Original airdate: March 20, 2022

The premise: Bart is humiliated when he finds the new trendy Slipreme sneakers Homer bought him are knock-offs. This leads to him meeting Orion Hughes, the rich kid of a movie star who owns the company, and the two develop their own new shoe. Meanwhile, Homer, feeling the sting of his son calling him “un-cool,” teams up with the other middle-aged men in Springfield to wear Slipreme clothing themselves.

The reaction: As Bart stormed into the not-Supreme shoe store to livestream on his smartphone his outrage to the cashier, only for the rest of the store to pull out their smartphones to film the debacle… it all just feels so wrong. I know this is borderline “Old Man Yells at Cloud,” but seeing Simpsons characters utilizing modern technology in a modern way always feels wrong to me. I feel like there could be stories written where it would feel more palatable, but between this and the last episode featuring similar scenes of mobs live-streaming a scene, these ain’t it, chief. So, I’m not entirely sure what this episode is really aiming for, but I guess it boils down to a very thin Bart-Homer story. Homer fucks up by accidentally buying knock-off shoes, causing Bart to erupt at him how much he sucks and how lame he is. Then the kid owner of the brand shows up, Orion Hughes (voiced by The Weeknd), playing damage control by getting Bart a ton of free stuff to make up for the bad press. The two bond when Bart teaches him how to skateboard, and then they’re developing their own shoe. The commentary about “Slipreme” is extremely surface level (“A sneaker that all my friends will buy?” “No, a sneaker that all your friends wanna buy, but can’t, because we won’t make enough of them,”) and Orion isn’t really much of a character. But a lot of the second half involves Homer co-opting the Slipreme look with him and his fellow middle-aged schlubs, which ultimately threatens the big launch party for Bart’s sneaker. Said event is being held in Springfield, with an appearance by Orion’s big movie star dad. Why is such a huge event for a big brand being held in some nowhere town? Ah, who cares. Then we get Marge giving a speech to Homer embracing his true self instead of trying to be cool, and then Bart and Homer make amends because the episode is ending and I don’t care. It felt like a couple different premise ideas strung together (making fun of shoe culture, Bart befriends a rich kid, Homer laments he’s “un-cool,” middle-aged dads try to be trendy) until they realized they had officially hit the 21-minute mark. It also feels weirdly cross-promotion-y given the new line of Simpsons shoes by Adidas, but that may have just been a coincidence. …maybe.

Three items of note:
– Who manages to fuck Homer over selling him counterfeit shoes? Why, none other than Mike Wegman, the character voiced by Michael Rappaport from a few seasons ago. This seems to confirm that the writing staff must just love Rappaport that they invited him back for more. I really don’t understand it, that episode was fucking awful, and his character was a big part of that. He even makes a reference to his first appearance, insulting Bart by calling him a “bed-wetting nobody,” as a call-back to his verbal abuse of a ten-year-old that made him a fan-favorite character. It’s not like I expect him to be punished or anything, but he came off as really emotionally unbalanced in “Go Big or Go Homer,” which went completely unaddressed through the whole story. Here, Mike just shows up without much introduction as if he were a Springfield regular like Cletus or Comic Book Guy, with an incredibly rushed mention that his food truck was apparently pushed off a bridge. Remember his brilliant concept of just selling one slice of pizza at a time? What a classic episode! Can this character please never come back?
– The Weeknd voices both Orion and his movie star father Darius. His voice for Orion is alright, though weirdly, his first couple lines it almost felt like he was doing a Michael Jackson impression? Was that just me? But his voice for Darius is really bizarre. It’s hard to explain, but it almost sounds like someone doing an impression of another voice. It’s just… off. Also the tag before the credits has this incredibly bizarre sequence where Darius reveals that Orion is a clone of him? It starts off with Orion bemoaning that “he’ll never be like” his dad, to which his dad replies, “I know exactly how you feel, because you’re me.” I thought this was a cheeky reference to them being voiced by the same guy, but then it turns out, no, he’s actually a clone, inspired by Darius’ “Clone Cop” movies. Did someone find an old script page from an American Dad episode on the floor and accidentally mixed it into this script?
– There’s an odd scene in the middle of the episode where Homer, Marge and Lisa attempt to eat hard shell tacos at dinner, only for them to exaggeratingly explode all over their faces (with Marge and Lisa being especially incensed, “Why do I keep buying hard shells?!“) I guess it served as the impetus for Homer needing to put on a clean shirt to leave the house, and him putting on the Slipreme hoodie, but I dunno, it felt like a weirdly specific attack, like they found “hard shell tacos are hard to eat” written on a note card under someone’s desk and decided to work it into an episode. Y’know what though, sometimes a nice hard shell taco can be pretty good. It’s like a loaded nacho folded in on itself!

Original airdate: March 13, 2022

The premise: Homer becomes the latest target of the social media outrage machine after a series of mishaps painting him in a bad light. He is approached by “The Institute” to help rehabilitate his image, being paired with fellow social pariahs to be documented doing good deeds, all unaware of the Institute’s actual sinister motives.

The reaction: The first chunk of this episode feels like a modern-era adaptation of “Homer Badman,” where an innocuous action by Homer leaves him trapped in a reactionary media hells cape that even his own family distances himself from. Here, Homer’s innocent candy ass-grab has been replaced by leaving Santa’s Little Helper in the car to go get the dog some ice cream, with a manufactured set-up that he was actually a good guy by cracking down all the windows and leaving the AC on but then the dog turns and shuts them all because he’s bouncing off the seats, and the car is immediately swarmed by dozens of passerbys filming and shaming Homer. Lisa writes up an apology for Homer to deliver at church, but he just ends up digging his own grave deeper by going on a rant about all the thin-skinned busybodies harassing him, ending with him accidentally nudging Reverend Lovejoy out his stained glass window. The image instantly becomes a worldwide meme, further tarnishing his image. Now, there’s definitely more to be said about outrage culture from the time of “Homer Badman,” but what’s here doesn’t feel all that more scathing or insightful than what we saw in 1994. Performative outrage, people documenting such events for their own clout, getting off on your own dissatisfaction, obfuscating the truth, all of these topics aren’t really delved into, instead either lightly touched upon or not explored at all. Eventually, rather than getting a call from God… frey Jones, Homer is randomly approached by a man from “The Institute” (I don’t believe he ever said his name, but he’s voiced by Kumail Nanjiani), a sprawling facility devoted to rehabilitating people’s public perception. He’s paired with some fellow social outcasts, with some familiar faces like Helen Lovejoy (now rebranded a modern-day Karen) and some new ones, like a Congressman who I guess accidentally flashed his dick on Zoom, and a short man who constantly flies off the handle on-camera, who I think is based on that guy who fucking lost it at a bagel store three years ago. When acts of public service don’t seem to be doing the job, the Institute guy reveals his ultimate plan: sneak into the headquarters of the biggest ad-farm Internet company to install a flash drive that will scrub all footage of Homer and company from the web. All of this is also clearly a riff on both the 2016 and 2021 versions of Suicide Squad, with the laborious introductions to each team member being like the former, and full scenes seemingly referencing the first trailer of the latter, like the team being briefed in a big lecture hall and two montages set to Steely Dan’s “Dirty Work.” Then Kirk says they’re like a suicide squad, just to make sure you get the reference. So they break into the headquarters and the rest of the team gets suckered into the clickbait articles the company makes… I don’t know, is this really a ripe topic for parody anymore? It’s based on those big blocks of random ads that appear on the bottom of lots of major websites with grabbing headlines like “You won’t believe how much this child actress weighs now!”, which also serves as the inspiration of the episode’s title. I dunno, I feel like more people are reading stuff off of social media versus going to actual websites, like this feels like it would have been a bit more potent if it were done five or six years ago, but maybe that’s just me. Although sometimes ads like that pop up on this very blog because my cheap ass has never upgraded to premium WordPress, so there’s also that. Anyway, Homer’s plugged in the flash drive, but then discovers the Institute’s real plan: to scrub the negative history of actual monsters the world over (including a groan-inducing “I think that guy was just President! And those are his kids!”) In the end, Homer aborts mission, and pushes the “Worldwide Broadcast” button to read Lisa’s apology note, and all is forgiven, and I guess the evil cabal that secretly runs the world has Kumail’s character executed. Unlike the last two episodes which I could sort of understand the appeal to certain viewers, this one feels like more back-to-basics, sleepwalking through topics that could be better torn apart, with a flimsy emotional center that barely feels like it’s there at all. I was surprised to see this was a Matt Selman show, I would think that button would have been mashed even harder.

Three items of note:
– Every time I think I’m not going to talk about voices, I end up talking about the voices. Homer runs into Lenny at the dog park, who typically doesn’t have that many lines of dialogue in a given scene, but Harry Shearer sounded particularly tired to me, but I don’t know if I blame him. We also have a one-off line from Drederick Tatum, here voiced by comedian and former SNL cast member Jay Pharoah. Unlike the other re-castings, this one’s kind of unique in that it’s just Pharoah doing his own impression of Mike Tyson, as Hank Azaria was doing his version. I feel like my brain automatically thinks of Azaria’s Tatum anytime I think of Mike Tyson speaking, so it’s tough to disassociate. Also, the lip sync was weirdly off, like you could tell by the phonemes that he was saying the same sentence, but it didn’t match the speed of Pharoah’s delivery, so it would drift once or twice off his dialogue. Anyway, it’s still weird to me that Drederick Tatum is still a recurring character. I was really surprised when he popped up in a major role two seasons ago as the owner of a dispensary, since Mike Tyson seems like a really played out celebrity to poke fun at in the 2020s, in the wake of the Hangover movies and Mike Tyson Mysteries seemingly having salted the earth. This weirdly almost felt like the staff has a list of all their semi-recurring POC characters and is trying to give them all reappearances so they can try out new voices. Excluding Apu, I feel like they’ve hit them all at this point. The only other one I can think is Cookie Kwan, and they’d be doing the world a favor if they just dropped her in a ditch and left her there.
– There’s lots of lines with Kumail’s character at the Institute that feel incredibly clunky, which I guess are supposed to be intentionally bad quips that you’d find from a blockbuster movie as they’re going through describing the big plan, but they’re pretty indistinguishable from a ton of dialogue from the last twenty years that was definitely meant to be funny (“You’d have to invent something to do that!” “Funny you say that, I did invent something to do that.” / “So we’re kind of like a suicide squad?” “You’re exactly kind of like a suicide squad.” /  “The upload is nearly complete! I can think of almost nothing at the last minute that can stop us now!”)
– Speaking of Bagel Store guy, doing a search for that video brought up a couple of podcast interviews he did, and it reminded me that after the video went viral, he tried to somewhat embrace his image and use his newfound fame to platform himself. He beefed up his social media presence with a YouTube channel where he ranted a bunch, he got paid a lot of money for a boxing match in Atlantic City, and probably profited a lot more from other endorsements and deals he made. All that seems to have abruptly stopped after he suffered a stroke about five months after the incident though. But that’s the opposite end of the social pariah spectrum that this episode could have touched on a bit more, but the closest we get is we see the only place that will welcome Homer is the bluntly titled “Right Wing Podcast House.” A+ writing, guys.

Original airdate: March 6, 2022

The premise: Bart, Nelson, Dolph, and Martin are forced to take part in the “Highland Trek for Trouble Truants” as part of community service. Martin is quickly made an easy target for the bullies, which Bart participates in to fit in, but ultimately he’s forced to see things from Martin’s perspective and has a change of heart.

The reaction: Martin Prince is a character who’s definitely fallen into the background in the last twenty-odd years of the series, only popping up every now and again with one or two lines during a school scene. In terms of the last time he had a major role in a plot, I can’t think of anything besides “Dial N for Nerder,” where Bart and Lisa witness his supposed death, but that episode featured Martin as a plot device more than a story built around him. The last major Martin moment I can recall is his crazed sacrifice to the alien cranberry sauce in “Thanksgiving of Horror,” an episode I shockingly actually liked, as well as being the final performance of Russi Taylor as the character before her death. Accomplished VO artist Grey DeLisle has taken over the role in the last few years, with this episode seemingly written to give her time to shine. When Bart and the town bullies are forced to go on this grueling wilderness hike that feels more like the Irish countryside than anywhere in Springfield, Martin is immediately the odd man out, claiming he signed up voluntarily. Eventually Bart has a crisis of conscious in actually sticking up for Martin against the bullies’ relentless taunting, which to me felt like the ending of act two of “This Little Wiggy” expanded to three times the length. When Bart and Martin are left alone, Martin has his breaking point, confessing he’s actually part of the group thanks to his overbearing parents. Forced to engage in extracurriculars to beef up his future prospects, he snapped under pressure and stole a bunch of drugs from a pharmacy to help him focus more. In the end, Martin debuffs his parents when they arrive and tell him to step away from those “bad kids” (“You’re late for your violin lesson. By the way, you play that now,”) and embraces his newfound chums. This characterization is fair enough, but I didn’t find it all that interesting. The overachieving student put under incredible pressure by their demanding parents is a trope I’ve seen play out in so many movies and TV shows, and nothing said or joked about here is anything that new. Plus, Martin always felt like a kid who enjoyed all of his quirky weird hobbies like playing the lute or model U.N., but does this episode imply that all of these things were thrust onto him and he was “forced” to like them? Like his dad telling him he plays violin now? I guess it could be implying he does actually like things like Greek chorus and waltzing, but it’s just way too many things to handle on top of academics? I dunno. All of this is combined with a weird runner featuring seemingly dangerous cultists and a sacrificial goat the boys save and protect, which has a twist ending that feels mostly overwhelming. This being a Matt Selman show, this is another episode focused more on the dramatic plot more than actual jokes, which I’ll again say is fine as long as you’re telling a story I can get invested in, but I wasn’t really. Martin saving the day thanks to his waltzing is sort of a satisfying payoff, as with him getting the respect of the bullies, but it all ultimately felt like a soft landing to me. Nothing before it felt particularly engaging or funny, so it made the ending feel not as impactful to me. I was pleased to see Martin in the spotlight, and with a pretty solid performance by Grey DeLisle, but the storytelling felt like it didn’t live up to the challenge.

Three items of note:
– The B-plot involves Lisa hijacking Homer and Marge’s weekend alone (how long is this death hike Bart’s been forced onto unsupervised?) by having them indulge in her fantasies of what it would be like as an only child, even adapting a new name “Jules.” Playing Suffragette-opoly, eating all the ice cream Bart always eats first, beat poetry, Lisa is determined to cram as many of these activities in as she can before her time is up. I understand the germ of this idea, but the forcefulness that Lisa thrusts this onto her parents is a little off-putting, arranging for Maggie to stay at Patty and Selma’s herself and presenting a pie chart of the sliver of time Homer and Marge actually spend on Lisa (“If you’ll just humor a middle child’s most frivolous whimsy, I’d like you to spend the entire weekend focusing only on me.”) Like goddamn, kid, could you be any more passive aggressive? People were bitching last week about Lisa’s childlike image of a romantic marriage inadvertently getting her parents almost killed out in the woods, but I felt her characterization was sympathetic in showing a child’s view of adult relationships. Here, it almost feels like she’s holding her parents hostage, frantically hurrying them through tasks and growling angrily when one of them fails to call her her new name. She ends up vomits up a bunch of ice cream on screen, which weirdly felt more uncomfortable than Homer bashing a poor animal’s brains in last episode, and things end on a semi-sweet note as Homer and Marge care for her, and the next morning Lisa pushes back at Homer’s suggestions off her list (“That’s kind of a Jules thing. Right now, I’d rather just stay in bed and be a Lisa.”) I feel like this could have been a kind of sweet subplot, but things just felt off overall. Maybe a lighter touch from Lisa would have helped.
– Grey DeLisle really is the best replacement for Martin we’re gonna get. From the very little we heard from the character previously, it felt like she was getting more comfortable with the voice, and now, in this prominent role, there were numerous lines that felt incredibly close to Russi Taylor’s range. Like if you just heard some of the scenes by themselves, you’d think it was her. There are certain sections where it starts to waver, particularly during Martin’s impassioned freakout toward Bart, but I think that’s partially due to DeLisle being so recognizable as many other major characters in animation. In some line readings, I’d be hearing faint reminders of Fairly OddParents‘ Vicky, one of the Loud House sisters, even Adventure Time‘s Ice Queen when Martin was really shouting. But overall, this is easily the strongest of all the recasting.
– Last week’s “Pixelated and Afraid” had a pretty warm reception by fans, and though it’s a bit early to tell, this episode seems to be getting similar accolade. There’s definitely been a noticeable shift this season, possibly due to Matt Selman becoming co-showrunner, giving us episodes that focus more on raw storytelling and dramatic elements over comedy, as we’ve seen with this, “Pixelated and Afraid,” and the “Serious Flanders” two-parter. I’ve reached the point that I can at least appreciate this move conceptually, trying to do new things with a 33-year-old show is more novel than hitting the same few buttons you’ve been mashing for decades. Plus, there’s a section of the fandom that seems to really love this new direction and want to see more episodes like this, and honestly, that’s perfectly fine. I feel I don’t have many specific criticisms of this episode or “Pixelated and Afraid” other than they’re not funny enough and the stories they’re telling aren’t interesting to me, which are two very subjective opinions, and things that the fans might not agree with. But even if they mean less for me to bitch about on this blog, I’d definitely prefer more episodes like this than “The Wayz We Were” or “Mothers and Other Strangers.”

Original airdate: February 27, 2022

The premise: Homer and Marge end up driving off a mountain road on their way to a secluded wellness retreat, leaving them abandoned in the woods and needing to figure out a way to survive.

The reaction: Homer and Marge’s relationship has always been an interesting one, since as opposite as they may seem, there must be something between the two that keeps them together and loving each other. Despite her normally acting above it all, we’ve seen Marge be quite charmed by some of her husband’s more boorish qualities, and those little touches make their union seem all the sweeter. This episode opens with a similar sight, with the two completely comfortable with eating snacks while watching TV in a massive pile of blankets. While this sounds like paradise to me, Lisa is disturbed by this image, conflicting with her childlike view of marriage as a never-ending romance movie, urging her parents to take a week trip to “The Saffron Togetherness Center,” a phone-free relaxation retreat. All of this set-up feels promising enough, as I like to see Homer and Marge function as a loving team, grumbling about how the keto-diet and yoga-happy retreat schedule is of no interest to either of them. Then they crash their car and end up stranded with their wet clothes accidentally burned up, leaving them buck naked, apart from some helpful digital pixelation (hence the title. Originally I thought this was going to be a video games episode.) Homer and Marge eventually forge a “love nest” out of the remnants of an abandoned honeymoon villa, and even manage to catch a fish for food. The problem for me is that we don’t really get much of a progression of Homer and Marge’s characters through this story. If anything, it would have been better to start with them having some kind of petty argument, and them slowly softening to each other as the episode progressed and their love rekindling in such a dire situation. Or, they could be learning new things about each other in this brand new environment divorced from their suburban rut, realizing there’s still more to discover in each other even after ten-plus years of marriage. Instead, we see how they love each other in the beginning in their comfort with each other in mundanity (just not visible to Lisa’s immature eyes), and we end with them loving each other in a time of crisis. Homer ends up bashing in the skull of a feral wolverine about to attack Marge (which felt very uncomfortably real), sparking up their romantic flames once more. The two eventually follow snowmobile tracks back to a ranger station, enjoying a beautiful serene walk back to civilization, ending in one last cry of an embrace between the two of them, and a final view of the sunset while eating chips, mirroring their similar activity at the start of the episode. This is a Matt Selman show, so there’s your required dose of schmaltz, which doesn’t feel as egregiously manipulative as other episodes, but it doesn’t really feel potent to me since nothing really happened in to make it feel really earned. Like I said, we saw how close and in love the two of them were at the start of the episode, and by the end, they just realized how much they really love each other? I guess? The episode just felt very inert, and pretty laugh-less throughout. It once again brought up my “What even is this show now” question when it came to the last five minutes between the grisly manner of Homer killing that animal and their blissful walk back to the real world. I felt like the episode really needed to build up to that ending to really make it hit home, but it just didn’t to me. It reminded me a bit of the Futurama series finale “Meanwhile” (well, former series finale), where it ends with time frozen and Fry and Leela spend their lives walking across the entire planet, but that ending felt like a satisfying pay-off to the build-up of the episode, along with actually funny moments leading up to it. Like, okay, Homer and Marge love each other. We’ve seen them together for 33 years now. I’m totally onboard for an episode about them rediscovering that, but you’re going to have to give me more than the old “lost-in-the-woods” trope. It just felt very predictable and old hat.

Three One semi-unrelated item of note:
– I don’t really have any other tidbits to say about this episode, given how focused it was in its one premise with just Homer and Marge, but being reminded about Futurama made me think I should briefly cover the Hulu revival. I can’t tell you how weird it was to read the “Hulu Reboots Futurama” headline in my Twitter feed and feel absolutely nothing. I flashed back to when fifteen years prior when I heard that Futurama was coming back for new direct-to-DVD movies, and myself, a teenager who was enraged at FOX for “mistreating” and canceling the show, I was absolutely beaming with excitement. But then the show came back again, and again, and then finally ended. I actually just so happened to finish rewatching the show a few months back. The Comedy Central era was definitely spotty in places, with its share of mediocre-to-bad episodes, but there was also a lot of good in it, and I’d say at least a dozen shows were on par with some of the best seen in its FOX run. Futurama had four series finales over its lifetime, and for the seemingly unkillable run that it had, I’d say it finally “ended” on a solid note and I was perfectly fine with it finally coming to a permanent end. But now, in this era of studios reviving every corpse with a fan base to get new subscribers to their streaming services, Futurama is the latest in an endless line of revivals, coming back with new episodes after a decade in 2023 (yes, 2013 was that long ago, let that sink in.) Could these new Hulu Futurama episodes be good? Quite possibly. But do I want them? No. Yes, the types of futuristic sci-fi-based premises they could do are seemingly endless, but I feel like you can only do so much with these characters, and they were already starting to feel played out in the Comedy Central run. Sometimes things can just end. It’s okay. There’s plenty of other things to watch, even, dare I say, new shows by the same creators of the stuff you love. I didn’t care for the first season of Disenchantment, and never went back to watch further, but that felt like the true successor to Futurama, with a lot of the same cast and crew working on it. I respect the artistic integrity and merit of that far more than a Futurama reboot. Things seem even more dire with the news that John DiMaggio, as of now, is not returning to voice Bender, as he was unable to reach a contract agreement with Disney/Hulu. I was pretty blown away to see more than a few people online bitch about DiMaggio for being greedy or insulting his fellow cast members by asking for more money, in defense of Disney, the all powerful media monopoly. Voice actors are famously underpaid, and John DiMaggio has always been a champion for the art form, so I don’t blame him for wanting to get a higher salary, given this is now the fourth revival of this very popular show, doing the voice of its most famous character. The entire cast had a similar contentious negotiation at the start of the Comedy Central run, with all of them being threatened with being replaced, so there’s clear precedent of studios trying to fuck over talent with this series alone. The first table read for the reboot was a couple weeks ago, and apparently someone is subbing in for Bender for now, so who knows if Disney and DiMaggio will actually reach an agreement by the time they actually start recording. But it really feels like an absolute bonehead move by Disney. I have to imagine a large majority of fans would disown a season of Futurama with someone else voicing Bender, but will they watch it anyway, and is that all that matters to Disney? I feel like eventually Disney will buckle and give DiMaggio what ultimately must be a meager pay bump, but there is definitely a chance that they’ll stick to their guns and we’ll get a weird-sounding Bender in the new episodes, in which case, I will watch the first episode out of morbid curiosity and then turn it off.

EDIT: Well, not even 24 hours later, DiMaggio is back, so never mind about all that! Even if Hulu Futurama sucks, at least Bender will still sound like Bender.

Original airdate: January 2, 2022

The premise: Springfield’s football team bags an all-star athlete, arrogant 22-year-old Grayson Mathers, who is quickly scooped up by Mr. Burns to be the sponsor of his failing brandy business. When a hungover Grayson stumbles through his first game, Marge takes him under her wing and cares for him, softening the footballer, much to Burns’ chagrin.

The reaction: This is another episode in recent years that seems to be focused on a brand-new guest character, in this case Grayson Mathers, played by Beck Bennett, who we’re introduced as a cocky, brash young athlete who has no filter, spouting off self-obsessed quips like “I do me” and “Truth bomb!” Mr. Burns chooses the pro-baller to lift up his struggling booze enterprise, and all-too-quickly warms up to Grayson’s charms (“To friendship hugs!” he toasts, in what may be the least-Burns quote ever spoken). A disastrous first game causes everyone in Springfield to turn on him, all but Marge, whose motherly instincts kick in as she invites Grayson into her home. There, Grayson’s backstory is revealed: when he displayed talent from a young age, his parents shipped him off to Football Academy, where his entire life has been entirely devoted to the game (“It helped me avoid the distractions that come with being a kid: friends, laughing, that junk.”) This man who was practically bred in a laboratory to be a perfectly marketable all-star athlete, with no concept of a loving family or social norms, is an intriguing comic concept, which the show kind of scratches the surface of, as Grayson finds himself more and more comforted by being a part of the Simpson family. But it’s not nearly enough, as the back half of the episode is devoted to the “hilarious” schtick of Marge and Burns butting head as Grayson’s “parents,” warring over who knows best for him. Even though Burns’ heart had softened to his new surrogate son, he’s aghast at Grayson’s newly proclaimed “momma’s boy” status (“Where’s my bad boy? Marge Simpson, what have you done?” Harry Shearer croaks out.) You can guess what the dialogue is from there, with the two bickering as if they’re actually co-parents, and Grayson is their real son. They both get invitations from Grayson to a sports awards show, and resolve their differences after getting blasted with brandy. Then Grayson announces he’s got a fiancee, and the episode is over. A pretty boring episode, all in all. There was the finest germ of an idea within the Grayson character, but it’s surrounded by a bunch of uninspired sports jokes and the tepid Marge-Burns dynamic. Bleh.

Three items of note:
– I had forgotten whether it was established that Springfield has a football team, then I looked it up and kicked myself for forgetting the amazing “Homer Loves Flanders.” The name Stan “The Boy” Taylor is funnier than anything in this episode, that’s for sure. The Springfield Atoms made a few other appearances within the last decade or so, most notably in the Boston episode, but who cares about those.
– John Mulaney makes his second appearance as fan-favorite character Warburton Parker. Remember him? He helped Homer and Bart go viral with their family fights? It was a season premiere a few years back? Remember what a funny and memorable character he was? He helps Burns with his brandy re-branding (how could they have not used that joke? It was right there), showing a slideshow on the benefits of celebrity sponsorship, with some surprisingly terrible caricatures of George Clooney and Ryan Reynolds. They look like those terrible gifts you can buy where a shoddy Simpson-ized portrait of your family.
– When Burns confronts Marge and they argue back and forth, the image starts to wobble as if they’re being “shot” with an actual camera, but it ends up looking like either you’re a little bit drunk or the Simpson house is out at sea. Then Burns slams his fist against the wall and collapses to the ground, and I realized this is their Marriage Story “parody.” Both he and Adam Driver yell “You’re winning!” as well. I’ve seen Marriage Story, but like all movies pre-COVID, it’s basically been completely memory holed, with the scene only being recognized by me thanks to it being immortalized in meme form. I guess that’s why they figured they could do the reference, since I’m sure a lot more people have seen the Adam-Driver-punches-wall memes than even saw Marriage Story. That’s kind of interesting, between this and the show referencing its own meme culture (steamed hams, Homer sliding into the bushes), it’s like the series going from referencing pop culture to referencing memes about pop culture.