(originally aired April 7, 2002)
While “Blame It On Lisa” got all the controversy, FOX executives were much more worried about this episode featuring Homer using medical marijuana. They were very dodgy at what the show could and could not do, especially on the point that they couldn’t actually show Homer smoking, so I guess it wouldn’t be teaching kids exactly how to do it. The episode kind of talks about the benefits of medicinal weed and the legalization of the drug. There are several different interesting avenues this show could have gone down regarding this topic. Not that I’m expecting any meaty, serious discussion on the matter, just an comedic perspective on the issue. Or we could just have Homer become a stereotypical stoner and make jokes off of that. A big chunk of this episode is basically the most hacky material one could write for a stoner character, and it couldn’t feel more lazy. Add on a truly bizarre third act that serves only to make the parody title make sense and you get a very strange episode.

Following our first act where Homer gets his eyes viciously attacked by crows, Dr. Hibbert prescribes him medical marijuana to cure what ails him. After some brief hesitation, Homer eventually tokes up and spends the entire second act high as a kite, with his pupils doubled in size and a permanently glazed look in his eyes. What shenanigans does he get up to? Listening to Lisa’s saxophone for hours, laughing at everything, watching the Three Stooges in the attic with fellow pothead Otto, it’s the easiest material you can possibly come up with. And it all feels so removed from Homer, I began to stop thinking him as himself for the second half of the act, which would have worked as the point if the rest of the episode was truly focused on him going cold turkey and sticking with it. Homer springs into action when anti-marijuana legislation threatens to harsh his mellow, so he arranges a pot rally. And he got Phish to play at the benefit! How? Doesn’t matter. But here’s the kicker. Turns out the vote for the proposition was the day before! They were so stoned they forgot what day it was! What a hilarious twist! Of all the hacky shit this episode, hell, this season, this is the most uninspired comedic “twist” I’ve ever seen. The lack of originality is staggering.

With pot banned, Homer is stuck living clean and sober, relenting to Marge in promising the kids he’ll never do drugs again. There’s a disheartening undercurrent here though, similar to “Jaws Wired Shut,” where people yearn for the status quo for reasons that even they can’t justify (Lisa comments, “I want the old Dad back, the one who was yelling all the time, and… you know, I’m not really sure what I want…”) He may have been dodgy and slightly off, but stoned Homer is a lot more bearable than wild, out-of-control “regular” Homer. But anyway, his penchant for laughing at everything got him promoted by Burns, who needs someone to yuck it up at all his zingers during his upcoming investor’s meeting. However, without dope, Homer is unable to laugh on cue, and since he promised Marge he wouldn’t smoke anymore, he has Smithers do it instead. But the two lose track of time while Burns is in the tub, and find the old man has seemingly drowned. And the investor’s meeting is in twenty minutes! What to do? Pull a Weekend at Bernie’s, and have Smithers work a super complicated marionette routine with Burns’s corpse, which for some reason works flawlessly, and revives Burns in the end. Even though it’s set up in act two, the ending is so jarringly out of place; it has nothing to do with Homer redeeming himself in any way. But whatever, I should be used to this shit making no sense by now. So yeah, uninspired and clumsy, and for a show about such a controversial topic, it sure did play it safe.

Tidbits and Quotes
– As if marijuana wasn’t enough, the beginning of the show takes on genetically modified foods, with the joke being that the food has become sentient. Not bad, but it’s a gag that takes three times the length as it really should.
– The Pop-Up Video stuff with all of the old Simpsons artifacts is kind of clever. Not to be too detrimental, but that’s as high praise as I can give it.
– Homer and the crows is kind of bizarre. The only thing I like is this exchange with Marge (“I’m very uncomfortable having a gang of crows in our bedroom.” “It’s a murder, honey. A group of crows is called a ‘murder‘”)
– We get a flashback to Homer’s past traumatic experience with pot. Hiding a toke from the cops in his underwear, a police dog sniffs it and bites his groin, whipping him back and forth. Hysterical.
– I like Lisa commenting the smoke-filled house smells like the art teacher’s office.
– Homer is slightly cruel to Lisa making her play until the wee hours of the morning, but at least he’s paying her. Better than when he forced her to cut lemons for his garage bar that he didn’t even use. Again, I’d much rather have stoned Homer than insane regular Homer.
– We have more strangely out-of-character Burns in this episode. He self-admittedly pissed away $60 million? On what? He’s a responsible business mogul, how does that happen? And he’s so concerned about his jokes going over big, where’s the heartless, humorless miser we know and love? Burns is almost adorable now, where he was once a compelling antagonist.
– The only Homer stoner line I laughed at was this bit (“I got news for you! I just got promoted and it’s all thanks to Yes-I-Cannabis! …we have a kitchen?!”)
– Phish is basically another in the long list of expendable guest stars, but I do enjoy their music, so I got no beef with them. And I like the guy initially misreading “pothead” in introducing Homer on stage.
– The police start a marijuana bonfire after the ban, but it inadvertently creates an alluring smoke, so they dump some barber hair on top to mask it. At home, Homer bemoans the situation (“I could have smoked that pot! And worn that hair!”)
– The scene at Moe’s, the bit at the dinner table, it’s obvious that the writers really had no material for Homer going cold turkey, so I guess that’s why they fell back on the Burns thing. I guess it’s like Homer having to brave through a situation without using drugs… except not, because Smithers came up with the Burns dummy idea. And do I even need to comment on how the Burns dummy rig makes no sense and how there’s no way in hell Smithers could pull that off? But as ridiculous as it was, I do like Homer very nonchalantly pushing Burns’s head behind the curtain and playing him off Elvis-style (“Mr. Burns has left the building!”)

(originally aired March 31, 2002)
Vacation episodes have pretty much gone to hell at this point. They’re more or less just an excuse to string together unrelated scenes of the Simpsons exploring a new location and how wacky things are overseas. Oh, and sometimes there’s a plot in there too. Well unlike “Simpson Safari” or “Kill the Alligator and Run,” this show actually does have a story, and despite there being a fair amount of crap here, I actually like how they resolve the main plot and how it’s set up through the episode. A $400 phone bill forces Lisa to fess up that she’s been sponsoring a poor little orphan boy named Ronaldo in Brazil. When she stopped receiving letters back from him, she tried calling the orphanage but they didn’t know where he ended up. Upon seeing video of the precious little scamp, the Simpson family agrees they have to go to Brazil and find him. This is more or less as flimsy as a catalyst as “The Bart Wants What It Wants,” and how the family is able to afford to travel is basically hand waved. But whatever, the Simpsons are going to Brazil!

Act two is basically just them searching the town for this kid, which gives us all of our Brazil jokes. A fair amount of them actually are funny, like the risque children’s show (“Bert and Ernie left it to your imagination,”) the Brazilian relative of the “Yeesss!” guy, Homer and Bart on the beach, and the samba school, where they’re hard at work on their new dance, the Penetrada (“It will make sex look like church!”) But these are just isolated bits, the through-line of finding Ronaldo really doesn’t matter. The plot could have been anything, it’s just an excuse to get them to a foreign country. Now this kind of thing worked in “Thirty Minutes Over Tokyo,” but the joke ratio was much higher there, so it got away with it. Here we also have some randomly jerky things by Homer like jumping on a nun’s back, commanding her to fly, and admitting to taking off his wedding ring whilst on vacation. We also have Bart inexplicably pointing out famous Brazilian landmarks (“It’s Copacabana Beach!” “It’s Carnivale!”) This happened in “Simpson Safari” too, it’s like they can’t figure out what to do with Bart in these vacation episodes, so they just throw him random lines.

Let’s get what I like about act three out of the way. It’s revealed that Ronaldo got a job puppeteering a giant flamingo in the kid’s show we saw earlier. It’s not exactly like you could figure out the “mystery,” but between that, and showing earlier the dancing shoes Ronaldo was able to buy with Lisa’s donations, it was subtly set up so the payoff is satisfying. It’s surprisingly competent in a season of such shit writing, that’s for sure. But most of the last act revolves around Homer getting kidnapped, which is just very dull and silly. What I find is that when characters don’t treat a situation seriously, then there’s no reason we should. Bart very casually mentions the situation to Marge, Homer seems nonplussed by everything, as do the kidnappers at a point. Why even have this story if you’re not going to treat it seriously in any way? Why should we care? Ronaldo gives the Simpsons the ransom money, they do the exchange high in the sky on cable cars, Homer leaps onto the family’s car, causing it to plummet down a mountain side in a horrible wreck, but they’re all totally fine and unbruised. And Bart gets eaten by a snake. And then that’s the end. I was surprised at how much I actually liked here, but the lack of an interesting story and ridiculous third act keep me from giving this one just an ‘eh’ on average. Eh.

Tidbits and Quotes
– Some quick bits at the phone company pad the episode. I guess sentient robot switchboard operators exist in this universe. And though it was an easy joke, I like the telemarketer taking it gravely personal when he gets hung up on.
– Man, the writers love Lindsay Naegle, and apparently now she’s both an alcoholic and a sexual predator.
– Homer getting shocked up the telephone pole is like the perfect scene showing the comedic leanings of later seasons: Homer gets hurt and is dumb and is funny. I remember way back when the show was up for Emmy consideration, this was the clip they used. Or maybe it was the Kids Choice Awards. One of the two, I always get them mixed up.
– Ronaldo kind of looks like a grown-up Pepi from “Brother From the Same Planet.”
– This episode is kind of notorious in that Brazil got really pissed at the representation of their country, mostly in relying on inaccurate stereotypes, like having characters speak in Spanish accents and mixing up their culture with other Latin American countries. I don’t blame them, really. If you’re going to parody something, at least do it right. But like most ignorant Americans, I don’t know jack spit about Brazil, so I didn’t notice.
– I like the two airline pilots (“The local temperature in Rio de Janeiro is hot, hot, hot, with a hundred percent chance of passion!” “Ronaldo, you make that joke every time!” “It was that joke that made you fall in love with me.”)
– Homer kicking his suitcase yelling, “Look at me, I’m Brazilian!” echoes “Look at me, I’m a scientist!” from “Simpson Safari.” Neither are funny.
– The only bit with the kidnappers I like is when Homer’s trying to get the money. With the $1200 the family can scrounge up, Homer runs off a chart of what they’ll get (“That’ll buy you one of my legs, or something they call a Mystery Bag!”) He calls up Burns, who, high on sheep embryos, is willing to pay him if he can work it off. Homer promptly hangs up. A call with Moe only gets Homer owing fifty more grand, and a call to Flanders asking for a hundred grand gets him nowhere (“Well I don’t really have that much, but if you need it that bad, you’ll be in my prayers.” “Go suck a Bible!”) The quick pacing of the calls makes it even funnier.
– I don’t quite understand why Marge and the kids are standing right in the middle of the Carnivale parade, or why the fuck they’re just standing there dancing while Homer could be dead at the bottom of the Amazon.
– Ironic that Marge comments how a music cue is making light of the tense situation, when meanwhile the episode has done nothing but make light of the kidnapping “subplot.”
– The ending is very bizarre. After the cable car crash lands and no one even has a scratch on them, Homer gives the moral lesson of the episode… I guess? (“I learned that no matter how bad I screw up, you’ll always bail me out.”) Where did this come from? And this is a good lesson? Homer can be as ignorant and careless as he wants because the family will clean up the mess for him. It’s so out of left field I can’t even be mad at it. And I don’t even have time to settle before we see Bart eaten by a snake. I then remembered we’d seen this gag before to comic effect in “‘Round Springfield,” but there it’s actually funny.

(originally aired March 17, 2002)
Whelp, here’s another anthology episode. Hands down it’s my favorite of the three so far, and I’d even say I really liked the episode, despite my usually apathetic feeling about these types of shows. Most of the jokes hit their marks and each story had an interesting twist to me, either by their casting or a mild subversion to the classic tale. Homer uncovers a long overdue library book of classic stories for children, and decides now is as good a time as any to read to his kids. First is Homer’s Odyssey, starring… Homer. Brave soldier Odysseus must get back to his beloved wife after the Trojan War, but must traverse through a number of dangerous islands and frightening creatures. I’d have been fine if this were the entire episode, since the story is so rich with set pieces. They condensed it well enough with just having them visit Circe, so they did the best they could with the six minutes they had. A funny, clever segment based on one of my favorite classic stories. A very good start, I’d say.

Next is probably my favorite of the three, with Lisa as Joan of Arc, leading the French army to victory during the Hundred Year War. There’s a real silliness to all of it, with the handling of God, the ridiculous tactics of the army before Joan shows up, the unfazed attitude of the British army, but then you also have some choice brutal moments like King Milhouse having court jester Krusty boiled in oil (“What, so no 10:30 show?”) The best part comes at the end where God is summoned into court to testify for Lisa, but then Willie of the British army speaks up, saying that the Almighty told him to lead the English to victory. Caught in his own web, God gets flustered and leaves. I just love that idea; in all wars, each side believes they’re on the righteous path, so maybe it’s like God doesn’t want to play favorites, but here he actually gets caught. Last is the story of Hamlet, starring Bart as he plans to avenge the death of his father by offing his killer, his uncle Claudius (Moe) who has taken the throne and married his mother. Moe is truly the star of this one, a completely lecherous, despicable man who doesn’t even try to hide his sleaziness. Especially at the end when he dummy proofs his final battle with Hamlet by painting poison on everything in the room. It’s all just so ridiculous, but in a good way. Usually I can’t think of much to say about these shows, but this is definitely the funniest episode this season. Maybe these anthology shows have potential after all…

Tidbits and Quotes
– Homer inexplicably has photos in the living room of O.J. Simpson and his rental minivan. Kind of bizarre.
– Flanders as the King of Troy is great, not wanting to turn down Homer’s generous “gift” (“We hope you don’t have a horse!” “Well… I don’t have one from you.”) Then we get the great line, “Now throughout history, when people get wood, they’ll think of Trojans!” This works as a good dirty joke. Similar to Kent Brockman’s “golden showers” line from “A Tale of Two Springfields,” where the character is unaware of the double meaning of his saying. It gets stepped on a little bit with cutting back to Homer giggling, almost poking the audience in case they missed it, but I do like how childish Homer is about it.
– Captain McAllister as Poseideon is basically perfect (“Yarrr, I’ll send him far! …off course.”)
– Nice drunken chit chat on the boat (“Is it vase (vey-se) or vase (vah-se)?” “You gonna be asking that the whole trip?”)
– The River Styx seems like a bit of an easy joke, but I still laughed. The best is a skeleton in the background taking off its shirt, flashing its non-existent chest on some poor schmuck’s shoulders.
– Wonderful bit with Helen of Troy, played by Agnes Skinner, who’s just doing Phyllis Diller (“This is the face that launched a thousand ships… the other way!”)
– More easy jokes, but hey, they still work (“God wants you to lead the French army to what?” “Victory.” “Victory? We’re French! We don’t even have a word for it!”)
– I’m all for an episode with a little girl repeatedly stabbing soldiers. And Lisa’s war helmet customized to the spikes on her head is just adorable.
– Great line from Lisa (“Let us kill the English! Their concept of individual rights could undermine the power of our beloved tyrants!”) It basically undercuts the entire story, but that’s what makes it great.
– God appears on the witness stand… somehow, then Willie calls Him a “two-timing spot of light.” Then when He leaves, His angelic music runs backwards and the ceiling hatch shuts behind him. I don’t know if I’ve laughed harder at a beam of light leaving a building.
– Bart tries to perform a soliloquy, but Moe ends up hearing him and decides to do one of his own (“Note to self: kill that kid.”)
– The “poison” in this episode being a unidentified green substance is great, especially at the end when Moe’s just painting it on everything, including Rosencrantz (Carl) and Guildenstern (Lenny). When Moe’s representative in the ring Ralph stabs himself with his first shot (“Boy, did I bet on the wrong horse,”) he tries to fall back on the poison (“You sure you don’t want a nice piece of fish, or to finger the drapes a little?”)
– There’s only one thing I hate about this episode: the ending. What in God’s name was that? They must have had nothing for the longest time, and then eventually slapped that on there. But it makes absolutely no sense, why would Homer gets Ghostbusters out of that story? It had Homer’s ghost going through the wall like Slimer, but that’s such a small joke in the episode, and wouldn’t have come through in the actual story he was reading. There are plenty of ways this episode could have ended, and I’m sure a room full of writers could have come up with something… anything besides whatever the fuck this ending was. But a good episode with a bad thirty-second ending is a lot better than the reverse.

(originally aired March 10, 2002)
I normally don’t like to directly compare newer episodes to older ones, since it’s pretty unfair to compare a piece of crap to a bar of gold, but if you’re going to retread old ground story-wise, I’m going to be reminded of the goods times of memory’s past. Grampa has a retirement home romance, so of course I’m going to think of “Old Money,” and goddamn is there ever a stark difference between the two. But let’s get one thing out of the way first. The plot need to get the Simpsons to visit Grampa, so how can we do it? Have them think he’s dead. It’s something that we the audience know can’t be true, but the thing is that the characters do, and scenes must be treated as such. It’s fine that the retirement home has people informed of their loved one’s death via recorded message (“He died from… complications of a medical nature. The nursing home was not responsible,”) that’s funny. But what happens next could not feel more disingenous. Marge tells Homer his father is dead, and what does he do? Scream and wail uncontrollably on a dime, then spout out a joke (“And he never even lived to be a vegetable!”) I know Homer is impulsive and emotionally unbalanced, but even he can’t go zero-to-sixty on news this mind-shattering. Think of past reactions to death on this show: Abe in “Old Money” and Lisa in “‘Round Springfield,” they’re very quiet and internally devastated, it feels more real. Here, Homer’s reaction is treated as a complete joke.

It turns out another resident actually kicked the bucket, leaving his room open for new resident Zelda, whom Grampa is immediately smitten with. Now, let’s compare, shall we? Bea is a sweet grandmotherly type who bonds with Abe over their respective health disorders, family, and an incredibly disturbing sequence of them seductively downing their pills. She doesn’t even live past act one, yet her character is completely cemented in the few scenes she’s in. Who is Zelda? She’s the love of Grampa’s life, apparently. How many lines does she have? Guess. …six. Six lines, only two of which are actually in the same scene. The two don’t even have a back-and-forth conversation, why make an episode about a romance when you don’t even have the two fucking talking to each other? Well the “idea” of the episode I suppose is Grampa acting like a teenager, borrowing his father Homer’s car, acting belligerent, and ignoring his advice. Zelda is obviously just a user, wanting someone who’s got a sweet ride. The fact that Grampa can’t see that and keeps chasing her makes him out to be a sad, horny old man, and that just isn’t him. As senile and scatterbrained as he can get, Grampa has always been feisty and strong-willed, but I’ve never thought of him as pathetic… until this episode.

Grampa ends up wrecking Homer’s car in a drag race, and with no car, Zelda drops him like a sack of hot rocks. Finding out her and her new beau have headed off to Branson, Missouri, he hot wires Marge’s car and takes off to get her, with the Simpsons following suit. The only good part in the whole episode is the Branson musical “That’s Familiar,” a magnificent ode to the town as a mecca for Z-list celebrities (“They took Nick-at-Nite, and made it a town!”) Grampa interrupts the show to call out Zelda from the audience, bring her up on stage and tell her they’re through and she’s a “hootchie.” Where did this come from? Homer and Marge told him this once earlier in the episode, and he ignored them. Where’s the scene where Grampa had the realization that Zelda never loved him? This ending couldn’t be more random and knee-jerk. They knew they didn’t want to bring Zelda back but couldn’t cram in any change-of-heart with Grampa, then they just did the ending anyway. They could have cut the completely worthless scene of Grampa pointing out hobo carvings for Bart talking to him about his new girlfriend, and Grampa being unable to explain a good reason why she left him. That’s all you need. One scene. But the writers couldn’t even be bothered to do that. Whelp.

Tidbits and Quotes
– The “Grampa is dead” opening stops on a dime when the real story starts. Homer is relieved that his father is alive and promises he’ll do more things with him. Grampa is pleased to hear that, to which Homer immediately back pedals (“Yeah, yeah, we’ll call you, or send you some fruit.”) Again, completely disingenuous. Homer just thought his father was dead a minute ago, what a complete dickhead.
– I like Grampa’s pick-up line to Zelda (“Now that you’re here, I’m changing my instructions to do resuscitate!”)
– The bit where Grampa pretends to be dead to get what he wants is the scene that really strikes me as being pathetic. And it feels especially wrong considering the episode opened with the family thinking he was dead.
– I just mentioned this last episode with the “Li’l Grampa Simpson” joke, but I absolutely hate it when adults call Abe “Grampa.” Like Marge will refer to him as “Grampa” to other people when the kids aren’t around. Adults don’t do that, why would they do that? His name is Abe.
– The scene is kind of dumb, but I like Grampa’s dapper zoot suit at the start of the second act (“You don’t trust your old man? You ungrateful milkshake…”)
– There’s so much screen time where Zelda is silent. It’s like they only had Olympia Dukakis in for ten minutes and had to rap it up. She doesn’t say one word during the drive-in scene, and in many of her other longer scenes, she has one line of dialogue. One.
– Grampa needs to use Viagra! And one of his top hairs becomes erect! Dear Christ do I miss “Old Money” right now…
– This one bit makes my mind explode. Grampa returns with the car and Homer is furious. The entire scene is very clearly that Grampa is like the irresponsible teenager and Homer the demanding parent. This couldn’t be more clear. Grampa throws a tantrum and runs up to his “room,” plays his rebellious music (old time swing music, a cute gag), and Homer bangs on the door to get him to turn down that “racket.” Marge suggests he give him another chance, to which Homer counters, “No. He’s got to learn, Marge. The way my dad made me learn.” Now that line works, it wraps up the running joke in a nice little bow, end the scene there. But what’s this? Marge responds, “He is your dad.” NO, REALLY? THANK YOU FOR EXPLAINING THE INCREDIBLY OBVIOUS JOKE. It’s like programming for dummies. Then they have no way to end the scene and have Homer say, “Cosmic…” What? Absolute shit.
– Nothing about the drag race is funny. And we get the return of Gloria for some reason, who is still Snake’s girlfriend, dressed in a sexy tube top. I do like the second act break where Grampa smashes the car into a tree, revealed to be the Simpson backyard, and the tree where Homer is lying down in a hammock in. But when he registers that his car has been completely destroyed, his reaction? Flustered, and slightly annoyed. Homer’s reaction to hearing Abe died is an overreaction, this is an underreaction. When the beach kids glued seashells and starfish on his car in “Summer at 4 Ft. 2,” what was his reaction? “Sweet merciful crap! My car!!” Here, the car is absolutely wrecked, and he doesn’t seem all too upset.
– The Itchy & Scratchy old time radio program goes on sooooo long. I’m sure the animators loved that (“We’re going to have this minute long sequence of them listening to the radio.” “So… what should we have them do?” “I dunno, you figure it out.”) It’s clear they want to rush through it since they cut it at the very end, but there’s so much you could have done to condense it. Cut the opening theme, cut the joke about the sponsor, just get to the cartoon with the sound effects. It could have been half the length and still worked as a joke.
– The Branson bus pulling up in front of the house is a lazy joke. But then we get the best gag in the whole show, maybe the whole season, where they wind up in Bronson, Missouri, where everyone inexplicably looks and acts like Charles Bronson. It’s so absurd that I love it (“Hey ma! How ’bout some cookies!” “No dice.” “This ain’t over.”)
– “That’s Familiar” is great in its brutal honestly, something the show has basically all but lost. Having Charo be all wrinkly, openly referring to the faded stars as washed up and pathetic, it’s great. And of course the big finish: Yakov Smirnoff. I love at the end where he seems almost pissed that the show was interrupted (“In Russia, stage is for performers only!”) Then we get Grampa recognizing Tennessee Ernie Ford backstage, knowing he’s dead because he clipped his obituary. Upon realizing this, Ford dissolves into a pile of ashes. Even as a kid, I remember thinking, “What the fuck was that?”
– I really feel they called Zelda a “hootchie” earlier so they could set up the Charo gag at the end. I wouldn’t put it past them.