Original airdate: May 15, 2016

The premise: Homer combats his fear of public speaking by turning to imrov comedy. Plus, in the episode’s final few minutes, Homer appears LIVE to take a few audience questions.

The reaction: Depicting stand-up comedy on your comedy television program is a pretty big challenge, since it kind has to be funny on multiple levels. “The Last Temptation of Krust” had the fresh new wave of comics do their set, but the humor came more from audience reaction and their being contrasted by Krusty’s old hacky material. Now, over fifteen years later, we have an episode about improv, where we’re forced to watch the troupe performers, and later Homer and company, go through these stupid, unfunny skits, to enormous applause and laughter, I might add. Homer gets enamored by improv and joins a class, and whaddya know, he’s an instant hit! He immediately “nails” the comic scenarios thrown at him, including the “one we could never crack,” so I guess this counts as a “Simpson-is-an-instant-success” episode. But here’s the big issue: Homer’s bits aren’t really that funny. Like, the entire show isn’t funny, but trying to be as objective as possible, his material is mildly clever at best, but the audience is just going apeshit over it. Soon, we see he’s formed a troupe with Lenny, Carl and Skinner, and they’re an instant success. After that, Lisa informs them they’ve been invited to perform on the main stage at the Springfield Fringe festival which I guess they have. Remember, all we’ve seen of Homer’s “talent” are three quick bits he did with the improv people, then him on stage doing a Paul Prudhomme “I guah-ron-tee it!” to monstrous cheering. But in the story, he’s an accomplished and respected improv performer. Still nervous, Moe proposes he feed him scenarios from the audience, but Lisa interferes, wanting to protect the sanctity of… improv comedy (“You can’t let your troupe down! They need your space work, your strong choices and scene-building skills!”) We saw Homer’s “troupe” in one scene, never saw them perform, and we’ve barely seen anything of what Homer can do. I’d say this feels flimsier that normal because they had to devote four minutes at the end for the live segment, but this episode also had a B-story with Marge fixing Bart’s treehouse that is so thin and superfluous I have nothing to say about it. The episode has no ending either, Homer just performs, camera pull out, gotta rush to get to the live section. I’m going to assume they came up with the live gimmick first and then figured they had to also write a main story to make it tangentially related. Maybe they shouldn’t have even bothered.

Three items of note:
– The impetus of the plot is that Homer has to give a speech for a seminar at the plant, one that apparently he gives one every year. What’s that about? He’s the safety inspector for one part of the plant, and a terrible one at that. They don’t even bother to make it into some kind of joke, or have Burns or anyone mention what the speech is about, it’s just “Homer has to make a speech.” Again, it’s just having the bare bones of a story in place so things sort of kind of make sense played in sequence. No need to develop anything, details are too much work and don’t matter.
– I guess since she’s been so underutilized this season, they crowbar Lisa into the story halfway, acting as “CREW” for the troupe’s show at Moe’s. At that point, I guess she’s their manager or main stagehand or something since she’s the one that gets informed that they’re gonna perform at Fringe (“This is going in my log! Yaaaayyy!”) At the festival, she’s in some kind of hipster get-up with a hat, vest and tie, and gushing about all there is to see and do… even when she’s not being bitter or smug, she really is just an insufferable character. And they try to cram in an emotional conflict with her in the little time they have left, I guess to try to give the episode some weight (“I need an occupation!” “A father I can look up to!”) It’s cheap, but no cheaper than the out-of-left-field, wholly manufactured emotional endings we’ve seen before. They’ve pulled the Lisa card to generate false sympathy many, many times before, and the fact that they think they can cram the same hollow nonsense in with so little time is just telling that they either think it’s a quick and easy solution, or they don’t care, or both.
– So, the live segment. Viewers were prompted to call in, and at the end of the episode, we cut to Homer seated behind a desk ready to answer some questions. This was done twice the night it aired, once for the east coast feed, once for the west coast. There’s a great article talking about how it was done, but explained simply, Dan Castellaneta performed live, and based on the audio coming in, Adobe Character Animate would register his words into phonemes linked to the proper mouth shapes to make Homer look like he’s actually talking. The result is kind of neat, but it’s more of a proof of concept than a polished piece. It feels too static; aside from a slight head tilt and a raised arm or two, Homer doesn’t move all that much. Perhaps a few different poses they could have switched between would have been neat. I guess the solution to this was to have characters randomly pop onto the screen to distract you, some with sign gags who just walk in and then leave after a few seconds, like Lisa (“We Parked in Bill O’Reilly’s Space”) and Kang with some more fan service (“Don’t Blame Me, I Voted For Kodos.”) I can at least give them credit for trying something new, though. For all the awful gimmicks we’ve seen from the show, this one at least feels like it came out of an earnest interest.

One good line/moment: Homer nervously walks to the stage for his speech, the entire room dead except for the sound of his footsteps. Not being awkward enough, Burns turns a dial on a speaker reading “Footstep Amplifier” to make it even louder.

Original airdate: May 8, 2016

The premise: Homer shakes up Marge’s doldrums with a family trip to Paris, but to pay for it, he agrees to act as courier for two bumbling (and familiar) French crooks.

The reaction: I continue to be amazed as we near the 600-episode mark, how surprised I am that this show continues to get worse. You’d think I would be numb to it at this point, but as bad as this show has gotten, it feels like as the seasons go on, these episodes get flimsier and flimsier. A lot of defenders cry hyperbole when people complain about how low the show has sunk, but I feel like people aren’t nearly harsh enough. The fact that these episodes make it to air, that the people making them watch them and think they’re good enough, is baffling to me. So this episode features Homer wanting to make Marge (and later his kids) happy, and then they are. To afford to go on Marge’s dream vacation to Paris, he agrees to deliver a secret package while he’s there. At the airport, Homer encounters his clients: Caesar and Uglion, Bart’s abusive captors from “The Crepes of Wrath.” Fan service, I guess? Also the briefcase contains a rare blue snake that the two crooks want to turn into a belt. Based on a cutaway joke, I guess they’ve expanded their operation from tainted wine to a whole animal cruelty factory. Lisa wants to save the snake, so she and Homer take off, being pursued by them a few times through the episode. But there’s never any tension; when the two crooks show up, they end up distracting themselves, look away, and Homer and Lisa are gone. At a point, they’re looking for a place to hide, Lisa points out a local jazz district she wants to check out, and then they just go and watch music. I’m not expecting high action drama, but it’s important if your story has… y’know, stakes. Lisa ends up playing on stage, and her inner monologue narrates, “I’ve never been happier!” Bart thinks the same line when he sneaks into a fashion show and baits the skinny models with a sausage on a fishing line. And later, Marge comments the same when she’s on a romantic night walk with Homer. So, as usual, it’s tell, not show. Caesar and Uglion end up having the police ransack the Simpsons’s hotel, they find nothing, and Homer surmises it was the best trip ever. And the snake was in Marge’s hair. And then that’s it. What was the point? Just so they could cross off another country on the map? There aren’t even a lot of French jokes, it’s mostly a lot of surface level stuff, like Lisa inexplicably dressed like Madeline and them sight seeing with no real gags. What was the significance of the blue snake? To appeal to Lisa? It wasn’t even about that. And they didn’t even bother to write an ending about what they did with it. These episodes are just a bunch of disconnected nonsense with something partially resembling a story going on around it. But none of this is new. I feel like so many of these points I end up repeating again and again. But I can’t just stop after I’ve gotten this far. It’d be like walking out in the middle of an autopsy. That would be rude.

Three items of note:
– Things start off aggravating as the Simpsons clean out the garage. They move the old Olmec head out of the corner, which now is like half the size that it used to be, and they uncover a classic roadstar under a sheet that apparently belonged to the old tenants. Now, the family has had this house for over eight years, and they never noticed this? And it was covered by the Olmec head, an item they acquired since they lived there. The car is there for Homer to hop in, have a fun little song about, and be emblematic of his wacky, carefree adventures that Marge envies. So where do we go from here? Have Jay Leno show up at the door, of course! You see, Jay loves old cars, so much so that there’s a whole TV show devoted to his collection, because what better way to spend your time than watch a millionaire show off all his cool stuff? So Jay wants to buy Homer’s car, pays in cash and takes it away. Homer goes back inside, proposes to Marge they go on a trip, and then the doorbell rings again. Jay’s back and he doesn’t want Homer’s car anymore. Plus, he tried to register it, found out it wasn’t Homer’s, and the police repossessed it. All within the span of… ten, fifteen seconds? There’s just so much about all of this I hate. As the “payoff” of the “bit,” Jay wants to rescind the deal because he discovered how convenient new modern cars are. So all of this just feels like him gleefully taking the piss out of his rich celebrity hobby. Remember when Jay Leno gave Krusty advice about joking about everyday life stuff? Me neither.
– Marge comments how she for once she wants to have a great vacation, echoing her sentiment from “Itchy & Scratchy Land.” She then runs down a list of all of the places/countries they’ve been to over the years, walking off and reappearing in the background still talking. Lisa takes her place in the foreground to talk a bunch of exposition with her father. As they talk, a man being hoisted by balloons floats by and ends up having them all popped by the floating house from Up. What is that doing there? Were the writers bored of their own story and felt they needed another Pixar love letter to fill the space?
– Sometimes when an episode seems particularly awful to me, I check the review thread on No Homers to see what the commentary is like. Reviews were mixed; positives seemed to rely on people liked seeing Caesar and Uglion again (so I guess transparent fan service does work) and they enjoyed seeing famous French landmarks animated. So… watch a travel special? They should just make the show a travelogue, these guys would love it! But I also came about a bunch of posts debating whether or not the end tag featuring caveman Matt Groening carving the final scene on the wall was “canon,” as well as Marge mentioning “outer space” as a vacation destination from “The Man Who Came to Be Dinner,” so I don’t know what that says about that caliber of fans. Like, honestly, who gives a shit?

One good line/moment: The one smirk I got was from when Marge wanted to indulge in plenty of pâté while her guilt-tripping daughter is away, so the waiter recommends she pick from the Extra Cruelty menu (“We have a coq Au vin made from an old rooster who was kicked to death in front of his wife and children. Very nice.”)

Original airdate: April 24, 2016

The premise: We flash back to two years ago: Ned Flanders wins a trip to the Grand Canyon and invites the Simpsons along, and the two families must learn to get along.

The reaction: I once again find myself finishing another episode wondering exactly what the point of it was. Narratives usually have to be about something, right? So this is a flashback episode, even though there’s really no need for it to be, pairing the Simpsons and the Flanderses together on a vacation. We get a lot of beauty shots of the Grand Canyon which the background artists worked hard on and did a very nice job. The usual predictable nonsense ensues with Ned being a namby pamby wuss, and Homer and Bart being maniacs. One bit involves Bart somehow suction cupping himself to the bottom of a glass walkway above a giant chasm just to moon his father. Homer moons him back, security knocks him out and drags him away, much to Marge and the Flanderses horror. “Stupid kid…” Homer grunts as he’s slowly being pulled from the foreground with his head sunken. It seemed weirdly serious, but then we quickly cut to our next wacky scene, and all is well. So there’s two things happening in this episode. First, Maude is a side-eyeing and judgey mom, with Rod and Todd being perfect little angels compared to the rambunctious Bart. She calls Marge “checked out” in her treatment of her little hellraiser. Does anything come of this story? Nope. No resolution at all. The conflict arises when their tour guide falls off the mountain, leaving them stranded. Homer and Ned go off to find help, and eventually come upon a caravan of rich assholes at the bottom of the canyon. Ned is hesitant to steal food from them, but Homer convinces him to do this “his way” for once, and they do. I guess this counts as the second story. Homer is mildly annoyed with Ned as usual, but then they… get along? A lot of times in these recaps I make the story sound more coherent than it is, but here, there’s barely any narrative tissue I can attempt to connect. There’s basically nothing to the Homer-Ned story, and the Marge-Maude story had like two scenes devoted to it, and nothing else. Homer and Ned bring the food back, then we cut to the next morning and they’ve been rescued. Does it matter how? Nah. I guess I can’t fault an episode for having no ambition (you can’t fail if you don’t try, after all), but what a sorry statement to make. These kinds of episodes are the most forgettable, but stuff like this and “Peeping Mom” irritate me the worst, stories that are about nothing but killing twenty minutes, but that are apparently good enough to air.

Three items of note:
– I really don’t understand the rich people element of the episode. They appear as a joke earlier, with a huge caravan of cars driving down the mountain, then later Ned observes them with binoculars being extremely wasteful and hurtful to the environment. Is this supposed to be some kind of commentary? It felt like an orphaned idea that they threw in and didn’t bother to connect with anything. It’s not like it’s contrasted with the Simpsons and Flanderses truly embracing roughin’ it. It’s just kind of there as a solution to their food dilemma. And they just take the food and leave. No chase, no repercussions. They could have just found an abandoned truck of food and it would have been exactly the same.
– There’s a gag at the end that you can file in the sizable folder of jokes the show immediately ruins by over-explaining them. Homer and Ned present their bountiful feast they stole to their families and they dig in. Among the shots, we see six-year-old Lisa gorging herself on a pile of bacon. Alright, that’s kind of cute. But then right after, we cut back to the present where Homer and Lisa explain to Maggie (ie: the audience), remember, this story happens before Lisa’s vegetarianism. Now do you get it? You may now laugh retroactively at the previous joke. Ugh.
– Like I said, there’s absolutely no reason this story couldn’t have worked in the present. None. Also, pre-Maggie Homer should have three hairs on top of his head, but he only has two here. Boy, I sure hope someone got fired for that blunder. Minor nitpick? Yeah, of course. But I’ve run out of things to say about this episode, so there you go.

One good line/moment: This latest guest couch gag was animated by veteran Disney animator Eric Goldberg, as we see each Simpson paying tribute to a different Disney hallmark, from Maggie in glorious Mickey Mouse black and white, Lisa as Cinderella, Marge as Snow White (using a vacuum cleaner as a broom), Homer as Baloo the bear, and Bart appearing as the Sorcerer’s Apprentice to fuck everything up and return us to the horrible sterile HD designs of the regular show. The way Goldberg animates the characters is so appealing. Beyond the fun Disney tribute, even seeing regular red dress Lisa wave goodbye to the pumpkin carriage before she transforms into Cinderella is a sheer delight. As great as some of these outsourced couch gags are, they almost work to the show’s detriment, since they’re so well done and enjoyably animated that they only make the actual show look that much worse. It also seems like the best pieces are always placed in front of the blandest episodes (the Michal Socha one before “What to Expect When Bart’s Expecting,” Rick & Morty before “Mathlete’s Feat,” etc.)

Original airdate: April 10, 2016

The premise: Marge takes Lisa on a trip to Capitol City to mend their strained relationship. Meanwhile, Bart’s prank game is reinvigorated by teaming up with Maggie.

The reaction: Fucking hell, another one of these? We’ve had four Lisa episodes almost entirely in a row, the first two featuring her being self-righteous and smug, and the latter two being a raging, uncompromising bitch toward her own mother. The writers remember Lisa is supposed to be a sympathetic character, right? The mother-daughter rift occurs when Lisa overhears Marge gab on and on about how much she hates jazz, and she feels hurt over all the times her mother had encouraged her and told her the contrary. We see Homer and Marge bond over their mutual hatred, so between this and Bart ragging on jazz to her sister in select jokes over the past decade or so, it seems the entire family is against Lisa and the musical genre. It feels weirdly negative of Marge to be so blunt about something she knows Lisa loves so much. So for once, Lisa is actually upset about something for a reason, and Marge arranges a girls trip to try and make it up to her. In their hotel room, we seem to get a repeat of the last scene from “Pay Pal” where Marge starts crying that she hurt Lisa, and Lisa has an inner monologue explaining what she’s feeling, except this time, she chooses to stay pissy. It’s really hard to pin down exactly what the emotional arc is for this story. After Marge takes her to a terrible musical, Lisa concludes (via inner monologue again) that her taste is terrible and that she’ll have to mother herself from now on. Since when did their mother-daughter bond depend on shared cultural interests? She later gives an interminably long monologue to our helpful guest star toward the end, where she eventually talks herself into forgiving Marge by the time she finishes talking. She mentions how her mom always sees the good in everything and everyone, and that hardly anyone likes jazz, so I guess that’s okay and she hugs Marge. Then we get a musical number from Lisa with a bunch of Broadway references in the background and we wrap this one up. I once again ask, what’s our takeaway? Lisa gets mad that Marge doesn’t like jazz, but then she gets over it, because nobody likes jazz. Okay? I just don’t get it.

Three items of note:
– The B-plot seems to speak to my thoughts about how antiquated elements of this show still live on, as Bart finds that no one is falling for his pranks anymore. Classic stuff like the dollar on a string, the spring-loaded peanut brittle, and that thing where you pour salt in the napkin dispenser. What kid in the year 2016 with a smartphone is pulling shit like this? This stuff seems even too softball for 90s Bart. The closest I can think back is when he and Milhouse ran wild in that joke shop in “Lost Our Lisa.” With Marge and Lisa gone, Bart takes to using Maggie in his pranks, and we get a bonding montage with them, set to that music they used in “Treehouse of Horror II” during Bart’s segment. I remember from the commentary on that episode that that music is a riff on an old father-son anti-smoking commercial. They used it ironically back then, plated against all these gags with Bart bonding with his jack-in-the-box father. Meanwhile, this has got to be the third time I’ve heard them use this music over sincere montages over the past decade-plus. As usual, the show is content to slum in the tired old tropes it used to savagely lampoon.
– Marge looks around Capitol City to find the perfect musical to take Lisa to. She glances over at three different marquees which show song clips from the musicals, and it’s the same joke each time, being musical adaptations of movies with an American Idol contestant in the cast. When she finally lands on Bad News Bears: The Musical, Lisa is weirdly offended (“Is there nothing so beautiful that they won’t keep exploiting until it’s worthless?”) Why would an eight-year-old girl have seen that movie, and why would the non-athletic Lisa even care about it if she had? But immediately after that line, we get the payoff to the joke, with “SIMPSONS SEASON 17 DVDS STILL ON SALE!!!” flashing on the screen. It’s just another example of this show’s self-awareness; as much as I’d like to think otherwise, it’s pretty clear the crew knows how subpar these episodes are, and how little they seem to care.
– Andrew Rannells plays himself as the star of Bad News Bears: The Musical, and tags along with Marge and Lisa during their quick and easy emotional reconciliation. The joke with him is that he thinks he’s a bigger star than he is, but no one really cares (“It’s a tourist trap, celebrities don’t actually come in here.” “Until today, right?”) But I think Rannells is a little too unknown for that joke to work. I see he had a recurring role on Girls, but off-Broadway, I don’t think many people know who he is. To remind the audience, he gestures to a series of helpful signs: Andrew Rannells from The Book of Mormon (Not The Fat Guy). Meanwhile, “the fat guy” Josh Gad has been getting a lot of major film roles, and is arguably much more well known. Maybe they could have had Rannells be bitter and jealous of Gad’s success, drop a Frozen reference or two… I dunno, something? Anything?

One good line/moment: Despite having just complained about his role on the show, Rannells is very charming, and has a great voice for voice over. He also shoots Lisa down for her heartless bitching, and later digs her when she’s playing the sax (“Hey, that little turd can play!”)

Original airdate: April 3, 2016

The premise: Having finally given up hope on a future with Mr. Burns, Smithers starts cracking the whip at work, leading Homer to try to find him a boyfriend. Meanwhile, the school puts on a production of Casablanca, with Milhouse hoping for on-set chemistry with his co-lead Lisa.

The reaction: As with all our characters, Smithers has gone through a transformation (and denigration) through the years. The baseline joke with him is that he’s the ultimate sycophant, the yes-man to end all yes-men. He’s so devoted to serving his boss that he’s actually in love with him, despite Burns being an evil, decrepit old skeleton. So he was always gay, but the humor usually always came from his interplay with Burns as his underling and his misguided affections. But as time went on, he became the show’s outlet for gay jokes; around season 13-18, goofs on his homosexuality became more and more overt and on the nose (at times teetering on the edge of offensive), to the point that I felt like they should just drag him out of the closet and have him profess his love to Burns since they were removing all doubt of his sexuality. So here we are now: Smithers realizes his puppy love is a futile effort, and ends up looking for love elsewhere, finding it with the flamboyant Julio. So if we’re examining Smithers’s affections seriously, then we’ve got to analyze why he was romantically interested in Burns. He must be into men of power, passion and determination, but he also likes being a caregiver, to be depended on and needed. But I’m putting much more thought into this than the show did. It feels odd that they would put Smithers and Julio together, other than they’re the only two gay men on the show (they’re made for each other!) I guess they were trying to make it like Julio wanted to loosen Smithers up and have him enjoy life a little, but as usual with this show, I have to squint charitably to try to figure out if this show is trying to actually say something. But as we just saw with Frink and Apu, this show doesn’t seem to really care about giving any more depth to Smithers. Between the time-eating B-plot and Homer and Marge arranging to set Smithers up, there’s not a lot of screen time devoted to seeing what he’s feeling or what he wants. I’m fine with giving these characters more nuance and learning more about them, but the show has to actually… y’know, do that. Instead, this episode just feels like a meaningless exercise. In the end, Smithers admits he loves the “thrill of the chase” with Burns, whatever that means, and Burns’s honest moment to him to hire Smithers back and admit he needs him boils down to him just saying his catchphrase (His performance review? “Excellent.”) These episodes continue to truly say nothing, even when it seems like they’re trying to.

Three items of note:
– The B-story is boring. I guess little kids performing Casablanca is supposed to be the joke, but that’s really as far as they went. There’s a new little kid who acts like Humphery Bogart, Ralph does a Peter Lorre voice… do they think senior citizens and cinephiles are the dominant demographic for this show? Lisa is worried since Milhouse is a terrible actor, but one paltry compliment from Lisa turns him into a show-stopper. Or, more accurately, he delivers his lines normally and the audience goes wild in applause. Remember the light, realistic touch used with crowd reaction to Ralph in “I Love Lisa”? Me too. But then, in a twist, we see that he was actually the Bogart kid in disguise and he and Lisa walk off together. Like, who gives a flying fuck? Also, Janey Powell appears and introduces herself as “Jacqueline Jones,” and is voiced by Tress MacNeille, not Pamela Hayden. I know she’s a C-list character that they barely use anymore, but surely someone on the entire staff remembered the name of Lisa’s old beset friend?
– The episode opens with Burns skydiving (with no explanation given as to why) and Smithers saving his life after he immediately goes limp. It’s just an excuse to show how Burns doesn’t give a fuck about him, but then they have him literally say that out loud because characters have to do that now. After that we have Smithers sing a song about how heartbroken he is, littered with nuclear puns. It’s not a terrible song, especially given some of the junk we’ve gotten lately, but Harry Shearer is really pushing it with his voice here.
– George Takei guest stars as himself, because of course he does. It’s the gay episode, after all! And despite having a husband, he’s at Homer’s gay mixer hitting on guys. I mean, I guess it’s all in good fun, but this show has done a lot of predatory gay jokes in the past that it reminded me of those. It’s just amazing how far removed we’ve gotten from “Homer’s Phobia.” John as a gay character would be far too subtle for this show nowadays. How do you know he’s gay if he doesn’t act gay? The audience needs to tell right away that it’s a gay! Sigh.

One good line/moment: The episode comments on the dumbness of its B-plot with a banner at the school (Tonight: Casablanca The Play, Tomorrow Night: A.M. Kindergarten presents Equus.)