Original airdate: April 28, 2019

The premise: After accidentally plunging down Niagara Falls, Lisa is granted sanction into Canada, and finds herself not wanting to leave such a seemingly perfect country.

The reaction: The Simpsons take on Canada! Again! Moments after Lisa washes up on Canadian soil, she’s greeted by a modest mountie who says “eh” a lot, and is later given an IV drip of maple syrup. It’s like ticking the over-exhausted Canadian trope boxes. When Lisa goes on an angry diatribe over all the current American affairs that plague her eight-year-old mind, the mountie deems that since she feels unsafe in her own country, she’s now a Canadian refugee, and then “deports” her parents after protesting. It all feels very dumb, but it doesn’t matter. Lisa is enthralled living in a nation that prioritizes the environment, education, and actually cares for its citizens (“I’ve never been happier!” she explains to the audience, helpfully.) Eventually, Marge eventually sneaks her way across the border to get her daughter back. Of course, there’s no real emotional element to this at all. Lisa seems to not care at all about being away from her family, as she adamantly demands to stay in Canada when Marge shows up. She lives with foster parents who I guess were assigned to her, but of course we don’t know anything else beyond that. Meanwhile, Marge is pissed when she comes to get Lisa (“Listen you little traitor, I’m your mother, and you live where I live! You’re coming home with me!”) Remember when Marge used to be nice to her children? Anyway, it turns out the two of them are stuck there since America is very anti-immigrant at the moment, but Lisa has a last minute change of heart about the good ol’ US of A because the episode is almost over. When she’s originally about to leave Canada, her new teacher helpfully walks by to let her know that there’s a lot of shitty things about Canada too. It’s a fairly pedestrian theme the show could have utilized, how the grass always seems greener across the border or whatever, but of course they doesn’t even bother. The episode ends with the Simpsons running across a frozen river that’s cracking apart, but that doesn’t really matter as Homer’s able to cram in a joke about the Detroit Lions, and they get back into America and that’s it. Boy oh boy did I not miss this show.

Three items of note:
– On their trip up north, the Simpsons take a little trip through Upstate New York, where Homer sings a ballad to the wretched wasteland with revised lyrics to “New York, New York.” It’s basically a minute and a half long piece of filler in an episode that already felt super short (there’s an extended reused couch gag from years ago, and another thirty-second song later by Canadian Ralph.) It’s full of references to Oriskany, Mohawk Valley Community College and the old Kodak factory, which I guess people will understand and think is funny? I don’t get it, are a bunch of writers from upstate New York and were just laughing their tits off writing this? It’s just more of acknowledging reference humor than actual jokes. If the Simpsons drove through Central Jersey and sang a song about all the different landmarks and tropes of the area, I’d be perplexed more than anything, even though I would get the references. And beyond that, of course, the song is completely meaningless. “Capital City” meant something. “New Orleans” from “Oh, Streetcar!” meant something. This song means nothing, except to get mentioned in a couple of local New York papers. Any press is good press, I guess.
– I’m pretty sure this is the first time the series proper has breached any sort of discussion about President Trump. In her rage against America, Lisa repeatedly tries to hurl obscenities about our very smart big boy President, only to be shushed by Marge. Later in her new classroom, she introduces herself (“As an American, I’d like to apologize for something our President said about your wonderfully progressive Prime Minister.”) She is then ushered to another room where she’s able to Skype with Justin Trudeau (voiced by some guy), who proceeds to prove he’s not “weak” by lifting himself up on his desk and shimmying around. Jesus. It truly feels like a shitty SNL sketch where whoever playing Trudeau rips his shirt off and he’s ripped, and he’s like “Does THIS look weak to you, Mr. Trump?!” And the audience goes wild. Holy fuck, how embarrassing. The scene ends with Lisa alluding to the SNC-Lavalin scandal, causing Trudeau to get the fuck out. I guess this is their way of being impartial, but it felt like too little, too late after such a sorry display.
– Marge doesn’t give a flying fuck about her daughter’s unhappiness or disillusionment about America. When Lisa once again affirms she’s going to stay in Canada, Marge, with a big smirk on her face, tells her to look out across the lake at the United States and think of only the good. Lisa does, and she imagines America’s all-stars: Abraham Lincoln flying on Dumbo (SWEET, SWEET DISNEY SYNERGY!!), Aretha Franklin, Judy Blume (voicing herself) and Louis Armstrong, who sways Lisa with just one line of dialogue (“Get your ass back over there!”) It’d be funny if it were intentionally awful, but I know it’s not. Speaking of Dumbo, I thought maybe I’d talk about the absolutely stupefying piece of synergy released a month ago during the promotion of Disney+, announcing the series would be available exclusively through the new streaming service. I still don’t fully know how to express how I feel about it. It so desperately wants to seem like it’s biting the hand that feeds like they used to, referencing to Disney as their “new corporate overlords” (SEE! They referenced that line that’s a meme!!) and showing Rupert Murdoch’s portrait in a trash can (never mind the Murdochs are now majority shareholders in Disney), but it’s all so fucking phony. The Simpsons went from being counter-culture in the 90s, to just being culture in the 2000s, and now they’re blank-faced corporate assets to be used however their new lords and masters at Disney will see fit. To paraphrase Troy McClure, who knows how much more soulless and creatively bereft The Simpsons will become between now and the time the show becomes unprofitable?

One good line/moment: I got nothin’ here. This was a pretty bad one.

Original airdate: April 7, 2019

The premise: When Llewellyn Sinclair is pushed out of directing the latest production at the Springfield Playhouse, Marge takes up the directors chair, putting on a Hamilton inspired musical about Jebediah Springfield, written by Lisa.

The reaction: Twenty-six years after “A Streetcar Named Marge,” one of the greatest episodes of the show, Jeff Martin (and his wife) have written this episode, not exactly a sequel, more like how bad “Streetcar” would have been if it were pitched and written today, made all the more depressing that it’s the exact same writer behind it. We start with the latest appearance of Llewellyn Sinclair, overbearingly directing his cast for their upcoming performance of Oklahoma! Eventually, the Springfield players get fed up and force him out, leaving Marge to fill in as director for some reason, leading her to direct a brand new musical written by her eight-year-old daughter, and later signs a contract with Krusty to air the musical live nationwide. So, “Streetcar” featured our favorite Springfield denizens as plucky small town folk thinking it’d be fun to act in a musical, willing to put up with an irrational, heated director to have a bit of excitement in their lives on the big stage. Marge herself was one such starry eyed optimist, thinking acting in the play would be an exciting escape from her mind-numbing home life. As usual, the situation itself was very normal and believable, surrounded by absurdist elements (the play itself, which we’ll get to…) Marge’s journey in this episode is hard to pin down. She’s initially nervous about being a first-time director, which is mentioned again and again. This implies she’ll direct more, and that this is some kind of passion of her’s (???) As usual with Simpsons-becomes-instant-success stories, we never see them doing any actual work. After her first day, Krusty finds Sideshow Mel rehearsing his lines, and decides to just buy Marge’s play outright, and we immediately cut to the negotiation, with Marge sitting with dark shades and a purple power suit smiling vacuously. The play itself is a Jebediah Springfield biopic musical in the style of Hamilton which is not only written by Lisa, but rewritten on the spot live when the venue floods. The songs suck and aren’t funny. We hear barely two songs from the musical, compared to snippets of five we get of “Streetcar,” but I don’t even feel I should bother cross-referencing these two because it’s not even fair. Making a musical out of A Streetcar Named Desire is one of the cleverest, more ingeniously executed ideas the show had ever done. The concept itself was a great joke, and the songs were all absolutely stellar, humorously written and performed. Speaking of, it was a joke in and of itself hearing the likes of Wiggum, Apu and Marge singing these songs, these goofy cartoon voices giving earnest performances. Here, the gag is that Professor Frink has Josh Groban’s singing voice, so it’s just a talented singer doing these songs perfectly. It’s boring! The episode ends with Krusty telling Marge the live show got huge ratings, and her winning an award. Who gives a shit? Really, what does it matter that the show was a hit? I don’t even know why Marge cared about it to begin with. “Streetcar,” of course, was never really about the show, but Marge feeling unappreciated by her husband, and Homer realizing that in the end and expressing it to her. As ridiculous and insane as the show got in the classic era, it always came down to the believable emotions and internal struggles of our favorite family. In episodes like these, I don’t know what I’m supposed to relate to.

Three items of note:
– There’s a subplot (I use the term charitably) where Homer stumbles upon an incredibly popular Daddy-And-Me class, filled with horny fathers who only go to ogle the hot, young instructor. Homer initially is naive about what’s going on, but quickly he becomes just as openly pervy as everyone else, spending the rest of the episode fantasizing about the instructor, one of which is interrupted by Marge in bed, who thinks he’s such a great father for going to those classes. In the end, the classes are cancelled when the instructor makes her choice of which father she wants to fuck, and then that’s it. Do I even need to further discuss how bizarre this all is? Remember when I tried to defend “Bart vs. Itchy & Scratchy” for being somewhat progressive in its gender politics? Never mind, I guess. Instead of making Homer completely oblivious to obvious outside temptation like “Colonel Homer,” or making the instructor not a total dumb dumb bimbo, the show just plays it out like Homer’s Kevin James from King of Queens or something. The icing on the shit sundae is they have a “sweet” finale to the story where Homer realizes Maggie liked hanging out with him for all the classes. How nice. And Homer’s favorite part was undressing the twenty-something piece of ass with his eyes and dreaming about her when in bed with his wife. Cool!
– After he’s outsed, Llwellyn Sinclair appears a few times throughout, first begging Marge to let him back into her production, and then later to poach her star player Sideshow Mel for his new show. But it really doesn’t mean anything, since all we saw of Mel was one scene where we learn he’s the lead, and then one quick bit of him rehearsing in his dressing room at Krustylu Studios. Llwellyn comes to gloat at the Simpson house where Marge is getting ready for what I assumed was one of their earlier production meetings, but then she admits the show is in three days and they have no understudy. In this episode about the production of a musical, we barely fucking see any of the production at all, unlike “Streetcar,” of course, where it was the primary focus, amongst other things, because the show could effectively multitask back then. Here, it’s a miracle when the show manages to have one complete plot with a beginning, middle and end that make sense.
– I knew it was only a matter of time, but it finally happened: we get a scene where Bart does the flossing dance. I feel like that gif is going to get isolated and rile some people up online… that is if anyone actually gives enough of a shit to actually watch this trash and actually make it. It may pop up somewhere, but honestly, who cares? It only stood out more to be because I just saw Shazam! which has Zachary Levi flossing and that was actually charming in context. Ehhh, fuck this show, go see Shazam! It’s not perfect, but it’s a fun, sweet movie that bucks a lot of superhero movie conventions.

One good line/moment: Over the end credits, we get a snippet of a music video by the Okilly Dokillys, a real-life no-foolin’ metal band who all dress up like Ned Flanders and perform songs that mostly comprise of quotes from the show. It’s one of those things that it’s so absolutely absurd on every level that it’s amazing already, but their music is actually really well done, even if metalcore isn’t really my cup of tea. Similar to using that 16-bit fan made couch gag a couple years ago, this felt like the show “officially” ordaining a fan work, but actually in showing something that felt so fresh, original and creative, it just kind of stands in contrast with the tired, hollowed out husk of the show itself. At least this time they put it at the end instead of the beginning. Here’s the music video if you haven’t seen it.

Original airdate: March 31, 2019

The premise: Lisa is recruited into a youth philharmonic in Capital City, forcing Marge having to commute with the other kids back and forth each day and Homer to work the night shift at the plant to pay for the course. While Lisa excels, she becomes worried her success is coming at the cost of the rest of her family’s well being.

The reaction: There was a running theme in the flashback episodes in the classic era of Homer sacrificing his own happiness for the sake of his family, and this feels like a belabored rehash of that same idea. You can track where the episode is going halfway through and you’re just waiting patiently for it to finally end. Following an extended intro featuring the life and times of Mr. Largo, Lisa is specially picked out by Victor, a fast-talking, no-nonsense musical instructor played by J.K. Simmons. The character is semi-based on his character in Whiplash, but with the mile-a-minute, jokey speech patterns as J. Jonah Jameson, as we’ve seen this show do with Simmons in his numerous previous appearances. It’s just funny that they chose to rip off another Simmons character, but can’t resist him doing his Spider-Man schtick. Simmons is fine in the role, but it’s shit we’ve seen him do so many times over, so who cares? Anyway, the characters are set in place for the plot within the halfway mark: Lisa is thrilled at being challenged musically for once, Marge, Bart and Maggie are bored and going stir-crazy during the long drives, and Homer is getting more and more sleep deprived by working nearly 24 hours a day (“Lisa’s Pony” this ain’t, sadly.) Lisa witnesses Marge sobbing as Homer leaves for his next shift (“There’s nothing worse than being a parent of a kid with promise!”) Lisa realizes how selfish she’s been, apparently… except we’re only thirteen minutes in, so we just kind of keep gliding on these same emotions until the episode’s over, where she blows her audition to get out of the program for her family’s sake. I originally thought of Homer in the flashback episodes having a similar moral dilemma, but this actually is very reminiscent of “Lisa’s Pony.” But rather than great moments like young Lisa not realizing the adult realities of her parents facilitating her childish dreams coming true, and Marge openly telling her she won’t make her get rid of the pony, that she needs to make that decision, we get none of that. During her final audition, we just have an internal monologue from Lisa describing what she’s feeling, and then everything is okay. If they had bothered exploring Lisa’s lingering moral concerns, or had her interacting with the rest of the family and witnessing their harangued states at all, this might have been a decent story. Instead, it just felt very bland and paint-by-numbers.

Three items of note:
– This episode was written by Nancy Cartwright, making her the third main cast member to take a stab at writing. The chalkboard gag reads, “I AM NOT A GRANDMOTHER,” referring to Cartwright recently becoming one. The concert hall Lisa practices in in Capital City is Daws Butler Hall, referencing the famous Hanna-Barbera voice actor, who was also Cartwright’s mentor. I remember reading her autobiography as a kid, and the only things I remember are her describing driving onto the Fox lot and being told Phil Hartman died, and an entire chapter devoted her to drooling over Mel Gibson when he came in to record. Whoo boy. Cartwright is also a devoted Scientologist, who did a now-infamous robo-call as Bart to shill for a Scientology event, and has given millions upon millions to the dangerous, brain-washing cult. Ay caramba.
– The first five minutes of the episode are devoted to Mr. Largo, giving us a more in depth look at his life than we’ve ever seen. Starting with a nightmare of his graduating with honors from the Springfield Academy of Music and going nowhere with it, we see his spirits lifted once he’s informed that Victor will be attending the latest school recital. He goes into double-time to make his student orchestra the best it’s ever been, but his dreams are shot to pieces when Victor tells him he’s only interested in Lisa. When Lisa excitedly tells him the good news, Largo musters a smile for the young girl (“I’m really glad you get to represent us. It’s like a little piece of me has taken a baby practice step.”) It’s a genuinely sweet moment. I knew the episode was going to pivot to a Simpson eventually, but I really wished we could just continue watching Mr. Largo. His home life, the dynamic between him and his boyfriend, all much, much more interesting than the story that followed.
– Boy, do I love cultural references! This show does parody so well nowadays! In figuring out how to pay for Lisa’s class, Homer alludes to being like Walt in Breaking Bad, but then it turns out he meant they would sell their beloved DVD box set. But then Homer just says a bunch of quotes from the show, takes a Heisenberg hat and goatee out of the nightstand as the theme plays, and we get a commercial break card themed off the show’s opening title. As I’ve mentioned over and over and over again, these are references. All a segment like this tells me is how much the writers love Breaking Bad, which at this point feels even stranger than their previous shout-outs given the series concluded six years ago now. What, are they gunning for Vince Gilligan to write an episode or something? Later, we get a sleep deprived hallucination from Homer at the plant where he eventually finds himself at a fancy bar with the attending bartender trying to get him to kill his family. Not only is this obviously material the show utilized much better twenty-five years ago, the referencing continues once Homer’s back to reality where we literally see Jack Nicholson with an axe heading toward the reactor core (Burns chortles, “There goes our head of human resources now!”) This transparent reference-based comedy is already lazy enough, but to do this when “The Shinning” exists feels even more foolish.

One good line/moment: Again, the five minute Mr. Largo opening. As I’ve said many times before, I would love to see more devotion to the other Springfield denizens, but I’m sure we never will. I don’t remember if we’ve seen Largo’s boyfriend before, but I thought their interplay was cute (“Oh darling, you’re cursed with the memory of an elephant, and the wrinkles to match!” “Can’t you just wake me with a slice of melon and a drop of affection?!”)

Original airdate: March 24, 2019

The premise: Itchy & Scratchy is getting an all-female reboot, causing Bart and the other boys to swear off watching the show. But when he gets exposed for actually enjoying the new series, Bart is ostracized, but then ends up joining a gang of sixth grade rebel girls.

The reaction: Well here’s a rarity: a topical episode that didn’t feel disingenuous with good characterization and pretty good jokes… I’m pretty freakin’ surprised. From the moment Krusty announces the gender swapped reboot, we immediately get a shot at the showbiz community embracing diversity, just as long as it pays well (“See? Girls like my pandering! Remember this if there’s ever a gender war!”) Bart arranges the boys to “hate-not-watch” the new series, while Lisa is excited for this new great step in women’s cartoon history. When she catches Bart actually laughing at the cartoon, she exposes his hypocrisy, making him a outcast. Milhouse of all people takes up the mantle of leader, which in terms of mirroring the impotent whining of misogynistic Internet dwellers, is pretty perfect: a socially awkward and meek boy with deep-seeded identity issues lashing out at those he believes are undermining him and his kind (“Girls get everything: bigger, softer baseballs, chick flicks, two piece bathing suits!”) He starts a new radical organization, the Boys Rights Association (“Right now, we’re just training BRAs, but soon, we’ll be the strongest, most supportive BRAs anyone has ever seen!”) Pretty clever, especially since it almost sounds like “bra,” like “surfer bra,” so it’s not awkward dialogue. Meanwhile, Bart’s only escape from ridicule is the girl’s bathroom, where he encounters three rebellious girls looking to tear down the patriarchy. But rather than being hollow feminist stereotypes written by fifty-year-old men, they’re actually more like prankster artists, vandalizing the Lard Lad statue with a dress (Lard Lady No-Nuts) and wrapping the boys urinals in saran wrap, all of whom ashamedly leave the bathroom with soiled pants (except for Milhouse, proudly stating, “This is why I sit!”)

When Lisa finally discovers Bart is part of the “Bossy Riot” gang, she is livid, angered that Bart is part of such a radical feminist movement knowing nothing about the cause (“Chicks get a raw deal! Little fuzzy on the deets, but take my word for it.”) Lisa, for once, is not really an eye-rolling rabble-rouser, as she balks at Bart’s infamy, but then must nut up or shut up when he invites her along to their next big stunt. She’s apprehensive, but eventually decides to go, just in time to save a tied-up Bart at the school. Bossy Riot has gone too far, it seems; following news that Krusty is caving to BRA’s demands to cancel the Itchy & Scratchy reboot, the girls are going to destroy the negatives to all the original episodes on live TV. I was worried the episode would do some both-sides bullshit in showing extreme feminism and equating it to MRA nonsense, but thankfully, that wasn’t the case. The girls’ actions are overboard, but also reactionary and nonviolent. In the end, Lisa thwarts their plans, but in the process, makes all the boys in the audience cry, impressing the Bossy Riot girls, who invite her to join the gang. In a sweet moment, after some thought, Lisa accepts, Bart gives her his colorful hooded mask, and she bikes off with the girls into the night. Of course we’ll never see the girls again, but letting this ending just play out with Lisa overcoming her fears and putting her beliefs into action was pretty satisfying, rather than having some contrived reason why she wouldn’t be allowed in just to preserve status quo, like the countless number of new, celebrity guest friends Bart and Lisa have made who conveniently vanish by episode’s end. So, I… liked this? I genuinely like this episode, the first since season 27’s “Friend With Benefit.” So what the hell happened? Well, this is the first episode credited to Megan Amram, who has written for the likes of Silicon Valley, Childrens Hospital and The Good Place. She’s also rather young compared to the other writers, a 31-year-old who grew up watching and revering the series in its heyday. This show has seen a lot of the same guys pumping out scripts for the last five years or so, with only brief flashes of new blood (Ryan Koh is the only newish name I remember, who is in his forties, and wrote the absolutely awful “Team Homer” “sequel” last season.) Is this the solution to the ever-important question of what the fuck could possibly fix this series? A newer, younger, hipper writing staff? Who the hell knows. But I’ll say this, I’m actually interested in seeing Amram’s next episode, and that’s a hell of a statement.

Three items of note:
– The very first female Itchy & Scratchy is a “parody” of Pitch Perfect, where Anna Kendrick’s character sings while making melodic noise with Solo cups, except here, FemItchy uses cat heads, of course. My wife loves those movies so I’m very familiar with them by proxy, but it took a moment to get what they were going for, even with Tress MacNeille warbling “When I’m Gone.” I mean, I guess that’s a franchise seemingly all women love, right? Although those movies are very popular, part of me feels like the reference is a tad obscure with no context… although the music video for “When I’m Gone” has over 450 million views, so I could just be talking out my ass. Plus those Pitch Perfect movies are just terrible comedies, which I can say because my wife doesn’t read this blog.
– The girl gang are all voiced by female comedians. I give props to Chelsea Peretti specifically for actually doing a voice, almost like a parody of a disaffected punk girl. Awkwafina and Nicole Byer pretty much use their speaking voices, but they were fine in their roles too.
– Normally this section is reserved for me bitching about specific moments or scenes and how awful they were, but since I liked this episode, it’s a little more difficult here. The only crazy moment of ire I had was Lisa pronouncing “gif” with a j-sound, like Jif peanut butter. I hate this “debate.” It’s “gif” with a hard g-sound. It just is. I don’t care what anyone says. I think even the creator of the first gif or whatever said it’s “jif.” I don’t care. “Jif” is fucking stupid. It’s “gif.”

One good line/moment: Honestly, for once, the episode is kind of full of these, which if you’ve been paying attention, doesn’t happen a whole lot. My favorite two moments were probably the aforementioned urinal backfiring incident, and the exchange when Bossy Riot turns on Bart (“Don’t have a lady cow!” “All. Cows. Are. Ladies!”)

Suffice to say, I’m very much looking forward to the comments section here, which I’m sure will involve conversation of Star Wars, Ghostbusters, Captain Marvel and other extremely related topics.

Original airdate: March 17, 2019

The premise: Bart’s gamer team is on the road to the grand championship, and Homer joins in to be their coach, hoping to eventually rest comfortably on the laurels of his son’s successful e-sports career.

The reaction: I was dreading this one a little bit, an episode about e-sports written about a nearly sixty year old man, but this story isn’t really interesting in lampooning this contemporary subject, and the jokes that are here are pretty surface-level, or just old gamer humor (dancing over corpses replacing teabagging. I’m pretty sure we saw similar jokes in the thirteen-year-old “Marge Gamer” episode.) The episode itself is seemingly a Bart-Homer story, except there’s not really much focus on their relationship, and I don’t fully know what the intent was. Homer is initially befuddled that Bart can actually get money for playing video games, and upon learning of the $500,000 grand prize tournament, he doubles down in his support of Bart’s new interests, making himself the teach coach. After a brief detour featuring a hoodie-wearing, nineteen-year-old gaming guru (incredibly dry, with very few jokes,) we get a montage of Homer supervising the kids on their computers. He’s not necessarily drilling them, he’s just kind of testing them with distractions and refilling them with coffee. After that we get a dream sequence of Homer rubbing elbows with other parents of famous successful athletes, at which point the plot now changes into Homer wanting to achieve glory vicariously through his son. Couldn’t that have been set up earlier? Why bother? Making the finals, the Simpsons jet off to Seoul, South Korea, with Lisa tagging along to take Homer and Marge to a Buddhist temple, where she teaches her parents about achieving inner peace and entering a zen state. This is all introduced within the final five minutes of the episode. Now Homer is super zen, wanders his way to the tournament where Bart’s team is about to win, and shuts down the power via a convenient master power switch on the roof that he’s able to access somehow. Now, a few things. Through the episode, Homer never seemed too angry or obsessed in his role as Bart’s coach. The living-through-Bart angle was randomly introduced later, but he never seemed to be negative or overbearing, as perhaps it should have been. He seemed pretty cool about doing this thing with Bart, so the turn of him learning to chill out and rebuff competition makes no sense. Meanwhile, his out-of-left-field attitude change comes completely at the cost of Bart, who not only lost the $500,000 grand prize, but in the final scene of the episode, we see that his teammates are super pissed at him and hitting him with stuff on the flight home. Not quite sure why they’re blaming him. Do they know Homer causes the power outage? Does Bart know this? What’s the resolution to this Bart-Homer bonding story? There isn’t one. When we pan by Homer on the plane, he looks pissed about there being no in-flight entertainment, so his whole zen revelation was completely wasted, I guess. At least until he gets upgraded to first class because he’s too fat (“Thank the Buddha I win again!”) Too bad all it cost your son was a huge cash prize and his friendships. I can’t even get mad at this ending because I have no clue how the fuck we got here. What a mess of an episode.

Three items of note:
– Bart’s teammates are the usual suspects of Milhouse, Martin and Nelson (I’m past the point of complaining why these four tolerate each other in social settings), as well as Krusty’s daughter, Sophie. Not quite sure why she’s there. I thought maybe they’d want to do some material about women in the professional gaming space (what fun material for a comedy show! What could be toxic about that subject?), but all we got was one gamer girl joke at the very end (“If I win, I’ll be the most famous girl gamer of all time! Also, if I lose!”) I’m sure there are quite a few prolific female gamers in e-sports, right? Whatever. It’s still weird that it’s Sophie. Why not Sherri or Terri? Or Janey? Those characters still exist, right?
– At the beginning of the episode, Lisa balks about Homer rewarding Bart for bad behavior by buying him a game station set-up. Fourteen minutes later, she shows back up again, sitting in her room in the dark, lamenting about not being paid attention to. Marge walks in and offers to spend the day with Lisa, but Lisa, now with an eye twitch, shuts that shit down flat (“Mom, I try to spare you because I don’t want you feeling thoroughly appropriate guilt for what this family does to me.”) She then explains that the Jogyesa Monastery is in South Korea, and she’s desperate to go (“I’m holding onto a thin rope here, because if Bart and Dad go to Seoul and I miss out, I’ll lose my grip!”) She then proceeds to freak the fuck out, and Marge gets her to shut up by saying they’ll go to South Korea too. Man, Lisa needs to calm her tits. Seriously, what is her damage? This behavior is appropriate in a lot of other episodes where Bart falls into great success and fame by pure accident, being given access to things Lisa would kill for that he responds with apathy or stupidity. In this case, Bart and Homer have actually worked very hard to reach the finals, and their efforts are paying off. If the episode featured Lisa turning her nose up at pro gaming throughout, this scene would kind of make sense, but instead, she just reappears to whine and complain and damn near have a seizure until her mother gives her what she wants. When Marge tries to placate her and spend some time with her daughter, Lisa responds with emotional blackmail at the cost of an expensive plane ticket halfway around the world. Why are there so many instances in these past couple years of the show actively trying to make me hate Lisa?
– There’s some pretty lazy sight gags throughout the episode that stuck out to me. When the pro gamer Homer hires decides to give up his career, Homer and the kids oversee him in the backyard burn his hoodie on the grill, as well as his notebook conveniently labeled “10,000 Video Game Hacks Only I Know.” At the end of the episode, we see little thought bubbles of Bart and the others as they get close to winning. Three of them dream of the first place trophy, Martin dreams of Nelson with a NEW FRIEND sash, and Nelson dreams of a wooden door labeled BEDROOM WITH DOOR. Both of these feel like incredibly lazy jokes. They both feel like they were pitched in the writer’s room as concepts, they tried to figure out how they could organically and logically work them into the script visually, and this is what they eventually gave up on and left them in the script anyway.

One good line/moment: I got nothing for this one. A lot of the episodes recently have been kind of innocuous and boring in their badness, but this one felt particularly aimless, and then just pulled it out with that nonsensical ending.