(originally aired November 18, 2001)
My word, I thought “The Parent Rap” was bad, but at least it had some semblance of a story with a beginning and end. This episode has a completely unrelated opening and ending, all completely out of nowhere, and a middle filled with a bunch of random elements that are both dumb and make no sense. It’s perhaps the messiest episode we’ve seen so far. Our opening features Bart digging a hole. Yep, that’s it. The family becomes increasingly worried about his behavior, then we get some bizarre Chinese satellite monitoring nonsense, and then it’s revealed that it was all a story Homer was telling at the bar (“Eventually, I become king of the Morlocks.”) Aside from the fact that none of what we just saw actually happened, this has got to be the strangest first act we’ve seen yet, but honestly, I was more interested in finding out why Bart was digging that hole than I was with anything that happened in the rest of the episode. How did they come up with this? And why did they think it was funny, or made any sense at all as a story Homer would tell? Three minutes in and I’m already annoyed.

Moe finds he’s lost his love for bartending and decides to take a sabbatical to his old college Swigmore University, and of course he leaves Homer in charge of the bar. Now, Moe attending bartending school works as a quick joke, but as it went on, it kind of bothered me more. I’m sure Moe never dreamed about being a bartender, and as such, he’s not a very good one. Instead he shows up at the college and is looked on as a valued alumni. Moe’s just some creepy sleazebag who opened his own shitty bar, now he’s some kind of campus hero. Moe’s old professor informs him that a renovation to his workplace may be in order. So Moe’s is torn down to make room for “m,” a post-post-modern club to cater to the most pretentious and pompous clientele. A joint that looks like it came with an incredibly high price tag, one I’m sure Moe had the funds to afford. Or wanted built in the first place. Right. Homer and the others feel out of sorts in these new surroundings, and eventually have a falling out with Moe. This leads Homer to open up his own bar in his garage, as at this point, he never goes to work anymore ever and can do such a thing.

After realizing he’s sold out, Moe goes to make amends with Homer, only to be surprised to find his makeshift bar. When he tells Homer that he can’t operate a bar in a residential area, he counters that it’s actually a hunting club, and when Moe informs him that all such clubs are required to actually go hunting, Homer insists he’s going to shoot a turkey the next day. So our ending involves Lisa and Moe trying to keep Homer from shooting a turkey. I have no idea how we got to this point. Maybe the writers felt like they wanted to do another Thanksgiving episode but couldn’t figure out a story around it, so they decided to cram it in here. There’s literally two minutes of the episode left and we’re completely off the rails with this random-ass ending. R.E.M. appears for some reason, and we get an incredibly forced attempt at a sentimental ending where Homer and Moe make up. The level of laziness has reached an all-time high with these last two episodes, it’s absolutely staggering. Perhaps once we wade through these Scully holdovers, the series will stabilize a little bit, but I’m not getting my hopes up.

Tidbits and Quotes
– “That’s odd. He’s outside, digging.” “Probably digging for drugs.” “There’s no drugs out there.” “No… of course not.” THIS IS LIKE THE THIRD FUCKING TIME THEY’VE DONE THIS JOKE. WRITERS, PLEASE STOP.
– I honestly don’t even know what to say about the hole plot. I’m almost curious to hear the commentary, but I don’t have the DVD set for this season. But I’m sure they don’t address it at all, or mention it briefly and laugh about how stupid it is.
– I like how Moe decides who runs his bar by way of a literal pissing contest (“Oh, don’t look so proud. That was wind-assisted.”) Also good is Homer’s lack of understanding of Moe’s business (“Hey, what are you doing? I gotta pay for that!” “No, Moe, you’ve got it all wrong. People buy beer from you.”)
– If I may do a quick compare and contrast, think back to the first act break of “Homer the Smithers,” which also featured Homer being left in charge of a job he has no experience in. In that episode, Homer is befuddled by his new responsibilities, and the one question he has time to ask Smithers, he doesn’t get an answer to: what to do in case of a fire? Then we see Burns’s office is on fire. Just his luck. In this episode, Moe is out the door two seconds before there’s a giant explosion. He goes back in to see the bar in ruins, and Homer very cavalierly says, “I thought you had to go.” In the days of old, misfortune and bad luck befall Homer, and he tries to sort it out in his own dim, stupid way. Nowadays, Homer causes his own messes, and either disregards them, or belittles those who call him out on it. Which of these two sounds better as our lovable protagonist?
– I like the saloon doors at Swigmore U, but the whole set piece still bothers me, like I said earlier. Also, having Moe’s professor kill himself felt like too much. This show, especially the state it’s in now, is far too silly to pull off comedy this dark, especially making as grim as someone dying of cancer drown themselves funny.
– Homer attempts to fix the skipping jukebox like Fonzie by hitting it with his fist, and he ends up breaking the glass and bleeding profusely from his hand. Like, a copious amount of blood. This is one of the earliest instances of gross cartoonish violence being used in the series proper. When did this show start crossbreeding with the Treehouse of Horror segments?
– I feel the crazy ultra-hip bar could have been good fodder for jokes, but it just doesn’t work here. The only thing I care for is Moe’s explanation of the place (“It’s po-mo! …post-modern! …alright, weird for the sake of weird.”)
– So apparently Homer has the technical prowess to construct and program a working sentient robot. …okay.
– Being the great main character he is, we see that Homer is forcing his children to stay up until all hours of the night cleaning glasses and slicing lemons. Child abuse is funny!
– Homer somehow got in contact with R.E.M. and got them to perform in his garage. And they believed his dumb lie. Whatever, who cares, fuck you.
– This is a really small thing, but when Homer’s hunting his target, he does a really quick roll on the ground before getting back into his prepared stance. When did he get some nimble that he would do a roll like that? It’s just more sacrificing character traits in favor of whatever the fuck is happening in the scene, however stupid or ridiculous it may be.
– My God, I thought the “Three mistrials later” from “Children of a Lesser Clod” was bad. This makes that hand wave look brilliant. We have a still shot of Moe’s Tavern restored, with this ADR (“How’d you get the bar back to normal so quickly, Moe?” “It’s a snap when you use certified contractors.” “Like the ones found in your local yellow pages?” “Exactly.”) Astounding. They didn’t even bother to write an ending explaining what happened, so they just threw this together at the last minute.

(originally aired November 11, 2001)
There’s a few more season 12 holdovers after this, but this feels like Mike Scully’s last hurrah: the last episode of his production run, and he co-wrote it. The last episode he had a writing credit on was also a premiere, “Beyond Blunderdome,” and it was garbage, and hey, so is this one! It’s just one insultingly stupid plot turn one after another, which cranks it up to eleven at the third act when absolutely nothing makes sense, and worst of all, none of it is funny. Things start out fair enough when Bart and Milhouse end up accidentally taking off with a police car. They end up in court, but thankfully Judge Snyder is a big ol’ pushover, with his handwaving belief that “boys will be boys.” The bit with the Simpsons talking about how court time is quality family time since they’re there so often is a bit conflicting to me: they’re clearly not an average American family anymore, but to be fair, how can they be after twelve years on the air? I’m on board with the episode until Judge Constance Harm takes the stand, a boring Judge Judy-style no-nonsense judge who doles out unique punishments, in this case ordering Bart and Homer being tethered together, citing Homer’s negligent parenting as the root cause of Bart’s behavior.

This plot immediately makes no sense. How is Bart expected to go to school, Homer go to work, change clothes, do normal everyday functions, do anything? But all of this can be excused if there’s humor to it, but all we get is Homer screaming about terror cobras or some shit. I’m shocked that they actually addressed that Homer works nights now thanks to this new arrangement, but nothing interesting comes from it. Things come to a head when Marge and Homer are about to have sex with Bart in the room until Marge reconsiders. Why was she considering it in the first place? This leads to a fight between Homer and Bart, and Marge, at her wit’s end, cuts the tether. But not so fast! Homer looks at one of the tether ends and sees a live video of Harm “through the magic of fiber optics.” Okay, let’s just say that Marge cut the rope right where the video screen was, that’d be dumb enough, but this is a live video, where she can both hear and see what’s happening, and her anger can set the rope on fire. The dumbness is off the charts. Severing the tether could have triggered some kind of alarm for Harm and she could have phoned them, sent police to their house, anything but this unbelievably stupid thing.

Harm now has Marge in her sights, believing that she is a bad parent too. When Marge refuses to admit to that fact, Harm has both her and Homer put in mobile stocks, which is even more dumb and inconvenient. They manage to break free in order to enact revenge on the judge, in the form of draping her houseboat with a banner reading “BIG MEANIE.” I’m not entirely sure what the purpose of this is. I suppose it’s Marge’s softball vengeance, but this is our third act, there should be something big going on. It’s as lame as George Bush’s “Two Bad Neighbors” banner. Homer and Marge’s plans are stymied by Harm’s freaking guard seal. Then Homer chucks a cider block, attempting to hit Harm, but ends up plowing right through the hull of the boat, sinking her house. So let’s see, Homer basically has an attempted murder charge, destruction of property, and I’m sure many other serious offenses here. But forget about all that, because Bart has a random, poorly set-up speech to make about how his parents are good and how everything is his fault. But before a harsher sentence can be reached, Snyder reappears so we can end the episode with no consequences. When your characters can do anything and get away with it, and weird impossible stuff can happen without much of an explanation, it makes your show… kinda stupid.

Tidbits and Quotes
– Wiggum has a Miranda Rights Teleprompter on his dash, which he puts to good use upon arresting Bart and Milhouse (“You have the right to remain… silent? That doesn’t sound right…”)
– I really like the pathetic charade Bart puts on with his innocence routine, played against the incredibly lenient Judge Snyder. Thinking it’s basically a done deal, Homer is anxious to wrap things up (“I’ll bring the car around.”)
– Jane Kaczmarek plays Judge Harm, best known at the time as the mom on Malcolm in the Middle, using basically her normal voice playing a Judge Judy parody, and it’s really not that funny. But I guess the writers thought differently as she kind of became the new permanent judge from the next several seasons. I’m sure we must have seen Snyder come back, but I was surprised (and disappointed) the next few times we see a court scene and she’s there.
– All the Homer and Bart stuff in the second act is boring and stupid, with some pretty lazy dialogue to boot (“We’re sure learning a lot about each other!” “Yeah, this tether has some pluses!”) Then we get the Moe’s scene, which has an incredibly dated joke about George W. Bush’s daughters, where we see Homer keeping his son outside in the cold for hours on end, and Moe inexplicably robbing Homer at gun point. Hilarious!
– Lisa mentions that the tethering has been quite beneficial, in that Bart might be on the honor roll this year. Really? Well it would have been nice to see that, it would give an interesting twist to this plot that the unusual punishment is actually working. Instead it’s all just dumb jokes.
– At the beginning of act three, we see Lisa confront Bart about feeling remorseful for their parents being punished for what he did, but it’s so quick and meaningless that it still makes his turn at the end feel incredibly random.
– To escape the stocks, Homer and Marge use Ned’s buzz saw. Of course now, we see that Homer’s entire arms fit through the stocks, when before it was just his hands. But whatever, who cares, fuck you.
– It’s such a lame joke where you see ‘BI’ on the banner, then it’s revealed as ‘BIG MEANIE.’ Oh my God, I thought it was gonna say ‘Bitch!’ How edgy! Come on.
– Honestly, this really is one of the worst endings we’ve seen thus far. If that cinder block had hit Homer’s intended target, Harm would probably have been killed. Whether Homer had intended that or not doesn’t matter, and in the end, he still ended up destroying Harm’s house. And what happens in the end? Absolutely fucking nothing.

(originally aired November 6, 2001)
A lot of the decline of the Treehouse of Horror episodes came from loss of tone. What were once unique stand-outs in a season would now just blend right in with all the rest of the monotony. A lot of this year’s edition feels indicative of that: most of the time I feel like I’m watching a regular episode, but with more fantasy elements in it. Take the first segment, “Hex and the City”: a gypsy lays a curse upon Homer, causing all of his loved ones to undergo hideous transformations. Marge grows hair all over her body. Bart’s neck starts to elongate, Lisa turns into some bizarre centaur. But everyone’s just kind of sitting around the breakfast table talking like normal, no sense of any shock or worriment from anybody. If the characters don’t care, then we don’t. Also Homer’s kind of a jerk in this one, stubbornly refusing to admit he’s cursed, despite the horrible things happening to his family. I get that’s the joke, but you’d expect a bit more of a reaction of him trying to rectify the situation. A big non-ending caps off this humdrum segment.

“House of Whacks” has more potential, but I feel it falls a little bit short. Like the first one, everything up until the end feels like a normal episode… albeit with a hyper-sophisticated super house with the voice of Pierce Brosnan. Brosnan is the standout here, with a fair share of great lines (“This is Constable Wiggums. We’ll be right there. Remove your knickers and wait in the bath,”) as he attempts to bump off Homer so he can have Marge all to himself. Or itself. It’s kind of slow to start, but once Brosnan puts his plans into action, things start to pick up, with some cool animation with the various appendages of the house as they attempt to thwart Marge from leaving and finish Homer off once and for all. I think the ending works too, with the family sending the house’s CPU off to Patty and Selma. A psychopathic machine, yes, but I guess Marge feels her sisters can deal with anything it can dish out. Not perfect, but it’s definitely memorable, and the best of the three segments here.

“Wiz Kids” is kind of forbearing, as it’s a story based on something from pop culture that is decidedly not Halloween-y, which we’d see plenty more of in the future. But Harry Potter’s kind of magical and fantasy, so it works well enough. A big annoyance is why they actually have the boy himself in class. Before that shot, we have the title reminiscent of the Harry Potter logo and the kids go to Springwarts School of Magic. At that point, we get the parody, we don’t need to have Harry fucking Potter sitting there in class. It’s such a small moment, but it just bothered me a lot for some reason. Anyway, there’s not much here in terms of story: Mr. Burns as Lord Montymort wishes to eliminate Lisa, the best wizard in school, for his own evil purposes, and enlists Bart to help him, who then feels bad and saves his sister. Whatever. There’s enough jokes here to keep it watchable, but I’m not too enthralled by this one. On the whole, this was an alright Halloween show, but that’s not too great praise considering they used to be season highlights. Ah well.

Tidbits and Quotes
– The Simpsons take a stroll through Ethnictown, a place where, as Homer puts it, “hard-working immigrants dream of becoming lazy, overfed Americans.”
– Tress MacNeille is the gypsy… of course. I like her childish taunt when Homer comes back at the end (“Ah, the curséd one. How’s that curse I cursed you with, Cursedy?”)
– Lenny and Carl give Homer advice on how to absolve his curse (“I was hexed by a troll, and a leprechaun cured that right up.” “Hey, you know what’s even better is Jesus. He’s like six leprechauns.” “Yeah, but a lot harder to catch. Go with a leprechaun.”)
– I really like Dan Castallaneta’s insane leprechaun character. I guess the writers did too because later he would show up in regular episodes. Like in “real life,” leprechauns apparently exist. I guess if jockey elves exist, then why not leprechauns? Goddammit.
– In addition to Brosnan, they got Matthew Perry to do one line, for some reason. They also have Dan Castellaneta doing Dennis Miller, and he’s specifically credited as such at the end for doing an impersonation. This show has its cast mimic celebrities all the time, why specifically mention this one? Maybe because the other two are the genuine article, but then why not have someone imitate Perry if it’s just one stupid line? Whatever. Who cares.
– I remember as a kid very much enjoying the sequence of Marge taking off her robe from behind. So does Brosnan, apparently.
– Brosnan and Homer talk about Marge (“You’re certainly a lucky man to have her.” “Lucky, schmucky! I knocked her up. But, she’s stuck now. We’re married till death do us part, but if I died, she’d be completely free, for man or machine.”) I’m not too big on the cavalier nature of Homer discussing his beloved wife, but it’s such a contrived, stupid line that I laugh anyway. As he walks off, Brosnan repeats, “Machine, eh?” Dramatic music sting. Then Homer pops his head back in to confirm (“Yep, a machine!”)
– I like how despite how sophisticated the Ultrahouse is, the basement is as plain as can be.
– It’s gratuitous and stupid, but I still love Bart’s failed man-toad vomiting abomination (“Every moment I live is agony!”)
– Montymort and Slithers debate how to stop Lisa (“We’ll need a go- between to get it away from her.” “How about Satan?” “No, no, I’m ducking him. His wife has a screenplay.”) A gag about how Hollywood types try to get their loved one’s scripts off the ground by schmoozing? It reminds me of the teamster jokes in “Children of a Lesser Clod,” these gags don’t really appeal to people outside Los Angeles. All this stuff reminds me of the classic Krusty line of him attempting to write relatable comedy (“Like when your lazy butler washes your sock garters, and they’re still covered with schmutz!”)
– I like Skinner using the amnesia dust twice, once to cover Milhouse’s failed invisibility trick, then to cover the audience’s disgust over his misguided ramping up of Lisa (“A sorceress so powerful, she made tonight’s refreshments out of dead people!”)
– The post-credits scene of Brosnan, the leprechaun and the toad thing is so strange, but it’s probably the best thing in the whole show, if only for more insane cackling from Castellaneta (briefly interrupted when he asks Brosnan if he can turn up the radio.)

(originally aired May 20, 2001)
So after “Bible Stories,” now we get “Tall Tales,” another anthology episode, and I’m just as ambivalent to this one as I was with that one. There’s nothing really to hate on here, but also not much to love. These episodes always kind of have a phoned-in feel, where I’d much rather be watching a normal episode. While riding the rails to Delaware, the Simpsons have a run-in with a kindly hobo, who regales them with three tall tales. First up, the legend of Paul Bunyan, a big lovable oaf who of course is played by Homer. Then we get the story of Johnny… err, Connie Appleseed, played by Lisa. And then we have Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn… not really a tall tale, but whatever, portrayed by Bart and Nelson. Oddly enough, being a non-religious type, I remember less of the specifics of these stories than I do the Bible ones, but from what I do recall, a great deal of liberties were taken in these renditions, so at least I can credit this one more than “Bible Stories,” which played most of their stories fairly straight to the source material.

There’s amusing bits and moments throughout all three stories, but it’s a little difficult reviewing these episodes. I find there’s a lot more going on in Halloween shows to elaborate on, but these are a bit thinner and don’t have much to really comment on. I’ll say what stuck out to me the most was the odd feeling I got from the wrap-around. All the Simpsons felt like a weird unified entity, all reacting in unison to almost everything the hobo did. It’s kind of hard to explain. But then they also had Lisa be the mouthpiece for the audience, another example of a few this season where they’ve done this just to have another character shoot them down and call them stupid for having valid complaints. And when this creepy, smelly man starts to take off his clothes and ask for a sponge bath, none of them even bat an eye. Marge doesn’t object, try to shield her children’s eyes, no one acts disgusted, it’s just like a wacky comedy bit. It’s a small moment like that that reminds me that any semblance of realism this show once had has pretty much evaporated, and this is what we’re left with: Homer scrubbing the cracks and crevices of a homeless man’s body. Eight more seasons to go…

Tidbits and Quotes
– We open the episode with the dialogue we saw at the end of “Behind the Laughter,” but here taking place at the airport rather than in the Simpson living room.
– I like the hobo vernacular for those with homes being “no-bos.”
– I honestly don’t have much to say about each segment. The only bit I liked in the first act was Big Holes with Beer National Park. The love montage between gigantic Homer and normal-sized Marge is pretty sweet, but is then ruined when Homer asks when they’re going to consummate their relationship, if only because of the mental picture it gave me. I mean, really, his genitalia has got to be bigger than her.
– The running gag of the easy-to-kill buffalo is kind of amusing, as is the Simpsons changing their last name to Bufflekill. But the story kind of just ends as Lisa randomly returns to the troupe with apples and saves the day. I do like the wrap-up with the hobo at the end (“And thanks to that little girl, today you can find apples in everything that’s good: Apple wine, apple whiskey, apple schnapps, apple martinis… uh, Snapple with vodka in it, apple nail polish remover…” “Don’t forget apple sauce.” “Yeah, I suppose you could grind some pills into it.”)
– The cast members do their darnedest at Southern accents in the third act, and are mostly successful. It’s definitely the funniest of the three: Nelson reckonin’ he can get a new neck from a cat, Marge bolting after Abe finally turns down his shotgun, leaving Missouri and entering Missoura, the photo of a young lady flashing her “privates” (the best line of the episode, “All for Silas, all for Silas!!”), Apu’s indignation of the high prices at the 99-cent store, the powerful-weak Derringers… Now I’m just listing stuff though. There’s not much to evaluate with these shows, it’s just mentioning what was funny about them. Just like “Bible Stories,” this one’s amusing enough, but wholly disposable.

Season 12 Final Thoughts
After seemingly hitting rock bottom last season, the series is just as ramshackle as ever: plot turns that make no sense, sorry attempts at humor, slapdash characterization for whatever is convenient for the scene… A few new awful things cropped up this season. Firstly, a lot more direct shots at the viewer, sometimes through Lisa commenting about how something makes no sense, followed by her being interrupted or belittled for her point. There were plenty of times when the writers deliberately pointed out how nonsensical their scripts are and figured that made it okay, but all it did was further emphasize how the writing was shit. Quite ballsy, but doesn’t make for a good show. Also on the rise are the number of crude, tasteless sex jokes, which all feel very out-of-place and strange. This show has slipped in plenty under the radar in the past, but being more overt about it is clearly not their strong suit. But here we are the end of Mike Scully’s reign of terror. When Al Jean took the helm, things seemed to level off a bit in terms of quality. Will this be a good thing? I guess we’ll have to see.

The Best
“A Tale of Two Springfields,” “Pokey Mom,” “New Kids on the Blecch,” “Trilogy of Error.” Yeah, just four this time. And three of them truly shock me that they ended up on the best list. Things are looking mighty grim.

The Worst
“Homer vs. Dignity,” “The Computer Wore Menace Shoes,” “Tennis the Menace,” “Day of the Jackanapes,” “Simpson Safari”

I’ll start up Season 13 at the start of next week. See you then!

(originally aired May 13, 2001)
There’s this odd air of “whatever” that permeates through this entire episode for me. It’s like they banged out the entire story in an afternoon and never revised it. There’s some kind of idea here, striving for an emotional connection, but it is not executed to that effect at all. The thing about garnering sentimentality in your story is that you need to set it up early so the episode is cohesive and feels like it builds. Instead it feels like they got half-way through and realized there was no point to the episode and crammed one in last minute. Homer gets a terrible knee injury and ends up wheelchair bound for a few weeks, which is a huge bummer for him, which of course is funny because normally he does little more than sit on his ass all day. He agrees to watch Ned’s kids for a night and enjoys their company so much that he decides to open a daycare center out of his home. This is like half the episode at this point, and everything feels so slow and aimless. It’s like instead of things building to this point, they just tripped and fell into the plot.

So the “emotional” element of the story is that Homer is investing so much time and care into the kids of Springfield, but not to his own. Only Bart and Lisa,  that is. Maggie is suspiciously absent, presumably because she can’t speak, but it would have been cute to give her some pantomime moments in going along with her two siblings. It’s not exactly clear why Bart and Lisa care so much about this, nor why Homer all of a sudden is the world’s funnest surrogate dad. We get like two scenes of showing him playing around with the kids, but it all feels so empty. So when a documentary crew shows up at the third act saying he’s up for a “Good Guy Award,” it feels so bizarre. This plot angle also kind of deflates thanks to one “joke” where Homer claims to have made little felt heart pins for his kids himself, then we cut to Bart and Lisa toiling in the garage making them all. Cruel parenting? Yeah, but beyond that it sort of betrays the conceit of the show. The idea is that Homer is blind-sighted by his new venture that he’s unconsciously pushed his actual kids to the wayside, not acknowledging their existence. But here we see he’s put them into slavery. Makes no sense.

Bart and Lisa enact their vengeance during the Good Guy Awards by splicing in home movie footage into the documentary, revealing Homer as the boorish, borderline psychotic lout he actually is. The crowd immediately turns on Homer, who snaps and corrals all the children into a van and takes off with them. This is a very bizarre, almost creepy twist, but some vicious commentary between Arnie Pye and Kent Brockman helps save the ending a little. Then rather than have a conclusion showing the consequences of Homer’s actions, we hand-wave over it with a “Three Mistrials Later” on-screen message so we can move onto the resolution of the Bart and Lisa story. I don’t even need to comment on this, this is the resolution of the emotional arc of the episode (“Why did you rat me out, kids? Was it because I showered love on those other children while ignoring you?” “Yep.” “Pretty much.”) Brilliant. I can’t even hate this episode because it just feels so inept. And this is another episode written by Al Jean; between this and “Day of the Jackanapes,” I don’t know what the fuck happened to this guy. And he’s been our show runner for over a decade now! I’m getting pretty scared…

Tidbits and Quotes
– There’s nothing really that funny about the YMCA set piece, only lots of little observations. First, Burns and Abe together feels so, so wrong ever since “The Curse of the Flying Hellfish,” but now they’re two feeble, neutered old men, not their actual characters. I actually really like Coach Lugash, modeled after Olympic coach Bela Karolyi, but I remember him being stronger in a future episode where Lisa takes gymnastics. Comic Book Guy wears a Muttley shirt, and for some reason is playing basketball. Okay. Then we have an uncomfortable scene where Homer is giving a pep talk, then argues with himself as Moe and Skinner look at each other confused. They’re like the audience whenever some shit like this happens, except it feels even weirder in-universe.
– The writers must have thought it was hilarious to give Homer a morphine addiction. There’s like four jokes about it in here, and they’re all unfunny.
– I like this bit when Homer is being released from the hospital (“You’ll have a full recovery from your spinal cord injury.” “What spinal cord injury?” “Oh, he fell off the gurney.”)
– A terminally bored Homer tries to breed the dog and cat by throwing them in a sack. Then he criticizes them for not having sex properly. These are the jokes, people.
– Nice exchange between Ned and Homer (“Would you mind watching the kids? I’m kinda in a pickle here.” “Well, they would keep me company, and this pickle you’re offering only sweetens the deal.”)
– The only golden bit this show has to offer is the “Kids Say the Darndest Things” clip with Bill Cosby manically riffing about Pokemon. An Internet meme is born.
– Ralph asks if he can touch Homer’s disgusting festering scar, which then heals over his fucking hand. It’s the grossest thing I’ve ever seen on this series, disgusting and absolutely not funny.
– It only took a season to age up the octopulets into toddlers. I thought it was next season where Apu has an affair, I forgot it happened this soon (“Hello, I would like to take advantage of your baby prison.” “We’re calling it day care.” “Yes, whatever, just take them.”)
– Lots of jokes about teamsters in the third act, which feels like a Hollywood insider joke. Like, do you know exactly what a teamster is and what they do? Or not do, which seems to be the case? I don’t think most people know.
– I like Skinner being up for and winning “Biggest People Pleaser,” unable to attend the award show (‘Having Minor Surgery.’)
– Homer absconds with the kids and drives off, then we pan over to Kent Brockman standing a few feet away giving his report. It just happened, why didn’t he react or do anything at all? I guess a real reporter gives the news, not makes it. But tell that to Arnie Pye (“I can see them right below me! I’m going to try to nail the driver with one of my shoes!” “Arnie, please, leave this to the police.” “I’m sick of being the reporter, I want to make the news!” “Arnie, this is not the time…” “You’re not the time, Kent! You’re not the time!”) The read on “I can’t see through metal, Kent!!” is hysterical.