(originally aired May 1, 2005)
In another inaccurate marketing gimmick, FOX billed this show as the 350th episode, touting its big name guest star Ray Romano. That stuff doesn’t really bother me at this point, but the episode’s bizarre third act turn and yet another insultingly asinine conclusion certainly does. A major thunderstorm causes the Simpson house to leak, and Homer is tasked to fix it. What’s amazing is how quickly Marge gets angry at her husband (“I’ve let a lot of things slide, but when you can’t keep a roof over your family’s head, you’re just not much of a father!”) Considering the dozens of much more awful things Homer has done over the years, it seems random that this is what sets Marge off, but maybe it’s just all that bottled up rage coming out. Mainly it’s just to set the plot in motion: cast off by his family and his bar buddies, Homer ends up at a bar down the interstate and meets Ray, a like-minded slob who also happens to be a roofer. He continues to make intermittent appearances to Homer, never committing to finishing the roof, but stranger than that is that no one else seems to see Ray but Homer. It isn’t long before the family becomes worried, and hauls him off to receive psychiatric care.

The third act involves Homer getting six weeks of electroshock therapy until he cops that Ray is imaginary. It’s very weird and sad to watch a whimpering Homer getting strapped down and repeatedly electrocuted over what we know must be a misunderstanding. They couldn’t look in a phone book or on the Internet to see if a Ray Magini actually exists? Moreover, it’s just an excuse to work over Dan Castellaneta’s vocal cords, and for us to laugh because Homer getting shocked for no reason is funny, I guess. Ray shows up at the end and we explain the reasons why nobody actually saw him. All well and good, yes, but how do you explain how nobody heard him? Most egregious is the bartender where Homer and Ray first met. He had an eye patch blocking Ray from his view, but Ray also had a beer and nachos, which he must have ordered from somebody. It makes the episode just feel like a big waste when you give an explanation this shoddy, but it’s not like these unsatisfying conclusions are anything new. There’s a few choice laughs here and there, but not enough to cover the aggressive dumbness.

Tidbits and Quotes
– Stephen Hawking makes his second appearance on the show, just randomly being in Springfield for some reason. He’d show up again for a third time later on too. He’s also had three appearances on Futurama, enough for them to comment on it (“You’ve solved the problem that baffled Einstein, and drove Stephen Hawking to quit physics and become a cartoon voice actor!” “I like physics, but I love cartoons.”)
– I’ve always been confused at the Knockers waitress yelling at Homer (“Read the sign, prevert!”) That’s not a typo, she says “prevert.” Is the joke that she mispronounced it? Is “prevert” a word?
– Marge’s tasks for the day: take the dog to the vet, and take Bart to get circumcised. She’s making this decision just now at ten years old?
– Ray Romano does a fine job and gets a few good lines in (“Sorry, man, I gotta go. It says my kid attempted something… I hate the way these things cut off.”) I even thought the bit at the end endlessly promoting Everybody Loves Raymond over the credits was funny, it was really well timed.
– Walking to Home Depot… I mean, Builder’s Barn, Homer waxes nostalgic (“My dad used to bring me down to Johnson’s Hardware. Old man Johnson used to know everything about fixing stuff. When they built this place, he hung himself.”) That’s the joke. Funny?
– Homer eats the rubber mouth guard before his electroshock, because that fat Homer will eat anything! It’s funny because he ate it even though it’s not food!

(originally aired April 17, 2005)
As I mentioned with “Bart to the Future,” “Lisa’s Wedding” is this humungous shadow that looms over any time the writers decide to make another episode set in the future. It may not seem fair to have to be compared to one of the greatest episodes of the series, but if this is the topic you want to cover, it comes with the territory, and while this episode is certainly nowhere near the abortion that “Future” was, it ultimately comes up a little short. Unease sets in for me early when we first see our future, featuring Bart and Lisa heading to the prom. Marge takes a Polaroid photo of them, which morphs into a cake with the picture on it, and she comments how great the world is now that scientists have invented magic. While I appreciate the lampshade hanging to some degree, it just feels like their lazy excuse for them to make outlandish future jokes, with human cloning and sentient vomit being around in such a short time from the present. Now think back to “Wedding,” which took place even further in the future, where all the technological advancements seemed logical as far as the direction society appears to be going. Video phones, overstuffed schools, the Rolling Stones still being on tour, these are all things that basically happened by 2010, while in this episode, we get flying unicorn clams.

To be fair, this show is more focused on the plot than future gags, featuring Bart needing to find direction in his life so his girlfriend Jenda will take him back. He inadvertently thwarts a robbery at Burns’s mansion, who in returns offers him a Yale scholarship, the one that Lisa is already slated to receive. Now Bart must choose between continuing to impress Jenda with his impromptu Yale admission, or saving Lisa from a fate worse than death: settling for Milhouse. It’s a simple enough story, and there’s nothing really wrong with the characterization or situations. Mainly, the episode just wasn’t very interesting, and neither is this future, for the most part. Like I said earlier, positing what could actually happen in the future is a lot more entertaining than just making stuff up, like having the police be cyborgs or that fucking clam thing. There’s a few choice gags that work, and the core of the story is somewhat sweet, but in the end, it just ends up in the ether, smack dab in the middle of the phenomenal “Wedding” and the abysmal “Future.”

Tidbits and Quotes
– The framing device of Professor Frink’s time machine is alright. He’s a lonely man desperate for a chance to wow others with his invention, which definitely makes more sense than the owner of the Indian casino taking time out of his day to give some kid a twenty minute vision of his future (with ads!)
– There’s a few minor callbacks in this episode that I like: Bart’s retro tux is reminiscent of his father’s from “The Way We Was,” and Homer’s underwater condo echoes his dreams of living under the sea in “Homer Badman.”
– The hand wave for Maggie’s absence is to show her on a video postcard from Alaska, which now has sandy beaches presumably due to global warming. Why is a nine-year-old living across the country from her family? Is this part of a school program? Never mentioned, doesn’t matter.
– I’m a bit conflicted, but I do like the roided out teenage Milhouse. Him wanting to man up by getting buff, but still remaining the same insecure wuss, makes sense to me. Asserting how Lisa being with him would be a dead end also works, with a future vision of their horrible potential future to boot. Then the future episode last season wrote them as married with children, which felt kind of lazy and sad. I’m not covering that one since I only watched it after the unusually large amount of positive response it got on No Homers, and while it wasn’t awful, I wasn’t as won over by it as everyone else was.
– It’s not as terrible as “Future,” but still present are the designs and voices for older characters still feel like they’re little kids. A lot of the people at the prom, like Wendell, Lewis and Ralph, just look like they took the kid head and put it on an adult body. Same with the voices, many of them still sound like ten-year-olds. But the few new designs and changes that are there do work. Nelson knocking up Sherri and Terri? I totally buy that.
– Some restraint is shown in this future world in having Homer splurge on one of the first hover cars, which doesn’t fully work yet. Going through the Quantum Tunnel, he and Bart get a surprise visit by Bender (“Alright! You guys are my new best friends!”) Seeing Homer toss him out and fall apart on the road as he laughs is a little sad. It was all done in love, surely, but at this point in time, Futurama had vanished from the airwaves, and this shit show was still going strong.
– Oh God I hate the “joke” with Smithers and his heterosexuality injections. I’m sure Harry Shearer was thrilled to record the wonderful line, “I love boobies!”
– Seeing the hanging Frink skeleton is a bit disturbing, but I don’t see it as an entirely unrealistic fate for him.
– The animation at the end with the flying car dodging and zooming up between the two trees looked really good. Don’t know why, but it stuck out to me.

(originally aired April 3, 2005)
This is another one of those episodes with so many aggravating elements, but ultimately I really feel nothing for it as a whole. Just another disposable show to fill up a season. We open with the Simpsons visiting Shelbyville, which I guess is now some kind of affluent, cultural capital with high end shopping centers and musical theater. So chalk this up for yet another thing modern Simpsons has tainted: instead of Springfield and Shelbyville being two towns filled with morons trying to one-up each, now it’s snobs from Shelbyville looking down at their poorer, dumber neighboring city. Hearing their “hate hoots,” whatever the fuck those are, is a lot more interesting and entertaining than “Lemon of Troy,” surely. Marge gets famed architect Frank Gehry to build a music hall in Springfield, but it goes belly-up instantly when the townspeople, despite voting for the $30 million building in the first place, realize that they don’t like culture. I feel like another “character” dampened over the years has been the town itself: mob mentality made a lot more sense in the older episodes, as it was more about the crowd being easily manipulated and blind-sighted, not being complete idiots. Maybe new Shelbyville has it right.

Mr. Burns steps in, volunteering to take on the town’s debt to convert the music hall into a prison. Why is this? No reason. Then Homer applies to be a prison guard? Why is this? Because he can, I guess. Wasn’t he already a prison guard for two minutes last season? Then Burns meets with Quimby, informing him he needs help as his profits from the prison are down. You assumed the town’s debt, and now you need help with your random business venture? Whatever. Next, Homer is arrested when Wiggum starts enforcing ridiculous, unchecked on-the-book laws, and then he unwittingly becomes a prison snitch. There’s no reaction by Marge or the kids that Homer’s in jail, which you think there would especially be given the ridiculous circumstances that got him in there. But why spend time on that when we can milk the snitch angle and make Homer even more unlikable, having Drederick Tatum go into solitary for his youth group “gang” tattoo while Homer gets a plasma screen TV in his cell. Marge randomly appears to get Homer during a prison riot out to kill him, then they’re saved, the prison is shut down and things go back to normal. Or whatever. I was more confused than anything through most of this, so many parts of it made no sense to me whatsoever. A complete mess of an episode.

Tidbits and Quotes
– Another unnecessary guest star, but Frank Gehry got maybe the only laughs of the episode, with his shocked inquiry that Marge wrote that he was the “bestest” architect, and seeing how his buildings are constructed, by building a normal structure, than smashing the steel beams with wrecking balls into their warped shapes.
– I was mistaken before, this is Charles Napier’s final appearance as the head prison guard. He had better lines in the same role in “The Wandering Juvie,” but it’s great to hear him again anyway.
– This episode has a subplot, but there’s no point to it and it literally doesn’t have an ending. The kids notice Snowball II is getting fatter, then discover she’s wandering off during the day to be primped and spoiled by another family. Lisa confronts them, but finds that the cat likes being with the other family better. Bart goes in to get more answers, but becomes just as won over with their endless supply of treats as the cat. And that’s it. I thought about this further for some reason… perhaps this is actually Snowball II’s real family. Remember that this actually isn’t Snowball II, this is the cat that wandered by the house in “I, D’oh-bot” that Lisa adopted and named after her poor dead cat for convenience’s sake. Who’s to say she hasn’t been doing this all along, that Lisa is keeping this cat as her own when she really belongs to this other family? It’s all bullshit anyway, since we don’t really need the cat in the show. They tried killing her off, now we see her happier with another family, just get rid of her, what does it matter?
– “This is worse than when we thought Mom was having an affair! Turned out she was just going to the library to cry.” I fucking hate one-off lines like this that callously throw out just devastatingly sour information about the family. Just think about it, Marge huddled between the aisles of the library weeping about her moronic asshole husband and her awful station in life. Hilarious, right? Above it all, the Simpsons have always been a loving family, but now it’s considered joke-worthy to mention that they’re completely miserable.
– Wiggum takes a shot at CSI (“That’s it! Lots of flash and no meaning!”) Once again, this show has absolutely no ground to stand on when it comes to mocking the quality of other series.
– The ending is just one puzzling thing after another. The prisoners get all the guards out by feeding Homer fake information about a prison break, which I guess made it possible for one of them to reach the prison door opener lever that’s conveniently placed on the wall next to his cell. Homer hides out in the basement when Marge arrives to find him. The convicts show up, and rather than run out the exit door, they instead lock themselves in the gas chamber. Rather than just turn on the gas, the prisoners try desperately to get the door open. Then the guards return, knock all the convicts out with tear gas, and in comes Mr. Burns and Governor Bailey for some reason. Homer proceeds to blow the lid off of the horrible conditions in the prison… except we didn’t really see anything all that bad. The guards were malicious and sadistic? You mean Lenny, Carl and Otto? And feeding them horse meat? No worse than the gym mats being served at the school. So the prison gets shut down and Bailey announces the convicts will be sent to a garbage island. You know where she should really put them? Into Springfield fucking Penitentiary. They never mention the actual working prison a single time time in this whole episode. Did they just move all the inmates? Is the old prison condemned? It could have been excused in one scene where we show that the prison is falling apart, so Mr. Burns’s plan to convert the music hall into a new prison would be favorable. That’s all you need. But instead, out of sight, out of mind, I guess.

(originally aired March 20, 2005)
These Homer-Marge marriage episodes are bad enough without making Homer into a petulant child, having him use, abuse and insult Marge for no good reason, and still end up on top again. It’s mind boggling to me that the staff watches some of these episodes without realizing how completely unlikable Homer comes off. Are they so enamored by him that they don’t notice? Following a terrible accident at home, Marge pleads with Homer to get life insurance so she and the kids will be supported in case he gets killed on one of his bonehead adventures. Ultimately unable to get coverage, Marge grows paranoid and resorts to penny pinching in order to create a nest egg, to be used on “a very rainy day.” Now Marge may be pushing things a bit too far, but her motivation is completely rational and sound considering the heightened probability of Homer’s demise. When he’s not allowed to pay to drink at Moe’s anymore, Homer’s had enough (“You can’t enjoy money when you’re dead, so why not have fun now?”) How big a moron is he? It’s not if they all die, it’s about if he, the sole provider for the family, dies, and his family is left for themselves. Doesn’t he care at all about what will happen to them? He then proceeds to argue that he works hard at work for that money while Marge sits around the house. It’s like I’m listening to the diametric opposite of Homer: he knows full well how much he jerks around at work, and that Marge is the glue that keeps the family together. Why is he acting like such a dickhead? It makes you completely against him to pick an ammo-less fight with his wife like this.

To assert his dominance, or something, Homer blows the entire nest egg savings on a mobile home. He invites an entire convoy of trailers to his backyard primarily to piss Marge off, ignorant to the fact that she easily sends them away when she cuts their power from the main home. Then, like in “Three Gays of the Condo,” Marge is the one who tries to mend the relationship, but it’s even worse here. She’s pleading Homer to just come back and stop all this stupidness, but Homer isn’t having any of that. Bart and Lisa, as sick of their parents fighting as I am with this episode, reason that if they just take the RV back to the dealer, the conflict will be resolved. They end up out of control on the freeway, somehow, leading Homer and Marge to have to save them. Then the episode ends with them all on a Turkish freighter for some reason, with virtually no resolution to the Homer-Marge story at all. This episode is basically as big a train wreck as “Three Gays of the Condo,” with Homer acting like a humungous juvenile asshole to his wife for no reason, and the show wrapping up in a nice bow just because twenty minutes is up, and in place of the offensive gay content is a whole bunch of shit that makes no sense, like how the kids are even able to drive the RV, or why the Simpson backyard is humungous enough to park ten RVs in. Fuck this show.

Tidbits and Quotes
– Marge fantasizes about a macho Homer completely cleaning the garage and losing weight while she’s out of the house, which of course is the exact opposite of what happens. The dream sequence isn’t framed like it’s Marge’s vision of a perfect husband, but what she honestly thinks is going to happen. Either way, it makes her seem like she’s delusional. Why would she think that?
– Homer lands on his back dead center of the front of the garage. He sees a spider coming down from above and throws a TV Guide at it. It flies up above him, outside the garage presumably, but then somehow ends up hitting the garage door button which is on the inside of the garage to his right. Am I to believe this is some kind of magic TV Guide? I hope someone got fired for that blunder.
– I’m sure the bit with Bart predicting Homer’s horrible accident with his drawing is a reference to something, does anyone know? Regardless, it’s just weird, creepy and out-of-place as a one-off joke like that.
– At least this episode had a few laughs, which at this point in the series is a highlight: the Merry Widow Insurance sign (“Denial, Anger, Acceptance, Cash!”) and the Budget-O’s cereal, with a bum dressed like a clown on the box, that you have to assemble like it’s a model airplane.
– Bart and Lisa have to wear Goodwill clothes, but of course only for the shot where they make the joke. Also, Lisa has her regular dress on under her shirt, so what’s the point?
– Another Katherine Hepburn character. The writers must love when Tress does that voice, I guess.
– A very grisly gag involving Flanders hallucinating seeing Jesus from the RV fumes, and him turning a wicked smile once he and his sons pass out.
– I hate absolutely everything around it, but I love this line from the one RV driver when Marge cuts the power (“I was making a Monte Cristo sandwich when my crisper cut out! It’s not golden brown, it’s not brown, it’s not nothin’!”) Just how angry he is about it is very funny to me.
– This episode features the “return” of Bob from Big Bob’s RV Round-Up, with a slightly modified model (his gigantic ears are no more). I think he’s voiced by Dan Castellaneta, who does a fair enough mimic, but there’s just no material here for him.
– I’m not sure how Bart and Lisa can drive the RV with both of them at the steering wheel. Why doesn’t one of them work the gas and the brake and the other steer? They’re driving in Springfield, then spend a long time staring at a map, then somehow end up on the freeway. Homer and Marge drive up beside them, and Bart yells at them to kiss and make-up. Marge insists they haven’t gotten to that point yet, but Bart tells them to do it anyway. It’s like he’s the status quo forcing these two to get back together when they couldn’t be further apart. Then they’re really in trouble (“We’re going downhill, and I can’t reach the brakes!”) Then go down and push down on the brakes then!
– The episode ends with the Simpsons partying with the Turks, for reasons I really can’t explain. Also the Homer-Marge conflict is solved by Marge being drugged into complicity, so I guess everybody wins.

(originally aired March 13, 2005)
What is it about “Bart vs. Australia” that makes it so perfect? It exhibits the same ridiculous stereotyping that other travel episodes have, but it feels so much less offensive than a show like this. I guess it’s all in the manner that it’s presented; “Australia” holds America and Australia in equal amounts of contempt, where in this episode, a lot of stuff just feels like, “Those Chinese sure are funny!” But before that, our set-up. Selma goes through menopause, leaving her despondent that now she can never have children. She decides she wants to adopt, so it’s off to the orphanage, but the baby she wants ends up being taken back by his father, Cletus. I guess they only had one infant so that option is no longer available, nor are any other orphanages in any other area. Patches and Poor Violet, anyone? Shock of shocks, Lisa suggests adopting from China, but as they will only allow children into the homes of couples, Selma claims Homer as her husband. Soon, she and the Simpsons are off to China to get her child, as well as keep up their charade.

Bureaucrat Madam Wu, played by Lucy Liu, oversees the Americans to make sure Selma and Homer are actually a loving couple. Act two is basically just scene after scene of exploring China, most of which involve Homer being a moron or getting hurt. Homer feels the need to lie that his profession is “Chinese acrobat,” and of course then we get a scene where he fumbles his way through a routine, which is just a bunch of time killing. Wu discovers that Homer and Selma are not actually married and takes away Selma’s new baby. The Simpsons devise a plan to get her back, which of course hinges on Homer, which of course results in him getting hurt. They almost escape, but are stopped by Wu, which of course leads to Homer making a heartfelt speech which of course sways Wu into giving the baby back. Isn’t it so hackneyed now that one thinly written touching speech can completely change the mind of the antagonist? I don’t remember that so much in the classic years, but it’s so overdone now. If Wu was raised by a single parent, why didn’t she have a little bit of sympathy about the situation? It took Homer to talk about what a great parent Selma would be, which he can’t believe to be true, and insult China by calling it another planet, for her to let them go? I dunno. Another forgettable episode, and for an episode that features the family going across the world, that’s saying something. Travel episodes used to be exciting, now they’re just another stupid thing that happens.

Tidbits and Quotes
– The opening is just awful. Selma is giving Burns his driver’s test, where he’s a neutered old man again. She goes through hot flashes and opens up the roof of the old automobile they’re driving. When the roof is upturned vertically, a gust of wind turns it into some kind of sail which causes the car to careen out of control. Totally makes sense. The scene then ends with Burns’s lungs shooting out his throat to act like air bags. Goddammit.
– Skimming through the episode for these quotes, I just noticed the credited writer: Lawrence Talbot. The Wolf Man wrote this? Actually, it’s just a pseudonym for Dana Gould. So, what, he was disappointed enough by this one to not use his name, but catastrophes like “Homer the Moe” and “The President Wore Pearls,” he’s more than happy to credit himself?
– This is the second episode in a row where we watch a tape hosted by a celebrity, this time with Robert Wagner talking about menopause. And both times they’re not funny.
– “Selma, I never realized you wanted a child so badly.” Remember “Selma’s Choice,” Marge? I guess not. One of Selma’s main motivations is that she wants to be loved, be it by a husband or a child.
– We saw it in “There’s Something About Marrying,” and now here, Homer openly making shots and cracking jokes at Patty and Selma. In the classic years, he’d only respond in kind if the sisters said something disparaging to him. Normally, he keeps his resentment to himself, usually for Marge’s sake. I’m sure someone will come up with a counter example, but his past behavior is definitely in stark contrast to now, where he just openly insults them at any given opportunity.
– How does Selma have $10,000 to shell out to get a child, and then enough money to send everyone to China for multiple days?
– Homer is intolerable in the second act: getting beaten up temple monks, including getting his heart ripped out, talking baby talk to Chairman Mao, then the whole acrobatic scene. He’s thrown on stage, and the performers make a giant tower of chairs. Watching this and standing on a plank, Homer comments, “Boy, this is easy! Maybe I am the world’s greatest acrobat!” Because he thinks that acrobatics is standing still? Is that the joke? He’s launched in the air and manages to magically land on top of the chairs. He then chants “USA!” until the tower collapses. Our lovable protagonist.
– Madam Wu is like a crazy person, spying on the Simpsons and tracking them down in a tank to get the baby back, all so we can get a stupid Tiananmen Square reference.
– Homer gets dressed up like a Buddha statue so the orphanage will bring him inside, which they do utilizing a giant hook in his nose. Aside from Homer’s muffled screams, wouldn’t they notice how fleshy and soft the statue is? These two guards have to be fucking morons to not notice this is a human being.
– Like all “big” changes in the show, Selma being a mother is never explored or developed at all. It’s barely even acknowledged. I think Ling has appeared in the show maybe three times after this, with either Selma holding her or showing her in their apartment. She’s basically a prop that the show is stuck with now.