Original airdate: February 21, 2010

The premise: In researching the Simpson family tree, Lisa uncovers the diary of a young 19th century girl who wrote of her attempts to free a slave belonging to Mr. Burns’s ancestor. She continues to dig deeper and deeper to find the full story, hoping to find at least one Simpson in history of noble character.

The reaction: This episode has forgotten to make jokes in the past, but here, it seems like they weren’t even trying to do comedy, but craft this historical mystery instead. Too bad none of it is interesting or entertaining. And none of it really makes much sense. The episode is about Lisa hoping there will be redemption for her 1860s counterpart, but then when she’s discredited by an out-of-character antagonistic Milhouse, she’s gone from the episode. Then all of a sudden it’s 1860s Marge who saves the day, moving with the slave Virgil to Canada. So is 1860s Homer not in the Simpson blood line at all? And did 1860s Marge just up and abandon her daughter, the girl we were supposed to care about the whole show? And did they eventually move back to Springfield after leaving? Who gives a shit. This felt like an extended version of an anthology episode, except with zero attempts at humor.

Three items of note:
– “The motto of the Simpsons is quit while you’re ahead!” Do the writers include lines like this on purpose?
– It really is stunning how little comedy there was attempted here. I mean, were they so proud of themselves and this historical “drama” they cooked up that they felt it would be worth playing it straight? The scene of 1860s Burns condescendingly talking down to Lisa felt so scathing, with no snarky joke at the end or anything. I think they were really trying to be serious here, but why? WHY?
– Homer randomly forbids Lisa to read on in the diary, and Abe out of nowhere provides all the necessary information about our story’s conclusion. Why is this? Never explained. Oh, except for a quick off-the-cuff line about Abe being a racist. Funny!

One good line/scene: Once again, a sign gag (Celebrating Black History Month. Coming Soon: March).

Original airdate: February 14, 2010

The premise: Homer and Marge’s marriage gets a new spark when they take up curling. They partner up with Skinner and Agnes, and eventually are invited to try out for the Winter Olympics upon curling’s admission into the games. Tensions arise when Agnes wants to urge Homer off the team, and later Marge sprains her shoulder to cover for him during a game. But then they bounce back and win the gold! Hoooraaaay… whoooo carrrees…

The reaction: Curling… my God. The scenes during the games attempting to play for drama are so hysterical, they must be intentional. Could this be any more dull? I guess this is another of their gimmicky, attempting-to-stay-relevant episodes as it aired during the Winter Olympics, and mixed curling was up for being included (results: it wasn’t). Homer and Marge try out curling, and of course they instantly become good at it, enough to get selected to try out in the motherfucking Olympics. So they go to Vancouver, Agnes wants to throw Homer off the team for some reason, more tensionsless scenes of curling, blah blah blah blah… and then they win, and everything’s great. So are they going to the actual winter games now? Yawn. Long gone are the days of the Simpsons being lovable failures, I guess. Watching underdogs in believable situations is a lot more entertaining than characters who succeed at the most gargantuan of tasks. Oh, and there’s also a B-story about Lisa being addicted to collectible pins and acting like a crackhead. What a pile of nothing this show is.

Three items of note:
– So I guess we’ve retconned Skinner again where we see he is Agnes’s biological son, in an absolutely disturbing image of unborn Seymour kicking her from inside, with a little foot jutting from her stomach in slow motion. Has any other character’s past been rewritten so much? And at the end we get Agnes acting wildly out of character. She tells her son she’s so, so proud of him, in a completely saccharine, irony-free moment of “emotion.” Where did this come from? And why? And did they literally make a reference to Shaq taunting Kobe Bryant with Agnes taunting Norway, “Tell me how my ice tastes?” I feel so unclean.
– Bob Costas gets a lot of lines here playing himself, but none of them are funny, or really form him into any kind of character. Remember when James Taylor, Stephen Jay Gould and Jasper Johns were inexplicably assholes? That certainly doesn’t happen anymore. Everything on this show must now be held with the softest of kid gloves.
– It feels like so little happens in these episodes because there’s so much goddamn padding… all the montages, the hallucination with the medicine lady, the Curlys bit (which felt soooo long, the writers must have been real proud of themselves for that one, “Curling… that sounds like Curly!”) and that end bit with the stupid upside down Homer muzzle thing. It was kind of like the random bit of Lisa skating to “Season of the Witch” at the end of “Rednecks and Broomsticks.” With so little story, they still came in short and had to pad twenty more seconds.

One good line/moment: Another sign gag at the ice rink (Thursday: Clockwise Night). It seems that sign gags are the only card the show has up its sleeve anymore. It seems like they’re the only things that work in these episodes.

Original airdate: January 31, 2010

The premise: Homer skips out on a wedding where he and Marge planned an elaborate toast for to purchase a lottery ticket, and ends up sending his car down a cliff attempting to hurry there. When he coming to, he finds he’s the million dollar winner, but knowing if he confesses he’ll admit he ditched Marge, he decides to spend the winnings in secret. Meanwhile, Lisa gets the denizens of the Retirement Castle happy and active with… sigh… the Funtendo Zii.

The reaction: Such an odd episode. For an episode where Homer wins a million dollar jackpot, it certainly felt like nothing was happening. And I guess something that huge isn’t meaty enough so we get a B-story and a fair amount of filler to go with it. So Homer can’t tell Marge he won because he’ll be admitting to skipping out on that wedding thing? If we couldn’t pick that up, thankfully his inner monologue explicitly exposits that for us. In order to covertly spend the money, he hides presents for the family about town, be it a washing machine in the bushes in the park, or filling the family car with brand new electronics at the car wash. Marge and the others just accept these random happenings, I guess, because they’re idiots. Couldn’t Homer have done this in a savvier way? Why not lie and say he got a raise at work? He’s not the smartest man, but surely there are dozens of other ways he could have kept this quiet. It all just felt very dumb. As for our B-story, it’s like Mapple all over again, it just felt like a giant Wii commercial. No satire, no real humor, just talking about how fun this wonderful game console is. Buy one today! Though surely you have one, since the system was out for over three years before this aired!

Three items of note:
– Even before Homer wins the jackpot, it seems the Simpsons are already pretty well off considering Lisa is just able to buy the Zii herself. Remember when Bart was saving up money to buy Bonestorm? It certainly felt more realistic than an eight-year-old buying a video game system by herself on a whim.
– Why would Marge go up and just sing her part of the toast with the silent gaps where Homer should be? It’s like that bit in the Tenacious D movie where Kyle Gass plays a song at a house party but with only his vocals, except there it kind of works because he’s an idiot. Between this and blindly accepting expensive gifts that just show up out of nowhere, I guess Marge is a big idiot too.
– Similar to treating Grampa’s rambling stories seriously in that previous episode, here our B-story is resolved with hearing the nursing home staff’s poor lot in life. The terrible conditions and environment of the retirement home used to be such sharp commentary and so underplayed, whereas now the plot ends with the staff griping to Lisa as overtly as possible (“You still should’ve let them have their fun!” “They should have had their fun before they got here!”)

One good line/moment: Homer considers all he can buy with his new fortune, like Hitler’s baseball, or a magic mirror that dispenses advice. Cue thought balloon with the magic mirror (“My advice is to buy Hitler’s baseball.”) Nice bit, the quick timing made it work.

Original airdate: January 10, 2010

The premise: Krusty is outraged at his new studio mandated co-host meant to cater to young girls, Princess Penelope, who soon begins to completely usurp his fame. But it turns out that Penelope is a devoted super fan, and the two begin a relationship. Meanwhile, a headhunter tries to lure Homer, Lenny and Carl away from Springfield Nuclear to the power plant in Capitol City.

The reaction: This episode aired before Morgan Spurlock’s special, acting as our 20th anniversary show of sorts. And man, is it ever illustrative of not only how bad the series itself has gotten, but how characters are now virtually their complete opposites. Remember Krusty, the degenerate, ill-tempered drunk who needed his mail sorted by death threat, paternity suit or both? Now it seems thanks to one insane super fan, he’s head over heels in love, willing to marry this Penelope person. Who is this woman? And why is Krusty so over the moon for her? The episode trots out this unbelievably cliche and saccharine ending, completely irony-free, where the two kiss and make up in Paris, which even if their relationship was completely understandable and made sense, it would still be frustrating. But none of it does; as usual, we’re just told things, not shown them. Meanwhile in our B plot, Mr. Burns not only cares if three of his dead-eyed, incompetent employees quit, but he gets on his knees and begs them to stay. Do I need to say a damn thing to explain why this is wrong? The episode ends with a thank you for 20 years of watching, and the warning, “The best is yet to come.” Oh dear.

Three items of note:
– I guess you could count this as a musical episode, except none of the songs are in any way funny. We have Penelope’s introduction, which feels endless. Bart and Milhouse plugging their ears and shivering in the fetal position watching as their beloved show is reduced to utter shambles… is this perceptive meta commentary? I doubt it. Then we have Krusty and Penelope’s new joint show, a lovey dovey affair with still no attempts at any humor. Then we have a somber Penelope at the end, busking at cafes in Paris. Again, no jokes. Have we gone from crippled attempts at humor, to just having none at all?
– Let’s have a guest star round-up, huh? Anne Hathaway stars as Penelope, a character we know nothing about. She enters as a prim, perfect princess, and then we see her speak normally in a (shaky) Long Island accent. All I can get from her is obsessed emotionally stunted super fan. None of this is Hathaway’s fault, she’s just reading words on a page, and admittedly she’s a pretty good singer. Elsewhere, Homer, Lenny and Carl are touring Capitol City’s power plant, who has on its payroll… Gary Larson, cartoonist of The Far Side. How did this happen? The Far Side is certainly among the greatest comic strips ever published, but its run ended in 1995. What was the origin of this booking? We also get a brief appearance from Eartha Kitt over a pre-recorded tape, as she died over a year before this episode aired. Was this story really in development for this long and this is what we got? And Jackie Mason returns briefly as Rabbi Krustofski, long enough to besmirch his future daughter-in-law for not being Jewish, and celebrate their busted non-union. Hooray!
– The B-plot is so stupid and empty. This headhunter finds Homer, Lenny and Carl at a bar and whisks them off, knowing nothing about their work ethic or if they’re good employees or not. We’ve seen Lenny and Carl are somewhat good employees, but surely this guy’s done zero research if he thinks Homer is a get. When Burns catches wind of this, as I stated before, he begs for them to stay. That’s right, the heartless old curmudgeon, with absolutely no regard for anyone with a smaller bank account than himself, grovels before three of his most worthless underlings. And he wins them over with special, artisan donuts. Homer loves donuts so much he’ll eat them off the side of a dirt road, what does he care about quality? What garbage this is.

One good line/moment: There were a few smirk-worthy moments in the first few minutes before everything went to shit, like the quick look at America’s Next Top Krusty (“Hey hey! I’m non-union!”)

Original airdate: January 3, 2010

The premise: Seemingly innocent journalist Marshall Goldman takes an interest in Abe’s rambling stories about his life, and it isn’t long before his tales become popular local literature. This leads to Homer getting jealous of this mysterious stranger, only to find his intentions may actually be of a sinister nature. Also there’s a B-plot about Bart and some stupid stuffed lamb.

The reaction: One of Abe’s hallmarks are his long rambling nonsense stories, so I’m kinda shocked it took until episode 450 for the writers to try to make a full episode about it. But where in the past, we got wonderfully ridiculous flashbacks of Abe as a cabaret singer performing for Hitler or his recently immigrated family filling the head of the Statue of Liberty with garbage, the tales here are decidedly less interesting. This episode plays this once hysterical character quirk much more seriously, and none of what the characters say or do makes me feel like it deserves to be. This is another episode where it feels like nothing is happening, because you never get a sense of who is enjoying reading Abe’s stories or why, and how many people know about the publications. So when things completely switch gears when we see Goldman is planning to kill Abe to get a Pulitzer Prize, it’s so out of left field that even if it was trying, it couldn’t make me care about the “dramatic” climax.

Three items of note:
– I couldn’t have less to say about the B-story. Krabappel gives out a stuffed lamb for kids to take care during the weekend? That seems too juvenile for fourth graders, yet they all go apeshit over it. Then by the end, we get more out-of-character Bart where he randomly feels remorseful about losing the doll. That stupid lamb ain’t no Mr. Honey Bunny.
– I feel like this episode could have worked had they laid more emphasis on how Homer and the family took Abe’s ramblings for granted. When you’re taking something that’s been used as a joke for decades, you have to do a bit more extra leg work to make it stick here when you’re playing it serious. They have two quick lines about it, before we quickly move onto dynamite material like Homer screaming at himself in the mirror and breaking it, or that endless bit at the beginning of Marge looking through all her camera photos. Twenty seconds never felt so long.
– We don’t know a goddamn thing about Marshall Goldman, who I guess is a main character in this episode. The reveal of his plans is so bizarre since absolutely nothing felt like it was leading up to that. And even that could have been excusable if they had developed his “aww shucks” innocent persona and then contrasted it with a short monologue about him being a selfish greedy crazy person. Instead, they just flip the cartoonishly evil switch for the duration of the episode. Also, Abe breaks a bottle on his head and he doesn’t even flinch. What is he, a fucking robot? Oh, never mind, he get incapacitated by a bunch of hat boxes that fall on him. Okay.

One good line/moment: I had to dig deep for this one. Uncovering Goldman’s evil plot, Homer spots a mock up poster for the film version of Abe’s series of stories. Subbing for Abe is a Jim Henson Creature Shop creation. The drawing of the stuffed Abe in a wheelchair with a wall-eyed expression made me smile.