(originally aired May 2, 1999)
This episode really confused me, as I’m not sure exactly who the main character is. It certainly looks like Mr. Burns, it sounds kinda like Burns, but he acts absolutely nothing like him. This is the first Burns episode we’ve had in a long while, and if this is honestly the best kind of material they can give him, perhaps it would have been best to retire him. I’ll set the stage, I guess: the arrival of affable showboating billionaire Arthur Fortune makes Mr. Burns realize that his life is strangely empty without public approval, and sets about to improve his image and be liked. Now we have a big fundamental problem right off the bat here. Since his inception, Burns has been a man who holds the common man in the utmost contempt, barely even considering them fellow humans. He treats his workers and his assistant like shit and could not be more pleased with himself for it. Now all of a sudden he’s desperate for someone like Homer’s approval? It really betrays the entire basis of his character.

To be fair, an episode where Burns tries to gain public praise, perhaps with some secret ulterior motive, could work. But this is just absolutely baffling. The second two acts of this show are beyond a doubt the most bizarre and odd I’ve seen yet on this show. Act two begins with Burns approaching Homer to get help on being liked, which he agrees to. No reason is given for this. In the past we’ve seen him bend over backwards in fear for Burns when he seeks his assistance for fear of losing his job, but here it’s like they’re old buddies or something. We’ll just see Burns standing in the Simpson dining room and driving around in Homer’s car, like what the fuck is going on here? Burns has absolutely no teeth here either. Rather than digging his public image hole deeper and deeper with his crotchety and evil actions, he’s rendered more and more pathetic after each and every scene. They go on a Howard Stern-type shock jock radio show, and Burns ends up collapsing thanks to the host’s crude candor. The real Burns would have had that jock taken away and executed at the first sign of trouble. He’s always been frail in body, but absolutely ruthless in spirit. But not here.

The episode was bad enough, but then we make an impromptu trip to Scotland to search for the Loch Ness Monster. Who turns out to be real. I repeat, they found the Loch Ness Monster. He’s a real thing here. And he’s gigantic, seemingly a huge presence in the now drained lake, it should have been kind of tough for him to hide. But it turns out Nessie has growing powers, since when he’s brought back to Springfield he’s significantly smaller, the size of a large water tank. Then later he’s maybe twice as tall as Burns. Aside from the shitty story and awful characterization, there’s also so much in this episode that defies logic and makes no sense, as well as particularly shoddy animation in certain sequences. This episode is pretty astounding, it’s the first show that I can honestly say that not only did absolutely nothing work, it felt like I was watching a different show. Burns being a harmless softie, random inter-continental trips, mythical monsters being real, what the fuck am I watching? All the other shitty episodes this season have at least a few things I can point at as being good, but this one’s got nothing. The worst this season, bar none.

Tidbits and Quotes
– The Simpsons taking a walk and the Fortune megastore are all bits that appear to have jokes, except they’re not at all funny. They’re just excuses for Homer to whine and moan, and for his ass to appear on every jumbo screen in range, even though it makes no sense. Some of the jokes don’t even have punchlines, like when Marge comments the megastore is better than the Kwik-E-Mart with a sad Apu in range. The bit just kind of hangs there, then ends.
– I guess we’re at the point where Burns relishing the idea of a talking banana is supposed to be funny. I’d think it would be too silly for Homer, let alone for Mr. fucking Burns.
– Homer and Burns attempt to emulate Fortune’s dollar shower by chucking silver dollars off the rooftops in the town. Which somehow rains down on both sides of the street, and manage to not only break through car windows, but one pierces through Lenny’s forehead, causing blood to spurt from his wound when he takes it out. I don’t expect absolute realism on this show, but at least make shit make some kind of sense…
– Burns has Homer deliver a sizable check to the Springfield Hospital, but since Homer is the one who delivered it, the donation gets put in his name, as well as a brand new wing of the building. How? Why? The check is in Burns’s name, as well as his account. How the fuck could this happen? Though I’ll say this bit had the only thing in this show that made me smirk, the ‘Cricket Gas’ button at Burns’ desk.
– So we have Michael McKeon in to do his Howard Stern voice, and basically they’re not really parodying Stern as much as emulating his bits, albeit as basically as possible. And this is even insulting to Stern, who’s a lot more clever than that (not recently though, but that’s a whole other issue). Watching Burns flail about like a harmless old man screaming, “Won’t someone please stop the farting!” is really a sight to see. It’s not even infuriating or saddening, I just don’t even know how to react to that. The Burns in this show is so un-Burns that I’m not even offended. This is an entirely different character.
– We bring in Willie for act three for no real reason other than we’re in Scotland. I guess the unaffected Irishmen are kind of amusing, but seeing their disinterest in witnessing their entire town get flooded was more sad than funny.
– Frink manages to drain the entire Loch Ness in a night. Then they go down in to inspect the homecoming float, and then they notice the giant fucking monster that’s right by them.
– I’ll say the reverse King Kong ending with the monster flattered by the photography and Burns freaking out is a creative idea, but the staging, the context and the overall shittyness of the prior twenty minutes just didn’t help it at all. Burns’s event is a disaster, and he realizes being evil is who he is. Makes total sense. Then we end with Nessie at a mere eight feet tall working at a casino. Fuck you.

(originally aired April 25, 1999)
There’s something very strange about this episode, it has this odd air to it that I can’t fully explain. I suppose I should start with the beginning. The town of Springfield scrambles to get ready for a visit from the Olympic committee, who is considering them to host the next games. But in the end, a slightly offensive comedy routine from Bart, who insults all the delegates, has them leave in a huff. It came at the end of a presentation organized by Principal Skinner, who interrupted the head delegate to bring Bart on stage, and apparently heard the routine in a rehearsal and thought it was okay. This whole thing makes no sense and blows my mind. Skinner amused by Bart’s childish antics? Especially in such a high stakes situation, no-nonsense Skinner who gave Bart a thousand days detention fora prior comedy act would allow this? It just does not compute on any level for me. There are dozens of ways Bart could have screwed over the town without Skinner having been complicit, but for some reason they went with this one.

So all the kids are punished with having to do community service, with Bart being sent to work at the retirement home. There he finds voluntary volunteer Lisa is already spending time with the old folks, playing bingo, cleaning them in their sleep and reminiscing about old memories of their pasts. The Retirement Castle we see here feels decidedly different than days of old. It was always an awful, awful place: run down, dirty, staffed by people who could give two shits about the old fogeys who lives there. The denizens within were also a sad lot, but also crotchety and full of old person vigor. Here, they’re handled with kid gloves, where Lisa and another nurse modeled after Nurse Ratchet from One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest seem to be treating them almost too well. Sure, they vacuum dirt and crumbs off them while they nap, but it just doesn’t feel like the same place whose staff attempts to solicit money from wealthy old codgers and pulls the plug on anyone who hasn’t made their payments on time.

Also a la Cuckoo’s Nest, Bart absconds with the elderly to take them out to sea to have some fun. This of course results in a big disaster, giving us yet another third act action sequence, another absolutely pointless guest appearance, and another ridiculous and stupid ending that ties in with the sort-of B-story. I guess I should talk about that shit. Because Homer has the mindset of a five-year-old, he, for no reason, decides to enter the mascot design contest for the Springfield Olympics. His design, Springy the Springfield Spring, wins, but when the games pull out, he’s left with a crate full of a thousand springs. He attempts to sell them, which only gives us hilarious sequences of him getting hurt, a quick bit of child abuse with using Maggie as a springy basketball, and Moe and Lenny getting one caught in their eyes as Homer sits by as an ignorant jackass. It all culminates in Homer flushing the springs down the toilet, which Marge is well aware of, and for some reason does not burst in the bathroom door and stop her husband before he fucks up the plumbing and causes a bigger problem. With a banal and dumb A-story and stupid B-story, this one’s pretty blah, but at least nothing here really pissed me off, so it’s got that going for it. High praise.

Tidbits and Quotes
– Great line from the Olympic chairman, breaking up a squabble amongst the delegates (“You’re forgetting what the Olympics are all about: giving out medals of beautiful gold, so-so silver and shameful bronze.”)
– Homer’s first mascot attempt is paper macheting the cat into “Abby the Olympic Tabby.” He’s exposed when the cat’s eyes move and the family realizes what’s going on. Then he presents Springy the spring, to which Bart immediately asks, “Those aren’t the dog’s eyes, are they?”
– I like the painstaking cleaning of the entire town, which seems almost like overkill, then we cut to the Olympic committee arriving and the chairman inspecting the sewers, deeming them the cleanest he’s ever seen. A nearby Lenny and Carl beam with pride.
– Okay, so we have the kids’s musical number, whose joke is pretty much done even before it begins by Skinner’s introduction (“And now, because the children our are future, here are the children or Springfield Elementary, with a song they call, ‘The Children Are Our Future.’ Children?”) Then we have to sit through a minute of the song of the same joke, which is just a time killer. Then in the credits, I was surprised to see a specific credit to George Meyer for choreographing the sequence. Really? Was that some kind of goof? It had the least complicated choreography of any song ever done on the show ever. It must have been a joke, but it kind of boggled my mind for a bit.
– Chalmers gets in some great dirty lines, citing his home town of Intercourse, Pennsylvania (which Ralph innocently repeats) and his adieu to Skinner and Bart (“Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to my vacation at lake Titicaca. Let’s see you make a joke out of that, mister smart guy.”)
– Another thing that bothered me: while the old people get treated gingerly, the kids get no mercy. Even though they did nothing wrong whatsoever, Martin and Milhouse get subjected to gang violence and hazardous medical waste respectively. Hearing Skinner’s smug commentary over their  horrible situations is even more of a kick in the balls considering it was his goddamn fault for allowing Bart to do that stupid routine. Even worse is later when Homer’s going door to door with his springs and Skinner repeatedly punches him in the face for what Bart did. Not only is this violence out of character, but again, it’s Skinner’s fucking fault. So yeah, I hate Skinner in this episode, if you hadn’t picked that up.
– Some good non-sequiturs came from this show, like “You sunk my battleship” and the ever useful “I want some taquitos.”
– The only bit at the old folk’s home that feels like classic era material is the edited Gone With the Wind, and Hans Moleman being escorted out by thugs for daring to mention the edited out material.
– Homer bouncing an infant around like a basketball? Flushing the springs down the toilet? Really, Marge should not be putting up with this shit. I guess the joke is that she throws her hands up and gives up after so much of her husband’s wackiness, but it really is kind of sad, even more so than their dynamic has been in the past.
– Another too on-the-nose Smithers joke with his drawing Burns in the nude a la Titanic. This distraction causes their boat to crash into the one the old folks are on. I do like the reveal of why Captain McAllister missed it, though (“Yarr… two glass eyes.”)
– As much as Homer should not recognize who Jasper Johns is, no way in hell do Bart and Lisa know who Jack LaLanne is. Plus it’s an absolutely useless appearance.
– Grampa’s defense of Bart and the very end moment between them made me realize that they really could have made this a neat episode between the two characters, but instead we got this. I’d also like to mention this episode was written by new writer Julie Thacker. She also happens to be Mike Scully’s wife. Curious how she got the job. Also the case with Brian Scully, who wrote “Lost Our Lisa,” “Make Room for Lisa” and co-wrote “Sunday, Cruddy Sunday,” all fucking awful episodes. Thacker’s got two more in her, “Last Tap Dance in Springfield” and “I’m Goin’ to Praiseland,” so we’ll see how she fares with those. But for this first one… not so good.

(originally aired April 11, 1999)
Homer gets another job. And acts like an arrogant, selfish insane wild man. And nobody seems to have a problem with it. Standard procedure this season. By all accounts I should hold this episode in more contempt than I do. But as I’ve said in the past, humor can absolve many a sin, and this episode has a fair amount of laughs, the most perhaps of any episode this season. Part of it may have to do with having gone through four years of art school, and this episode treads upon very familiar territory in mocking pretentious and snobby art types. And while it’s not perfect, I still like the core idea of story, that a buffoon like Homer could be praised for his unintentional masterpiece. A spectacularly failed attempt to build a barbecue ends up in the hands (or rather the car hood) of an esteemed art dealer, who heralds Homer as the hottest new name in outsider art. Homer embraces this new title, while in the meantime Marge becomes jealous of her husband’s fame given the artistic dreams of her youth.

All the stuff involving the art world really worked with me: the Eurotrash snobs, the visit to the art gallery, and various discussions of famous artists like Claes Oldenburg (“He must be a hundred feet tall!”) and Christo (“Killer umbrellas! Of course!”) I also kinda like the back half of the episode where Homer’s attempts to recreate his work is treated with mockery. It’s the same kind of work as before, and therefore it’s not interesting. A “piece” like his first one took raw emotional effort, whereas these new ones were calculated to emulate the original. It’s like he went commercial and sold out. But I think maybe now I’m bringing in too much art theory into this. And even though the ending is absolutely, positively stupid in every single logical way, part of me still likes the idea of Homer taking the idea from a William Turner painting to create the grand canals of Springfield. How it could possibly happen and why all the townspeople are seemingly not infuriated by this, it doesn’t matter, I still like it.

Alright, enough praise. Despite my kind words, Homer is as big of a raging ass in this episode as he’s been the rest of the season. Forcing Lisa to lay down the cement for his grill, answering the door with a shotgun, then placing it in Maggie’s crib, Homer is still a maniac, in more respects than one. You’ve got the scene where he sketches Lenny and Carl nude, which I don’t know what to make of. The joke is that he’s gay, I guess? He grows incredibly pompous due to his new success, and when his fame runs dry, he demands people fear his wrath, for some reason. We also get the running bit about Marge being jealous. Not only does Homer need to spell it out for the audience (“It’s like Marge’s dream come true… for me! Isn’t that great, Marge? For me!”), it doesn’t really go anywhere. They could have had Marge reinvigorate her past passion, but have her paintings be mocked for being trite, and then Homer come to her defense, or something. But no, Marge is upset, but then in the third act, she takes her husband to the museum to inspire his art. And then they kiss at the end. Again, it’s like all the other characters just become accessories to Homer’s madness in whatever capacity the scene calls for. This episode basically has the same share of problems as most of this season, but God help me I still liked it. Its consistent jokes and sharp jabs at the art community save this one.

Tidbits and Quotes
– I like the beginning with showing Homer’s abandoned home projects, painting the garage (with a note “Start here tomorrow 7/17/95,”) and the snake in the family piano.
– Mom & Pop Hardware is a great set piece right off the bat with “A Subsidiary of Global Dynamics, Inc.” mocking how gigantic corporations try to mimic a humble old-fashioned operation. Homer originally goes there to do some handiwork (“I’m planning some expert home repairs and I need a pair of bolt cutters, or wire cutters, or something to get the lock off my toolbox.”) He then comes across a video advertising an amazing do-it-yourself barbecue pit, albeit with some disclaimers (“Lighthearted apron not included. Snapping fingers may not make food appear.”) When he fails spectacularly, he brings the grill back later, and notes with a flashlight that he does have the box and receipt, just in many tiny pieces amidst the monstrosity of concrete and grill parts. Also great is Squeaky Voiced Teen as “Pop” trying to score with teen harlot “Mom,” which seems to have gone smoothly when Homer returns later.
– The Homer barbecue freakout is just way way too big. Although I do love the line, “Why must I fail at every attempt at masonry!” I saw a great Internet pic taking the scene of Homer looking at the perfect grill on the box against his disastrous attempt, comparing it to the writers looking at old classic episodes and looking at theirs (“Why doesn’t mine look like that?!”) Seems pretty apt to me.
– I hate hate hate Homer answering the door with a shotgun. Then Marge later comments, when she and the kids are hiding behind the house, “Is everything okay? I got worried when I didn’t hear any shots.” So this is a regular thing, that Homer apparently kills people who come to the door to sue him? And Homer can also spew out an average settlement from his many lawsuits against him. This show is officially a cartoon. And I mean that in terms of an absurd exaggeration of characters who are vaguely human, whereas before the show was a cartoon of an exaggeration of actual people.
– I don’t like how Homer knows who Jasper Johns is as he name drops him, but I do like that they made him into a kleptomaniac for some reason (“You squeal on me, I’ll kill you!”) Kind of like how they made Stephen Jay Gould an asshole.
– I love the bit with Burns before he buys Homer’s sculpture (“Years ago I blew the chance to buy Picasso’s ‘Guernica’ for a song! Luckily, that song was ‘White Christmas,’ and by hanging onto it I made billions.”)
– I like the Eurotrash (“We are a drift in a sea of decadent luxury and meaningless sex.”) My favorite line in the whole show is after the big letdown of Homer’s follow-up pieces (“You’ve gone from hip to boring. Why don’t you call us when you get to kitsch!”) Followed by a strained laugh. Hilarious.
– Even though the scene of them in bed has plenty I hate (like somehow Homer’s recently announced show is in Art in America), I do like Homer’s compliments of his wife’s art (“Your paintings look like the things they look like.”) It’s basically every non-art person’s reaction to art, their gauge on if it’s good or not depends how realistic it is.
– I like all three of Homer’s latest pieces, topped with his “thing de resistance,” “Attempted Birdhouse One,” complete with a squawking bird inside. No one offers a bid, save Moe (“I’ll give you two bucks for the bird if it’s still alive.”) Cut to the sculpture, where the bird is now silent.
– Homer’s trip to the museum to be inspired only serves to discourage him, which is a sentiment I’ve shared. Seeing others work is inspiring, but also is a bit intimidating if it’s work that’s really good. I’ve found myself quoting him in those situations (“These guys are geniuses. I could never think of something like soup or a pencil.”)
– The flood ending is fucking stupid, but without it, we’d never gotten that classic Milhouse line from him wearing flood pants (“Hey, they’re working! My feet are soaked, but my cuffs are bone dry! Everything’s coming up Milhouse!”)

And look at that! I’m officially at the half way point! Holy crap, I can’t believe I’ve got another 222 episodes left… Well, thanks to everyone who’s read this long, or those who are just checking in, but we’ve still got a long road ahead of us. But we’ll get through it. Together. Like a big happy Simpsons family.

(originally aired April 4, 1999)
Here we have the first non-Halloween anthology show, featuring three stories of similar subject matter. We’d get a lot more of them as time went on, with more and more tenuously connected themes (classic literature, historical figures, famous ships?) Now considering past Treehouse of Horrors have been fantastic, there’s no reason why these kinds of episodes can’t work, but there’s a big difference between something like a classic Halloween show and this episode. When taking a theme or a specific source material, you need to give it some kind of twist or new interesting angle to make it memorable on its own. Even something like their Nightmare on Elm Street parody, which played very close to the original movie, still felt original as it integrated itself so well into the Simpsons universe in making Willie into Freddy Kreuger, a perfect match. Here, there doesn’t seem to be as much thought put into things. It’s basically just Simpsons character re-enact stories from the Bible. You know how every story is going to play out the moment it starts. Not that that’s really bad, but it’s not really good either.

The wrap around story occurs during a scorching hot day at church, causing the Simpson family to doze off and dream about themselves in Biblical times. First is Marge, who imagines herself as Eve and Homer as Adam in the Garden of Eden. After that, Lisa dreams of Milhouse as Moses leading the Hebrews out of Egypt. And finally, Bart has himself as David facing off against Goliath’s son, Nelson. I honestly don’t have that much to comment on these specifically. There are jokes that work through all three segments, but as I said, it’s all just so banal. Though there’s something that kind of works in the Bart segment. The conceit of Goliath II, the training montage, “A Bart Simpson Dream,” it feels like a bombastic action movie, which is exactly how would Bart would dream, and want to interpret a Bible story like this. This theme isn’t flawless though, since I don’t think Bart is clever enough to come up with the twist at the end (or have his dream self arrested for that matter), but it gives an idea of how these stories could have had unique flair to them. This isn’t present at all with Marge and Lisa’s. So yeah, these episodes are pretty middle-of-the-road; nothing offensive, but nothing really special either. I’d be surprised to find if anyone called any of these anthologies their favorite episode.

Tidbits and Quotes
– Act one is pretty risqué for having Homer and Marge nude the entire time. Also, why is it acceptable to show a guy’s butt and not a girl’s butt on TV? It’s not like you can see any genitals. Towards the end when Marge lands on Homer after being expelled from the garden, her hair is completely stuck to her back to cover her ass, which makes no sense.
– I like Flanders as God, and this being the only situation where Homer would have to cow tow to his almighty neighbor-eeno (“Oh, Adam, you’re too kind.” No, you’re too kind, and wise, and righteous. I can’t believe you don’t have a girlfriend.”)
– I like the “general-interest” People magazine God gives to Marge having a picture of, who else, Adam and Eve.
– It’s kinda clever having Snake as… Snake, and Homer’s line, “You’re pretty uptight for a naked chick.”
– Great contrast of Milhouse’s quick and quieted “Letmypeoplego…” followed by Skinner’s loud repeat back “Let your people go?!”
– Great bit of Skinner dictating (“Giant eye, dead fish, cat head, cat head, cat head, guy doing this…”) I imagine in Egyptian times, it pretty much went like that.
– I’m not a big fan of the finale where the kids literally flush the Red Sea. It feels like something the Rugrats would do in their Passover special. But following that are two great bits, first with Skinner (“After them! In the temporarily dry sea!”) and then when they’re flooded with Wiggum, Lou and Eddie (“Hey, Chief, he splashed me!” “Hey, nobody likes a cry baby. You just splash him back!”) I also like the very end where Lisa struggles to skirt around the tumultuous future of the Jewish people (“It looks like we’re in for forty years of wandering the desert.” “Forty years? But after that, it’s clear sailing for the Jews, right?” Ummmm, more or less… hey, is that manna?”)
– I don’t get the King Solomon bit as to why Homer would want Lenny and Carl killed, but I love the People’s Court of Jesus Christ versus Checker Chariot. Jesus’s stern look as he straightens his file folder labeled “My Accident” cracks me up.
– Another shot of Mike Scully’s fucking kids in Jerusalem. Seriously, you can tell it’s got to be someone on or related to staff since they look more detailed than regular background characters. I remember Matt Groening (I think) talking about how annoyed he got when animators would insert themselves into shots. It’s the same thing with this.
– I like how Bart’s attempts to climb the Tower of Babel are thwarted, with the two times he throws his grappling hook, he ends up snagging a guard and pulling them down to their deaths.
– Nice homage to Fantasia with Nelson emerging from the fire like Chernabog in the final segment of the film.
– I’d be annoyed with the dumb deus ex machina of Ralph reappearing at the end with no explanation, but again, I think it works as a kid’s dream, and mimicking similar dumb third act twists in mainstream movies. But then, again, I’ll say no way Bart would fantasize of the end reveal being that Goliath was actually an incredibly competent king (“To us, he was Goliath the Consensus Builder.”) I’m also not bothered by the apocalypse ending, since this clearly isn’t a canon episode. It felt more lazy than anything, which is saying a lot since the episode up to that point was pretty lazy.

(originally aired March 28, 1999)
So Homer gets another job, huh? Even though I said the same thing back in “Lard of the Dance,” it really does feel like the writers are conscious about how ridiculous it is that Homer has randomly taken on all of these different professions. That’s another thing that seems to be clear with these episodes, and also through the few commentaries I listened to, that the writers seem well aware of the elements of the show that go too far, or make no sense, or are just dumb, but keep them in because they laugh at it for some reason. So yeah, this episode’s kind of more of the same with brain dead Homer, illogical plot points and a bombastic gravity-defying ending, but it didn’t irritate me as much as others this season have. The set-up of Homer taking this job at least makes a little sense. He enters an eating challenge at the new steakhouse with trucker Red Barcley, which Red ultimately beats him at, seconds before he dies of beef poisoning (restaurant shareholder Dr. Hibbert assures the diners “probably from some other restaurant.”) So Homer feels somewhat responsible for Red’s death and options to drive his rig for him. Okay, I can buy that. Then Bart comes along too with Marge not saying anything. Hmm. Maybe she didn’t notice.

There’s not really much to Homer being a trucker, so the plot feels very thin, but sort of like him being a hippie, I can buy him in a job where all he has to do is sit on his ass. This is supported even more in the third act twist, where it’s revealed that truckers have an auto-driving system secretly installed in their rigs that drives the trucks for them. It’s kind of an interesting idea, and I like the fact that Homer is in awe that there are people even lazier than him. Then in the next scene he’s showing it off by lying on the hood of the self-driving truck and the convoy has to go after him. Then they escape by defying gravity and flipping their truck over a long line of vehicles and sticking the landing. Yep. Nothing wrong with that. Aside from that ending, and the general malaise feeling from the episode, I’m not so hot and bothered about this one. The fact that it seemed so conscious of itself being dumb kind of helped it, with the start of Marge’s insistence that Homer not go on another wacky adventure, since we’ve had a season full of them already, and Homer predicting the plot convenience of how he’ll get back to Springfield in the end by driving a train full of napalm.

During the “A” non-plot, we have a “B” non-plot starring Marge and Lisa, two characters who are seemingly not interesting enough to have an engaging story. Like “Sunday, Cruddy Sunday,” I guess that’s the joke, but it sort of undermines these two. They’re very entertaining if utilized properly, but since the series is gradually turning into “The Homer Show,” they’re sort of sidelined. The plot here is at least more entertaining that “Cruddy,” where Marge’s idea of walking on the wild side is buying a new doorbell, and her insistence that the first ring must occur naturally. Unfortunately the mechanism is broken and causes it to ring nonstop. I like that the tone is “Close To You” by The Carpenters, which has consistently been Homer and Marge’s love song throughout the series. Also great is Senor Ding-Dong, the Zorro-like magnanimous savior of the doorbell problem. Actually, now that I think of it, this story kind of had more working for it than the main plot. Maybe I just miss the more grounded stories. Anyway, there’s a lot here that doesn’t work as usual, but there’s enough that does and is funny enough to keep this hoisted above a lot of the slop heap this season.

Tidbits and Quotes
– Nice tasteful neon sign for the Slaughterhouse. Though, minor gripe, but if they just opened, how do they have a hall of fame for their renowned eating contest? Maybe it’s a chain or something.
– The bit with Homer not recognizing Red is kind of painful. They drag the joke more and more when from the first moment you know that the joke is him recognizing him as Tony Randall. And again, Homer is dumb, but can he really not tell that the guy he’s staring at and the picture on the wall are the same person?
– Homer meets his gluttonous match as he finds himself unable to finish the 256-ounce steak, and he’s none too happy with it (“What’s happening to me? There’s still food, but I don’t want to eat it. I’ve become everything I’ve ever hated!”)
– I like the personalized body bag from the Slaughterhouse, and the manager giving one to Marge for her husband, just in case.
– Act two has no real story, it’s just stuff that happens. But most of it’s pretty funny: Homer rocking out to the Spice Girls, wanting to ram a “punk” kid for doing the air horn gesture, then accidentally detaching his rig, and parking his truck at the drive-in blocking all the cars behind him. I don’t care for the bit at the diner where Homer daydreams how he can just divorce his wife and live at the truck stop though.
– Today of all days, no one will come to the Simpson door to ring the bell. Milhouse’s seed-selling venture is thwarted by birds, and two Jehovah’s witnesses have an impromptu change of heart (“Maybe we’re bothering people by trying to change their religion. What if we don’t have all the answers?” “You’re right, Noreen. Let’s go get real jobs.”) Marge calls in the big guns by ordering from Luigi’s, but the delivery guy ends up knocks on the door. I also love that she ordered a half-order of garlic bread, I’m sure the cheapest item on the menu, a small sacrifice to have her doorbell satisfaction.
– Some nice Homer logic that he can effectively balance out a bottle of pep pills with a bottle of sleeping pills. He fluctuates from super hyper to sleepy until he eventually passes out at the wheel.
– The climax is really fucking terrible all around. The shift from the truckers physically ambushing the truck to the row of trucks blocking Homer’s way is so abrupt, with only a Homer voiceover over the truck driving between the two. It’s like they struggled to come up with the ending and just threw this together.
– I like the reveal of what Red’s cargo was: artichokes and migrant workers. You never even thought about it through the entire episode, and that makes it even funnier. At least to me, anyway.
– Also, note, this episode aired before the series premiere of Matt Groening’s sister show Futurama. I can’t remember the exact point I started watching Simpsons episodes first run, but I know I watched Futurama from the start, so it must have been some time around here.