(originally aired November 14, 1999)
Normally when you’re writing an episode, you should make it around one story, one concept, one core idea. This show is very disjointed, but even stranger is there is some groundwork for the final act put into the first, but the middle portion of the episode is so disconnected and irrelevant that it doesn’t even matter. It’s just such a mess structurally. Things are pretty aimless at the start with Homer blowing off steam after work going bowling, with a crowd slowly emerging as he gets closer and closer to bowling a perfect game. For him, it’s a release after a particularly bad day, but it’s less satisfying to us as the audience since all the bad things that happened to him were his fault. Classic Homer was an unlucky son-of-a-bitch who fate spat in the face of repeatedly. Here, Homer oversleeps, runs his car through the median and molests his boss’s face repeatedly. Then he’s punished and made to eat barrels of toxic waste. Nothing wrong with that. Nope. Totally makes sense.

When Homer gets his perfect game, the episode shifts gears to be about the fleeting nature of fame, particularly of the flash-in-the-pan variety. Homer has his brief moment in the sun, but is unable to step away. I really don’t know what to make of this second act, every single scene is truly bizarre. I get that Springfield is an easily impressed podunk town, but why are they this amazed about a guy who bowled well? Also, we just jump from random set piece to random set piece. From giving a talk at Bart’s class, we immediately go to Springfield’s answer to Hollywood Squares, with Homer as the center square. And placed over Ron Howard, no less, in his second guest appearance for some reason. From then on we’re just burning through celebrities. Homer tries to do a walk-on during Penn & Teller’s show and almost gets crossbowed, one of the only funny scenes in the show (“I’m gonna kill you!” “He’ll do it! I’m not the first Teller!”) Then he watches TV at home where Pat O’Brien and Nancy O’Dell tell him he’s old hat. Why have them on the show? Hosting “Access Springfield”? Not only does it make no sense, but was it really necessary? All just to raise the guest star count, I guess.

What’s a man to do when your popularity is waning? Commit suicide, of course. Think back to “Homer’s Odyssey,” where Homer wanting to jump off a bridge was a tough pill to swallow, but at least it made sense and the episode was building toward it. Time and again we’ve seen that Homer feels he only has worth if he can provide for his family, and when things seemed impossible for him to do that, he gave up. Here, he thinks his life has peaked and he makes a snap decision to jump off a building. No consideration to his family, nothing. Then he’s saved by Otto bungee jumping and everything’s okay. Brilliant. After that, he decides to devote his life to his kids, but when he finds himself too out of his depth with Bart and Lisa, he settles for Maggie, who has a not-so-great view of her distant father. Now, this technically was set up earlier in the episode how Homer ignores the baby and the effect it has on her, but there’s nothing in the rest of the show that built toward his realization that his kids could give his life meaning. The only prompting was him running into Ron Howard and his kids, it was more random than anything, much like most of the content here. This is the most scatter-shot episode ever, with no focus, no ideas and no clue where to go. There’s a few funny lines, but that’s about it.

Tidbits and Quotes
– In art school, I leaped at the chance to see Koyaanisqatsi basically because I knew it from this episode in the fast-motion sequence of Homer oversleeping. It was… interesting.
– Homer pulls out Burns’s dentures, who regenerates a new pair complete with a cash register sound. He escapes and hides in the reactor core, where Burns proceeds to strangle him through the mounted gloves, and kick him with the mounted feet, which makes no sense. Then Homer is forced to eat nuclear waste. That’s a trifecta right there, the show is officially a goofy cartoon that can do anything.
– Lenny and Carl at the bowling alley have a lot of great material: ‘POO’ and ‘ASS’ on the scoreboard, Lenny’s banana split (“I paid 7.10 for this split.” “Will you at least call it a banana split, you dumbwad?” “Hey, spare me your gutter mouth!”), and Lenny dumping his pills in the trash seeing a “psychotic” Homer get strike after strike.
– I don’t quite see why Marge isn’t upset that Homer lied to him to get out of bonding with their daughter. Instead, she and the kids just stand at the sidelines at the bowling alley, telling them to not disturb their father.
– I don’t understand the Springfield Squares bit. Why is the Capitol City Goofball there? And really, if you’ve got Ron Howard, you make him the center square. And Itchy & Scratchy are real? Somehow? Whatever. I do like this exchange though regarding Howard (“Homer, you can’t just ride one accomplishment forever. Why do you think I stopped acting and became a director?” “I don’t know, because you weren’t cute anymore?” “Hmm… I’ll agree.” “Circle gets the square. Goodnight, everyone!”)
– More dumb cartoony shit where Homer somehow inhales the ‘300’ balloon. He didn’t even inhale that deeply, it just plummeted down his throat.
– Otto was conveniently bungee jumping off the building and managed to catch up to a falling Homer, which defies gravity, and for some reason his cord was long enough to descend through various underground levels below the city. So if they hadn’t gone in that manhole, Otto would have smashed his face into the pavement. Was that the aim? And I love that Homer gets hit with the manhole cover before he pops back on the surface, just one more opportunity to see him get hurt.
– Speaking of which, his Teletubby bit makes no sense either. He’s got the TV chained to his neck, sometimes holding it with one hand, which is ridiculous as that thing must weigh a fair amount. Then the TV seems to work without being plugged in, and electrocutes him somehow. Okay?
– I don’t even feel like commenting about Maggie saving Homer’s life at the end. The commentary yields no answers, as usual. But the episode can barely be bothered to explain it, they just crammed in a quick Hibbert line (“When a parent’s life is in danger, a child can summon super-human strength.”) No joke, no response, no questioning. Honestly, if you’re going to pull this kind of shit, at least have characters acknowledge how it makes no sense. By this point though, I’d been so dulled by the rest of the episode, this is just the cherry on top of the shit sundae. …oh, but I will say that I thought Maggie looked very cute in her little swim suit. At least I have a positive note to end on. …before she pulled a two hundred and eighty fucking pound man to shore. WHAT THE FUCK.

(originally aired November 7, 1999)
Already I can tell that season 11 is going to be curious for me. I think a big reason is that it’s the first season I can remember watching first run, and as such, I have a strange affinity towards some of these shows. Season 10 had a lot of garbage, as does this season, but I feel there’s a lot more to love here in terms of the ratio of enjoyability to shit. This episode is a good example, as there’s a lot of weirdness and elements that really shouldn’t work, but as a whole it kind of works in a weird way, has a fair amount of humor, and gave us the concept of tomacco, which is pretty amazing. Even the opening kind of makes sense to me: Homer is the kind of dolt who would mimic a movie hero in challenging strangers to duel (reminds me of him parroting an action one-liner way back in “The Way We Was”) and I can definitely see him taking advantage of the privilege, and get bitten in the ass when he tangles with the wrong southern fried sheriff. The stereotypical candor of the Sheriff is kind of stupid, but it’s stupidness I can get behind.

Homer and the family escape their house when the colonel arrives to duel and they must find a place to hide out. They end up at the old Simpson family farm, and must adapt themselves to a new way of life. Why he figures he has to grow crops and be a farmer now and not just drive to a convenience mart and stock up on junk food isn’t exactly clear, but it’s easy enough to hand wave. The jokes in the middle half are kind of hit and miss. You’ve got the most wildest risque joke in the show’s history (Sneed’s Feed and Seed, Formerly Chuck’s) and the condescending rival farmers, but the writers also seem to think tractors repeatedly falling on Homer to be comedy gold. Hoping to kick start the growing process, Homer loads up a pesticide sprayer with plutonium, and with his random assortment of seeds he planted, ends up tending to an entire field of tomacco, the unholy hybrid of tomato and tobacco. And wouldn’t you know, people just can’t get enough. Bart acknowledges it tastes terrible, “but it’s smooth and mild. And refreshingly addictive!”

Laramie Cigarettes takes notice of the new tomacco craze, wanting to buy the plant off Homer so they can use it to get kids addicted to nicotine (“Kids are crazy about tobacco, but the politicians won’t let us sell it to them.”) It’s an interesting idea, but it feels too crammed and rushed within the final four minutes of the episode. It also doesn’t help that Homer is a brain dead moron throughout, raising the stakes from million to billion and arguing with Lisa about how he can’t destroy the plant because he doesn’t know how, a bit that didn’t make any sense to me. Ultimately, the hopelessly addicted animals of the farm attack, and the last tomacco plant ends up in Laramie’s hands anyway, at least until their helicopter crashes thanks to a rabid stowaway sheep. And then we bring it all the way back around to the colonel, which has a pretty satisfying payoff that calls back to an earlier event and is somewhat satisfying seeing our hero shot in the shoulder. So here’s another episode that has its problems, but in the end is pretty damn enjoyable.

Tidbits and Quotes
– Nice Buzz Cola depicting the horrors of D-Day in the pre-film advertisements. Reminds me of when they have Veteran’s Day mattress sales. Something doesn’t quite compute with that…
– Seeing the Milk Duds swimming in “butter” makes me sick. I worked at a movie theatre, it’s all oil, that must taste absolutely disgusting. But that all makes it make even more sense that Homer would want it.
– The Zorro movie is pretty good, with his anachronistic fights between the Three Musketeers, the Man in the Iron Mask, and ninjas. I also like the over-the-top read at the end by the Scarlet Pimpernel (“Do you accept? Or are you a coward.” “I… am a coward!!“)
– One of my favorite bands, the B-52’s, guest star to play a variant of one of their hit songs as “Glove Slap,” which is pretty damn incredible. Whenever the tune gets stuck in my head for some reason, it’s a 50/50 chance of whether it’ll turn out as “Love Shack” or “Glove Slap.”
– Nice bit towards the end of act one where Homer wonders what Zorro would do against the colonel. Turns out, according to his dream sequence, he would just get shot. It’s a nice tie-in to the opening, and the mentality of how we got here. It makes the episode feel more complete, rather than just have random, tenuously connected sequences as we’d see later on.
– The Simpson farm did burn down in “Grampa vs. Sexual Inadequacy,” but I’m not that huge of a stickler for continuity. Perhaps this episode took place before that one chronologically, who cares.
– I like the discourse between Homer and the condescending farmers, a running bit that has an amusing rhythm and great payoff (“Well, well. Look at the city slicker pulling up in his fancy German car.” “This car was made in Guatemala.” “Well, pardon us, Mr. Gucci loafers.” “I bought these shoes from a hobo.” “Well la-de-dah, Mr. Park Avenue manicure.” “I’m sorry, I believe in good grooming.”)
– I like Homer’s haphazard approach to farming: he figures if he just plants a little bit of everything, like candy corn and gummi bears, something must grow. And if not, just get some plutonium to help it along. He calls Lenny to have him mail some (“Plutonium? Gee, Homer, isn’t that kind of risky? …yeah, I guess you’re right. It’s not.”)
– Great Ralph line where he comments the tomacco tastes like Grandma. But nonetheless, he and the Chief are hooked (“We’ll take a bushel or a pack or just… just give it to me.”)
– I really do love the ending. We have Marge earlier unable to sell her mincemeat pies (Homer even chastizes her for it: “You’re scaring off the customers, honey!”) but in the end they almost save Homer when the Colonel asks to have some. But thick-headed as ever, Homer calls for the duel to begin and the Colonel casually shoots him in the arm. But that won’t stop Homer from having some pie himself. Great stuff.

(originally aired October 31, 1999)
Prove me wrong, later seasons, but I believe this to be the last solid Halloween special. I’ll say one factor of my eventual departure from watching new episodes was my perpetual disappointment of each year’s Treehouse of Horror, of how even with the free license to have the characters do whatever the writers wanted, they still felt as banal and lifeless as the rest of the season. But I feel I’ve treaded this point many times before, so for now, let’s enjoy these three great segments. First is “I Know What You Did-Iddly-Did,” where the Simpson family must cover up the fact that they accidentally mowed down Ned Flanders with their car, but someone knows what they did… It’s reminiscent of past segments that parody something specific (here, obviously, being I Know What You Did Last Summer,) but adds its own spin and flourishes to make it its own. The bit with Homer acting as ventrioloquist with Ned’s corpse to create a fake death for his wife is wonderfully dark, and the inexplicable twist at the end with the werewolf is pretty excellent as well. Full of great jokes, succinct plotting, and just the right level of fright and violence (Homer being ripped to pieces by Werewolf Flanders off screen leaves it all to your gory, disgusting imagination), we’re off to a pretty good start.

Next is “Desperately Xeeking Xena,” which has one of the last truly classic bits the series has to offer: Stretch Dude, Clobber Girl, and Comic Book Guy as the Collector. Superheroes aren’t exactly Halloweeny, as I’ve chastised the show for using non-spooky subject matter in these specials in the future, but at least they tried to tie it in at the beginning where the kids get superpowers through radiation inspecting trick-or-treat bags. Because that totally makes sense. But no matter, Comic Book Guy is the real star, in his greatest role ever as the evil celebrity-snatching Collector, this time getting away with Lucy Lawless, aka Xena. Everything about this segment is just so much fun, from Bart and Lisa’s new theme song, how they choose to best use their powers, the other kidnapped celebrities, and how CBG is finally outdone: in the heat of the moment, removing a limited edition lightsaber from its packaging (“No!! It is no longer a collectable!”) Lawless is also fantastic, from the very start in dealing with her adoring nerd followers, to the great bit where she manipulates CBG into letting his guard down so she can get all Xena on his ass. An absolute classic. I’d say this can fit somewhere in top ten “Horror” segments.

“Life’s a Glitch, and Then You Die” seems like it wouldn’t age well, but it serves as an amusing time capsule of how insane people were at the turn of the millennium. Homer is assigned as Y2K compliance officer for the power plant, and of course his sole screw-up causes all hell to break loose on New Year’s Eve as all technology goes haywire and the end appears nigh. I remember how people were going apeshit, building fallout bunkers and stocking up on supplies, for an event that even I as a child knew was absolute nonsense. So this episode is cathartic in showing the absurdist version of Y2K, how the entire world just goes to hell. If all that weren’t enough, they have the great ending where the planet’s best and brightest are sent off to colonize a new planet, and the planet’s worst are rocketed into the sun. Tom Arnold’s a great sport for voicing himself on that ship, amongst the likes of Pauly Shore, Al Sharpton and Rosie O’Donnell. Homer and Bart ultimately can’t be dead soon enough and eject themselves into space, where their heads inflate and explode off-screen. See, the violence can be horrifying and graphic, but here it works because it’s woven into the story and serves a purpose. But in summation, after the last two specials which were a bit rocky, we’ve got one last amazing one to go out on. I’ve got a fair amount left to go through, and maybe I’ll be surprised, but for now, I’ll just reiterate, this is the last of a dying breed of awesome Halloween shows.

Tidbits and Quotes
– The beginning with Kang and Kodos is pretty good. It always must be a hassle to work them in every year, but it’s always great to see them.
– I love the start of “Diddly” where it seems the family is returning from a spooky adventure we didn’t see, fighting off vampires to relinquish their Sugar Crisp cereal.
– Homer propping Ned’s corpse up on the roof is so amazingly awful (“Relax, I’m fine! But when I do die, I don’t want any autopsies!”) He throws him off the roof (landing smack dab on the doghouse), but Maude goes inside and doesn’t see. So, Homer goes to plan B: “Hey Maude, I’m home! Uh-oh! I think I’m having a heart attack!” Throw the corpse in the foyer, wait for the scream and call it a day (“And that’s the end of that chapter!”)
– Ned’s funeral’s pretty great, with the family walking in with big smiles as to not look suspicious, and Homer’s eulogy (“When I think about Ned, I can’t help but remember the look on his face when Marge drove over… oh wait. What I’d like to say is, we’re still looking for the real killers. Anyway in conclusion, a man cannot be forced to testify against his wife.”) He proceeds to wink continuously until Marge tells him to stop.
– A great creepy atmosphere is built with the family sitting in the dark when the phone rings. I love how Homer whimpers and trembles in fear, then answers with a casual “Yello?” And the scary voice on the phone was just Moe. Then we get an awesome wrap-around shot of the family screaming in terror as lightning illuminates the room, with “I KNOW WHAT YOU DID” scribbled all over the walls.
– The car runs out of gas, so Homer must act quick as to where to hide (“Marge, you hide in the abandoned amusement park; Lisa, the pet cemetery; Bart, spooky roller disco; and I’ll go skinny-dipping in that lake where the sexy teens were killed a hundred years ago tonight.”)
– I love Milhouse’s Radioactive Man costume, reminiscent of old time Halloween kid’s costumes where you’ve have a Batman mask, then a weird over shirt that has the Batman logo and a picture of him on it. Like, what’s all that about? Costume makers were weird (“I don’t think the real Radioactive Man wears a plastic smock with a picture of himself on it.” “He would on Halloween.”)
– Skinner’s great at the beginning, when after Lisa lifts up the bleachers that pinned her down with her super strength (“Hold the funeral, Poindexter!”) he’s shocked (“Poindexter?!”) I also like how he falls for Bart’s dumb hand trick when he stretches around to knock on the door.
– Classic bit at Xena’s Q & A, where she explains that whenever something in a show doesn’t make sense or seems illogical, the explanation is always, “A wizard did it.” It works in any context. Also great is when the Collector uses a giant magnet to attract her breastplate, Lawless is hesitant to free herself, in more ways than one, in front of a bunch of camera-happy super nerds.
– Comic Book Guy is so great in this, wonderfully over the top and ridiculous as any great campy supervillain should be. I quote “Ha ha! I am unbelievably amused!” quite often. And of course his last hurrah in struggling to strike a Battlestar Galactica pose before the Lucite hardens (“Best… death… ever!“)
– Seeing Dick Clark’s skin melt off revealing his robot interiors, which turn to dust, seems slightly less appropriate now that he is deceased. Still funny though. I also love the more harrowing instrumental version of “Auld Lang Syne” as we see the world turn to disaster.
– Great appearance by Krusty, whose pacemaker is on the fritz (“It’s stuck on hummingbird! Nectar! I need to drink my weight in nectar!”) It’s also a believable means to get the Simpsons to the rocket that they swipe his ticket.
– Homer’s got a plan to get on the ship leaving Earth (“I am… uh, the piano genius from the movie Shine.” “And your name is?” “Uh… Shiney McShine?”)
– I like Homer’s increasing panic as he lists off more and more celebrities on the bad ship, until he screams in terror at the sight of Tom Arnold. Again, what a sport (“That ship’s going to Mars. Ours is headed for the sun!” “Yeah, ain’t that a kick in the teeth? I mean, my shows weren’t great but I never tied people up and forced them to watch. And I could’ve, because I’m a big guy and I’m good with knots!”) I also love his horribly off-tune singing along to “Clang, Clang, Clang.”

(originally aired October 24, 1999)
Similar to putting Bart on ADD medication, Homer the food critic seems like an idea that should have been done already. It’s another Homer-gets-a-job episode, but like I felt with him as a hippie or a trucker, at least here it makes sense as a position that Homer would actually want to do. As a result, the first half of the episode works well, but a random second act turn and silly finale taints a bit of the goodwill they built up. But like “Brother’s Little Helper” before it, the humor throughout alleviates some of the less favorable elements at play here. So even though the way in which he gets the job doesn’t make much sense, I do like the idea of Homer being a food critic, and his enthusasim towards it. Again, it’s a job tailor-made for him. Lisa moonlighting writing his reviews and Homer’s indiscriminate stomach loving everything he eats also all works. Homer’s not a jackass, most of the jokes land, the first half of this show is pretty solid.

Things start to turn when a group of other critics from the Springfield Shopper confront Homer about his consistently positive reviews. After this criticism, he turns the other way, and bashes each and every dish he eats, including in his own home. Now I don’t quite get why the critics would feel the need to talk to Homer about this. I kind of get their frustration about his fluff reviews, but they seem almost too vehement about it. And why would Homer then all of a sudden take it to such heart? The plot turn just seemed too sudden. One scene, Homer loves everything, then the next he’s turning his nose up at everything solely to curry the favor of some schmucks he barely knows. I feel there could have been a way to make this plot turn make sense, but it feels very hastily done here.

Our big bad finale takes place at the Springfield Food Festival, where the town’s restauranteurs shell out their wares, and have also conspired to terminate the man who’s been trashing their reputations. A sinister-looking Frenchman has cooked up an ultra-fatty eclair injected with enough poison to bring Homer down, and Lisa must save her father before he takes the first bite. Again, this final act seems pretty silly and too over-the-top, but it’s got enough jokes within it that make it worthwhile. It shares this element with “Helper,” in that all of the dumb plot twists and elements of the second half are pretty much alleviated with the good jokes along the way. This isn’t a spectacular episode, nor is it a disaster. It’s a fairly solid story with enough laughs to make it worth your twenty-odd minutes.

Tidbits and Quotes
– One of the last times they actually bother explaining why or how Homer got out of work, but here it’s ridiculously wonderful. It’s got mutiple layers of dumbness: Homer’s pathetic excuse for a decoy, Burns mistaking it for a real person, then on top of that giving it its own office. How it got up there, I have no clue, but it’s a pretty funny sequence.
– Most of the stuff at the Shopper is great: Johnny Newspaperseed, the current day paper being a result of merging the Springfield Times, Post, Globe, Herald, Jewish News and Hot Sex Weekly, the “reporters” just being telemarketers selling subscriptions (with a good Gil appearance), the cryogenically preserved Ann Landers and Dear Abby (“Our advice is to free us or let us die!”) and the paper’s proported claim of using a percentage of recycled newsprint (“What percent is that?” “Zero! …zero’s a percent!”) The shot of the giant trees being fed into the printing plant, with a poor boy inside a treehouse in one of them, feels like classic era brutal material.
– Homer’s employment at the paper is kind of hit-and-miss. I don’t care for his food song, or his pathetic takes at writing reviews himself (“You keep using words like ‘pasghetti’ and ‘momatoes’ You make numerous threatening references to the UN and at the end you repeat the words ‘Screw Flanders’ over and over again.”) I like that the ‘e’ is missing from the typewriter (“Food Box: Go or No Go” by Bill Simpson) but his final result seems almost too stupid. Though I do like later when Lisa leaves him, he looks elsewhere for help, logically starting with the dog (“Rough? You’ve been pitching that all night.”)
– It’s cute seeing Lisa mimic her father’s drooling noise and trying to articulate that in a word: transcendent! (“How about groin-grabbingly transcendent?” “Uhh… I don’t think so.” “We make a good team.  A groin-grabbingly good team!”)
– I like the title headline of Homer’s first review (“Cod is Great, Scrod is Good”) and the horrible photo of Homer, who looks absolutely drunk out of his mind. Even better is they use it again later.
– One of the knick knacks at Planet Springfield is the cane from Citizen Kane. I think there actually was a cane in the film somewhere, so it could actually be authentic.
– For some reason, the Shopper has a farm supply critic on staff. I love his catty review (“We see John Deere has come out with this years line of roto-tillers.  Surprise, surprise, they’re green! I say it’s time to time to send John Deere a Dear John.”)
– Great scene with Krusty doing some local dinner theater (“How do you make a King Lear? Put the Queen in a bikini!”) He’s ultimately surprised when he finds out that the play actually isn’t a comedy.
– Though I don’t like his random hatred, I do like some of Homer’s passive aggressive air in the late second act (“So come to the Legless Frog if you want to get sick and die and leave a big garlicky corpse. P.S. Parking was ample.”)
– Luigi is incensed with Homer’s criticism (“He gave me a bad review! So my friend put a horse head on the bed. He ate the head and gave it a bad review! True story.”)
– I like Homer talking about how bad things happen to him everywhere, then he proceeds to step in a puddle, get hit by a Frisbee and bit by a bat (“That’s a new one.”) Reminds me a bit of “Mother Simpson” when he “ruins” the moment when a pelican appears and spits a fish in his pants.
– Captain McAllister and Akira make some good small talk about Homer’s unbuttoned pants (“I’m surprised he doesn’t just give it up and go for sweatpants.” “He says the crotch wears out too fast.” “Yarr! That’s going to replace the whale in my nightmares.”)
– Classic line when the evil Frenchman shoos Flanders away from his killer eclair (“A rude Frenchman! Well, I never!”)
– Pretty good how Lisa gets Homer to chuck the eclair away by screaming it’s low-fat, which lands and explodes on Hans Moleman’s booth. The police arrive on the scene (“That was close! Thank God it landed in that smoking crater!”)
– I don’t care for the ending where Homer talks about having apparently badmouthed Lisa and everyone at the festival wanting their blood. Didn’t make much sense. But whatever.

(originally aired October 3, 1999)
Putting Bart on ADD medication seems like a pretty obvious premise. In terms of satirizing the recent trend of warping rambunctious youngsters with pills, this episode succeeds. A fair amount of this episode is pretty solid and enjoyable, at least until the last five minutes or so when things get dumb and weird, and even then, I still like it for some odd reason. Bart’s latest destructive prank forces Skinner to give Homer and Marge an ultimatum: Bart will be expelled unless he goes on a new experimental drug called Focusyn. I like how this subject is treated with a bit of seriousness, where Bart is resistant to take the drugs at first, with Marge remaining unsure about it herself. As silly as the ending of the show gets, this first act at least grounds the episode emotionally to some extend, that Homer and particularly Marge want what’s best for their son and must ultimately face the crazed nutjob they inadvertently turned him into in the end.

It’s not long after Bart starts taking the pills that he becomes a totally new kid. Focusing on schoolwork, doing acts of kindness unto the family, and helping around the house… as Homer succinctly puts it, “He’s gone from Goofus to Gallant! And we owe it all to mind-bending pills!” I like Nancy Cartwright’s performance throughout the show as Bart’s tone becomes subtly more ticked and frantic, as well as the animation where his eyes become more squinty and manic through the second act. Everything seems to be building toward Bart cracking, but we can’t figure out to what end. Eventually we find him wrapped in tin foil with a trash can lid hat and coat hangers from the ceiling, spouting paranoid theories about secret agencies spying on him. What organization in particular? Major League Baseball. A bit nonsensical, yes, but I guess it kind of works to how manic they’re trying to make Bart out as.

Whacked out on drugs and determined to unveil the truth, Bart steals a tank off an army base and drives it through town. He then shoots a round off into the sky, hitting and bringing down a satellite belonging to, who else, the MLB. Then Mark MacGwire shows up and attempts to instate a big cover-up. So yeah, the ending is by all means stupid, but for some reason I don’t really mind. Bart hijacking the tank works for the scene where Marge must confront her son, warped by the pills she agreed to give him. Even if it makes no sense that Bart was able to accurately hit the satellite and for it to land right next to him, I buy that he was able to figure out exactly where it was in the sky or something. And for some reason, I love the resolution with MacGwire. It knows it makes no sense, but it’s not like the painful self-awareness of something being shit that we’ve seen as of late. MacGwire wowing the town by hitting a few dingers to distract them from wanting an explanation is a fantastic hand wave over the whole thing. He basically could have just distracted Springfield with a shiny object while he conspicuously made off with the satellite data. So as dumb as this episode gets in the end, I think most of it still works really well. It has a deeper meaning and some level of emotional content that’s been missing from the series for a while, and a steady collection of laughs that make a great antidote for the shit pile that was the season 11 premiere.

Tidbits and Quotes
– The fire safety fair has some good bits. Bart may have been pushed a bit too far into the insufferable child direction, but I was still amused by his antics (“Look, a fire! …engine. Help! Help! Fire! …helmets.”) Also great is Hosey the Bear, who Ralph seems to mistake as Santa Claus (“And I want a bike, and a monkey, a friend for the monkey…” “You’re not going to start any fires, are you?” “At my house, we call them ‘uh-ohs.'”)
– Interesting to note, I guess, but here we have one of the few instances where Marcia Mitzman-Gaven voices Maude Flanders. Voice actress Maggie Roswell had a falling out with FOX over her salary, which apparently was over it not being financially viable anymore for her as her pay didn’t even cover her plane tickets from Denver to Los Angeles. In this episode, Maude is voiced by both actresses. I guess they rewrote her scene after the fact and had Mitzman-Gaven do a few lines. Why not redub the whole thing? But then again, I didn’t notice, but her voice did sound pretty off overall. And, sidebar, is it just me, or did Maude look pretty damn good in that hippie getup? …actually, let’s move on…
– I like how angry Skinner gets following Bart’s prank, punching the crap out of his therapy blow-up clown doll. It’s a return to the more ruthless, war-addled character of the past, not the consistently sniveling spineless wimp we’d see later on.
– All the stuff at the pharmaceutical lab is pretty great right from the start (“I don’t want to pump my little boy full of drugs.” “Yeah, yeah, we get a lot of that.”) The name ‘Focusyn’ itself is pretty brilliant, as are its supposed effects (reducing class clownism 44%, with 66% less sass-mouth.)
– We get some great David Silverman drawings of Homer’s twisted freakout upon test tasting the pills. It’s always fun to see some more far-out poses and animation in the show.
– Purposely childish, but I love Bart’s orange-testicle prank (boy, will this make sense out of context) as well as the rest of the scene (“Back in the lunches you go!” “Eww, Mom!” “Oh, grow up.”)
– An interesting subversion with the class rushing to the window to watch two dogs “going at it,” with “it” revealed the dogs fighting over a fan belt, of all things. Reminds me of way back in “Bart the Genius,” with Krabappel asking whether those “naughty dogs” were at the window again.
– Great Krusty bit where he almost chokes to death on his electronic spinning bow tie and proceeds to attack his associate producer (“I said start it at 60rpm, then move it up to 100 on the skirt blow!” “Sorry, Krusty, I choked.” “You choked? You choked?!”)
– I like that Homer and Marge’s adult night out involves seeing the infamously awful Showgirls (“Screw you! Screw everybody!”) I also like their conversation on the way home regarding their next night out (“I heard about a new club that opened up where men dance with men. Isn’t that adorable?” “Yeah, if it’s true.”)
– I don’t really know why, but the two showering soldiers is probably my favorite part of the episode (“I can’t believe that Sarge said we’re the worst bunch he’s ever seen.” “See, I have to believe he’s seen worse bunches than us.” “But he said…” “I know what he said. He was just trying to motivate us.” “Well, it ruined the whole hike.”)
– Great bit when Bart’s tank rolls past the Android’s Dungeon. Comic Book Guy and Otto take notice (“Egad! A maniac cutting a swath of destruction! This is a job for the Green Lantern, Thundra, or possibly… Ghost Rider.” “What about Superman?” “Oh, please.”) I also love Krusty’s clown car, and the unfortunate “end” of Sir Widebottom (“I’m alive… but why?”)
– It’s a bit too convenient that the satellite has actual printouts inside of it that Lenny can automatically decipher. For what purpose? But again, for some reason, I accept the dumbness of it. My favorite bit is how MacGwire tucks said printouts under his hat so obviously, darts his eyes, then tucks another stray bit back under. Also great is the souvenir bat, which is another surveillance item, which has some great data for Homer in a POV shot (Snack Preference: All, Squalor Index: 97).