Original airdate: February 28, 2021

The premise: Bart gets a summer job at the country club as a caddy, finding that sucking up to the rich players earns him big tips, building up his “wad” of cash. However, Marge worries the job is changing Bart, leading her to rally to get the whole golf course shut down.

The reaction: Sometimes an episode will just lose me in exactly what the point of the story is and what’s motivating characters through it, like there’s script pages missing and I have to piece it together myself. Act one culminates in Bart thriving as a caddy once he learns that the golfers tip big if you stroke their egos enough. Initially thrilled about her son’s new job, Marge’s tune changes when she sees Bart’s behavior close-up (“I’ve never seen my son suck up before!”) “Sucking up” is a phrase that she repeats throughout the show, and that’s basically the extent of her complaints with Bart’s job. When she fails in enlisting Homer to get him to quit, she teams up with Lisa to try and shut the whole club down. But what exactly is the problem? Bart’s a ten-year-old kid scoring some extra cash off rich people as a summer job. It would be one thing if we saw Bart “sucking up” off the job, at home or at school, like his new mentality was warping his mind in a more negative fashion. But no, Bart’s aware that it’s all a schtick he does to get more money, directly telling Marge this information. So, really, what is the big deal? The fact that Marge never gives any further explanation of her feelings until the very end doesn’t help matter (it’s almost like it’s kept a secret on purpose, as she says to Homer, “I know it’s not logical, but when I saw Bart on that golf course, my mothering spirit just wanted to hurl!”) When her anger expands into wanting to get the entire grounds shut down, a clever idea Bart gives to the club owner has playing golf declared a protected religion, saving the greens. Act three has Marge pleading with representatives from other congregates to join her in rallying against the golf course… but the conflict has gotten so macro beyond Bart, I don’t even know what’s driving her anymore, as she gives some complaints about rich people and golfers. If she was upset about rich entitled people taking advantage of sweet common folk like her son, that’d be one thing, but it’s never framed that way. At long last, at minute sixteen, Marge admits to Bart why she’s upset, that she thinks the job is robbing him of his natural instinct to speak his mind. Bart assures it won’t (“I’m not gonna suck up forever! Just until I’m rich. Then other people will suck up to me!”) It feels like the point is that Bart wanted to make this into his career and is wholly focused on being a subordinate for hire, but again, this feels like another episode where I’m desperately trying to connect dots that the writers should have done while writing the script. Things all wrap up in the most formulaic ending I’ve seen in a while (more details below.) The meat of this story, Marge worrying a job is changing Bart, is a good one, but as usual, it doesn’t feel like enough work was put in to really develop that emotional through-line, and as a result, I just didn’t care.

Three items of note:
– Last week I wondered why Harry Shearer was still voicing Dr. Hibbert, and it’s almost like the show heard my question, because a news article came out about it a few days later, and now in this episode, we see that Kevin Michael Richardson is the new voice of Dr. Hibbert. It’s only one line, so there’s not much to gauge in comparing, but it definitely sounds much lower register, since that’s Richardson’s signature. But I wonder why it took longer recasting Hibbert than any other character. I know Harry Shearer wasn’t pleased with the recasting in general, but I’d also read rumors he was quitting the show because of it, but that isn’t true. Whatever.  Speaking of voices, I’ve noticed in these last two episodes, Bart started to sound a little funky too, like he was skewing closer to Nancy Cartwright’s actual voice. I guess it’s just been a while since he’s had a ton of dialogue, but I can’t say it wasn’t distracting to hear.
– Marge finds a partner in Lisa in hating the golf course, who immediately says that they’re evil. When Marge asks why, Lisa immediately consults “The Woke-ster’s Encyclopedia of Outrages” to formulate her opinion for her. Okay, so they’re making fun of people who claim to care about causes but have no actual information. They’ve done this with Lisa a lot, but do they not realize how unlikable this kind of stuff makes her? Because this episode is about Marge and the local country club/golf course, I resisted comparing it to “Scenes from the Class Struggle in Springfield,” but as we saw there, Lisa hated the country club too for roughly the reasons she reads off her phone here, but she was an actual character who cared about things, and on top of that, she was also an eight-year-old girl who put her grievances aside to go ride a pony (“I found something more fun than complaining!”) Anyway, Lisa tells Marge she should start an online petition to get the club shut down. In writing the title, Marge discovers it’s too long, and abbreviates it to “Stop Coddling the Springfield Juniper’s Wealthy” to “Stop Coddling the S.J.W.s.” Yep. The petition gets a million signatures overnight, as Lisa explains to her mother (and the audience) what an SJW is and why this is bad. Except it’s just a throwaway joke, it doesn’t really go anywhere. If Marge found herself aligned with a bunch of alt-right psychos, that would be an interesting turn-of-events, but it just ended up feeling like a stretch.
– This is a Matt Selman-produced episode, and as such, you can expect some incredibly generic and trite teevee, and the ending is exactly that. Club owner Bildorf (voiced by Stephen Root, doing the best he can with a nothing role) makes it clear to Bart he’ll never be more than he is, causing him to run off in shame. Meanwhile, Marge seems defeated as she goes to leave the golf course, when Bart returns on an ATV he was eyeing with Milhouse, Nelson and company in an earlier scene (he was aiming to buy one, and when the others asked if they could ride it, he told them to fuck off.) Bart then gives the killer line (“You forgot about the wad! It can buy a pretty nice ATV, or rent a whole bunch of them!”) Cue the other kids riding in on their ATVs as they proceed to wreak havoc on the greens, as fun, family movie-esque music plays and the club owner and his new rich boy caddy are aghast. Just absolute garbage. I guess this is supposed to be their tribute to Caddyshack, but since it’s a bunch of kids doing it, it’s like a scene straight out of a fucking Nickelodeon movie or something, with a bunch of kids getting even with the snooty rich people. Milhouse yells “Kid power!” for God’s sake. It reminded me of the conclusion of last year’s finale “The Way of the Dog,” where it felt the farthest removed from The Simpsons than anything I’ve seen in its thirty-two seasons. I’ve complained a million times about how this show once bucked the conventional, whereas now it warmly embraces it, but this and “Dog” feel like the greatest offenders of that. And in the end, when the club owner gloats that Bart has affected nothing, the police arrive to arrest him because his new golf religion has become a sex cult? Again, this show used to be very reflective of reality, and if there’s one social group that was completely above punishment, it’s rich capitalists. They could have done some schmaltzy ending where the club owner gloats but Bart and Marge unite in talking back to him and leave triumphantly, that would have probably sucked too, but it would have been more honest.

14. The Itchy & Scratchy & Poochie Show

• I love that we just see the end result of Krusty’s one-man pie fight. It’s a great example of something that’s funnier seeing the aftermath rather than the actual action.
• There’s a great note on Krusty’s door that you can barely read on screen (Cleaning Crew: The Liquor is Not For You.)
• The hierarchy of power between Krusty and Roger Meyers, Jr. has swapped a few times, but it seems to make more sense that Krusty would be the “boss,” since the cartoons run on his show. I love their dynamic in their first scene, where Meyers, Jr. effortlessly gets Krusty distracted from his chewing out session (“What happened here? Lightning hit the transmitter?” “See, that’s what I thought at first, but then… hey, shut up!”)
• “Please refrain from tasting the knob.”
• “So, you want a realistic, down-to-earth show that’s completely off-the-wall and swarming with magic robots?” Sounds like they’re describing Futurama a few years early. Although, sadly, you could not win stuff by watching, at least as far as I remember.
• Lisa’s speech about Itchy & Scratchy not having the staying power they once had is one of many overt meta references in this episode on how long this show has gone on and the inevitability of it growing stagnant. Oakley & Weinstein really felt that season 8 could possibly be the final one, and it shows clearest here than any other episode, and it’s pretty funny (not in a good way) watching this while knowing there’s over two decades more seasons to come.
• I love Krusty’s boardroom suggestion that the new character be a gangster octopus. I want to see a drawing of that…
• A lot of this episode is reflective of the writer staff’s viewpoints, but I like that we get a brief moment devoted to the grievances of the artists, as an animator who looks suspiciously like David Silverman is subject to Krusty, Lindsay Naegle and Roger Meyers, Jr’s incessant design by committee. I’m sure there are plenty of artists on staff who had similar nightmare stories about producers who think they’re creative coming in and fucking their work up.
  
• Roy’s introduction reminded me, was there a story about FOX suggesting the show could add a new character at some point? I might be remembering that wrong. I know James L. Brooks’ presence killed a fair share of network meddling, but I wonder what notes and creative direction came through from executives over the years. I’m curious how horrible they must be, and how thankful we all should be that they never got enacted.
• A scene I still don’t really get is during the auditions where Roger Meyers, Jr. is absolutely enraptured by Otto and Troy McClure’s auditions (“You’re perfect! In fact, you’re better than perfect! Next to you, perfection is crap!”) I guess it’s supposed to make him seem easily impressed that it makes Homer’s harsh rejection sting all the more, but it doesn’t seem to fit his character to see him so complimentary to Otto of all people.
• The college nerds are the perfect avatars for the 90s-era Internet obsessive cartoon nerd (gifting us the classic line, “I really hope somebody got fired for that blunder.”) As big a cartoon fan as I was, I don’t think I was ever at this level, and I was a 2000s-era young Internet user, but it’s kind of fascinating reading about adult men’s obsession with the likes of Tiny Toon Adventures and Animaniacs. I mean, I enjoy a lot of cartoons ostensibly meant for children, but this interest seemed like it was on a whole other level.
• Great bit of (ad-libbed?) ADR before the Poochie premiere, we hear Barney in the crowd comment, “You know, Poochie’s based on me!”
• I find myself saying “You’re missing the jokes!” if someone’s talking while we’re watching a comedy, particularly if it’s a shitty comedy.
• I both love and hate the Comic Book Guy scene. It’s a perfect encapsulation of CBG’s character and the sense of fan entitlement, but Bart’s rebuttal is kind of strange. His impassioned defense of professional TV writers really makes him feel like the show’s grievance mouthpiece (“They’re giving you thousands of hours of entertainment for free. What could they possibly owe you? If anything, you owe them.”) I totally get how frustrating it must be to work incredibly hard on the show, only to have self-righteous Internet dwellers shit all over it seemingly without a second thought, but saying “you owe us for writing this show” is kind of on a whole other level. Plus, as mentioned before, this scene rings more and more hollow the more shit seasons of the show keep piling up.
• “One, Poochie needs to be louder, angrier, and have access to a time machine. Two, whenever Poochie’s not onscreen, all the other characters should be asking ‘Where’s Poochie?’” I love Roger Meyers, Jr’s stone face, he can’t even be bothered to look at Homer when he’s giving his dumbass suggestions.
  
• Homer’s impassioned speech in defense of Poochie sets up one of the greatest bait-and-switch endings of the whole series. I don’t know how they did it, but they managed to make me feel kind of emotional about the fate of a gangster surfer cartoon dog (“But if everyone could find a place in their hearts for the little dog that nobody wanted, I know we can make them laugh and cry until we grow old together.”) Poochie’s rejection is Homer’s rejection, so that’s why it feels affecting, but it’s still crazy to me that I always get a slight chill hearing that speech. Then, of course, it all comes smacking Homer in the face with the actual cartoon, where his line is unceremoniously dubbed over by Roger Meyers, Jr. himself, they didn’t even bother paying to animate Poochie’s outro, and Krusty’s announcement of his permanent death is met with rapturous applause by children everywhere, including Homer’s own kids. Just fantastic. One of the biggest casualties of this show’s decline was its ability to switch gears from genuine emotion to completely undercutting it without undermining it, and making it look completely seamless.
• Simpsons Archive retro review: “Either the writers are trying too hard, or they just don’t give a damn anymore. This episode was utterly predictable and not funny. I wouldn’t call it the worst episode; I would rather see it than Bart Gets an Elephant. Still, the idea of having a ‘cool’ dog with Homer’s voice is just absurd.”

15. Homer’s Phobia

• Like “Date with Density,” this is another title I didn’t get as a kid. It’s so damn good, it’s as if Homer got his name for the sole reason of making this genius pun title.
• “These campaign buttons are all partisan. Don’t you have any neutral ones? ‘May the better man win’? ‘Let’s have a good, clean election?’ That sort of thing?” “No, but we do have some old shirt buttons. They’re kinda kooky and fun!” “Missy, you just talked yourself right out of a sale!”
• John of course is just John Waters. Hell, it might actually be him moonlighting as owner of a kitsch store in a small town during his off-time. Contextually within the story, the casting and characterization is perfect.
• Lisa’s quick interjection when Marge gives John the Confederate statue (“Please don’t construe our ownership of this as an endorsement of slavery”) is another great example of showing her believably wise and enlightened beyond her years. A moment like this in a modern day episode would have Lisa give a mini-monologue about how aghast she is that Marge treasures such a problematic heirloom and that slavery is wrrroooooonnnng you hear me wrrrroooonnng, but here, she gets to make her point, but her quickly getting the comment in right before John might pass judgement on them is a nice added touch.
• I love that John’s embracing of the Simpsons is based on their world basically being camp in and of itself (”Pearls on a little girl? It’s a fairy tale!”) In yet another meta examination this season, it’s the first big magnifying glass held to the show in how it’s starting to feel dated a good decade since its creation. That age starts to feel even greater in 2021, while new characters look and dress like “normal” people, Lisa’s still got those pearls and spiky red dress.
• It’s such a delicate line keeping Homer from being unlikable with his ignorant views on gay people, but it still manages to work just because of how blindindly stupid he is on the subject (“Think of the property values! Now we can never say only straight people have been in this house!”) It never gets way too silly, but it never goes too aggressively homophobic either. Homer’s panic comes from ingrained societal expectations that he himself doesn’t even understand, so they’re less his views than him just parroting what middle-aged men in the 90s would latently believe on average.
• Smithers being pissed that John blew off their date for lunch with the Simpsons tells so much with so little. It makes sense that a live wire like John would find straight-laced Smithers kind of boring. I guess Malibu Stacys just aren’t his thing.
• Anytime I hear about white people being pissy they can’t say the n-word when black people can, or any other kind of slur, I always think about Homer being equally whiny over the word ‘queer’ (“I resent you people using that word! That’s our word for making fun of you!”)
• “Well, it’s been two hours. How do you feel?” “I dunno. I kinda want a cigarette.” “That’s a good start! Let’s get you a pack. What’s your brand?” “Anything slim!”
  
• What more could I possibly say about The Anvil? One of the greatest scenes in show history. I love how act three immediately opens with Homer at Moe’s sadly commenting, ”And the entire steel mill was gay…” If you had just tuned in at the commercial break, what could you possibly think was going on?
• Moe and Barney are more low-key bigoted in this episode than Homer to serve the third act, but they’re also even dumber than him, so their ridiculous beliefs feel just as delightfully ignorant (“You still got that other kid, Lisa. Let’s take her out hunting tomorrow, make her into a man.” “She’d never go. She’s a vegetarian.” “Oh, geez! You and Marge ain’t cousins, are you?”)
• I never noticed before, but in the time lapse of Homer and company in the woods, we see Homer has shot a smiley face into a nearby tree out of boredom, with his gun still smoking.
• Homer getting tenderized by the pack of reindeer feels like an early sign of the “hilarious” scenes to come in the Mike Scully era and beyond of Homer + pain = funny, but it works here almost as an amends to how he’s treated Bart and John, taking the brunt of the harm he’s caused.
• “Well, Homer, I won your respect, and all I had to do was save your life. Now, if every gay man could just do the same, you’d be set.”
• Dedicated to The Steelworkers of America. Keep Reaching For That Rainbow!
• Simpsons Archive retro review: “This was indescribably horrible. Just when I was beginning to get optimistic from last week’s inside joke-themed ‘Itchy and Scratchy and Poochie,’ along comes an episode full of lame, ‘In Living Color’-style routines about homosexuals. Did Ron Hauge win a ‘Write a Simpsons Episode’ contest or something? This was the first episode where I’ve ever hated any character, and here I had three to choose from: Homer, in super-doltish Al Bundy mode; Moe, who had nothing but lame bile and not one good line; and John Waters, who is the last person I would choose to do a voiceover. His ‘hoo!’s had me muting the TV halfway through. Simpsons episodes are about memorable lines, and this one had absolutely none. Please, get Ron Hauge a writing partner.”

16. Brother From Another Series

• Krusty’s prison song was another track on the soundtrack albums, one I never really understood as a kid (“I slugged some jerk in Tahoe / They gave me one to three / My high-priced lawyer sprung me on a technicality” aren’t exactly lyrics a ten-year-old can really grasp.) But I love how quickly Krusty recovers and wins the convicts back.
• I know I harped on this the first time around, but this really should have been (and at times feels like it is) the last Sideshow Bob episode. Bart running to his room in fear at seeing Bob on TV was so refreshing to see. The next Bob episode “Day of the Jackanapes” would do a big joke that Bart was no longer afraid of Bob since they’d done their song-and-dance so many times before, and each ensuing appearance almost drew comical exasperation from the Simpsons, wanting Bob to just explain his new evil plan and get it over with. Here, Bart is believably acting like a ten-year-old boy seeing the man who tried to kill him twice. The realism is still there… but not for long.
• “He explained his reasons for trying to kill us all, and I assure you, they were perfectly sane.”
• The Bob/Cecil dynamic is wonderful right off the bat. I’ve never seen Frasier, but I can easily tell that Kelsey Grammar and David Hyde Pierce make very convincing bickering brothers (“Hydrological and hydrodynamical? Talk about running the gamut.” “Snigger all you like, Bob.” “Thank you. I believe I shall.”)
• “Free comedy tip, slick: the pie gag’s only funny when the sap’s got dignity!” Interesting how this comedy philosophy didn’t carry over when Bob actually joined the show, replacing his sophisticated suit with a bare chest and hula skirt.
• “Shake it, madam! Capital knockers!” So fucking funny. Grammar kills it in this episode. This might be his best Bob performance.
• “Hey, you said we were going to Dairy Queen!” “I lied. Now help me rummage through Bob’s trash for clues. Then I promise we’ll go to the waterslide.” Yet another example of Bart and (especially) Lisa talking and behaving like kids. Also, could the waterslide comment be an intentional foreshadow of the ending where they make their escape down the water pipe?
• Wonderful attention to detail: the dumpster Bart and Lisa search through isn’t a dumpster at all, it’s a Trash-Co waste disposal unit, as seen in “The Otto Show.” 
• I’ve always liked these two shots toward the end of Bart, Lisa and Bob’s chase. Just some nice visual direction to break up the scene a bit.
  
• Bart sicing Lisa on Bob (“Get ‘em, Lis!”) and her barreling at Bob with an intense growl is absolutely adorable, as is Bob’s lack of response in just holding her head at place as he continues to process what’s going on with the shoddily built dam.
• The misdirect with Bob through the entire episode is really well done, and I love how it culminates in his awkward team-up with Bart and Lisa to escape and save the day. As much as I wish this were the final Bob episode, there are definitely still ways they could have brought him back somehow. I thought the premise of “The Great Louse Detective,” having Bob act as a Hannibal Lector-type in assisting the capture of a wanted man was a promising one, it’s the episode itself that blew.
• Simpsons Archive retro review: “This Frasier crossover turned action adventure, was not the worst episode ever, but it was pretty close. The good, kind bob didn’t work, and his brother playing a sinister mastermind out to destroy the town didn’t work either. The writers need to save these action episodes for a spinoff series. I don’t want to see Bart and Lisa look through dumpsters, sneak through offices, run around a hydroelectric dam and then save a city. The show can sink much lower after the ‘America’s Funniest Home Videos’ Bob saves Bart ending.”

17. My Sister, My Sitter

• Kent Brockman referring to the boardwalk prostitutes as “allied tradespeople” is great.
• Lisa and Janey read “The Babysitter Twins,” an obvious reference to the The Babysitters Club in name and cover design. This kind of “Funtendo Zii,” same-name-but-tweaked-slightly stuff I usually rip on, but I give this a pass since it helps set up the premise of Lisa being interested in babysitting, and for convenience’s sake, just having a stand-in Babysitters Club makes more sense than creating an all-new thing.
• Another great church marquee gag (No Synagogue Parking).
• Eight-year-old Lisa the successful babysitter is a bit of a pill to swallow, but the episode puts in the legwork during the first act to build her trust within the neighborhood and her parents. Her first job is for Ned, who is only talked into it since Homer and Marge would be next door in case of an emergency. From there, I was able to just go along with her being trusted by the other parents by Ned’s recommendation. The only thing that’s a problem is that Marge might be okay with Lisa watching Bart, but definitely not one-year-old Maggie. It’s not a huge deal for me though.
• A very cute exchange where Lisa tries to mollify her father’s worry about his unwashed tuxedo (”Can you see the pie stains?” “It’ll be dark.”)
• I love the slight Doppler effect on Mayor Quimby’s “Stop, you idiot!” as Homer drives past him on the boardwalk.
• I like that as big of a brat as Bart is to mess with Lisa, she throws it right back at him. It makes it more satisfying to watch than Bart making Lisa’s life a living hell and her not being able to take it.
• Homer and Marge walk the Squidport past all the different stores, reminding me of the Squidport expansion of the Tapped Out app game I had an unhealthy obsession with years ago. Having to wait 24 hours per boardwalk tile… man, fuck that game. Good thing I had it cracked for near unlimited donuts.
• “This isn’t faux-dive. This is a dive!” “You’re a long way from home, yuppie boy. I’ll start a tab.”
• I love that the sub delivery man just flies off screen as Krusty bursts his way through the door.
  
• Great design on the Dr. Nick phone book ad.
  
• Yeardley Smith is fantastic in the third act as Lisa gets more and more panicked and exhausted. Two highlights are her “Maaaagggiiiiieee!” right before she puts the wriggly baby in the pet carrier, and her elongated struggling noises as she slides all the way down the cliff with the wheelbarrow after Bart.
• Patient Diagnosis list: Unusual sex practice, looter’s hernia, Mexican stand-off, prison tunnel syndrome, armed homeowner, allergic reaction to mace, pepper spray or bullets, liquor store robbery, or John Gotti’s disease.
• Smithers’ “situation” at Dr. Nick’s is a joke that feels a little too far. For the gags about his sexuality outside of his unhealthy obsession with Burns, I prefer lighter stuff like him being miffed at being stood up by John Waters rather than him going to a back alley emergency room to have God knows what removed from his rectum.
• The Squidport reacting aghast to Lisa plays itself a little too seriously, although it seems intentionally and exaggeratedly so (I always laugh at Quimby’s loud “What the hell is that?!”) I don’t like how the scene just fades out with no real ending, though. I guess the joke is supposed to be that Lisa’s paranoid nightmare came true with Dr. Hibbert saying exactly what she dreamed about, but it’s not the best.
• The ending is very true to this show, that the parents of Springfield don’t give a shit about what Lisa did, as long as they can pawn their kids off on someone else, it’s all good.
• Simpsons Archive retro review: “Worst episode ever, first truly to deserve that crown. A sadistic and hate-filled Bart torments Lisa for no apparent reason other than sheer malice (with maybe a touch of envy over her money making thrown in, not that that would excuse anything.) I honestly can’t think of any high points, although there might be some. But I haven’t the heart to watch this episode again.  I’m marking the tape with a big black ‘X’ so I don’t accidentally see a few seconds of this episode while looking for something else.”

18. Homer vs. the Eighteenth Amendment

• Lisa goading on the kids to “attack” Bart in the opening is another great, believable kid moment for her (“No one’s pinching his legs!”)
• Drunk Bart is understandably played seriously, but true to this show, it’s still undercut with the kids in the crowd cheering for him, and his pretty disaffected attitude after the fact, announcing he’s heading off to Moe’s for a couple of beers (Homer gets up to follow, “I’ll come with!”)
• “Ladies, please, all our Founding Fathers, astronauts, and World Series heroes have been either drunk or on cocaine.”
• The only thing I know about Bernice Hibbert is that she’s a drunk. Is there any other appearance she’s made that illuminates anything else?
• Anytime some kind of mild to moderate inconvenience happens and then resolves within a small amount of time, I always end up saying, “That was a scary couple of hours,” subbing hours for minutes, or whatever other measure of time is applicable.
• This animation… wow. Is that top painted on Princess Kashmir’s chest?
  
• I don’t know why, but I’ve always thought Li’l Lugger, Springfield’s U-HAUL equivalent, was a really great name.
• The ball retrieval system from the bowling alley to Moe’s is just rinky dink enough that I can believe that Homer constructed it himself. Though did he have the permission from Barney’s Bowl-O-Rama to do it? It seems like it would be a natural connection to include Barney in the scheme, giving him access to his uncle’s business to assist Homer, an act that ultimately benefits him with as much beer as he can drink. Although it seems he probably wasn’t in on it, since we see him get charged $45 for his first drink (“This better be the best tasting beer in the world! …you got lucky.”)
• “This isn’t a very happy birthday for Rex Banner.”
  
• At Moe’s “Pet Shop,” all the patrons raise their glasses and cheer, then quickly put them back behind their backs when Rex Banner turns his head back around, but we clearly see that Eddie and Lou are still facing forward. Most likely just an animation oversight, but also, I can easily believe that Eddie and Lou don’t give a shit about enforcing the prohibition law, and are getting pretty sick of Rex Banner to do anything about it.
• I spent way too much time thinking if the Simpson basement could possibly fit forty-two bathtubs in it. I guess it could? They also managed to get Xtapolapocetl’s head down there, so none of this logistics shit really matters.
• I’m on the fence about the unceremonious expulsion, and presumed death, of Rex Banner. It’s unexpected and a funny visual, but it’s the only of the season 8 death quartet that was directly caused by a character, in this case, Eddie activating the catapult. It’s funny how while I’m mixed on Rex Banner and Frank Ormand’s demises, I still love the final outros of Shary Bobbins and Frank Grimes, and even more interesting is I’m sure other fans have different feelings on this topic too.
• “To alcohol! The cause of, and solution, to all of life’s problems.” That’s got to be like top 5 most famous phrases from the show, right? 
• Simpsons Archive retro review: “Some funny lines, good routines, the Narrator was pretty funny and Lisa’s darling in a green dress, but the story for the most part sucked. It was just one big love letter to alcohol, and I, for one, am not for overuse of alcohol (for health reasons.) I also was disappointed in Swartzwelder for the various spots of characters out of character, especially Marge, and I really don’t think the Homer I once knew would be stupid enough to break so many laws for alcohol. And what’s with these morbid endings?  First Sherri Bobbins killed in 3G03, and now Rex Banner killed. I can’t laugh at stories that end in such sick, black ways. Adding to the list of 19 worst ever episodes with a C- grade.”

19. Grade School Confidential

• “The bake sale to raise money for the car wash has been cancelled due to confusion.”
• Putting Skinner and Krabappel together seems like a natural idea, but I like the effort the episode puts in to make it feel that much more believable. Both are self-acknowledging lonely people whose lives haven’t gone the way they’d hoped (although Edna’s is, “But then I was a very depressed child.”) We know Skinner is kind of an awkward geek play-acting as a disciplinarian, but this episode gave him some more shades of innocence that appeal to Edna. It’s both heartening, and a bit sad, when Skinner explains how he’d always dreaded that he would end up with a woman like his mother, and that he’s glad he didn’t.
• We get a welcome appearance of a new unnamed cafeteria cook (“Good gravy!” “Oh, thank you, it’s just brown and water.”) Doris Grau passed away a year and a half before this episode aired, so this script was definitely written after her passing, and look! They wanted to make a joke with a cafeteria worker, so they made up a new character! I kind of go back and forth as to whether retiring or recasting is a better option when actors pass away, but as I’ve mentioned many times already, it’s just curious which characters ended up retired (those voiced by “major” names like Phil Hartman and Marcia Wallace) and those that ended up recast (Russi Taylor, Doris Grau.)
• Chalmers the annoying moviegoer is one of my favorite syndication cuts. It’s just so silly (“You think they actually filmed this in Atlanta?” “I don’t know. I don’t think it’s important.” “Yeah…”)
• Toward the end of act two, it starts to get a little stupid how far Skinner and Krabappel push Bart. They have to know how shaky their alliance is, that he could blab at any second and it’s all over for them, so why are they forcing him to courier notes for him during school hours? Skinner forcing Bart to say “I love you” in the middle of class is really, really dumb, but Martin’s jab at Bart that finally breaks him almost makes it worth it (“Now, Bart, you must promise not to fall in love with me!”)
• “Baby looked at you?!”
• “Willie hears yah. Willie don’t care.”
  
• I always laugh at Homer forgetting to pull the megaphone away from his mouth after he finds the remote, sheepishly pulling it from Marge’s face before repeating himself (“IT WAS… it was in my pocket.”) Such a nice little moment.
• Why exactly would the police choose to blast romantic music to try to drive a romantic couple out of the building? Who knows. The third act does get a little dull at points, I won’t lie.
• I love the contempt Chalmers has for the rest of the townspeople, and Sideshow Mel’s impassioned rebuttal (“Let us take our case directly to the townspeople.” “Oh, yeah, that’ll be real productive. Who do you want to talk to first? The guy with a bumblebee suit, or the one with a bone through his hair?” “My opinion is as valid as the next man’s!”)
• Of all the show moments that made no sense to me as a child, Skinner’s admission to being a virgin is the biggest of them all, since it’s basically the resolution to the entire story, and season 8 ran a lot when I was big into syndication. I don’t think I even had a clue as to what Skinner meant when I first saw this. But I love it, how Chalmers can’t get away fast enough to escape the awkwardness, and also this excellent bit (“Hey, does this mean that Mrs. Krabappel is a virgin too?” “Ha!”) This also implies a kind of sweeter element to the story: we’ve seen Krabappel to be sexually open in episodes past, but despite their heavy make-out sessions, she still respected either Skinner’s hesitance to have sex or his desire to wait. How wholesome.
• Simpsons Archive retro review: “A promising premise made for the worst episode ever (tied with 4F04). The birthday party and the standoff were the suckiest scenes I’ve ever seen (no pun intended), and Bart’s role seemed like nothing more that something the writers put in to keep us from bitching about OFF’s lack of screentime (like we did last year with 3F15). That and that fact that I don’t know which makes me wanna wretch more- this ep or 4F04.”

Original airdate: February 21, 2021

The premise: Bart gets a hold of Edna Krabappel’s diary, and upon finding her writing about her belief in his untapped potential, he turns over a new leaf to be a better student. Lisa discovers Edna was actually writing about her cat, and struggles to keep the secret to herself.

The reaction: Almost eight years following Marcia Wallace’s death, Edna Krabappel’s departure from the series has always felt like this weirdly unresolved issue. I absolutely understand the apprehension given Wallace’s untimely passing, but considering Edna was a pivotal character as not only Bart’s teacher but also Ned Flanders’ wife, it felt all the stranger as years and years went by with no in-series acknowledgement apart from a short tribute shortly after Wallace’s death. Eventually, Ned ended up the new fourth grade teacher, but I can count on one hand the number of episodes where we’ve actually seen him in that role. But now, finally, we have what feels like our Farewell to Edna episode, and while the intentions were obviously pure, it’s a big schmaltzy mess. Bart ends up with Mrs. K’s diary, and is surprised to find a passage about Edna’s “spiky-haired after school buddy” he assumes is about him (“Sometimes I have to be tough on him so his behavior gets better, but he’s smart as a whip.”) Invigorated by his former teacher’s faith, Bart resolves to do better of himself, eventually leading to an actual A on a test. Lisa, however, finds that Edna was writing about her cat, and drives herself into an anxiety spiral to keep the secret. The back half of the episode is Bart giving long speeches about how he actually likes being good now while Lisa literally drives herself sick with guilt. It’s all so strange. I guess Bart just stopped reading the diary over however many days pass after reading that previous passage. Meanwhile, Lisa’s motivations are muddy: she starts off suspicious and weirdly jealous about Bart’s A, and that’s before the school carries Bart off like a hero for getting the “Most Improved Student” award or whatever. Is this still based off of just one test? Bart’s resolve is shown that he’s more kind and helpful, not that he’s working harder academically. At the start of act three, Bart feels confident enough to enter the spelling contest, and now Lisa is motivated to stop Bart before he fucks up and humiliates himself. Would he be a school-wide laughing stock for misspelling a word? Why would anyone care?

When Lisa finally exposes the truth, Bart starts crying and runs away. It’s pretty pathetic. In the end, Ned Flanders comes to the rescue, telling Bart a story about when he was planning to leave Springfield (for what reason, we’re never told why), but Edna was the sole “no” vote, believing she needed to stay because students like Bart needed her help. And… I’m not buying it. Sorry. I can kind of understand why some people might find this touching, but it just stinks of manipulative re-characterization. Like most Springfieldians, Edna may have entered her profession with hope and optimism, but for the course of the entire series, she was completely apathetic about her job, desperate for any opportunity to cut corners and get the hell out by the final bell every school day. Again, we’re never told why Ned wanted to leave, but it’s an opportunity that I think Edna would have leaped at if given the chance. The ending also attempts to put a sweet bow on Nedna (you know, that relationship nobody cared about?) by having Ned thumb to a page in Edna’s diary (“Now that I’ve been with Ned a year, he’s made my life a living… dream come true.”) Following this we get a sweet photo montage of Edna moments, ending with the “We’ll Really Miss You, Mrs. K” chalkboard that was used shortly after Wallace’s death. There’s so much irony-free sentimental bullshit here that I was surprised this wasn’t a Matt Selman show. Now, I don’t want to come off like a heartless asshole. Wanting to give Mrs. Krabappel a send-off show is a nice idea, and hoping to give it a level of earnestness is a good thing. This show used to be a master at balancing genuine emotional moments within its own crapsack world perfectly. We’ve seen more caring and vulnerable sides of Edna in the past (“Bart the Lover,” “Grade School Confidential”), so it’s possible to create some kind of narrative that gives her a farewell that feels within character. Even having to rely on using archive audio of Wallace, it could have been done. Instead, they went the easy route of retroactively framing Edna as an incredibly caring teacher who really loved her new husband and what a wonderful woman she was and it’s so sad she’s gone. Marcia Wallace was an incredibly talented performer, and most likely a wonderful woman beloved by the whole crew, but translating that great affection onto her character creates too big of a disconnect to me. For as pure the impulse seemed to be, this episode just came off way too forced and disingenuous.

Three items of note:
– More recasting shit: flamboyant gay stereotype Julio is now voiced by singer Mario Jose. Honestly, I don’t think anyone would have been upset if they just quietly retired this character. Also, Dr. Hibbert is still being voiced by Harry Shearer, having already made two other appearances (I think) this season. Did they just forget to recast him at this point?
– The episode opens with a musical number of everybody in Springfield waking up excited to head on down to Ned’s garage sale, since he’s such a pushover, they can get really good deals on all his stuff. Within the song, it’s implied that Ned “always” does this, so I guess he’s held multiple garage sales over a long period of time? The sale barely starts before Ned blows up at the bullies for smashing the Norman Rockwell commemorative plates they just bought. He vows to not sell one more item unless it’s going to actually be respected. So we spend two whole minutes on an opening musical about Ned being too nice, and then immediately undercut it. And it’s not like any of it has any point. Bart sweet-talks Ned into buying a box of books, one of which is Edna’s diary, unbeknownst to either of them, but he could have done that with Ned being his normal too-nice self. Pointless. Also, the song just sucks. The jokes aren’t funny, all our favorite characters do an elaborate choreographed dance number… just boring, transparent padding.
– Ned shows up at the very end to save the day, but it’s funny how we don’t see him at all in the middle chunk of the episode as Bart excels and impresses at school. He gets an A on a test in art, I guess presumably because they wanted to save Ned’s appearance until the end, but why not have it be in Ned’s class? Bart could be indirect when questioned about his new change-of-heart, which would make Ned curious, setting up the ending more. Later, when Bart discovers the truth and runs off crying, Lisa could go to Ned’s classroom and explain everything, leading right into him finding Bart to comfort him. But no, instead, Ned is nowhere to be found in Springfield Elementary. He’s not in the teacher’s lounge where we see the rest of the staff working telemarketer jobs, he’s not at the big assembly to award Bart… why make this change if you’re not going to do anything with it? Ned is literally Bart’s new teacher, the classroom being a huge series set piece for one of the main characters, and in three years after christening him the new fourth grade teacher, I can only remember one time we’ve seen Ned at school (“Crystal Blue-Haired Persuasion.”) It’s yet another “big” change in the series that actually doesn’t change anything, unless the writers randomly remember it sometime later. We literally just saw this in the last episode, where years and years after giving Comic Book Guy a wife, they finally decide to make an episode about it. By that standard, I guess in season 37, we’ll finally get an episode featuring Ned actually being a teacher. Can’t wait!

7. Lisa’s Date with Density

• As a kid reading the Simpsons Complete Guide book, I never understood the title. I thought it was “Destiny” and they made a typo. Even after seeing Back to the Future, it was still a bit of time after that I read the title again, and was like… oh. Now I get it.
• In maybe his sixth or seventh major appearance, the show is already making fun of Chalmers’ “SKINNER!!” This is the point where you would dial back the running gag after getting self-aware of it, but no, we’re in for decades more of “SKINNER!” (and uninspired variations of it) being one of Chalmers’ only two jokes.
• Everything about the telemarking scam subplot is an ominous harbinger for stupid and wacky Homer antics to come. Silly one-off stories like this or Homer’s sugar business in “Lisa’s Rival” work perfectly fine on their own, but it wouldn’t be long past this point where that exaggerated cartoony version of Homer would just be his “normal” character, an eccentric maniac who acts completely on impulse and gets off scot-free from all his crazy adventures.
• “When she sees you’ll do anything she says, she’s bound to respect you!” Boy, this quote doesn’t bring back any painful high school memories at all!
• “Guess who likes you” is still a very popular shitposting macro to this day. It also gave us this wonderful looping gif.
  
• The premise of this episode is fairly simplistic, but it feels incredibly human, especially the scenes where Lisa and Nelson just stand in silence not really knowing what to say with each other. Childhood romance is incredibly awkward, since neither party really knows what to make of their weird new feelings or what to do about them. It all comes from an honest place. Lisa has this odd infatuation with a boy that she wants to control to suit her, but cannot, and Nelson, in the end, admits he humored Lisa because he appreciated that deep down, she actually saw some good in him. Coming from a clearly broken home, it adds just a drop of emotionality to the character that really works. Eventually, Nelson’s “poor kid” label would become his “thing,” either to be the subject of scornful ridicule, or to elicit sympathy, sometimes both in the same episode. It sucks.
• “You kissed a girl!” “That is so gay!” Every time in the mid-to-late-2000s where an episode would use “gay” as a punchline (which sadly was quite often), I’d always think back to this line as another reminder of what actual clever writing used to be like.
• Skinner yelling at Agnes to not look out the window at the mooning bullies feels like a good example at how the Seymour-Agnes dynamic was a bit more developed back then. There’s an obvious pathetic sadness to Skinner living with his mother, being more or less under her thumb, but in moments like this, or in episodes like “Sweet Seymour Skinner’s Baaadaaasss Song” and “Grade School Confidential,” we see how Skinner is also acting as caregiver for this old woman, and has some kind of controlling hand in the household. In later portrayals, he’d become absolutely submissive to Agnes, which worked to heavily neuter the character, robbing him of his position of authority as the head of the school and Bart’s archenemy. …boy, I really didn’t mean to bitch this much about the modern-era show in this specific episode. A lot of stuff in it just ended up reminding me of how far things had fallen since this point.
• Simpsons Archive retro review: “One of the best Lisa-based episodes ever, but more time should’ve been spent on the subplot (Homer’s telemarketing scam). I was glad to see that Nelson never actually showed any sign of changing his character, as the kiss was without sincerity. I own a Honda, so I particularly liked the beginning, but a Lisa episode is still a Lisa episode, and the best of those still only gets a C-.”

8. Hurricane Neddy

• “The weather service has warned us to brace ourselves for the onslaught of Hurricane Barbara. And if you think naming a destructive storm after a woman is sexist, you obviously have never seen the gals grabbing for items at a clearance sale.” “That’s true, but he shouldn’t say it.”
• The onslaught of panicked customers raiding the Kwik-E-Mart definitely gave me March 2020 vibes trying to go into any grocery store.
• There’s a great attention to detail of when the national guardsman is trying to get Abe to leave the nursing home, he does a perfect heel turn when he goes to leave the room.
• It’s on-screen too long to be a “blink-or-you’ll-miss-it,” but I love that Homer has ripped off the back door to nail over his back window and it’s never highlighted as a joke.
• The death row convict blowing away, then getting shocked by the power lines to everyone’s elation is such a crazy, wonderfully dark joke.
• Fun animation of the Simpsons getting swirled around in the eye of the hurricane.
  
• “Neddy doesn’t believe in insurance. He considers it a form of gambling.”
• “God Welcomes His Victims” has got to be the greatest church marquee joke in the whole series. “Christ Dyed Eggs for Your Sins” is a close second.
• There’s so many great moments of Ned touring his shitty new house: the toilet in the bathroom (“Ned, you ever try lugging a toilet up a flight of stairs?”), the load-bearing Krusty poster, the upstairs replacement flooring… (“We ran out of floorboards there, so we painted the dirt. Pretty clever!”) It serves as the perfect last straw for Ned, showing on full display this entire town of absolute morons who somehow, miraculously, all came out of the storm completely unscathed. Hey, have I mentioned Dankmus recently?
• I love everything about the first two acts, as misfortune after misfortune befalls Ned (he himself specifically compares it to the story of Job) until he finally, after eight seasons, loses his cool. However, I still don’t like the ridiculous explanation of his childhood therapy, which retroactively turns his “okily-dokilys” into suppressions of his rage. I am absolutely all for an episode exploring what made Ned try to shut out all negative emotions in his life and how it deeply affects him, but the year-round spanking treatment felt way too silly when I would have rathered a more character-specific exploration. Ned admitting he hates his parents and the episode immediately ending feels like the ending of “$pringfield,” but rather than it feeling like a clever joke about addiction (“Maybe I should get some professional help.” “No, no, that’s too expensive. Just don’t do it anymore,”) to me, it just feels like teasing an interesting plot line that never actually happens. But despite my bitching, we do get the ever-useful classic line, “We’ve tried nothing and we’re all out of ideas!”
• “Ned Flanders, I mock your value system. You also appear foolish to the eyes of others.” “Past instances in which I professed to like you were fraudulent.” “I engaged in intercourse with your spouse or significant other. …now that’s psychiatry!”
• Simpsons Archive retro review: “It’s a waste of time to make an episode centering on a minor character. This format necessitates too many Simpson-less scenes. Also, the Ned-talk resulting from therapy is inconsistent with ‘Lisa the Vegetarian’ in which the clan talked like Ned. The slam at my alma mater didn’t help.”

9. El Viaje Misterioso de Nuestro Jomer

• I like the framing in the opening scene of Homer looking through the cut-out newspapers to each of his suspects. We also get this ever-useful reaction image at Marge’s limp excuse for why she’s suspiciously holding the scissors.
  
• Since getting a dog a few months ago, I have had many a dog-dangling afternoon. I highly recommend it.
• “Of course everything looks bad if you remember it” is yet another incredibly handy phrase this show has given us.
• The cowboy Smithers scene was a syndication cut, and seeing it for the first time on DVD really baffled me. I still don’t have any idea what it’s supposed to mean. I guess his costume is pretty flamboyant, but he’s affecting a macho voice while asking Marge to dance… anyone want to explain this to me?
• I really like how Ralph is kind of lucid in this episode, innocently giving Homer the idea to use the candle wax. There’s a fine line between making him dumb and simple, and making him a braindead one-line generator, and this show would very soon cross it.
• Kudos to Dan Castellaneta for reading wax-lipped Homer’s dialogue with his mouth slightly open, really selling that he’s talking through the wax.
• I like that right before Homer’s freakout begins, he laments how Marge wasn’t there to see him triumph over Wiggum. He grumbled about Marge’s no-beer promise when the two parted, but he still loves her and values her company, even if he’s doing something all for himself. His great victory means less to him since he wasn’t with Marge, almost like she’s his soulmate! It’s a small, but important touch.
• The animation in this episode is really just gorgeous, with so many great trippy visuals.
  
• A while back, I was absolutely obsessed with the game LEGO Dimensions, a toys-to-life crossover game featuring many different franchises like Back to the Future, Harry Potter, Adventure Time, Doctor Who and so forth, where you collected the actual LEGO figures that appear in-game when you put them on the gamepad. The Simpsons was one of the first expansions released, with Homer, Bart and Krusty as playable characters, and the bonus level was based on this episode (you can watch it here.) The thing was, the game publisher was able to get the Simpsons license, but could only secure the voice rights of Dan Castellaneta (while playing as Homer and Krusty will trigger random quips, Bart was left a completely mute character.) In regards to making a game level using only existing show audio, this feels like the only possible episode they could have used, since the plot is really only focused on Homer. They dodged around it well enough, with Marge conspicuously left mute in the opening and ending. They were still able to use Johnny Cash’s voice, so I guess his estate wasn’t hard to deal with.
• While barely featured in this episode, Bart and Lisa get two fantastic scenes: Bart’s “Time for Chili” hat, and “So I says to Mabel, I says…,” which I’m still not completely sure what it’s a reference to or why it’s so funny, but it is.
• Homer desperately running around the from-behind Marge and her blowing away like sand is honestly kind of chilling imagery. 
• Johnny Cash is the perfect wise voice for the Space Coyote, and he even does really great coyote growling and gnawing noises!
• “We don’t have anything in common! Look at these records: Jim Nabors, Glen Campbell, the Doodletown Pipers. Now look at her records! They stink!”
• I really love how act three is fueled by Homer’s insecurities. Unlike future Homer-Marge storylines, where Homer would do some incredibly stupid shit and get forgiven by Marge for no real reason other than the episode was almost over, it’s great that here and in “A Milhouse Divided,” Homer is more introspective about his relationship, wondering if he’s truly deserving of a saintly woman like Marge, a much, much more sympathetic portrayal than his future Captain Wacky de-evolution. The resolution is incredibly sweet, as Marge gives believable and funny reasoning as to how she found Homer, revealing that she knows him better than anyone. The elation in Homer’s “Oh, Marge!” when it all dawns on him is palpable, it’s so endearing.
• Simpsons Archive retro review: “Bad animation, mostly flat jokes and a story that lacks depth makes this an all time clanger, to me. Homer’s quest for his new soulmate is handled rather improperly. I, myself, am tired of seeing stories about Homer and Marge’s relationship in jeopardy. The ending is so predictable and forced that it just totally falls flat. I didn’t too much care for the animation or most of Homer’s hallucination either. A few good jokes, but a story that leaves much to be desired.”

10. The Springfield Files

• It’s pretty obvious from the start that this is an Al Jean & Mike Reiss show, considering almost half of the first act is isolated scenes of characters talking about how it’s Friday. It’s a writing style that’s held firm since their years running the show, as well as The Critic, which can result in some funny individual moments, but it makes the episode itself feel kind of thin and underdeveloped. This episode feels like one of the “worst” examples, since if you only left in the scenes that actually progressed the story, it’d probably barely be ten minutes. There could have been ways they could have beefed the story up a bit more, although, to be fair, I don’t really know how much further you can develop a plot as thin as “Homer sees an alien.”
• The score at the end of the first act is really great. I don’t know if it’s meant to be specifically evocative of any musical motifs from The X-Files (besides the actual theme music when the “alien” appears), but it sets a real unique and ominous mood as Homer gets more and more lost and out-of-sorts.
• I’ve only seen bits and pieces of The X-Files, but I’m aware enough of the characters of Mulder and Scully to go along with their roles in the story. It’s also pretty curious that two years prior, Matt Groening cried foul at “A Star is Burns,” but I guess he didn’t have a problem with this. I guess he softened a bit in the time between, but it’s pretty interesting, especially since both episodes are Al Jean & Mike Reiss joints.
• I’m torn about the alien line-up gag. It’s funny, but it kind of shoots a gigantic hole in the reality of the series to just have five aliens standing there in a police line-up. Also, Mulder and Scully are there to verify if Homer’s wild claims of actually seeing a real alien are true… yet they’re able to drag in Chewbacca and Marvin the Martian at the drop of a hat? The joke is a little too muddy. Also, since ALF is there, I’ll plug Phillip Reed’s ALF reviews again, since I just finished re-reading them for the fourth time and laughed my ass off just as hard.
• “I’m like the man who single handedly built the rocket and went to the moon. What was his name? Apollo Creed?”
• Even though I just bitched about isolated gags, I still love the man waking up from a 23-year coma bit (“Do Sonny and Cher still have that stupid show?” “No, she won an Oscar, and he’s a Congressman!” “Good night!” [dies])
  
• The reveal of the Burns alien feels like such a classic moment, and part of me still loves how stupid an explanation it is, but really, what’s the deal here? Smithers explains how Burns gets all of these debilitating and disillusioning procedures done every week… and then just lets him wander around defenseless in the woods? I guess he just picks him up later in the night? It’s really kind of pushing the boundaries of logic a bit.
• It’s odd that there’s no real wrap-up for Mulder and Scully. They reappear in the crowd at the very end with no dialogue, but it feels like they should have had an actual role in the third act, like they come back to Springfield after the alien footage gets released. They could still be skeptical, react in shock when the “alien” appears, then have some kind of conclusionary remarks before the big song. It would definitely make this feel more like a real crossover. Instead, they’re just around for a few minutes in act two and leave.
• Simpsons Archive retro review: “Ugh, ugh, retch. I’m sorry, I really expected something funny out of this episode, but aside from the Nimoy intro, the exploding lie detector and a couple other small things, this episode’s jokes were predictable, corny, cheesy, dated, poorly thought-out and just plain embarrassing. The premise? Done to death. The crossover? Anticlimactic. I really hate to say this, but this episode blew.”

11. The Twisted World of Marge Simpson

• Women don’t really have many robust roles on this show, but what we do see (at least in this era) was very good. The Investorettes is a great idea, this collection of bored housewives and single women exerting some independence via meager, quick-on-return investments. But when Helen wants to up the ante a bit, it’s too much for Marge to handle (“I’m not wild about these high-risk ventures. They sound a little risky.”) Most Marge episodes boil down to her wanting more excitement out of the house, which this episode kind of is, but I like that the framing of it is completely different, where she pushes herself out of her comfort zone to go toe-to-toe with her fairweather friends.
• The pancakes in the mail joke is such a fantastic double-joke, carried over two scenes with two separate characters. Helen sternly telling Marge she’ll get her pancakes in the mail is funny on its own, then when we cut back to Marge having finished telling the family the story, Homer asking about the pancakes is even funnier, because of course that’s the one detail of the story he would hone in on. Also, bits that carry over from scene to scene really work to make the story feel more cohesive, as small as they are.
• Fleet-A-Pita’s blatant whitewashing to rebrand scary “ethnic” food as an exciting “specialty” business venture makes for such a great scene. Cautious suburbanite Helen is cautious (“I don’t know about food from the Middle East. Isn’t that whole area a little iffy?”) but the saleswoman wins them all over thanks to “flavor sauce,” “crunch patties,” and her world-class chef “Christopher.” This episode is over twenty years old, and you still see this kind of white American-ization of foreign dishes, the scene plays as strong as ever.
• Jack Lemmon does a great job, he’s just the perfect person to convince Marge to invest, a simple, kindly man who forgoes flash for wholesome values. It sets up the perfect David and Goliath between her and the Investorettes. Fleet-A-Pita, the flashy new worldly food option with a heap of money behind it, and Marge’s made-in-American, family-run Pretzel Wagon.
• The family helping Marge’s business out lends itself to some really sweet and funny scenes, from the phony ticker tape parade to avoid littering laws (“Welcome back, space girl!”), Homer diligently acting as pretzel inspector, with a taped on label over his work shirt and helmet, and Homer actively talking up the Pretzel Wagon to his co-workers as she arrives at the plant (“Why, it’s one of those pretzel wagons the movie stars are always talking about!”)
• Something about Cletus yelling out his enormous list of kids paired with their incredibly slow walking out of the house and into place on the porch makes that scene extra funny, capped off by Cletus’ big goofy grin at the end, extremely pleased to have outsmarted his way to free food (“I should’ve said limit one per customer.” “Should’a, but didnt’a.”)
• “‘Copyright 1968.’ Hmmm, determined or not, that cat must be long dead. That’s kind of a downer.”
• Whitey Ford’s unconscious body lying on the field is such a hilarious image.
  
• Frank Ormand being dead, and the reveal of his executor being dead as well (“They were in the same car!”), feels a bit too dark, which is saying something for a season with both Shary Bobbins and Frank Grimes. Maybe it’s different because both those episodes ended with the guest star’s death, while here, it’s a scene in the second act where we find out an old man is dead, with an added twist that another old man is also dead. Not quite as funny to me.
• This feels like one of the last great appearances by the Springfield mafia. The montage of them muscling other foodstuffs off Marge’s turf is full of great gags (Legs removing the little table from the pizza and smashing the box, escorting the Girl Scouts out of town by gunpoint), but even better, they use the Mermaidman and Barnacleboy music! Up, up and awaaaaaayy!
• “You have twenty-four hours to give us our money. And to show you we are serious… you have twelve hours.”
• Marge’s reconciliation with Homer at the end feels like a great summation of her love for him (“I don’t hate you for failing, I love you for trying.”) Homer getting the mafia to help Marge without her knowing is an insane and dangerous idea, but, being the saint she is, she knew how it came from an absolutely pure place of earnestly wanting to help. It’s such a nice moment surrounded by the crazy Yakuza ending.
• Simpsons Archive retro review: “If I could sum up this ep in a word, it would be ‘weak.’ Even before I realized Jennifer Crittendon wrote it, I started thinking that it was like the Country Club episode. I am seriously starting to wonder if maybe a female writer can’t capture the essence of The Simpsons correctly. And is it me, or has it been awhile since we’ve seen much of Bart or Lisa?” (surprisingly, this review was written by a woman.)

12. Mountain of Madness

• I’m not a coffee drinker, but Burns’ reaction face makes me want to be.
  
• The unnamed ranger is this episode’s understated MVP. I love his measured voice, almost like a more muted version of Hank Azaria’s Adam West-esque beekeeper from “Lisa’s Rival.” 
• It’s weird seeing Smithers with blue-tinted glasses in this episode. I don’t know at what point this switch was made permanent, but Smithers went from normal white eyes to having them be slightly blue due to his glasses, which never made any sense to me, since that logic doesn’t apply to fellow eyeglass-wearers like Ned or Milhouse. It’s similar to another random design change where Professor Frink’s lab coat changed from green to white. At least in that instance, I understand the logic, as a white coat makes him more easily recognizable as a scientist, but I still miss that green coat! #NotMyFrink
• I love how irritated Smithers gets by Bart and Lisa. We typically only see him as Burns’ ever-obedient lapdog, but there’s undeniably some repressed angry feelings building up in him, both from the stress of his overbearing job and his eternally unrequited love. I also like how Bart and Lisa are both annoying in their own distinct ways: Bart is of course a dim little shit, searching for gold and not knowing how a watch works (“What comes after twelve?” “One.” “No, after twelve,”) while Lisa tries to tend to each and every woodland critter with a bum ankle or a light cough (Smithers snaps, “Aren’t there any healthy animals in this forest?!”) Has Smithers ever had any extended screen time with Bart and/or Lisa before or since? I can only think of Lisa getting Stacy Lovell’s address from Smithers in “Lisa vs. Malibu Stacy,” but that was a quick scene. It’s a pretty unique pairing, another reason I really enjoy these scenes.
• “I’ve always felt that there’s far too much hysteria these days about so-called cheating. If you can take advantage of a situation in some way, it’s your duty as an American to do it. Why should the race always be to the swift, or the jumble to the quick-witted? Should they be allowed to win merely because of the gifts God gave them? Well, I say cheating is the gift man gives himself!”
• “From the mightiest Pharaoh to the lowliest peasant, who doesn’t enjoy a good sit?” Harry Shearer nails each and every one of these Burns lines.
• Like in “Bart After Dark,” I’m reminded once again of Rocko’s Modern Life, which did their own trapped-in-a-cabin-by-an-avalanche episode, and a really great one at that. Seriously, guys, that show really does hold up pretty damn well.
• I love the build-up right before Homer and Burns finally throw down, where their ghost armies close in on each other, the tension increases… and then they fade away as the two start fighting, their grandiose delusions melting away to show these two cold and tired men attempt to kill each other.
• The rocket cabin is a little dumb, but it’s absolutely worth it for Lenny’s ”Something’s wrong with its brakes!” I fucking love that line.
• Simpsons Archive retro review: “Stupid TV… be more funny! I find myself saying that a lot lately. I had thought this season’s biggest problem with the bad episodes was that they wrote the plots around the jokes. Well this week my words come back to haunt me, because this week there were few jokes at all. A few of the slapstick gags (which seems like the writers’ humorous element of choice for it these days) got me snickering but that was about it. And yet again Bart and Lisa are pretty much ignored except for a few inane lines. Still, it had a few moments, which were a few more than that horrible abomination of last week. C’mon writers, let’s get back to the dialogue and satire that made the show what it always was which is relatively absent most of the time these days.”

13. Simpsoncalifragilisticexpiala-D’oh-cious

• Seeing Lisa pull one of Marge’s looooong hairs out of her soup really shows what an enormous hassle her giant beehive must be. The drains at the Simpson house have got to be clogged at least once a week.
• As Homer attempts to expose the “man in drag” at his door, I’ll just say I recently watched Mrs. Doubtfire for the first time in 15 years, and it 100% does not hold up. Just an annoying and ugly movie.
• All the songs from this episode were on the soundtrack CDs, and I’ve heard them so, so many times. In “Minimum-Wage Nanny,” after Lisa yells at Bart for interrupting, I always misheard when he replies, “Just cutting through the treacle.” Never having heard the word ‘treacle,’ I heard it as ‘treehole,’ which makes absolutely no sense. Treehole, like in the cover of To Kill a Mockingbird? To be fair to my younger self, Nancy Cartwright doesn’t really emphasize the ‘k’ sound, so it almost kind of sounds like “tree-hull.”
• Speaking of the soundtrack, it contains a full song cut from this episode featuring Patty and Selma, “We Love to Smoke.” I don’t know if it ever even got to the animatic stage. It’s a nice little song, but I understand why it was cut, since it’s completely separate from Bobbins and the main family. Also, the final line of the song, “Although we’ll croak before 2003,” would have only gotten funnier with age.
• This is another episode I’ve seen a ton of times in syndication, and this moment always stuck out to me. During the slow push-in on the window where we first see Shary Bobbins, we hold on Marge’s incredibly dumb-looking face as the magical music swells, which kind of taints the moment a little bit. Couldn’t they have had Marge looking sad or defeated or something?
  
• Maggie Roswell got a separate “Starring” credit for this episode, and it’s absolutely earned. Of the supporting cast, Roswell may not have gotten meaty regular roles like Pamela Hayden or Tress MacNeille, but her talents shone through in recurring characters like Maude Flanders and Helen Lovejoy, as well as a large cast of random one-off characters. Shary Bobbins was her spotlight role, doing so great a job that the producers decided to let her voice the character rather than go after Julie Andrews herself. Hearing her incredible talent here makes her later contract battle with FOX a few years later all the more aggravating.
• This episode has my absolute favorite Willie scene, with doing the Flashdance dance and then screaming at a not-blind Shary Bobbins (“It’s good to see you, Willie.” ”That’s not what you said the first time you saw me!!”) Either one of those bits would have been enough to make it an all-time great scene, but both of them together? They’re just spoiling us.
• Another misheard line I’ve listened to a hundred times: Abe’s “I think we got our umbrellas switched!” Great line, great act break, took an embarrassing number of times watching as a kid to understand what he was saying. Maybe it’s just me, but like Bart’s “treacle,” I can’t hear the “r” in umbrella, and the back half of “switched” fades out very quickly since Abe’s out the door by that point, so I can kind of see how I got confused.
• If I may praise one specific moment of Roswell’s performance, it’s most definitely her exasperated “Do-re-mi-fa-so…” under her breath as she scurries back to the kitchen.
• Where the sizable amount of “filler” scenes in “The Springfield Files” bothered me a bit, I don’t really mind them here, since they’re mostly all stuff the Simpsons are watching on TV, reinforcing their sloth-like nature. Included is one of the best Itchy & Scratchys, the Reservoir Dogs parody where Itchy slices the head off of Quentin Tarantino. Asked to voice himself, Tarnatino apparently was slightly offended by his dialogue and turned it down, so I guess he got what he deserved.
• The episode doesn’t really resolve Marge’s problem, but that’s kind of the point, as she explains she’s just going to emotionally disassociate and go with the flow from now on. “Happy Just The Way We Are” is a card-carrying ode to the status quo, and it’s wonderful for what it is, though it feels like another illuminating example of the Oakley & Weinstein era feeling like the would-be final years of the series. In another world, maybe they would have been. We can only imagine…
• Simpsons Archive retro review: “As fate put it, I couldn’t watch the episode live, and had to tape it; during any subsequent viewing, my thumb just ached for the ‘forward’ button, which speaks in volume. It’s not that I dislike music in the Simpsons universe, but I find myself uncomfortable around musical numbers, where people start singing out of the blue for no other apparent reason than to make sure it’s a real musical number. So, when facing song after song of ‘we’re bad, we’re rad, we’re a mess and we love it,’ I grabbed whatever humor was left, silently waiting for the real Simpson family to be back next week.”

1. Treehouse of Horror VII

• The Simpson kids forming a human ladder is a cute little piece of animation.
  
• It doesn’t rain much in Los Angeles, but when it does and I have to drive somewhere, I invariably think, “Who needs a car-wash when you can just drive around in the rain?”
• I love that Marge’s surprised scream at Hibbert’s appearance is followed by Hibbert screaming right back. It just kind of happens and they move on without highlighting it, which makes it even funnier to me.
• “I think I’ll bottle feed that one” is yet another joke I didn’t get over multiple viewings as a kid.
• I don’t know for sure, but it sounds like they electronically deepend Nancy Cartwright’s voice for Hugo. She can get pretty low register at times, but Hugo still sounded a bit artificially sweetened to me.
• I like that if you’re really paying attention, you can figure out the “twist” ending of Bart being the evil twin, since we see what side Bart’s scar is on right before the flashback.
• Bart’s teasing of Lisa on her petri dish society of “You trying to grow a friend?” feels like the most authentic big brother taunt he’s ever said.
• The sequence of the mini fighter jets flying up to Bart to attack is really cool.
  
• Neat touch that we see mini-versions of the college nerds alongside mini-Frink after Lisa is first shrunken down. 
• I know he did Bill Clinton on SNL, but Phil Hartman doing Clinton here is a little distracting, considering how similar he sounds to his other Simpsons characters. I like that Kang and Bob Dole are both voiced by Harry Shearer, and I thought it would be more appropriate if Dan Castellaneta voiced Clinton, since he also voices Kodos. He had voiced Clinton in previous episodes, but in future appearances in seasons 10 and 11, Clinton was voiced by Karl Wiedergott, which is kind of weird. Why bring in a guest voice when one of your main cast members has proven to do a funny impression already?
• “Aliens, bio-duplication, nude conspiracies… Oh my God! Lyndon LaRouche was right!”
• The “abortions for some, miniature American flags for all!” scene is still a classic, but I was more struck by the beginning of the scene, where for some reason, Dole is introduced as “73-year-old candidate Bob Dole.” I was a little kid during the 1996 election, did Dole consider it a point of pride that he was the oldest Presidential candidate? It’s even funnier now since last fall, we had two candidates who were older than Dole, and we now have the oldest President ever to be elected. Boy, living in a gerontocracy sure is great!
• “I am looking forward to an orderly election tomorrow, which will eliminate the need for a violent blood bath” was a quote that popped up a lot last November.
• The “third party candidate” bit at the end is so great, but it’s bizarre that the line is said by Skinner’s dark-haired doppelgänger. Did his model sheet get accidentally mixed into the crowd pile and they didn’t have time or want to spend the money to do a retake? It’s weird that a pretty big mistake like this could happen as late as season 8.
  
• Simpsons Archive retro review: “I thought this was a horrible special. Every single episode had no, or a very sketchy, bad ending, unlike nearly all of the previous specials. I was very disappointed with this episode, and if it is an indicator of what’s ahead, look out.”

2. You Only Move Twice

• “I’ve dug myself into a happy little rut here and I’m not about to hoist myself out of it.” “Just bring the rut with you, honey!”
• I like that after Bart shoves Lisa out of the way, the next shot she’s annoyedly rubbing her arm. I like when small stuff like that carries over past the joke. They could have easily had Lisa just standing there, or not had her in the next shot at all, but I like the added detail. Similarly, we see the collapsed chimney in exterior shots of the house, when it could have just been ignored past the goofy gag.
• I love the end of act one where we get our entire cast saying goodbye to the Simpsons. This being the season premiere, it’s almost angling like this is the start of a whole new revamp of the show where they move to a new town with all new characters and situations. It’s also funny that the second character to say goodbye after Ned is everybody’s favorite side character, the Blue-Haired Lawyer.
• Ah, Hank Scorpio, hands down Albert Brooks’ best Simpsons role, and one of the best one-off characters ever. Almost every line of his is quotable. The character itself is brilliant in his conceit, that a Bond villain would also angle themselves as the world’s best boss, but on top of that, the excellent writing and Brooks’ performance elevates Scorpio to a whole new level. It may be somewhat of a front that he genuinely cares for Homer at all, but I like to think that he does. Why else would he have worked so hard on his coat bit if not to earnestly try and impress Homer?
  
• Cypress Creek Elementary School being so impressive that they have their own website is most definitely a time capsule joke. Also, in case you’re wondering, http://www.studynet.edu does not exist.
• I always laugh at the dramatic music stings at Marge drinking the wine.
• It doesn’t seem very logical for business to have so many identical stores in one place, but man, that hammock distinct sounds mighty comfy.
• “Maybe it just collapsed on its own” is one of many random lines I find myself saying quite a bit, in reference to anytime I or someone else messes something up.
• Another signal Scorpio is actually a nice guy: despite having his goons ruthlessly gun down his arch nemesis James Bont, he still intends to pay for his funeral. A cheap one, but still.
• They tried their best to come up with big reasons why the other Simpsons would hate Cypress Creek, but really, even Homer could have figured out how to help them, especially if he asked Scorpio for help. Surely there are effective allergy medications Lisa could take, Bart could have been transferred to a different class, maybe even held back a grade, and if Marge couldn’t bother to find a new hobby or something to occupy her time, just rip all the automated shit out of the house and let her do the housework again. But whatever, the point is they all miss Springfield, and Homer has an important decision to make.
• I once again wonder why the hell they didn’t just make Albert Brooks’ role in the movie Hank Scorpio. He could have still been the head of the EPA and had some throwaway dialogue about how he infiltrated the government, but not so much as to alienate casual fans who wouldn’t know who he was. But hey, why throw the fans of your show any bones when you’re trying to appeal to the widest demographic possible? I think after season 11, I may do a Revisted of the movie to finish things off.
• “Scorpio!” is definitely in the top 10 songs of the series. Even though they had to speed it up a bit to fit in the credits, it’s still fabulous.
• Simpsons Archive retro review: “One of the more forgettable episodes I’ve seen; this one just wasn’t as well written as I’ve come to expect. The only big laughs come from Bart’s remedial class and a climax that parodies just about every 007 movie ever made. Worst of all was Homer’s new boss, who was just plain annoying.”

3. The Homer They Fall

• Homer pulling Marge at the mall (“Homer, please! You’re hurting my arm.” “No, I’m not!”) feels like an early sign of Jerkass Homer. 
• The designs for Jimbo, Dolph and Kearney’s dads feels a bit silly. I get you want to make them instantly recognizable they’re the bullies’ parents, but Jimbo’s dad is literally wearing his son’s exact same skull shirt and purple hat.
• Fun background detail in Moe’s “office” on one of his old fight posters: Szyslak vs. Oakley (complete with a little caricature of showrunner Bill Oakley.) Also advertised is Kirkland vs. Silverman, referencing show directors Mark Kirkland and David Silverman.
• I wonder if the producers actually tried to get Don King and he said no, so they decided to make their own stand-in character (“He’s exactly as rich and as famous as Don King, and he looks just like him, too!) Paul Winfield does a fantastic job as Lucious Sweet, caricaturing the Don but still playing it straight when needed in the story.
• Glad to see Dr. Hibbert keeps his surgical 2x4s sterilized in their own packaging before use.
• At the precipice of an endless series of Homer-gets-a-job storylines, this episode gets a pass for two reasons: first, there’s a believable reason and explanation as to why Homer both wants to do this job (working with Moe, money) and why he’s actually good at it, and second, the story is really about Moe, as we get a look into his past and his struggles to reclaim his former glory in exchange for his friend’s well-being. 
• More words I learned from this show: verticality, and fustigaton.
• Homer having no idea who Drederick Tatum is feels like a big pill to swallow. I don’t care about it as a continuity error given him watching his big fight in “Homer vs. Lisa and the 8th Commandment,” but even if Homer didn’t know a thing about boxing, Tatum, being a Mike Tyson expy, is such a well-known public figure that even Marge knew who he was. 
• I really hope someone made a T-shirt of the fist coming toward Homer’s face.
• Some of the melodrama in act three gets to be a little much: Moe tossing away the towel, the backend of the fight as Tatum pummels Homer and prepares for the final blow. There’s a few jokes peppered here and there, but it still felt like it needed a bit more.
• “I can’t remember where we parked.” “That’s all right. We’ll just wait till everyone else leaves.”
• Moe as the globetrotting altruistic Fan Man is such a bizarre ending. Is this any kind of specific reference to something? I feel like an ending with Homer and Moe at the bar giving a final coda to the story would have felt more appropriate.
• Simpsons Archive retro review: “There’s very little to say about this episode at all, aside from the fact that it’s riddled with continuity errors. Janey’s voice is wrong. Homer’s age is 35, not 38. Homer’s dealing with Bart’s getting beaten up is COMPLETELY inconsistent with ‘Bart The General.’ And Moe has SO had a woman in his establishment since 1979. Furthermore, I don’t believe that’s even the real Drederick Tatum. This episode is quite frankly the biggest piece of sh*t I’ve ever seen dubbed as a Simpsons episode.”

4. Burns, Baby Burns

• Homer’s body crumpling to the ground after his brain floats away is such a funny piece of animation. Similar to Krusty collapsing after getting brained by a golf club in “Scenes From the Class Struggle in Springfield,” this show mastered hilarious fall animations before Family Guy showed up with their own crappy version of it.
  
• I really like the mini-running gag of Marge’s mis-pronunciations. First she gets mildly annoyed at her daughter correcting her on “foliage,” then later she makes her feel better by saying it correctly, but then screws up again (“I can’t excape Lisa, our little walking liberry.”)
• Another great line I think about often for no reason: “If this stuff’s too nice for you, I’ve got some crap!”
• I used to have a big collection of the Playmates Simpsons figure line when I was younger, most of which I ended up selling. Two of the figures I still have are Larry Burns and Hank Scorpio, two characters who have nothing in common, yet I have them standing right next to each other anyway, being two fantastic season 8 characters.
• “This guy’s got more bread than a prison meatloaf. He’s rich, I tell yah. I never seen a place with a walk-in mailbox. …hey, who am I talking to?” I can see some people not like that Larry is basically just Rodney Dangerfield, but I still like that it works within the context of the story. If there’s any friction to be had from a long lost son of Monty Burns, it would be because that son is a light-hearted, uncouth jokester that Burns has no idea what to do with.
• “Under the smiling eyes of four stuffed Eskimos, we expressed our love physically, as was the style at the time.”
• According to the commentary, the Snoopy puzzle that Homer frantically wipes off his console was designed to not actually show Snoopy’s head, as to not incite the ire of Charles Schulz’s lawyers. Was he that litigious about stuff like this? A couple years after this, South Park would feature a gag where Snoopy beats a naked Charlie Brown with a baseball bat. Also, was there any specific reason it was a Snoopy puzzle? Why even do it if they were afraid they might be sued? Why am I obsessing over this three second shot?
• There’s a great little moment in the dinner scene after Larry tells his father to “make with the yakkity-yak-yak,” Burns grumbles and under his breath mockingly refrains “the yakkity-yak-yak…” It’s such a well performed moment, clearly showing that he’s just about at his wit’s end with his undignified son and his ridiculous manner of speaking.
• The phony kidnapping feels a bit like a Mike Scully-era Homer harebrained scheme. I think if there were a few more lines where Homer and Larry come upon the idea and rationalized it a bit, it would have played off better. Instead, Homer just says, “There’s only one sure way to make him realize how much he loves you, and that is a phony kidnapping!” Like he just had that idea at the ready, because he’s such a wacky character! The idea of trying to get Burns to actually admit he loves his son is what we need from act three, which leads to great moments like him only caring out of principle that someone stole from him (”I’m missing one son! Return it immediately!,”) but kicking that part of the plot into gear was a little too abrupt.
• Really cute moment where Bart mimes readjusting his tie after delivering a Rodney-style zinger to Marge.
• “You know how I feel about hoaxes.” “Still?”
• The timing of Hans Moleman’s incredibly slow walk back to the lobby, then cut right to all the squad cars speeding up outside the theater is fantastic.
• I really love how we don’t get a sentimental reconciliation between Burns and Larry. After seeing so many modern episodes featuring a completely neutered, defanged Burns with schmaltzy bullshit resolutions, it was so refreshingly honest that we see Burns attempt to hug Larry, but then pull back, acknowledging that he just doesn’t have it in him to exhibit any actual human kindness. The best he can do is wish Larry luck living somewhere else far away from his property, and his parting words to his own flesh and blood are completely self-serving (“It’s good to know that… there’s another kidney out there for me.”)
• Simpsons Archive retro review: “Losing only to ‘Two Bad Neighbors,’ this is the worst episode in the last 6 seasons. I found it hard to sit through a second time because Larry just wasn’t funny. His cutdowns give a very brief chuckle, but there isn’t a single line that sticks out as notably funny afterward. Include that with a poor plot and significantly less Homer humor than usual and you’ll get a deadly combination which earns this episode an F!”

5. Bart After Dark

• The episode opens with a V-chip joke, which I really only know about from the South Park movie. I was a kid during the 90s, so I never had any direct consciousness of Clinton-era morality policing and legislation over movies, TV and video games. I’m kind of glad I was none the wiser, because as an adult, it would have driven me nuts. Rot in peace, Jack Valenti.
• The first act features another great depiction of Lisa as a bleeding heart activist, who is also a distractible little girl with a childish mindset. Going to help clean up the oil spill is a righteous cause, but Lisa, appropriately, is incredibly excited to clean and cuddle cute little baby seals and otters. Marge wisely calls Lisa out on her flighty interests, alluding to the peach tree in the background she presumably wouldn’t stop talking about and quickly lost interest in. This leads to a fantastic performance by Yeardley Smith pleadingly play-acting how much Lisa loves the peach tree until Marge throws her hands up and relents.
• Bart’s childish fascination with the Maison Derriere is played very well. His offer that he can sort through bras toes the line of him being a little brat, but also subconsciously acting out some prepubescent hormones. That attitude falls away as the plot continues and the days pass, as Bart becomes more comfortable at his new job, as the normalization of him just being a regular employee at this burlesque house becomes more of the joke. An episode like this stands in great contrast with many Bart episodes in the last decade or so, where they either write him as incredibly sexually immature or more directly like a teenager, and in some cases, both within the same episode.
• One of the greatest looping gifs to ever come out of this show. I love the little added yelp Abe gives when he sees Bart before he turns around.
  
• “President Eisenhower celebrates 40th wedding anniversary. Not pictured, Mrs. Eisenhower.”
• I love the callback to Mel Zetz when Homer confronts Belle. It’s another one of those examples as a kid where I figured that was an actual celebrity, instead of a purposefully comedic name they made up.
• Skinner’s “I was only in there to get directions on how to get away from there!” is fantastic, but it’s even better that it seems that he was literally crouched behind Lovejoy and popped up just to deliver his line.
• One of the most illuminating Marge lines: “Sleazy entertainment and raunchy jokes will never be as popular as sobriety and self-denial.”
• “Mayor Quimby!!” “That could be any mayor!”
  
• Abe and Jasper apparently both frequent a local bordello. There’s a nice mental image for you.
• “We Put the Spring in Springfield” is one of the great show stopping numbers of the whole series. Since the song is about the town as a whole, it’s appropriate that so many different characters get verses (the highlight being the bullies, “We just heard this place existeeeeeddddd!”) The big finish, involving as many wacky sound effects as possible, is really fun as well. It’s also great when Marge arrives and they have a semi-meta discussion about how the spontaneous song just kind of happened impromptu and they can’t really do it again. It reminded me of the Rocko’s Modern Life episode “Zanzibar” where Rocko is similarly disillusioned by the townspeople’s coordinated musical numbers (Heffer tells him they spent weeks rehearsing, which Rocko wasn’t aware of.)
• Where did Marge get that little dummy of herself made? It looks well crafted. Also, as crude as it was, I found it weirdly kind of sweet that Homer yells, “Take it off!” Is that weird? The man really loves his wife.
• Simpsons Archive retro review: “Well, actually, it seemed to be going well. Then, unfortunately, we get More Musical Mucilage. I despise this ‘musical’ ‘comedy’ that we see in ‘Animaniacs’ all the time. I’m not making fun of ‘Animaniacs,’ I just hate the songs. And to see this on OFF, altogether too many times (also the terrible ‘Who Needs the Kwik-E-Mart’ ruin-the-whole-episode-thing). Without the song, it’s a B — but as it stands, a D.”

6. A Milhouse Divided

• The opening did a pretty serviceable job hiding Bart’s body in front of the TV for the joke of him lying around in his underwear (“This ain’t the Ritz!”) Definitely in comparison to similar jokes done by this and other shows where the framing is so obvious that you can easily predict the joke coming.
• Pretty great detail that Homer is reading Hot Lotto Picks Weekly magazine in bed.
• “Hey, Lis, check this out. Non-stick coating.”
  
• Lovejoy’s first line about his missing coat is funny on its own (“My coat was stolen at last week’s interfaith banquet, so I helped myself to a few of the better umbrellas,”) but I love that it pays off later when it’s revealed that Luann was the one who stole it.
• This episode performs a miracle in its instant characterization of Kirk and Luann Van Housten. For the preceding 150 episodes, they were just Milhouse’s parents who we knew next to nothing about. But here, over the course of one evening, we learn so, so much about them individually and their relationship, emphasized even further by the powerhouse performances of Hank Azaria and Maggie Roswell. The Pictionary scene is one of the greatest scenes of the entire series, with these two characters ratcheting up the tension more and more as everyone else gets increasingly uncomfortable. This and “A Fish Called Selma” are these beautiful hints at a future of the series that never happened, where we could pick from our wide array of supporting players and turn them into real, compelling, funny and human characters over the course of just one act. But, sadly, this did not come to pass. Also, Kirk and Luann have got to be cousins, right? How can they not be?
• It’s funny how in the decade of seasons following this episode, Kirk became the show’s vessel for cheap, easy single dad jokes, but they basically wear out all their best gags in this very episode: his new home Casa Nova (A Transitional Place for Singles), his change in wardrobe, his new hobbies (“Today, I drank a beer in the bathroom!,”) his attempts to rebound with the lovely Starla (“Can I have the keys, lover? I feel like changing wigs.”) None of the jokes done past this point ever topped any of these.
• “Crackers are a family food. Happy families. Maybe single people eat crackers, we don’t know. Frankly, we don’t want to know. It’s a market we can do without.”
• Despite bearing his name in the title, Milhouse doesn’t factor in much of the episode. It’s implied that he’s enjoying being lovingly doted on by his parents trying to one-up each other, and that’s basically it. Then the episode turns into a Homer-Marge episode, but in another miracle this show pulls off, it still feels like it all works. I love that the Homer-Marge strife has been played subtly through the whole episode with just minor annoyances, like Homer not getting dressed before the party and not going out with Marge when he agreed to it. The third act isn’t Marge being pissed at Homer and him having to make amends, like so, sooo many future episodes would be, it’s Homer remembering how terrible he’s been in the past and trying to make things right with an oblivious Marge. Their reunion at the end feels earned as a result, and their second wedding remains a sweet, memorable moment for their relationship. I also love the meta aspect about how this impromptu act of love doesn’t work for Kirk as he attempts to serenade Luann to take him back. Unfortunately for Kirk, this show isn’t called The Van Houtens, no one gives a shit if they get back together. So they don’t, and Kirk gets the door. Brilliant.
• Bart smashing the chair on Homer in the tub became a pretty popular shitpost for a while, and for good reason. Dan Castellaneta’s scream is so hysterical. You can hear in his voice when he switches from reacting in pure pain, then the confusion of what the hell happened creeps in, then finally to anger at Bart.
• Is it gross that I think butterscotch chicken sounds kind of delicious? Also, in “Blood Feud,” we learned that Bart is allergic to butterscotch and imitation butterscotch. BOY I HOPE SOMEONE GOT FIRED FOR THAT BLUNDER.
• “Do you, Marge, take Homer, in richness and in poorness… poorness is underlined… in impotence and in potence, in quiet solitude or blasting across the alkali flats in a jet-powered, monkey-navigated… and it goes on like this…”
• “Can I Borrow a Feeling?” is the perfect combination of funny. The lyrics are great on their own, and brought to another level entirely by Hank Azaria’s impassioned, yet pathetic performance.
• I absolutely love the light jazz version of the end credit theme. It’s my favorite end credit variation, and yet it wasn’t on any of the soundtrack CDs, despite basically all the other end credit versions being on there. Scandal!
• Simpsons Archive retro review: “Poor Milhouse: he finally gets an episode named after him, but he hardly appears in it. Why give so much screen time to characters (the adult Van Houtens) we don’t even care about? There were a few good gags, enough to save it from a failing grade. Also, I give a major thumbs down to Bart bashing Homer on the head with a chair; I don’t see how you can call that funny.“