Original airdate: September 25, 2022
The premise: On a family trip to the zoo, Homer is shocked to find his beloved tortoise Slow Leonard is missing. Suspecting something is afoot, he reaches out to other online weirdos, finding himself the head of a social group of crackpot conspiracy theorists, all throwing out their own out-there ideas about what really happened to their beloved reptile.
The reaction: As real life continues to outpace satire more and more, I really sympathize with any comedy that bases itself in social commentary. Online conspiracy theorists almost seem unable to be parodied, since the absolute insane shit they genuinely believe, and their reasonings behind it, are usually completely absurd on their own, so there’s no way you can really top that without seeming redundant. Thankfully the episode isn’t really about that, and more focused on Homer trying to find comfort in a group of peers who don’t look down on his lack of intelligence. We open on a town hall meeting where Homer is mocked for doing something foolish (suggesting Springfield build a library, forgetting the meeting is actually being held in a library), later bemoaning to his family that everyone thinks he’s dumb, which brings to mind the opening of “Secrets to a Successful Marriage,” and probably dozens of other episodes. Homer fretting that he’s stupid? The man’s been brain dead on TV as long as I’ve been alive, how many times does he have to be shocked at this “revelation”? Anyway, Homer finds kindred spirits with the likes of Comic Book Guy, Sideshow Mel, and others, all believing that there’s a greater conspiracy behind the disappearance of Slow Leonard, the 150-year-old tortoise. At one meeting, when CBG is about to criticize a suggested theory, Homer nips it in the bud quick, recalling his humiliation at the start of the episode, proclaiming, “There are no bad ideas. Nothing said here is stupid.” The conspiracy group becomes incredibly close-knit from this point, even leading to an engagement between Miss Hoover and Gil. But then the Simpson family discover something shocking: Slow Leonard walking into their kitchen. Homer explains that he accidentally uncovered the tortoise himself burrowed in a hole in the outskirts of the zoo. Him absconding with the animal is kind of glossed over, but it’s clear that Homer didn’t say anything because he doesn’t want to lose his new friends. Things are pretty quick to wrap up after this: at Miss Hoover and Gil’s wedding, the team’s ideas on how to squeeze info out of the zookeeper get way too radical and violent for Homer’s liking, and he finally reveals the truth, along with Marge, who arrives with Slow Leonard. The final resolution is kind of confusing: Homer keeps the group together by moving on to a new conspiracy (“What is calamari?”), but that doesn’t really address the problem with the group being quick to escalate to radical degrees. It’s just kind of unclear what the point of the episode is. Homer found comfort with people who spouted the same bullshit nonsense as him, but his opening goof about the library was more about him being forgetful and dumb, not believing in the kind of wackadoo stuff these other characters do. Homer’s vulnerability throughout was nice to see, but the story all culminated too quickly and ended all too nicely. Overall, a pretty soft, inoffensive season premiere.
Three items of note:
– I always find it weird when an episode will flip-flop between using real brands and fake ones. Marge says Homer can post his thoughts on “Facelook,” but then later namedrops Instagram and TikTok. I thought maybe it was because we actually see Homer using “Facelook,” but they could have easily just not shown a logo and had it be a generic-looking social media page. I feel like it must be some kind of legal concern. But then in a scene over the credits, we see a cooking TikTok Homer filmed, complete with a TikTok logo in the corner (not the actual one, but it actually says ‘TikTok.’) So why not just say ‘Facebook’ then? I don’t get it.
– The Slow Leonard group is comprised of different types of Springfieldians, from educators (Miss Hoover, Superintendent Chalmers), upper crust celebrities (Sideshow Mel, Drederick Tatum), to civil servants (Chief Wiggum), it felt a little like a missed opportunity to not show (or at least talk about) how their paranoid behavior influences their work life. Peppered throughout the episode are references to other popular conspiracy topics like flat Earth, 5G cell phone towers, and a veiled reference to COVID, which feels like easy writing, like they had a checklist of crackpot tropes to check off plugging into the script. Toward the end when Slow Leonard is revealed, the group initially doesn’t believe it’s really him, crafting more insane theories of what it really is. It almost feels like that could have been a better angle to take the episode: Homer supports the unhinged rantings of his new friends as to not undermine them like he experienced, but he ends up fostering a psychosis so far gone, he can’t even get them to believe the truth in front of their eyes. The group actually feels way too nice. Maybe they were afraid to push beloved characters like Wiggum or Gil too far in an extremist direction, but why not? The people of Springfield are no strangers to reactionary violence.
– Homer makes a hearty serving of paella to offer his guests at their first conspiracy meeting, and later, the episode ends with him giving a live cooking of the dish recorded for a TikTok. The initial joke, I guess, is that he’s putting in greater effort to create a complicated dish for his weird new friends than he ever would his own family, but I don’t know why they bring it back up again toward the end. It might be a personal thing, though, it still feels weird to me when the Simpsons are eating food beyond a relatively basic meal. Remember the early episodes when they would just be eating weird technicolor mush on a plate for dinner? Bring back the goop!
Original airdate: October 9, 2022
