Original airdate: October 17, 2021

The premise: When Evergreen Terrace becomes a never-ending traffic jam, the Simpsons must confront Wayz, a navigational app that redirects traffic to residential areas. Meanwhile, Moe is reunited with his old girlfriend Maya, but is plagued with insecurity about her possibly leaving him again.

The reaction: Season 20’s “Eeny Teeny Maya Moe” is a pretty fondly remembered episode by a lot of fans, which isn’t easy to say about any episode from the last fifteen years. The writing staff has noticed this, and as a result, we get the Maya sequel episode that fans have been clamoring for thirteen years after her introduction. I don’t remember caring much for “Eeny Teeny,” as it felt an overly saccharine affair with a boring, schmaltzy Moe and a rushed ending. Moe was all set to propose to Maya, as well as get height adjustment surgery for her, but Maya broke it off with him because she felt that he didn’t see her for her, only her as a little person. Except that wasn’t actually true, and she only got mad when he started making short jokes about her, but only after she made them herself, and she also did weird shit like pretend to be a doll for some reason. I don’t really remember much about Maya as a character, nor do I think there probably was much to her in the first place, but here, she is a complete blank slate. She and Moe reunite in a traffic jam, and she is still head-over-heels in love with Moe with absolutely no reservations, or explanation, as to why she wants to get back together. She off-handedly mentions she got her PhD, but we never find out in what, what she’s been doing for x amount of years, or anything like that. We get a few short clips of “Eeny Teeny” showing her and Moe together, but besides that, we’re given no re-introduction to this character who appeared in one episode over a decade ago. I feel like there are pretty dedicated fans who might not remember her episode well enough after all this time to discern who she is. So Moe and Maya are back together, and since we’re not going to develop her character or their relationship whatsoever, the bulk of the episode is about Moe dealing with his crippling anxiety that Maya might leave him again. We never go into why she left him in the first place, of course, which makes this even weirder. Why bring this character back if you’re not going to bring up anything from the previous episode? But none of that matters, because it’s all building to Moe proposing to Maya to lock that shit down (when Homer suggests “the big M,” Moe thinks he means, “murder-suicide,” again completely forgetting that he proposed to Maya in the last episode.) So Moe pops the question, Maya says yes, and then the episode ends. So, I guess they’re a permanent couple then? Just like Comic Book Guy and Kumiko, I assume this means it will take many, many years to do another episode actually examining their relationship, or giving Maya any sort of characteristics or personality traits. I get the impulse of wanting to bring back this character from an episode people like, but they did absolutely nothing with her. I guess there’s people who will just feel good that Moe got a happy ending, but why? Moe being a miserable loser leeching off of his regular customers, as well as his disgusting, perverted lowlife, are fundamental bedrocks of his character. If he’s now going to be a happily married man, they have to completely reconstruct his character, and I know they’re not going to do that. We’ll get plenty more of the same kinds of jokes with Moe, and every now and again, Maya will show up and the audience will be baffled that she still exists. I mean, I’m more than willing to be proven wrong, but once again, CBG and Kumiko is a perfect example of a “big” change in the series that ultimately led to nothing. Let’s see what happens!

Three items of note:
– We get another guest couch gag done by Stoopid Buddy Studios, where Maggie imagines her little wooden kingdom playset comes to life. It’s all done in a similar style to their Hulu series Crossing Swords, a show that I’ve never heard anybody talk about ever, but apparently is still premiering its second season later this year. Does anybody watch that? Anyway, it’s not terrible, but nothing really memorable either.
– It’s weird that the Moe/Maya story is kind of the B-plot in this episode, with the A-plot being the Evergreen Terrace traffic jam thing, taking up the bulk of the first two-thirds of the show, and gives us the episode title (they’re really stretching how many times they can naming episodes after The Way We Were ). The traffic never, ever stops, so a neighborhood meeting is called, but everyone just uses it to bitch about how much they hate the Simpsons. We also get a look at who apparently lives on the block: the Hibberts (I thought they’d live in a much nicer, more expensive area), Sideshow Mel (same comment), and Pamela Reed returns as Ruth Powers to give a meta joke about how it’s been two decades since Marge said hi to her. Later, Professor Frink saves the day by hacking into the navigation app’s code to remove Evergreen Terrace from the map completely, and Homer is annoyed at how everybody loves him now for fixing the problem. But he didn’t do anything, Frink did. Oh, who gives a shit. It’s surprising enough that the Moe/Maya thing, something a good pocket of fans wanted to return, is not only the B-plot here, but to such a really boring “main” story such as this.
– Racked with anxiety, Moe spends the night in Bart’s treehouse, and when he returns to the bar the next day, Maya is already packing to leave (“You’d better speak fast, or for the second time, you’re going to lose the first good thing that ever happened to you!”) In “Eeny Teeny,” Moe’s crackpot plan to reduce his height is kind of stupid, but he gave a heartfelt speech about what Maya actually meant to her as a person, but she just left him anyway because the episode was ending. Here, rather than actually talk to Moe, Maya is just going to leave him again, despite completely dropping her entire life (whatever that is) because she just had to be with him again after all this time. WHO is this character? In both these episodes, thanks to poor writing, she almost comes off fickle and slightly manipulative, and I know that’s completely unintentional. I look forward to an episode in season 39 where we can finally learn that Maya used to be a gymnast in college or whatever bullshit crumb of backstory they decide to give us.

Original airdate: October 10, 2021

The premise: “This Side of Parasite” is a Parasite “parody.” In “Nightmare on Elm Tree,” Bart’s treehouse comes to life and gathers an army of trees to wage war against their human oppressors. “Dead Ringer” is a “parody” of The Ring, except with TikTok instead of a videotape. Yes, you read that right.

The reaction: Here we are at another Halloween special, where I struggle in vain to try and come up with something new to say about them. No real scares or tension, unremarkable tone, parodies that don’t actually parody anything…  I’ve said all this stuff before. The first segment just retells the plot of Parasite up until the very end where they attempt to build atop the rich social commentary of the film by having all the “parasites” hiding under the house fight and kill themselves. I really didn’t get it. It reminded me of the Stranger Things segment where they tried to condense so much source material plotting down to a few minutes that it loses all meaning as a story. I can’t imagine this would make much sense to anyone who hasn’t seen Parasite (if you haven’t, feel free to chime in. And then go watch Parasite, it’s fantastic), and to those who have seen it, it’s just a series of scenes you recognize from that movie you saw. The third segment is not as slavish to the source material, but it’s equally as dull with Lisa uncovering the mystery of the ghost girl killing all her classmates, with the “twist” being that when the girl comes to get her, Lisa bests her by smothering her with her friendship, resulting in the ghost girl banishing herself because everybody hates Lisa. Really uninspired stuff. Along that vein, the second segment felt incredibly bare bones. While I like the impulse of writing a story about an actual treehouse of horror, it’s basically nothing but the trees going on a rampage, and then they kill all the humans. It reminded me of “Night of the Dolphin,” but without the Snorky character, so there’s no story other than a bunch of pop culture jokes to fill time (Little Shop of Horrors! The Wizard of Oz! A Tree Rollins cameo!) Modern Treehouse of Horrors are normally pretty forgettable, but this one felt like the weakest I’ve seen in a while, without much of anything I could even charitably call out as a highlight.

Three items of note:
– This year’s special was advertised as having five stories instead of three. The opening is a riff on Disney with Bambi (Bart) fearing his mother (Marge) has been shot and killed just like the original film, but a Homer buck ends up goring the hunter (Mr. Burns) to death. I’d hesitate to call this a parody. I honestly don’t even know what to call it. Between segments two and three is a brief visual poem read by not-Vincent Price, “The Telltale Bart,” depicted in a twisted storybook style of Bart getting up to all sorts of mischief. This segment is actually an expansion of a bit from a season 18 episode “Yokel Chords,” where Bart terrifies his classmates with the legend of “Dark Stanley,” where we see his nightmarish tale come to life in the same sort of Edward Gorey-inspired art style. However, watching that clip again, the art direction is pretty striking and unique, and by itself, it’s a pretty fun and inspired sequence. “The Telltale Bart,” on the other hand, has the Gorey-style designs, but none of the interesting visual direction. It’s just animated straight ahead like it were a normal section of the episode, only in a different style. It also abruptly ends with Maggie killing the Vincent Price storyteller for the story taking too long, which was just random. In the end, it ultimately came off as kind of boring, especially given how they executed a similarly stylized sequence so much better thirteen years earlier.
– It’s so strange how we get “parodies” of Parasite and The Ring in the same episode; the former being an example of the writers desperately trying to take on current pop culture, but being far too late to the party (although of no fault of theirs, the pandemic has kind of wiped all pre-2020 pop culture from any kind of relevancy anyway), and the latter just feels like such an uninspired pull, given Ringu is almost twenty years old. But the bulk of the original Treehouse of Horrors were based upon older movies or Twilight Zone segments, so what made them so different? Well, on top of the show being produced in the 90s when those other works felt more timeless in an age when there were only so many media outlets, those episodes actually crafted real stories with these characters, and many times with some kind of unique twist or hook that was unique to the Simpsons universe. Homer goes mad in the “Shinning” house because of no beer or TV. The Talking Tina doll from The Twilight Zone is re-imagined as a Talking Krusty. I never saw the source material of any of these segments  until much later, but these stories made sense to me, made logical sense, and most importantly, were incredibly funny, completely on their own. Meanwhile, the Parasite segment featured no real Simpsons spin on the film whatsoever, and like I said before, must not make a whole lot of sense to someone who hadn’t seen the movie.
– Yes, it’s true, the Ring segment features all your favorite Springfield Elementary students saying the word “TikTok.” It’s as awkward as it sounds., I guess it’s no different than Dolph writing on his Apple Newton way back in the day? But at least that had a joke to go with it. Whatever. Grey DeLisle gets in a few more lines as Sherri and Terri, and I think she’s starting to sound a bit better. It’s not perfect, but it felt close enough that it didn’t sound jarringly off as it did a bit in her first couple of appearances.

Original airdate: October 3, 2021

The premise: Abe falls for a phone scam, wiring $10,000 to supposedly get Bart out of jail, money that he originally was saving for his family’s inheritance. Homer is outraged at his father’s gullibility, but when he falls for a scam himself, the Simpsons decide to track down the swindler and get their money back.

The reaction: As this episode entered its third act, it began to remind me a lot of the morality play episodes of the show’s early years, where the family deals with right and wrong and the karmic consequences within. I’m not looking to do any comparing and contrasting, but the way this episode builds to its finale feels so much more heavy-handed and schmaltzy than I care for. But I’m getting a bit ahead of myself. The premise and character dynamics of this episode aren’t really that bad to start: Abe is swindled by a phone scammer who pretends to be a random grandchild on the phone calling from jail. Learning he’s been hoodwinked, he feels ashamed, while Homer, discovering his newly lost inheritance he never knew existed, can’t berate his father enough for it. He cockily claims that he’s too sharp to be scammed, and we know it’s only a matter of time before he easily falls for one himself, in the form of a MLM scheme involving fancy cutlery. This all feels logical and within character, and it might have worked if the storytelling were tighter and they peppered some more jokes in. When the family ventures to find the scammer and confront them, Marge affirms that this is a matter of good winning over evil, and how the good apples outweigh the bad. Upon discovering a sea of soulless telemarketers working under an unknown entity who all leave the office with zero consequence, Marge breaks, giving into the inevitable sin of existence, going along with the rest of the family’s absconding with the scammers’ swindled gift cards. This is all pretty ham fisted enough, before we get a food-induced mass hallucination of Loki, God of mischief (thankfully not appearing like the Marvel character), who flat-out says his “prize” is obtaining “an honest woman’s belief in the good of mankind.” Marge’s faith is seemingly shattered, but upon seeing a seemingly honest woman at a gas station asking strangers for $20 and being ignored, she has an important choice to make (“Is this it? From now on, I live in a world where nobody trusts anybody? …no, not me!”) She lends the woman money, who pledges to mail her the cash back, and two weeks later, sure enough, Marge gets an envelope with $20 and a note, “THANK YOU FOR THE TRUST.” I honestly thought this pathetic pablum would just be the ending, but in our final moment, it’s revealed that Abe sent the letter (“I’m out another twenty bucks, but I gave them something to believe in.”) This is overly saccharine enough, but I feel like it could have landed better if there was any sort of interplay between Abe and Marge, or him reacting to her repeated attempts to restore her faith in humanity. Marge stood up for Abe against Homer’s anger toward him in her trying to get him help, but there was no connection between the two beyond that. It just comes off as another aggressively sentimental ending that feels very unearned, and even worse, with no jokes. I don’t expect these emotional moments to be undercut with a gag, or sabotaged in some humorous way, but there’s a way to balance the honest sentiment with humor in the way that great comedies should, and as this show was once the champion of. But here, it’s just played straight and we’re expected to be touched, I guess? This is definitely a more successful outing than the premiere, but the final act is a perfect representation of how this show settles for easy sentimentality over real substance.

Three items of note:
– This episode was written by Nick Dahan, who was a producer’s assistant for about a decade before getting a chance to write a script of his own. There actually were a couple of jokes that landed in the first two acts, which I was surprised to see (Homer pontificating about his money dilemma in bed, causing “whip-cash,” the different people in the scammers support group, Homer’s overconfidence in his ability to not be scammed). Looking ahead, this season’s actually got a bunch of first time writers coming up, but then again, there were a bunch of those last season too, and as I continue to repeat, the credited writer doesn’t seem to matter much as all these episodes end up coming out more or less the same flavor of bland slop. Also, I think Matt Selman is now the joint showrunner with Al Jean for either most or all of this next season, so I’m prepared for more treacly bullshit endings like this one going forward.
– The family’s weird shared fever dream ends with Loki announcing his leave to add more blackout days for Disneyland annual pass holders, before morphing into Mickey Mouse and bolting out the door. Some people worried that after the Fox acquisition that Disney would “ruin” the show and exert more creative control, but it seems like with jokes like this and the ending of “Bart the Bad Guy” last season where we saw a bomb planted under Homer and Marge’s bed care of Disney/Marvel, it seems like the writers are still doing their “bite the hand that feeds” jokes. But it all definitely feels much more fang-less, given the Disney+ Simpsons shorts that are full-on lovefests for Disney’s most beloved IPs: Star Wars, Marvel, and a newly announced third short to be released on “Disney+ Day” this November. I can’t wait to see what beloved Disney property they “parody” next!
– A one-off gag with Loki involves him showing off his many other forms, which includes Jesus Christ, as well as Bill Cipher, the triangle demon from Gravity Falls, with a three word bite by Alex Hirsch, show creator and voice of Bill (“Buy crypto, suckers!”) It’s a rather odd guest appearance, although since I assume most Simpsons diehards nowadays skew on the younger side and are overall animation fans in general, I can see how a lot of them would appreciate this cameo. I love Gravity Falls, and knowing how big a Simpsons fan Alex Hirsch is and how big an influence it was on his work, I’m sure he was absolutely thrilled to be on the show. It’s kind of funny how Bill looks just like his Gravity Falls self, sadly lacking a mouth to slap a Simpsons style overbite on. I guess it’s not too different than the King of the Hill cast’s appearance in “Bart Star” where they’re just sitting there in their flesh-colored, Mike Judge-drawn glory. It’s kind of weird, but whatever.

Original airdate: September 26, 2021

The premise: Marge yearns to relive her high school glory days as stage manager by putting on an encore presentation of their showstopper, “Y2K: The Millennium Bug,” but quickly finds herself ousted from the close-knit reunited cast, headlined by returning student and Broadway star Sasha Reed.

The reaction: There have been several musical episodes of the series before, but this one was promoted as the show’s first “full” musical, which is kind of accurate, as at least half of the episode’s runtime is comprised of songs. The writer, recent addition to the staff Elisabeth Kiernan Averick, previously wrote for Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, and the music was co-written by the composer of that series. Despite that impressive pedigree, the songs here are largely joke-free, which is really bizarre given how absurdist some of the numbers in Girlfriend could get. The story is very rudimentary, so I guess that doesn’t help spice things up: Marge has fond memories of being stage manager back in high school and is thrilled to revisit the role, but is quickly upstaged by the returning star of the show, Sasha Reed, where she is ostracized from the rest of the cast. Marge then exposes that Sasha lied about her Broadway career, making everyone else turn on Marge even more, and then they all make amends and do the play and everyone loves it and everyone’s happy. As common with episodes these days (and especially Matt Selman-run shows like this one), there’s no ironic twist or subversive take to a cliche, simplistic story such as this; it’s just played completely straight, and as such, is very boring. Marge’s first song introduces us to her singing voice for this episode, Kristen Bell, and our next song is performed by guest star Sara Chase, so for the first act, it didn’t even feel like I was watching The Simpsons. Normally I give the show a little credit with experimental episodes like these if I could appreciate the impulse of what they were going for, but I don’t know about this one. It’s their honest tribute to Broadway with songs that feel like they could be in actual musicals… except they’re really not that entertaining or creative or funny. Again, it’s not the show actually doing anything interesting with the genre, it’s just a musical episode that looks and sounds like a musical, with the characters doing perfect choreography and singing their little hearts out. I just don’t see why I should care.

Three items of note:
– Marge’s singing voice is Kristen Bell, for obvious reasons. Last season, I feel like I talked about Julie Kavner’s weakened voice a bit too many times, and I resolved not to harp on it at all going forward, just because it was getting redundant and I didn’t want to come off as mean-spirited. The in-universe explanation is that Bell is Marge’s inner singing voice, which she cheekily compares to that of “a Disney princess,” which is fair enough. In the instances before she switches from Kavner to Bell, they visualize a weird effect where there’s a magical colored mark on her throat. I get they were trying to make this cheat feel as “authentic” as they could, but it seemed a little unnecessary. It’s a musical episode, I can go along with the cheat. But like I said earlier, with Bell and Sara Chase singing for a bulk of the first half, it felt so unlike this show. The “best” song comes from Homer in the last act trying to talk some sense into his wife. It’s not particularly funny, but the concept of a song about a husband trying to talk delicately to their stewing wife is kind of cute, and it was a little fun actually hearing a regular cast member do a whole song for once.
– Floating timeline bullshit: Marge having done a Y2K musical in high school feels incredibly strange, but it is accurate. Given she has been bumped in age to 38, if she graduated at age 18, that would make her part of the class of 2001. I’m not a fan of the writers’ gradual increasing of Homer and Marge’s ages over the Mike Scully era, but the timeline does track. I feel when they do flashbacks now, they just shouldn’t mention anything era-specific, or at least not put a big highlight on it. I mean, the show already did an entire Treehouse of Horror segment about Y2K. I get that the idea of a Y2K musical itself is meant to be the joke and that’s it, but it just seems silly to me.
– There’s not a whole lot specifically to talk about in this one, given how the bulk of it is the songs. The Y2K cast consists of Barney, Dr. Hibbert, Smithers, Helen Lovejoy, Kirk Van Houten, and Lenny (who has to drop out after getting injured), characters who, to me, feel like are a wide range of ages, but, as we’ve seen many times over, they conveniently are all the same age when we see flashbacks to them as teens or as kids. Since saying maybe like two or three lines last season, we also get a good amount of dialogue out of Kevin Michael Richardson as Dr. Hibbert, and like most of the other recastings, it’s just going to have to take getting used to over time. He’s trying his best to match Harry Shearer’s cadence, and Richardson is an incredibly accomplished voice actor, but his Hibbert is definitely shaky at times. Richardson’s voice is too distinctive in the world of voice acting, he just ends up sounding like a bunch of other similar characters he’s done in my head by default.