Original airdate: September 30, 2012

The premise: Bart seeks out all his old ex-girlfriends to see if any of them still hold feelings for him. The only one unaccounted for is Cletus’s daughter Mary Spuckler, who has run off to Manhattan, which means the Simpsons are going to New York! Again!

The reaction: How many ten-year-olds do you know that think their love life has peaked and want to track down their exes to get emotional closure? This is yet another episode where they write Bart as a teenager, but it’s also a story born of this show’s absurdly long lifespan. At this point, Bart’s had seven or eight “girlfriends,” but where does that work in the show’s timeline? Episodically you can accept it, but showing the whole roster of girls here just raises some weird questions. But whatever, the main one here is Mary Spuckler, who if I remember correctly, wasn’t really a love interest of Bart’s, as her father Cletus just strung the two together for a hillbilly arranged marriage. But why bring back this character at all? It couldn’t possibly have anything to do with her voice actress Zooey Deschanel now having a hit FOX comedy, could it? Mary, who once was one of Cletus’s naive and innocent hick children, now, for whatever reason, has gone off to New York, is a talented musician, and a staff writer/performer on SNL. And she’s… eleven? Twelve, tops? These stories just don’t make any goddamn sense with children. Earlier, Bart watches a video of the two of them in Cletus’s hay loft; “I don’t know if we should be up here, Bart Simpson…” Mary coos in Deschanel’s sexy adult Southern drawl voice. It’s like the set-up of a bad porno, as well as reminding me of “Natural Born Kissers” as the place Homer and Marge got their mojo back. But that creepiness aside, this story just doesn’t work with Bart at all, showing him so cloying, awkward and desperate. And like in “Beware My Cheating Bart,” they give him a line that undercuts everything and reminds us he’s still a young child (“Girls don’t like me. I don’t really like them either, but I think I’m gonna.”) This is after he’s been pouting for days, putting cut-outs of his exes faces onto Lisa’s dolls to psychologically torture himself with, and guilt-tripped the family to go across the country for the sole purpose of seeking out a girl he kinda maybe liked this one time. None of it adds up whatsoever.

Three items of note:
– The inspiration for Bart looking back over his failed love life is some kind of town ball where he realizes he has no one to dance with. He continuously taunts Milhouse for dancing with Lisa, which I guess is supposed to be him deflecting his own misery, but it just feels very uncomfortable. I know Milhouse is everybody’s punching bag, but the two are supposed to be friends, right? And I guess Lisa at this point reciprocates Milhouse’s feelings, at least to a slight degree. What happened to the Lisa that sees him as a big sister? It reminds me of hearing that in early drafts of the movie, Lisa’s crush Colin was originally going to be Milhouse, and I remember being confused by that. But after seeing recent shows featuring the writers clearly shipping the two closer and closer together, it makes a little more sense now. I guess they expect fans to see themselves in Milhouse, and him making headway with Lisa is like a “win” or something? I’m still not entirely sure.
– So the Simpsons return to New York, roughly fifteen years later. They make hinting references at them repeating themselves, as well as the return of the Khlav Kalash guy, but no reference to Homer’s blind, uncontrollable rage toward NYC. He basically acts as Bart’s distant chaperone as he tracks Mary down. Meanwhile, Marge and Lisa attempt to see the sights on a shoestring budget, one of the few times the show remembers that the family are hard-up for money. This leads to Lisa spearheading a public recreation of Romeo & Juliet once their Shakespeare in the Park show is cancelled? Which they prepare for and perform in like a few hours? I dunno, it’s just dumb. And all of their New York jokes are either softballs, or just variations of jokes they’ve already done before. Why go back to Manhattan if you don’t have anything new to say?
– I don’t understand why they didn’t have Zooey Deschanel voice a new character. Why not? Did they think fans were that attached to Mary Spuckler? They just throw Zooey attributes onto her old, mostly empty character: she can sing, she has a new trendy outfit each scene, she’s introduced doing a lady dowager bit? But where did all this come from? We don’t even get a scene explaining how she left, or her talking about how she felt unfulfilled with her hillbilly family and wanted more out of life, blah blah blah. Cletus randomly appears two-thirds in to bring Mary back, and Bart helps her escape on a train. But why? Again, we don’t know anything about Mary’s character, her wants or ambitions. If she goes back to Springfield, that’s a win for Bart, but you need that scene where she expresses why she’ll be unhappy there, which would lead to Bart helping her get away. Instead, it’s like watching a threadbare story with big patches just missing.

One good line/moment: I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I got a surprise laugh out of an awfully tasteless 9/11 joke (“Dad, you love New York now that your two least favorite buildings have been obliterated: old Penn Station and Shea Stadium!”) I couldn’t believe they actually did that, but the joke actually kind of works, given Homer probably harbors negative feelings toward World Trade Center Plaza after the whole booted car fiasco.

Original airdate: May 20, 2012

The premise: Lisa is at her lowest point after being humiliated at school, and who better to help cheer her up than pop superstar Lady Gaga, who continuously harasses and stalks the poor girl to make herself feel better.

The reaction: I already watched this episode way back when I initially ended this blog, and I absolutely hated it. And even now, after watching all the terrible episodes up to this point, even being numb to the low, low quality, this one is still particularly godawful. It goes beyond the show’s typical celebrity worship, this is a full-on Lady Gaga dick sucking session. I really don’t feel like sugar coating it; from beginning to end, Gaga is the star of the show, adored by all, and inexplicably saves the day in the end. We even get an original song out of her, but you could’ve fooled me that it was meant to be funny, because most of the way through, I thought it was some shameless cross-promotion of her newest album. In terms of satire, the only thing the writers can come up with for Gaga is just exaggerating her already exaggerated persona. Getting transported by a gaudy pink train with high heels on its drive wheels, being lifted by hummingbirds onto a stage, crying glitter, and then when they run out of ideas, they just insert shit Gaga’s done already, like the meat dress or being hatched from an egg. This is not parody. There’s no joke to this, other than showcasing the reality of the artist’s eccentricities, honoring her mega-fame rather than trying to do anything remotely humorous. As for the plot they attempt, it’s pretty mind boggling. Through completely absurd reasons, Lisa is extremely depressed, and Gaga rolls into town with the desire to make everyone feel good about themselves. She’s almost militant about it, screaming “No negativity!” at a man who’s been stuck against the side of her train for days. Through her weird psychic powers (???), she hones in on Lisa’s sadness, and then takes it upon herself to follow her around everywhere and poke and prod her into cheering up. While this poor girl just wants to be left alone, Gaga won’t stop spouting empty platitudes and creating meaningless gestures like a flash mob to fix the situation. Through the whole thing, it almost feels like it’s building up to something, like it’s inching so close to satire. As a hypercharged megacelebrity, Gaga seems extremely out of touch with normal people, and her quick fix solutions and simplistic view of the world just don’t cut it for Lisa. By the end of the episode, Lisa rightfully explodes at her, calling Gaga out on being shallow and self-centered. Again, it’s so, soooo close to being actual satire, it hurts. But then we get to the ending. Homer says some nonsensical shit to Lisa, and then, literally out of nowhere, she perks up and rushes to catch Gaga before she leaves town. She apologizes for being ungrateful, realizing that blowing up at her was a big stress reliever and fixed all her problems. And then they sing together. And Yeardley Smith is auto-tuned. So, not only do they skirt the edge of satire with Gaga the entire show, teasing it so closely, they just completely and utterly undermine the whole thing at the very end, like whoooooops, just kidding! ALL HAIL GAGA! That’s why this episode is so detestable, so fucking offensive to me. They have a lot of the ingredients for satire there and they partially execute them, consciously or not, but for whatever reason, they just roll over and let themselves be just another glorified platform for a huge celebrity. It’s the starfucking I expect from a disposable supermarket tabloid, not what was once the greatest comedy series of all time.

Three items of note:
– I really do try to avoid direct comparisons to classic episodes as much as I can, but seeing this, I would be shocked if it wasn’t the writer’s room’s intention to try to recreate “Stark Raving Dad.” It was a similar scenario for the staff twenty years prior, a larger than life superstar wanting to do a voice on the show. Michael Jackson was an even bigger name for his time than Gaga, and the episode could have easily been just a big lovefest. But, because the show back then actually had some integrity, we got Leon Kompowski, a hulking mental patient who thinks he’s the King of Pop. The show still honored Jackson and presented him in a positive fashion, but in a unique and bizarre twist. Having him voice this normal guy who liked making people smile with moon walking and crotch grabbing is a million times more endearing and inventive than anything they did with Gaga here.
– The only thing close to positive I can say about this show is Yeardley Smith goes into overdrive as the most despondent we’ve ever heard Lisa, but the reason for her depression is so nonsensical that it’s in service of nothing. At an assembly, she’s given the most unpopular student award, which is a thing that exists and that Skinner openly allows Lisa to come up and accept, all on the verge of tears. Later, we see there’s an anonymous poster on the school message board defending Lisa, which raises her spirits slightly. But the next day at school, Lisa drops her notebook, which Bart finds is full of drafts from the anonymous poster, exposing Lisa. It’s such an involved controversy that makes no sense. Why would Lisa be writing these posts down on paper rather than her laptop, and furthermore, why would she bring it to school? And really, what does all this matter? Lisa was always the loner with no real friends, it’s something she’s more or less made peace with over the years. But now episodes like this and “The D’oh-cial Network” portray Lisa as a sad nerd who desperately wants acceptance from other kids who wants nothing to do with her.
– Lisa isn’t the only Simpson Gaga invades the personal space of. We get an absolutely desperate scene featuring an unprovoked kiss between her and Marge. For some reason, Marge has a exaggeratedly negative reaction toward Gaga touching her hand, which then leads to Gaga locking lips with her. This apparently gets Marge so horned up that she immediately rushes upstairs to fuck her husband, so I guess that makes it okay that Gaga effectively forced herself onto her. What an absolutely shameless plea for publicity. It even had its own hashtag when it first aired, #GagaKissesMarge. This is the shit that I expect from garbage reality shows on Bravo trying to boost their ratings.

One good line/moment: Absolutely nothing. Going forward, I will be incredibly surprised to come across a worse episode than this. I can’t think of what could possibly sink lower.

Original airdate: May 13, 2012

The premise: When Ned and Edna reveal they’ve already gotten married, Marge volunteers to throw them a make-up party, but their union runs into trouble when Edna decides to enroll Rod and Todd into public school.

The reaction: Remember that desperate marketing gimmick… I mean, momentous show-changing event of the new relationship between Ned Flanders and Edna Krabappel? After revealing they did indeed stay together in a quick scene in the season premiere, now we finally check back in on these two, and it turns out they got married in secret. First off, I honestly and truly don’t understand this relationship. It was barely explained at all in “The Nedliest Catch,” the show thrust them together on one lunch date, followed by a montage of their relationship growing, but we never see exactly why they care about each other, much less come to love each other. And now they’re married? And we’re going to do a relationship episode about these two characters who we don’t really get why they’re together. Even worse, it seems to all be about Flanders fretting that their marriage isn’t perfect because he disagrees with Edna about certain things. These two act like a couple of twenty-somethings fretting over small-ish problems, when meanwhile these two have both been married in the past. We also have Rod and Todd, who I don’t even remember from the Nedna episode, and Edna deciding to pull them out of their wacko ultra-religious school. It’s unclear how much time has passed between the start of their relationship and now, but are we to believe Edna doesn’t know what school her stepchildren attend? Why wouldn’t she know that? And Ned is passive-aggressive at the idea of his boys going to Springfield “Hellementary,” even though that’s where his wife works? It all just feels so weird. They randomly put these two characters into a relationship, and now they feel obligated to do at least one episode featuring them. But I just don’t see it. Maybe in the show’s heyday they could have written some angle to make me believe in Nedna, but here, it just feels like the one-dimensional shadows of Ned and Edna spewing out cliche, over-explained dialogue in a sleeping pill of an episode.

Three items of note:
– I’m still low-key annoyed by the new opening titles and how they just try to cram so many needless jokes into it. Each episode opens with a little gag over the classic cloud intro, but this one was way too long, apparently. It’s a news copter with an incredibly long banner that reads, “We Don’t Hate You FOX News, We Just Love MSNBC, CNN, CBS, etc, etc, more.” Like a really long banner. The joke is longer than the beginning cloud animation, so what do they do? Just hold the frame. Four seconds after the copter goes by against a static background, then the animation and music begin. It’s like someone hit unpause. You couldn’t do an additional little four second animation of the clouds moving?
– A big bugaboo of mine in this show now is that Springfield’s oddball residents will just pop up wherever, whenever, regardless if there’s a reason for them to be at an event, or someone’s house, or anywhere. This episode openly acknowledges this as the reason Ned and Edna kept their message hush hush (“Everyone in this town makes such a big heck-a-baloo about everything!”) Cue Lenny, Disco Stu, Professor Frink, and other assorted weirdos barging into their hospital room. We see the same thing later on at their wedding party. How do Ned and Edna know Sideshow Mel? Cookie Kwan? Captain McAllister? None of that matter. Everyone in the town knows everyone, and sadly, it’s been that way for a while now.
– There’s a sort-of running story maybe involving Bernice Hibbert, Helen Lovejoy and Luann Van Houten upset with Marge for throwing Ned and Edna the wedding party because they wanted to throw it themselves? What? I don’t understand why they’re so bitchy, or why they would care, or why they would want to throw the party, or why all three of them were in the bridal supply store lying in wait to get the jump on Marge. Marge bends over backwards to make sure the party goes perfectly (which, for some reason, means breaking up a potential hook-up between Lindsay Naegle and Captain McAllister. Why would that reflect badly on Marge?) Then when Ned snaps at Edna, Helen is smugly overjoyed, texting a photo that Marge’s party was a disaster? What? I don’t fucking understand what the point of any of this is. This “plot,” and the whole episode. And this show. Why am I still watching this?

One good line/moment: I actually did think the LGBT scene was pretty clever: Ned’s meeting of the Left-Gifted, Bi-Dexterous, and Trans-Handed community. It runs a little long, but not as tortuously long as some other potentially funny segments have dragged on in the past.

Original airdate: May 6, 2012

The premise: After sustaining a head injury at work, Homer hallucinates a James Bond-type mentor figure to woo Marge back into his good graces. Meanwhile, Bart enacts revenge on Nelson by getting him hooked on Krusty Burger, leaving him morbidly obese.

The reaction: Things start off on a bad note as we open with two set pieces that feel like neutered recreations of past show moments. First is the Stradivarius Cain movie clip, featuring a meeting of a group of evil super villains who are thwarted by our hero popping out of something. It’s a hollow mimicry of the McBain segment from “Last Exit to Springfield”: the in-context parody of overtly evil action movie villains is replaced with awkward out-of-place comedic dialogue of the evil guy’s mistress assuring she didn’t sleep with Cain and stale violence that feels nowhere near as wonderfully brutal as McBain (or as funny, like when a guy reaches for a dead man’s slice of cake before getting shot himself). Homer and Marge are watching said movie, and Homer is making an ass of himself, as he did previously in “Colonel Homer.” Like then, this scene sets up a rift between the two that will have to be dealt with over the episode. Homer decides not to tell the family he got time off of work since Marge is still mad at him, and then he starts hallucinating Cain to give him advice on how to romance women. There’s no rhyme or reason as to when he appears, he just comes and goes as he pleases. We also get a segment of Homer at a trendy bar successfully using a corny pick-up line and getting a hot girl, so there’s also some recycled stuff here from that ode to pick-up artists episode from last season. Not only does Cain show up like five minutes after we see Homer’s accident, it’s not clear exactly what the point of him is. Homer gets completely back in Marge’s good graces with one smooth-talkin’ line of dialogue, followed by a sleep-inducing climax involving the hot girl from earlier and her husband who acts like Scarface? For some reason? I dunno. This episode was just a lot of random things happening that sometimes connected to a threadbare story line, sometimes. Bleh. Don’t have much else to say about it.

Three items of note:
– The B-plot is just as unremarkable. We get an in-universe version of Super-Size Me with Eric Idle’s character, a film that at this point was nearly a decade old. I feel like this show referenced it at least once before. But there’s no satirical element to it, the only joke is characters get cartoonishly obese eating all that Krusty Burger. That’s all. The Beavis & Butthead revival did a Super-Size Me segment around this time, but it actually had a story to it. And humor. Here, Nelson gets fat, Krusty lets him use his trainer, then we end with buff super bully Nelson. That’s it. We also get maybe the most bafflingly dated reference in show history, when the trainer makes an Alicia-Silverstone-in-Batman-&-Robin fat joke. Were they doing spring cleaning in the writer’s room and found a post-it note from 1997?
– There’s a pretty lazy piece of dialogue toward the end of the episode. On an establishing shot of Homer driving to the fancy garden party restaurant thing, Homer comments, “The three of us are going to the most romantic restaurant in town!” So you expect Marge to say, “Three? You mean two?” Some kind of comedic response? Instead, nothing. We see Cain in the backseat, who is strapped into Maggie’s car seat (why?), but Marge doesn’t make any remark. Did they just forget they were setting up a joke and not pay it off?
– Sweet, sweet FOX synergy. One of the many hallucinations Homer cycles through is Cleatus, the FOX Sports robot, who Homer mentions by name and he does his little end line dance as the NFL music plays. It goes so long, and feels like nothing but sad time filler.

One good line/moment: He’s got no material to work with whatsoever, but Bryan Cranston is never not likable. As Cain, he’s pretty much playing a suave James Bond type, but there’s a weird moment when he appears to be getting his rocks off while watching Homer and Marge make out. He pops up into frame at a perfect diagonal angle behind them locking lips, it’s a really bizarre sequence that I laughed at because it was so weird. It was like it turned into an Adult Swim show for a few seconds.

Original airdate: April 29, 2012

The premise: Bart seeks to dispel his recent ennui with a family vacation on a luxury cruise, but when he realizes his perfect week is only temporary, he schemes a plan to make the vacation last forever.

The reaction: The Simpson family once existed in a world where everything sucked. When they watched commercials for seemingly amazing attractions or products that seemed to be too good to be true, they usually ended up being huge let-downs. The show was a satire on all aspects of modern life, and no subject matter was safe from its masterful ridicule. Nowadays, whether it be celebrities who play themselves delivering softball jokes at their own “expense,” or showing the family at elaborate events and new locales based on the writing staff’s seemingly wonderful SoCal lives, it seems at times the show isn’t as interested in ripping on things as it is glorifying them. This may be the crowning example thus far, an episode that seems like an extended commercial for the cruise industry. When Bart sees the ad for a cruise line, he’s immediately won over. It looks like the funnest thing to ever be fun in the history of fun-dom. Then the family takes the cruise, and it’s the best thing ever. Everything about it is great. More fun than anything else ever. Fun fun fun. Did the writers get a free vacation out of this? The cruise industry seems like such a ripe target for ridicule, but they just let this one slip by. In the context of the story, there’s no room for satire though; the episode is about Bart’s inexplicable melancholy, and his realization that while the cruise is enthralling now, it, like all things, is only temporary. I’ll give the episode some credit, we go into some really dark places with Bart, with him imaging himself on his death bed mourning a wholly unexciting life. There are a few sequences that come close to holding real weight, but ultimately, I’m left not entirely sure why Bart is feeling this way. This type of depression about one’s future seems weird for someone as young as Bart to have; Lisa’s bout of sadness way back in “Moaning Lisa” made sense because she’s always been wise beyond her years, and we see why she feels this way, from her unappreciative school and home life. No matter how many times Bart talks about how unhappy and unfulfilled he feels, I never understood why that was. There are elements of this episode that feel like they actually could work, but by the time we get to the third act when all hell breaks loose on the ship that ends up with the Simpsons in Antarctica, it just becomes the same nonsensical slop we always get every Sunday.

Three items of note:
– The opening act is full of sequences I’ve come to expect from this show. To raise the money for the cruise, Bart sells everything in his room in a yard sale. Everything. His bed, his furniture, all of it. This all happens without Homer or Marge saying anything, it’s just a set piece where they can kill a little time. The next day, Bart is shocked to find that his funds jar is completely full, like magic! Marge announces that each family member sold one beloved item each, so then Lisa, then Marge, then Homer wait their turns to give their respective joke lines about what they sold. Like the kids talking in the movie theater in “Beware My Cheating Bart,” it’s all this super hacky set-up/pay-off style of sitcom writing that this show used to make fun of.
– Bart tricks his fellow passengers into thinking that there’s been a virus outbreak on land so they must stay out at sea, creating panic and pandemonium. We get a panoramic view of the ship that mirrors the one earlier in the episode, except all the attractions and amenities are in ruin. Everyone is miserable, everything is dirty and run down, nothing works, but for some reason, Bart doesn’t seem to care. He’s deluded himself into thinking this is all still fun, but it doesn’t play out like a delusion. Like, why is he still psyched? This could have played into some realization that it wasn’t the superficial fun stuff on the ship that was making him happy, it was seeing the rest of his family enjoy themselves that he liked. Instead, we don’t get that confession out of him until the end of the episode. Speaking of which…
– The Simpsons end up stranded in Antarctica with a few minutes of runtime to spare. They run into a hoard of penguins and Bart and Lisa make some observation about how life is about enjoying those fleeting moments of fun, blah blah blah, whatever. It all feels so arbitrary. The family is stranded in a freezing cold wasteland, but when they see the penguins sliding down the hill, they decide it’s time to exposit the meaning of tonight’s episode.

One good line/moment: I actually really liked Steve Coogan as the cruise director. The gag in his introductory video where it keeps cutting to him leaning against different guard rails as he gives his spiel gave me the first genuine, hearty laugh I’ve gotten out of this show in a long time.