)