Original airdate: November 10, 2013

The premise: Homer’s old Spanish pen pal comes to Springfield to help him fulfill his many childhood dreams. Meanwhile, Lisa implements a student code of honor to help with the school’s rampant cheating problem.

The reaction: Normally when you’re telling a story, you need a little thing called conflict. You know, the thing that your character must overcome to get what they want? Or learn a lesson? Or grow as a person? These plots are getting thinner and more simplistic by the season, but this is the first episode I can think of that literally had no dramatic tension whatsoever. Kirk Van Houten rolls up in his midlife crisis-mobile, which is played as a big goof, but it’s enough to get Homer to spiral into melancholy. Enter Eduardo, a Spanish “Magical Negro” character, Homer’s old pen pal he hasn’t written to in decades, who shows up to help him achieve the dreams he wrote about as a kid. We see them in a little montage: riding on the back of a firetruck (I guess the writers forgot they already made Homer a firefighter), playing a pirate, recreating a scene from Star Trek… We get a scene where Marge seems to be a little upset, but she doesn’t explain why, and we gloss over it with Homer convincing her to do something she’s been wanting to do her whole life. So what’s the pushback on this? Some dreams should live in the past? Hedonism clashing with reality? My guess was that Eduardo was in love with Homer, as he longingly watched the previous Homer-Marge scene from outside their window, in addition to him making several forward remarks toward the big guy. Homer’s final dream involves sky gliding, which is going well until Marge calls him via headset (“Come down, Homie! You only live once, but that also means when you die, you die!”) What is her problem? Normally they give a character an incredibly weak motivation, but here, we don’t get anything. If all of Homer’s dreams involved dangerous stuff, at least there would be a pattern. So I wasn’t sure what I should be concerned about. Homer will fall and get gravely injured? Not in the final two minutes, he won’t. He gets hurt all the time with no repercussions, and sure enough, that’s exactly what happens here. In the end, Marge is all smiles at the hospital with a barely scraped up Homer as Eduardo proudly announces, “You’ve lived your dreams!” Alright, so here was the story: Homer’s sad he didn’t do more stuff, some guy shows up and says he should do stuff, then he does those things, and then that’s the end. Keep hitting those home runs, guys.

Three items of note:
– The B-plot is almost as empty. Everyone at the school cheats, everyone, and Skinner holds a PTA meeting where he crumples to the floor because he’s spineless and awful at everything. In another let’s-acknowledge-our-narrative-shortcomings-in-hopes-that-it-excuses-years-of-bad-writing moments, Chalmers chastises Lisa for not coming forward with a solution earlier. She proposes an honor code the students have to stick by, a plan which ends up working. Again, I’m waiting for the twist. What’s the plot turn? Lisa discovers Bart is still cheating, as he knows his sister won’t turn him in, as it would prove that her system failed. So who’s to say everyone else isn’t cheating too? In the end, the two plots collide, literally, as a skydiving Homer collapses on top of Bart. Homer ends up at the hospital, but Bart, who just had a 250+ pound man fall on him from hundreds of feet above, is just fine. Mmmhmm.
– I wasn’t even going to comment on the cringe-worthy episode title, but they worked it into the show itself. YOLO, or You Only Live Once, I guess the writers connected the dots to You Only Live Twice and wrote “parody” lyrics in the span of five minutes, high fived each other, and called it a day. So we get a Bond-style rendition of “You Only Live Once,” and it’s just the worst. It’s so fucking bad. Here are the lyrics (You only live once, or so it seems / No life for yourself, and none for your dreams / You work every day, at a job so lame / And every night the ending’s the same.) Even for the show’s low low standards, can this even be counted as a parody? The rhyme scheme is exactly the same, and a big share of the words are unchanged as well. It’s almost embarrassing. Remember “Scorpio”? The wonderful anthem from “You Only Move Twice”? (striking coincidence) It’s not a parody of one specific Bond theme, but a pastiche of the elements that we identify as classic Bond music, and the lyrics themselves are actually about something, and subverting the source material: Hank Scorpio is an evil supervillain who cares about giving his employees generous pensions and a stock plan. The contrast couldn’t be any more stark.
– We get our latest character to be dug up from the classic years and trotted out for the sake of fan service: Llewellyn Sinclair, performed with gusto by Jon Lovitz. We see Homer and Eduardo are sword fighting with two pirates on a dinner theater stage. In case you were confused, over the backdrop is written “Springfield Dinner Theater presents: PIRATES OF PENZANCE.” Stage productions typically have the theater and play name in giant letters as their backdrop, right? Enter Sinclair, who’s pissed (“I’m sick of pirates off the street ruining my play!”) So, are all four of them just random guys not in the play? Or are two of them actors who just decided to play and sword fight with Homer and Eduardo? Oh, who gives a fuck.

One good line/moment: Brockman’s report on the school’s cheating at the beginning felt a little closer to his classic style, which is especially weird coming off of last episode. But I kinda liked it (“If these children are our future, then I for one do not want to live.”)

Original airdate: November 3, 2013

The premise: A funeral sparks four threadbare stories about regrets: Mr. Burns of his lost love, Kent Brockman of his dead end career, Marge believing her prenatal habits led to Bart’s bad behavior, and Homer of a failed stock investment.

The reaction: So here we get four stories going on at once that feebly connect at the end, but none of them are the least bit meaningful or engaging whatsoever. Everyone just sort of explains to camera their problems and we go from there. There’s no real order, so I guess I’ll start with Burns, portrayed here as a neutered pussycat pining for the one that got away, a Parisian girl who wouldn’t marry him because he’s evil. So he tracks her down, finds out she’s a Buddhist monk now for some reason, and then they’re back together, for some reason, and then she dies. For some reason. And he fulfills her wish for him to spend five minutes a day doing good deeds, because he’s a limp-wristed pushover. Or he likes being good? I’d bitch about this being anti-Burns, but what’s the point? Next up, Brockman’s old colleague Rachel Maddow shows up, and then it’s just nonstop exposition of explaining their past and saying out loud exactly what they’re feeling and thinking. Kent goes to New York to interview at FOX News, but finds that even he can’t stoop so low, so he returns home. The other two plots are minor in comparison. Marge worries that her listening to KISS music while pregnant made Bart out of control? How did they come up with that? I’m shocked they didn’t use this as an excuse to get Gene Simmons to do a voice. And then Homer’s one joke about buying stock in bowling balls instead of Apple becomes an entire D-plot. In the end, some of the plots come together kind of. Bart’s latest stunt puts him in danger, Kent reports on it, and Homer’s bowling ball saves him. Boy, what fun. All in all, it just felt like a worse version of that “500 Keys” episode a few seasons ago. This series just astounds me in that they just keep getting more and more terrible. It’s like a slight but steady decline to an unknown bottom.

Three items of note:
– This episode aired a week or so after Marcia Wallace’s death, so we get a sweet tribute at the beginning with Bart writing on the chalkboard, “We’ll Really Miss You, Mrs. K.” It was a real bummer finding out she died, and despite my clearly established hatred for this show now, I feel bad for the writers. They did the whole Nedna thing, and I was stunned that they actually utilized the two together a handful of times over the last season or two, even coming into play as the resolution of a story in that one with Lisa’s bitchy substitute. But now, for reasons outside anyone’s control, Ned is a widower twice over. We will miss you indeed, Ms. Wallace. You were the greatest apathetic teacher we ever had.
– Homer’s story is honestly so terrible, maybe one of the worst things the show’s done as of late. We flash back to Homer’s big regret: he invests in bowling balls and dumps his Apple stock (“You heard me! Technology is a fad! Heavy blue balls are the future!”) Easy joke, and one I’m sure the show has made in the past, but alright, fine. As a one-off gag, I’m fine with it. Following that, Lovejoy for whatever reason calls for his congregation to “text on our ubiquitous Apple tablets and phones” and we see everyone on their devices. Homer bemoans on how he missed out, then Burns claims that he bought Homer’s stocks those years ago. How much longer can they prolong this joke? After the act break, Burns steps in again to shout how much his Apple stock rose to further annoy Homer. Then later on, I was surprised that this was actually a mini-plot, as we see Homer trying to return the bowling ball, only to find it closed to prepare for a new Apple store. Later on, as Homer’s bowling ball is being used for the big dumb ending, Lou talks about Apple’s stock rising again, the same damn joke Burns did before. Then they do it again as Homer floats away, Lenny yells, “Homer’s rising faster than Apple stock!” I guess even the writers realized this was ridiculous, so they have text on the screen: “This is the last time we will kiss up to Apple. We’re not even getting paid for this.” An easy, one-off joke just became a hot-and-heavy dick sucking session for Apple. The only joke is that Apple is so great! Also, whatever happened to Mapple? That parody was so brilliant, why wouldn’t they reuse that? You know why.
– I can’t hate that Homer plot line enough. They also ripped themselves off again with the sweet montage set to “Memories” of Homer saying goodbye to an old friend. In “Bart’s Friend Falls in Love,” Homer bids adieu to his fat gut, and we see all the sweet moments of him using it to bounce Maggie up and down, balance a bowl of snacks lying in the pool, etc. His jolly fatness and gluttony is a firmly established part of his character, we get it. Here, they have a montage of the great times Homer’s had with this bowling ball, an object we were briefly introduced to eight minutes before this scene. Who cares?

One good line/moment: The Hobbit couch gag was fun. It falls into the trappings of the show just referencing rather than actually parodying, but it was still a nice little sequence, certainly leagues better than anything in the episode itself.

Original airdate: October 6, 2013

The premise: “Oh, The Places You’ll D’oh!” is told in Seussian rhyme, starring Homer as the Fat in the Hat, who takes the kids out for a calamitous Halloween rampage. In “Dead and Shoulders,” a freak accident results in Bart’s decapitated head being attached onto Lisa’s shoulder. “Freaks No Geeks” takes place in a 1930s circus, where sideshow freak Moe is sweet on Marge the trapeze artist, while strongman Homer plots a scheme to steal his valuable emerald.

The reaction: I certainly wouldn’t consider Dr. Seuss very spooky, but the first segment is definitely the stand out. The designs and art direction of the Seussified Springfield is pretty neat and engaging to look at, and the rhyming prose remained pretty strong throughout the whole thing. I’m not exactly sure why Homer acted like a homicidal maniac, but I appreciate the rare use of satire in treating the Fat in the Hat like a dangerous child abductor. Also, Maggie is designed like Cindy Lou Who and that’s pretty freaking adorable. The second story is… whatever. If Futurama‘s “Put Your Head on My Shoulder” was six minutes long and had no jokes or narrative thrust, this is what you’d get. A big pet peeve of mine with these Halloween shows is that horrible violence or crazy shit happens with none of the characters even batting an eyelid in reaction. Bart’s head is (bloodlessly) cut clean off by his kite string, his head hits the grass, and he lets out a quiet exasperated sigh. It’s like he could barely muster the energy to care. Also, what happened to his body? I guess they just forgot about it. The third segment starts off okay. I like the sepia tone and the old time designs, and a few gags were chuckle-worthy, but when the actual plot kicks in, it’s just awful. Homer exposits his scheme out loud for the audience: he gets Marge to marry Moe, he’ll kill him, and then take his emerald ring. Next scene he walks into Marge’s trailer, asking, “Hey Marge, wanna marry Moe?” He gives a limp argument, blathers on about the ring Marge knows nothing about, and she just rolls over and agrees. Later, we get another scene in the trailer where Homer pours poison into Moe’s drink, and in similar fashion, Homer just yells his plan at Marge again in case people forgot. Then the story ends with the freaks killing Homer. And we get a random tag of him as a tarred and feathered limbless mound as the How I Met Your Mother theme plays. Boy, that show sure gives me the creeps.

Three items of note:
– I know I’ve mentioned this multiple times, but do they just hate Maggie Roswell or something? We get a scene from Miss Hoover, and the sound quality on her is just the worst it’s ever been. It sounds like they recorded her from under the couch or something.
– We get a wonderful scene of Skinner getting out of the car after being chewed out by Agnes for the umpteenth time, crumpling to the floor and rolling up into a ball. Agnes then berates him for having a panic attack and starts walloping him with her hand bag. Isn’t this great Halloween fun, everybody! This is just bizarre and depressing. Bipolar disorder, anxiety, depression… I believe any topic can be funny as long as it’s framed in the proper way, but as we’ve seen time and again from this show now, it really feels like the joke is just to laugh at the person. Martin is gay! The FBI agent last episode has a mental disorder! Skinner’s having an anxiety attack after decades of psychological torment! Let’s laugh at how broken he is!
– For the first time in years, Kang and Kodos actually cameo within a story rather than being isolated to their own cutaway or tagged on at the end. They’re one of the captives at Burns’s freak show (“Creatures from another galaxy!” “Actually, it’s more of a globular cluster!”) Then Burns drops a sheet over their domes, to their chagrin.

One good line/moment: The extended opening title sequence, directed by Guillermo del Toro, is the obvious pick. Although I do think it’s overly long and has way too much stuff going on, I still think it’s one of the coolest things to come out of the show in a long time. It’s clear del Toro just wanted to cram every single horror icon into one piece, including references to all of his movies. Personal highlights are the nuclear rod turning Homer into one of those horrific Blade vampires, Lisa jamming with all the iterations of the Phantom of the Opera through film history, and the pan-over prior to the Simpson house where it’s just a grab bag of all the monsters left on del Toro’s giant list.

Original airdate: September 29, 2013

The premise: Homer returns from a nuclear power convention acting strangely sedated, as well as refusing pork and beer. A concerned Lisa informs the FBI, believing her father has been brainwashed into enacting an attack on the power plant.

The reaction: For the show nowadays, a parody means just straight up recreating scenes from popular movies and TV shows shot-for-shot with a yellow coat of paint, desperately hoping some third-string entertainment news outlets will pump out a few articles about a Game of Thrones couch gag. Here, we have an episode based on the Showtime series Homeland, which I know next to nothing about. The show is filled with scenes and flashbacks and an entire character that I suppose were pulled right from the show, but with no context, I didn’t know what to make of them. Hell, the episode opens with a recreation of the Homeland opening title sequence, so having not seen the show, I already felt alienated. The plot is that Homer comes back from a convention acting really weird. He speaks in short, monotone sentences, and for unexplained reasons, he vehemently refuses pork chops and beer. Lisa is suspect, but Marge is none the wiser, loving her newly changed husband. I hate it when they write her this naive. She seriously has no concerns why Homer is acting so damn weird? From that point, it becomes another big mystery episode like “The Saga of Carl.” Why is Homer acting so weird? Why is he praying on a rug? What’s that strange device he’s bringing into the plant? Lisa corners him on it, and we finally get our laboriously torturous explanation that goes on for two whole minutes. Some eco-friendly activists kidnapped Homer, told him pigs don’t like being eaten, gave him a detox, and the strange device is to sabotage the power plant’s air ducts, rendering the facility unworkable. What a logical explanation! Except none of that accounts for why Homer was talking so weird and creepy through the entire second act. In the end, Burns gets the plant shut down by accident, but we get an end tag of it reopening because it has to. Similarly, a magic floating beer can appears to tempt Homer back to being his old self. What’s the point in making huge changes if you’re not going to bother resolving them in a meaningful way? Or at least in a funny way. But questions such at these are pretty futile to ask at this point.

Three items of note:
– We open on the breakfast table as Marge serves Bart cereal complete with multiple medications mixed in (including Focusyn, because do you remember that?) He then recites the Wizard of Oz quote about the isosceles triangle. Lisa points out that’s incorrect, and Bart retorts that he’s rehearsing his lines for the school play. It’s basically a repeat of the joke from “$pringfield,” except much more belabored, and not featuring Homer fishing Henry Kissinger’s glasses out of the toilet. Hell, that random joke even led into the plot with him wearing the glasses keeping him from getting fired.
– Kristen Wiig plays an FBI agent on the case, except she’s a complete maniac. I guess she’s supposed to be Claire Danes’s Homeland character, but I don’t know what to make of her. She seems spastic and incompetent, and she also takes bipolar medication, because mental disorders are hilarious! Is that from Homeland? Or just some thing they thought would be funny? 
– Lisa confronts Homer in the plant operations center, that requires a facial scan of Mr. Burns to enter. They make a joke how she got in thanks to Girl Scout cookies or whatever, but this show has a debilitating habit of characters just appearing wherever they need to be regardless of logic or reason. I’m supposed to just go with it, but honestly, how the hell did Lisa get in there? Because she had to, because plot resolution.

One good line/moment: Homer gets into the operations center himself by holding up a disgusting craggly looking fish with Burns’ distinctive silhouette. The joke is slightly diminished in that it cuts to a close-up shot of the fish after it’s scanned, in case you missed the gag somehow.

Original airdate: May 19, 2013

The premise: Marge accidentally signs up on an Ashley Madison-type dating site, and ends up connecting with an unhappily married man voiced by comedy darling Seth MacFarlane. She’s aggravated thinking Homer forgot their anniversary, but he, meanwhile, is busy reconstructing an old mall train from one of their greatest dates.

The reaction: Honestly, it feels like these premises are just getting thinner and thinner. It used to be that episodes would feature crazy twists and go off the rails, but now, so many of these feel like barely anything happens in them. We start with Marge wanting to order cupcakes for Homer’s anniversary off of DollyMadison.com, but she’s shocked when her sisters point out she’s actually on SassyMadison.com. We then see she’s already put in all of her personal information, as well as a photo, onto this dating site for married people. This is really what we’re supposed to go with? How fucking dumb is Marge? We see the giant logo on the laptop screen, with the slogan “Cheat, Stray, Love.” But whatever. I guess because she’s anal retentive, Marge responds to each message she gets personally, until the last one from Ben, who seems like a nice enough guy, who she continues to talk to. She ends up running into him at the supermarket, and then later goes for coffee, and then later has a cyber date with him watching the latest transparent “parody” “Upton Rectory,” airing on PBC. What could that be a take on? In every single scene, she just says over and over how she’s happily married, she doesn’t want to continue this any further, but then she does. But it’s not like she even acknowledges she’s on a slippery slope, or that she’s developing feelings for Ben or anything. It’s just “this can’t continue,” and then it does. Over and over. The plot mostly ends with her dumping him in her mind. No progression, no emotional arc for Marge, nothing. The entire episode she’s pissed at Homer for seemingly forgetting their upcoming anniversary, while he’s been working in secret restoring an old train from the upscale mall from their first anniversary date. That, too, has no stakes. At one point, Homer gets a call that the engine car is damaged, but then that’s it. Both plots have no conflicts; Marge exhibits no real feelings toward Ben and nothing happens, and Homer wants to fix the train, then he does. The episode culminates with the reveal of the train, as the whole family takes a ride. Homer asks his beloved, “Do you think we’ll last twenty-five years?” To camera, Bart cheekily replies, “Nothing should.” The writers know how ramshackle this show is. They must know. They must.

Three items of note:
– I’m no fan of Seth MacFarlane, but that being said though, I’m surprised they gave him such a bland, nothing role. It’s just his normal speaking voice he uses for Brian the dog, playing a character with no discernible personality. Then later they have him sing a crooning tune in Marge’s mind, because that’s a thing he always has to do (though to be fair, to me, his Sinatra-style singing is his strongest creative merit). Lisa Lampanelli also guest stars as his insufferable wife who barely gets any lines. Just throw those guest star names on the pile!
– The opening is pretty aggravating. It’s a flashback to nine years ago, with Homer, Marge and baby Bart taking a stroll in the fancy Springfield outdoor mall, the one we saw last season in the Facebook episode. Hadn’t it just opened in that show? It certainly doesn’t feel like a location from 2003, and as mentioned in that other review, it certainly doesn’t belong in a dumpy town like Springfield. They run into Ned Flanders, who Homer happily lets watch Bart. Now, in continuity, they hadn’t moved to Evergreen Terrace until about a year later, but whatever. We also see Squeaky Voiced Teen in this flashback, but my theory is that there are hundreds of clones of him throughout time, so that’s fine.
– The Sassy Madison commercial has a stylized UPA look to it, sort of, which they use again for a song at the end to kill more time. I guess they really loved how it looked, but it felt very bland to me. It reminded me of “The Saga of Carl” where Bart and Lisa watch a video about probability at a museum, which contained zero jokes. Commercial and film strip parodies used to be this show’s bread and butter, and they can’t even make those funny or entertaining anymore. Where are the funnies? That they rhymed “commercial” with “Herschel”?

One good line/moment: Nothing again. Normally I write these reviews quickly after I watch the episode, but I saw this and “Carl” a day ago, and scanning through both, I really couldn’t think of a thing. That’s a bad sign, right?