(originally aired November 10, 2002)
Now this is a historic episode, as it’s the last one Mike Scully ever wrote. He wrote last season’s premiere episode, which was garbage, and wouldn’t you know it, this one ain’t much better. I have a lot to talk about with one, so let’s just get this out of the way first. This episode is about Homer attending “Rock ‘n’ Roll Fantasy Camp,” a one-week program held right outside of Springfield where people receive rock star training from the Rolling Stones and other famous artists. To complain that this story makes no sense is a fool’s errand. Why should I waste my time talking about how little sense this premise makes? The reality of this series has already been shattered, so this doesn’t even feel that egregious to me. I guess when you have such huge guest stars, you feel the need to really showcase them and put them on a mantle, but look back at “Stark Raving Dad,” where the show took the biggest celebrity in the world and made him a hulking, bald, ugly mental patient. Now we have the Rolling Stones on and Homer fawning how awesome they are. But whatever, when I gave up on the story, all I was hoping was that characterization made sense and that it was funny. I got neither.

Let’s rewind a bit and highlight this episode’s fatal flaw. Homer ends up so wasted that not only can he not remember how he got home one night, but he also spaced that he was filmed for a TV show “Taxicab Confessions.” He and his family watch as he drunkenly admits that he could have had a rock star life if it weren’t for his goddamn wife and annoying kids, which the other Simpsons are understandably hurt by. So what happens after this? They send Homer to the camp, and not only that, they empathize with him (“Even though what you said about us was incredibly thoughtless and hurtful, you had a point.”) So in honor of him going to work and sometimes being a decent father, they blow their vacation fund on this camp just for him. Then Homer acts like a loudmouth party rocker at the camp for some reason. Since when is it his dream to be a rock star? I guess it kind of fits with the wackier, more high-energy Homer of later seasons, but what happened to the lazy son-of-a-bitch I used to know and love? At the end of act two when camp is finally over, Homer is crestfallen. The opening of act three is him whining and sobbing like a four-year-old. I don’t think I’ve thought this before, but Homer is absolutely pathetic here. Not a good quality for your lead to have.

Mick Jagger and Keith Richards feel sorry for Homer and allow him to be a guest at their benefit concert the following night. Homer manages to welch a bunch of front-row tickets for his family and friends, and is all ready to rock out on stage! Except the musicians just want him to do the mic check. Why the fuck did Homer think he would be performing? The whole ending makes absolutely no sense. We get the sad music as Homer walks on stage to the crowd cheering, but I felt absolutely no sympathy because Homer is completely deluded, yearning for a dream that we never knew he fucking had, and makes no sense for him to have. Then he does the mic check, and the crowd is disappointed, for some reason, even Marge for some reason, who I thought would be smart enough to realize that Homer was not going to perform (“Why is he performing the duties of a roadie?”) Then the Stones prove to be just as moronic. Rather than pull Homer off stage when he starts playing guitar, they drive a giant fucking Satan head around the stage and end up crashing into the audience. Then they have to apologize to Homer. That’s what this whole show is: Homer being an inconsiderate, hyperactive moron, and everyone else having to apologize to him. I wasn’t as pissed off as I was with “The Parent Rap,” but this episode is just abysmal, and a real uncreative waste of such high profile guest stars.

Tidbits and Quotes
– Sympathetic Moe of later years can go two ways for me. I kind of like showing his crushing desire to be accepted in certain situations, but him feeling bad for not giving Homer a beer without paying? And then offering him a free beer? The man who wouldn’t even give one to those Iranian hostages? I don’t think so.
– Homer arrives home only to find that it’s dinner time. He’s quite confused (“Wait, was last night the night we set the clock ahead eight hours?”)
– I don’t know what I feel about the Disco Stu bit. Him admitting he hates disco is sort of like the jokes we’ve had with ancillary characters in the past rebuking their entire gimmick (“Yarrr, I hate the sea and everything in it,”) but I dunno. I feel kind of bummed that Disco Stu is apparently really depressed with his lot in life, and I know how fucked up that is for me to be concerned with the well-being of a tertiary character, but I love Disco Stu. I just want him to be happy! Is that so wrong?
– The editing of the family watching “Taxicab Confessions” is so sporadic, we cut back and forth way too many goddamn times. We cut back twice to have the family laud Homer for being so nice, then like four more times when things start to go sour. You really only need half of those cuts to get the message across, but instead, it just lays it on way too thick. The family loves Homer! Now the family hates Homer! Yeah, we get it.
– The family acts evil and laughs maniacally when Homer gets in the car for no real reason. The fake-out is drawn out so long and handled so clumsily.
– Here’s the only complaint I’ll give about the fantasy camp. All the other campers are known faces, of course. Here’s the line-up: Otto, Barney, Apu, Wiggum, Herman, Louie, Kirk Van Houten, Dr. Hibbert, Frink and Gil. Now let’s put aside the notion that a lot of those characters have seemingly no inclination towards rock ‘n’ roll. A one-week instructional course taught by the Rolling Stones has to cost a pretty penny. I’d say even more than the Simpsons can afford, but let’s say the vacation money covers it. I would be generous in saying maybe half of the people there could afford this extravagant program. But completely broke characters like Otto, Kirk and Gil? Homer’s band at the end consists of Otto, Barney, Apu and Wiggum, so you don’t even need the others. They have no lines anyway. And the others barely have any. What a bunch of crap.
– There are a few choice lines at the camp that I laughed at, the first being from Mick Jagger (“Remember, rule number one: there are no rules! Rule number two: no outside food.”)
– The bit with drugged up insane Homer in the morning may be the most awkward scene in show history. It’s so completely bizarre, out-of-character and unfunny, combined with we’re just as uncomfortable during the scene as the other characters.
– My favorite bit in the whole episode is definitely Elvis Costello’s twinging eyebrow, and his shock when Homer rips off his hat and glasses (“My image!”)
– They filled the camp with recognizable faces, but Homer gets 85% of the lines. Why include them at all if you’re not going to have them talk?
– I like that the musicians have to get back home to do menial chores (“My lawn’s not going to mow itself!” “And I’ve got to put up the storm windows. Winter’s coming!”)
– “I was so close to being a rock star that now there’s a chance it might not happen!” Homer is truly a lunatic in this. Why should we feel sympathy for a character this deluded?
– Homer escorts his family to their front-row seats. Marge comments, “I’m so proud of you, Homie!” Proud of him? You were there when you saw your husband cry like a little baby until he got what he wanted. What the fuck is there to be proud of? Why does everyone assume Homer’s going to get on stage and be a rock star? Wouldn’t they care more about seeing the Rolling fucking Stones perform than this fat idiot?
– I hate everything about this ending… except (“Test one, test two, test three, test four, you test me like the water in El Salvador!” “Wooo! El Salvador!”)
– Actually, the biggest laugh I got was at the end when Keith Richards takes a drag off his cigarette while Mick Jaggar is talking. He blows out smoke, then it just holds on his open mouth, so while the scene goes on for another three more seconds, Richards is just standing there wall-eyed with his mouth open. It’s kind of telling when my favorite part of the episode is an animation mistake.

(originally aired November 3, 2002)
Here’s the part where I talk about how depressing it is that these Halloween shows are declining in quality, since I can’t think of any new way to start these. Or I could just jump in immediately. That’s a better idea. “Send in the Clones” is a decidedly goofy segment where Homer buys a magic hammock only to find it creates mindless clones of himself. At first he reaps the benefits, now able to fulfill multiple boring family and work duties at once, but when he finds the clones are capable of terrible things, he abandons them all out of town… along with the hammock. Soon an army of Homers is created and starts destroying the town, and they must be stopped. I kind of like the first half of this, with all the dummy Homers subbing for the real one, but the ending feels kind of lazy. The Homer clones eat everything and all go to the Duff brewery? Come on, that’s too easy. It almost seemed like they were setting up the clones were going to off Homer, which could have been interesting, but then they turn it into a joke (“It would take three clones to kill the original Homer! …I mean, four!”) That’s another odd thing about this segment, where everyone acts so casually and jokey even when there’s strange or horrible things afoot. It’s like a normal episode when the characters don’t seem to care, but even more bizarre here given the fantastical things that are happening. Oh, and the ending was completely obvious too.

“The Fight to Creep and Scare Harms” is really strange, I’m not even sure what to make of it. Lisa sees a tombstone of a young man killed by gun violence, and in response, she pleads with the town to ban all guns. Her wish is granted, but when Springfield is left defenseless, gunmen of the old west rise from the grave, led by the deceased man Lisa was inspired by, William Bonney, aka Billy the Kid. I get the idea here, that without guns, five men are able to completely take over the town with their six shooters, but it really doesn’t feel right. Why can’t they get help from another town over? Then there’s the scene where they’re all at Moe’s, and the whole Simpson family is there of course, why couldn’t anyone else just ambush them with giant bats? Or torch the place? I dunno. South Park unintentionally took this idea (Simpsons did it!) in their “Pinewood Derby” episode, but it works a lot better there. Then Homer steals Frink’s time machine, goes back and has everyone repeatedly shoot the graves of the dead ghouls, causing them to rise and run like hell, and Lisa cops that guns are the answer. I can’t even say I hate this one, even though I want to, because I feel I really don’t understand what they were going for. I’m still puzzled.

“The Island of Dr. Hibbert” is the only segment that kind of works… kind of. The Simpsons vacation on an island resort run by Dr. Hibbert, who had long ago gone mad. Turns out it wasn’t the best idea, as Hibbert has been spending his days turning humans into animals, and the Simpsons are next on the chopping block. Seeing all the animal-ized characters is visually interesting in how it reflects their characters, like Agnes Skinner as a kangaroo with Skinner in her pouch, Wiggum as a pig (not much to change there), and of course Disco Shrew. But why is Dr. Hibbert doing this? He has one mad spiel about how he feels humans should never have evolved, but it doesn’t really fit who he is. It’s basically they wanted to do a Island of Dr. Moreau parody, and figured they had to go with Hibbert since he’s the doctor character they have. I almost feel like an idiot talking about reason or sense in a Halloween show, but you need at least some in there. Burns and Willie work as villains since they’re already crass and mean, but Hibbert, not so much. But this is the best of the three segments, though that’s not saying an awful lot. Definitely the worst Halloween show so far, though I have a creeping feeling I’ll be repeating that in later seasons.

Tidbits and Quotes
– The opening seance with Maude, voiced again at long last by Maggie Roswell, felt uncomfortable to me, and really showed how the writers had no concern about dealing with offing Maude, to create such crass comedy about senselessly killing the wife of an important character (“Maude! You look as pretty as the day I buried you!”) It kind of made me cringe. And not much has changed: the latest Halloween show where they pathetically tried to parody Dexter showed a devilish Maude apparently being Satan’s love slave. What the fuck, guys?
– Really, why didn’t the first segment end with the Homer clones trying to get rid of Homer? It was set up, it makes the most sense, hell, they even released a promo card of the clones ganging up on the original. They could intimidate him with their dumb clone voices, and it could be creepy and weird, but still funny since they’re mindless Homers. But instead we’ll end with getting rid of them with helicopters carrying giant donuts. The potential for creepiness and scares in these Halloween shows is basically gone, and been replaced by the same sad attempts at comedy we see in the show proper.
– The only joke in the first segment I like is the slow bit where Homer shoots the clones that know how to get back into town. It’s pretty well timed. I didn’t even laugh at Peter Griffin in the sea of clones. Any pot shots the show makes at other media nowadays feels kind of toothless, given how poor the series has gotten.
– Going off of “Poppa’s Got a Brand New Badge,” I weirdly didn’t mind Maggie shooting all the mobsters in that episode, but her being a master marksman becoming one of her personality traits is something that’s not so cool with me. So here we are, an episode later, doing a gag showing a giant box labeled “Maggie’s Guns.” It’s a Halloween show, but still, what?
– The only joke in the second segment I like is when Billy gets upset when Homer starts playing piano. He said to play pian-ee, which is more like jangly old Western-type music.
– Why does Frink pull Homer aside to tell him about the time machine? Why the fuck didn’t he just go back in time himself? They didn’t even bother to explain it.
– Turkey Frink’s dying speech is good, but kind of went on too long.
– I love whenever Marge attempts to be funny (“‘House of Pain’? This must be where you pay the bill!”)
– I have no doubt that cat creature Marge set off signals for a lot of furries out there. Even though it’s so dumb that he didn’t notice, I love how shocked Homer is by it after the fact (“Oh my God! She’s become a monster! Which I have to admit, I sort of suspected during the sex.”)
– Why would Hibbert turn Flanders into a female cow? Because we need a joke where Homer has to milk someone he doesn’t like. Why not make it Patty or Selma? Actually… no, that would be incredibly creepy…
– I like that Comic Book Guy is the leader of the “manimal” clan. It kind of fits him that he, normally an social outcast, would be on top in this fantastical situation.
– Kang and Kodos get wedged in at the end. They’re feeling more and more like an afterthought in the last couple specials. They deserve more, dammit! (“Look at that island! It’s shaped like our number four!” “Makes you think.”)