(originally aired September 28, 2008)
This episode feels like someone just wrote the bare basic outline, and then they just jumped right into the script without developing anything. There have been plenty of episodes like this, but this one feels particularly egregious, where we just hit the familiar plot beats so transparently: bonding scene, chase scene, dramatic “twist.” Everything is explained and laid out so openly so the dumbest of viewers can follow. After a drunken St. Patrick’s Day Parade brawl, Homer is arrested and must see a bail bondsman, because this is normal behavior for him now. When he arrives, he’s introduced to a bounty hunter, who, in one long piece of exposition, explains who he is and what he does, and Homer automatically decides to become a bounty hunter too. He tracks down his first perp, Snake, and is saved from being shot in the face by Flanders in one of the biggest cheats in the history of the series. The two end up becoming partners, just ’cause, and bonding in the process. But soon Flanders must take Homer to task for his past transgressions, as his latest job is to bring him in.

Homer can’t stand Flanders, but I guess because he saved his life, he decides to team up with him. Then we see the two grow to like each other during a stakeout, a scene that just feels shoehorned in for the purpose in showing them growing on each other. They sing along to Ned’s white-washed AC/DC cover band, then Homer shows Ned a new way to eat pizza… like, what the hell is this? Then we finish it off with a big two-minute chase scene across town in an overly elaborate and choreographed fashion, because parkour is popular and it’s a thing we can do to show we’re still relevant. I thought back to previous instances of over-the-top chases involving these characters. In “Homer the Heretic,” Flanders chases Homer in his car in a last ditch effort to bring him back to Christianity, which is the whole point of the episode. In “Homer Loves Flanders,” Homer latches onto Ned’s car a la the T-1000, a complete lunkhead who doesn’t realize he’s pushing his new friendship too far. He’s being dragged by a speeding car, but we buy it because it ties in with the theme and makes sense in the story. Here, Homer and Ned are agile acrobats doing backflips and jumping across cars on the highway for no particular reason. Anything to pad twenty minutes, I guess.

Tidbits and Quotes
– Small moments sometimes hurt and reveal the most. The Simpsons comment on the Springfield river being green for St. Patrick’s Day. Then Mr. Burns chimes in (“Actually, my nuclear plant did that. And now that you know, your life is in danger.”) Dramatic music sting. Burns tints his fingers. Then he walks away. Why would Burns just openly mention this? And of course then the threat is deflated. Burns used to be a formidable force, an actually legitmate antagonist. Now he’s a doddering old fool who’s of no harm to anyone, unless the writers remember he’s supposed to be evil, then he becomes a one-dimensional cartoon super villain. None of this is new though. That’s why this blog has become so stale.
– Not only do we see that goddamn leprechaun again, now there’s an orange Northern Irish leprechaun for him to play with. And the Hulk and the Thing are there too. Oh wait, in court he says he’s the Mulk. Ugh.
– There’s a B-story here too where Marge becomes an erotic baker. Okay. She works in this guy’s cake shop for what seems like a good amount of time, and yet doesn’t realize what’s going on until he comes clean. It’s just more awkward attempts at trying to be racy, but not understanding that saying “penis” on The Simpsons isn’t funny in and of itself.
– The bounty hunter’s name is Wolf, and he looks like Dog the Bounty Hunter. Great work, guys.
– Gloria returns again, now pregnant with Snake’s child. The staff must really love having Julia Louis-Dreyfuss around. Why else would this character keep coming back?
– So Homer chases Snake down an alleyway, and Snake shoots at him. The bullet races towards his brain… and then bounces back and nabs Snake in the arm. What stopped it? Flanders, holding a big piece of bullet proof glass he was buying for the Leftorium. There’s an giant empty opening on the side of the building facing the alley he just happened to be in. And the glass he’s holding is nowhere near big enough to fill his store window. What a load of fucking shit.
– Homer’s obsession with his tazer reminds me of better times of him using mace on his eggs (“Mmmm… incapacitating.”)
– Fat Tony appears in this show, being arrested by Homer and Ned. He has no lines, but his grunts and gasps are done by Joe Mantegna. Mantegna has gone on record several times saying he loves Fat Tony so much, that he’ll come into do his voice even if he just sneezes or hasps, so I guess they called his bluff. Couldn’t they have given him just one line though? Maybe a longer scene got cut.
– “Marge, do we have any more of your extra long Twinkees?” “Oh no! Those were for Mr. Smithers’s commitment ceremony!” Sigh.
– “You hang onto resentment like a Confederate widow!” “I forgave you for accidentally killing my wife!” “Yeah, but you hold onto the big things!” I don’t know what to think about them actually acknowledging Homer’s hand in Maude’s death. It’s not like it changes anything, since Homer brushes it right off. It’s just another example of the writers recognizing shoddy writing, or Homer doing something awful, and just joking around about it to fuck with the fans.
– Homer and Ned fall in wet concrete and are completely stuck in it, despite the fact they were standing on a beam held by an operating crane, so clearly there must be people at the construction site, or anywhere near by, who would have noticed them.

(originally aired May 18, 2008)
We wrap up the season with a curious episode, one I really can’t figure out. A Simpson child becomes Krusty’s assistant, only to soon usurp his own fame for themselves. No, this isn’t “Bart Gets Famous,” though I wish it was. That episode felt like it was about something and had a purpose. This one, I think I know what it’s saying, but whatever it is, it makes no sense given the characters it involves. Auditions are being held for a new “Krustketeer,” and Lisa tries to convince Krusty to hire Bart. This only ends up getting herself hired as his new intern, where she puts up with all the clown’s demands. There’s even a scene that echoes “Famous” where Bart gets Krusty a bagel, except here it’s Lisa letting him use her necklace string as dental floss. The difference is while we saw Bart being run ragged by Krusty, calling him at school in a panic about burying a body, here, Lisa is seemingly working full time and is a great assistant, because nowadays the Simpsons are perfect at everything they do. It isn’t long before Lisa takes over Krusty’s show, because I guess she wants to be an entertainer now. Oh wait, she got the taste of laughter. That’s a thing, I suppose.

The episode is told with narration throughout by Sideshow Mel, the only good part of the episode, if only because I love Dan Castellaneta’s performance as the downtrodden thespian. He explains how Lisa got swept up in show business, neglecting to tell Krusty about an important network meeting so she could swoop in and take his position. Act three opens and it’s the Lisa Show, with her now performing and managing her own production. Again, I guess she’s taken an extended school leave. This whole section moves so fast, I don’t understand why Lisa would want to do this, or even care about being a TV buffoon. No time for any of those explanations, because we need to cram in a worthless subplot where Homer and Bart collect coins. Very entertaining. Anyway, on the eve of an awards night, Mel informs Lisa of the tragic tales of past recipients, himself included, and how far they had sunk for the sake of entertainment. Not wanting to suffer the same fate, Lisa shifts the spotlight back to Krusty and resumes her normal life. There’s nothing really aggravating about this one, it’s just rather confusing and empty.

Tidbits and Quotes
– The coin collecting subplot… just riveting! Despondent about not getting the Krusty gig, Bart sells all of his Krusty merchandise, in exchange for an empty book for storing coins. He expresses no interest in it, but takes it anyway. He and Homer go off on a coin collecting spree and fill the whole book, save for one: the immortal double-printed “Kissing Lincoln” penny. They discover it at an auction, but are easily outbid by Mr. Burns. But of course since Burns is a doddering old buffoon, Homer easily swindles him out of it. And then the plot’s over. Rather than develop the main story and have it make sense, we waste precious minutes on this shit. Great job, guys.
– More bad CG with Krusty driving his car through the backlot. The characters look like they’re cardboard. How can they do 2D-3D integration so well on Futurama, episodes from almost a decade ago, but here it looks like shit?
– Mel ends his tour of the past with Lisa to his portrait. You can tell it’s him, but he ends his dialogue, “But that was before he took the bone…” His shadow casts over the portrait and we can see it matches. I like all that, it works. Then Lisa dusts off the plate, and reads it, “Melvin Van Horne.” Gasp! “Sideshow Mel! That’s you!” No shit. They could have had her just say, “Oh my God, Mel! How could this happen!” But no, let’s kill time and spell it out for the dummies in the audience as much as possible.

Season 19 Final Thoughts
One season left. One season left. I’m sorry, I’m sure all of this feels very redundant and repetitive at this point, it’s just there’s not really that much left to say about a lot of these episodes. The series has the same problems, they just keep getting a little bit worse each season. It’s a slight downward curve, but at least I’m almost at the drop-off point.

The Best
“Eternal Moonshine of the Simpson Mind”

The Worst
“The Homer of Seville,” “Husbands and Knives,” “E Pluribus Wiggum,” “Papa Don’t Leech,” “Mona Leaves-a”

(originally aired May 11, 2008)
“Mother Simpson” is a definitive Simpsons classic, one of the most heartwarming episodes of the series. “My Mother the Carjacker” cheapened things a bit, but mostly remained disposable in that it more or less told the same story over again. But this episode… it turns Mona Simpson’s character and her entire past on its ear, turning this farewell show into hackneyed schlock and more or less shitting all over the good vibes established from “Mother Simpson.” Out of the blue, Mona reappears at the Simpson house, asserting that she’s through running from the law and wants to be involved in the family again. The feds still think she’s dead from the events of “Carjacker,” so how exactly would this work? Anyway, Homer feels apprehensive about this, not wanting to get hurt again by his mother’s seemingly eventual re-abandonment. Unfortunately when his change of heart does come, Mona has already died. To make peace with this, Homer vows to accomplish her dying wish to release her ashes at a specified time out in the mountains. The ashes get swept up in the wind and end up clogging the guidance system of a missile set to dump nuclear waste to the rainforest. Now the Simpsons have to stop this evil James Bond plot! What the fuck is this?!

I’m going to bypass the third act, because it befuddles me way too much to even try to analyze. We kill off Mona in this episode, but her character is completely sullied. If you’ll remember, she was a 60s radical fighting for change, but she was a caring mother first, always looking out for her little Homer. That’s why she left in the first place, to keep him safe from harm. Here, in one of the most infuriating scenes of the entire series, we see young Mona callously saying goodbye to her son for the night (“See you later, honey! Mommy has to go chain herself to a nuclear submarine. Hugs and kisses!”) Li’l Homer reaches out for a hug, but is rejected. Fucking. Terrible. Homer’s life only went to shit when he was left to be raised by Abe, but I guess he had a terrible, unattended childhood both ways now, I guess. And despite her selfless effort to keep her son from harm’s way in the past, which was even reaffirmed in “Carjacker,” Mona has Homer sabotage that missile launch, which ends up getting him into trouble. He could have suffered the same hardships she did, and it would have been all her fault. Mona was a saintly mother figure, now she’s a die-hard radical who puts her activism before her son. Just a ghastly episode, trying to elicit emotion from an untimely death, but completely betraying the character they’re killing in the process.

Tidbits and Quotes
– What a terrible title, first of all. One of the worst ever, I think.
– We start off at the mall at “Stuff-N-Hug,” another transparent pop culture surrogate. Lots of jokes to be made about Build-a-Bear, aren’t there? Not really.
– “Mom, I can’t believe you’re here. You keep appearing and reappearing and it’s not funny! You’re just like that show Scrubs!” Again, guys, pot to kettle. Also, what a clumsily written line.
– Glenn Close just sounds tired as Mona, which I guess makes sense given her imminent demise. But not even death would keep her from the writers scrounging her character back up one more time, I think in that Inception episode where Homer keeps wetting the bed. Thank God I don’t have to watch that one.
– The moment where Homer finds his mother dead by the fireplace at the end of act one is a little chilling. I just wish there were a more serious, competently written episode surrounding it. Then act two begins with Homer at the funeral home sobbing, “My mother’s dead!” It’s one of those exposition lines you get after a commercial, but I feel it could have been accomplished in a more natural way.
– Homer tries to find solace in his friends, but to no avail. Apu talks about reincarnation, while Ned is very compassionate (“Look, Homer, people don’t come back as anything, except for our Lord, who came back as bread, that’s it.”) Then it becomes a religious pissing match between Apu and Ned. What a wacky religious odd couple! Two more dead characters.
– Homer climbs the mountain to fulfill his mother’s last wish, or rather, he makes it part way up having Marge carry him (“Marge, your back is so sweaty! I’m starting to slip off!”) Class act.
– The third act… God, who cares? It ends with the secret base exploding and Homer flying out with an English flag parachute for no discernible reason or explanation, and him believing if he adds water to the ashes, Mona will come back to life. Then we end with a montage of clips from past Mona appearances. For some reason, I’m annoyed by them adding new animation of her kissing young Homer goodbye and walking out of the room, right before the old clip from “Mother Simpson” of sleeping Homer’s face as the door closes.

(originally aired May 4, 2008)
The Simpsons take on Sundance! Too bad South Park did it over a decade earlier sharper and smarter, and that episode ended with a tidal wave of human feces. So, yawn, Lisa takes up filmmaking, a hobby she becomes enamored and proficient with instantaneously, but this phenomena is nothing new. Encouraged by Principal Skinner, who lets her use the high-tech editing bay I guess the school can afford, Lisa gets to work on a full film, a documentary about her dysfunctional family. She submits it to Sundance, it gets accepted, and her film becomes a big hit, although its depiction of the family is not so favorable. Along the way, Skinner and Chalmers masquerade as movie big shots for no explainable reason, and independent director Jim Jarmusch appears to namedrop some of his movies that most of the audience hasn’t seen, and read lines on a script page to help Lisa with the dilemma she created for herself, leading to yet another non-ending.

So what’s our commentary on Sundance? They’re snooty, anti-Hollywood folks who appreciate what’s off-brand and bizarre for its own sake… s’about it. The end result is Lisa’s film ends up being way too personal and depressing, depicting the Simpsons as a ridiculously broken family. Every time the show tries to paint them this way, it’s usually only showing Homer being a raging madman, one you can’t believe that Marge and the kids haven’t run away from years ago. Lisa put together and edited the film without her family’s approval, and she feels guilty about making them feel bad. But Jarmusch appears, praising her work, and ultimately shows her that there are families that are far worse off than hers, so she shouldn’t feel so bad. Was that the conflict? The episode was never really about Lisa’s tumultuous family life, so it doesn’t make much sense. Another failed attempt at satire.

Tidbits and Quotes
– Lisa starts filming at a tailgate party, seeing the beauty of everyday life. It’s her eye-opening realization of the creative possibilities of filmmaking, but it feels so sterile and lifeless… much like the rest of this show.
– We get more annoyingly smart Lisa here, but I guess since the writers acknowledge that, it makes it okay (“What comes to mind when you think of drama?” “Well, according to Aristotle, drama contains six elements: plot, theme, character…” “Not the smarty-pants answer, I mean the drama in your life.” “Okay, but can I please finish the smarty-pants answer?”)
– Skinner concludes that Lisa’s family is the source of drama in her life as he peruses through her files (“Your brother is Bart Simpson, one of Mrs. Krabappel’s 4th graders…”) What, is he reading official documents verbatim? Bart is the bane of Skinner’s existence as we’ve seen in episode like “The Debarted,” but for some reason here, he speaks about him, and Edna too, like he doesn’t even know them. If anything, having Skinner exhibit a negative emotional reaction to Bart would help sell Lisa’s fractured family life. It’s such a bizarre choice to go with such a sterile read.
– Chalmers urges Skinner to submit Lisa’s film to Sundance (“The preeminent independent film festival held each January in Park City, Utah?”) Thanks for filling us in. They could have filtered that information and told it in a more natural way, or made a joke about the exposition drop, but y’know, coming up with jokes is really hard work. Bad writing is a lot easier.
– The Sundance entry judges scene is the only moderately clever bit in the show, where they scan through submissions (“Paul Giamatti… is the world’s greatest super spy… who only exists in the mind of an overweight, agoraphobic jazz musician… played by Martin Lawrence in a fat suit.”) They gasp so loudly at Lisa’s entry that at with the summit at such a high altitude, they all pass out, with some even needing to be brought out in body bags.
– There’s a Shining shot as the Simpsons drive to Park City with ominous music… but there’s no payoff to the joke. It’s like they cut something out and forgot it left the joke hanging.
– Homer randomly knows who Jim Jarmusch is, and his gag involves being unable to eat an onion without crying. Funny?
– There’s lots of small moments in this episode that are just awful, over-explaining jokes making them even less funny. Marge deduces that Sundance movies with innocuous titles like “Regularsville” contain racy content, so she must love “Chernobyl Graveyard”! She dashes in, and exits looking frazzled. That should be enough. Oh wait, she says, “I didn’t.” Really? I couldn’t figure that out, thanks for that. Later, Lisa tries to defend her film to the family saying it got butchered in editing. On screen, we see “Edited by Lisa Simpson.” But just to drive this home, we have a voice-over of her reading, “Proudly edited by Lisa Simpson!” This ruins the joke, and also vilifies Lisa even more.
– I honestly do not understand the “ChalmSkin” “subplot” where they’re approached by producers and end up acting like snobby big shots in front of John C. Reilly (yet another great talent wasted in a nothing part). If someone wants to decipher it for me, be my guest.
– Jarmusch’s dialogue is dreadful (“My movies, like Stranger Than Paradise and Down by Law, are also about social misfits experiencing the dark side of the American dream.”) He’s not a very good actor, which is fine, but in that case, don’t give him a large amount of dialogue. I chuckled at his pathetic “Ow! That hurts!” when he literally fades out of frame at the end.
– “Life Blows Chunks,” Nelson’s film, is wrong in many regards. Firstly, Skinner trusts Lisa with his AV equipment, but Nelson? But most importantly, it’s nothing but a pale, empty imitation of “Pukahontas,” Barney’s film from “A Star is Burns,” which both depict tragic characters communicating their sorrow in film. But while “Pukahontas” was a brilliant send-up of art films, a logical, sorrowing, but ultimately hilarious character study, Nelson’s film just ends up feeling sad and hackneyed. The series seems to love making fun of Nelson for being poor and having a deadbeat mother, two unfortunate factors out of his control and I’m sure mirrors the situation of many, many kids out there. Barney’s alcoholism is a problem he created himself, and it’s a much different situation. A line like “Don’t cry for me, I’m already dead” is a certified classic, being self-consciously cliched, tragic and hysterical at the same time. But something like “I like to cry at the ocean, because only there do my tears seem small” is just lame.