Original airdate: October 7, 2012

The premise: In “The Greatest Story Ever Holed,” Springfield’s very own supercollider creates a black hole that threatens the entire town. In “UNnormal Activity,” Homer sets cameras up around the house in an attempt to capture unexplained ghostly phenomenon. In “Bart & Homer’s Excellent Adventure,” Bart travels back to 1974 and accidentally interferes with Homer and Marge’s fateful first meeting in detention.

The reaction: The first segment is pretty drab despite its fantastical premise. It has something I haven’t seen in a while from a Halloween special: a music montage! Because those are always scary. Marge forbids the family from putting anything into the black hole, then we get a montage of her, and the others, doing exactly that. Alright. The Paranormal Activity  “parody” is the only story here rooted in anything actually spooky, but it’s pretty nonsensical, and ultimately a big wasted opportunity. At this point there were four Activity movies total and a slew of other shitty found footage horror films, there’s lots to poke fun at and skewer in this genre, but all the show can think of is Homer wanting to have sex on camera, and the tape fast-forwarding through him taking a long piss. Marge seems inordinately worried about the demon’s presence, and it’s revealed at the end that it’s a hellspawn she made a deal with as a girl to give up her favorite child to save her sisters. If this was the case, why wasn’t she more freaked out or protective of the children? Or trying to leave with them? As usual, it just didn’t feel thought out. The last segment is just dumb. We get HD recreations of scenes from “The Way We Was” and it made me sad, since the dim-witted but sweet and genuine teenage Homer is now replaced with his raging asshole modern characterization. Then it ends with alternate universe Marge being married to like thirty different Homers? Oh, who gives a shit. I don’t have much to say about this one. Another terrible Halloween show in the books.

Three items of note:
– The second segment ends with Homer offering himself in Maggie’s place as part of a demon threesome. Yep, that’s right. Do I need to say anything else?
– The “Way We Was” detention recreation scene is a pretty big bummer. Also, Bart just walked into the room, and Homer and Marge get into a screaming match, without a peep out of the teacher at the front of the room. We don’t even see him past the first shot.
– Bart returns to the present to find his new father is Artie Ziff, and he sports a blonde Jew fro, with the most cartoony “boing” sound effect imaginable as he takes his hat off (did he have that on the whole time just for that one joke?) Lovitz/Ziff’s schtick feels very played out at this point; I guess we’re supposed to laugh and slap our fins together when alternate Lisa does his “Achem!” Jay Sherman cough, but whatever. The last we saw of Ziff was seven seasons ago, where they had the joke with all the other Lovitz characters at Moe’s. I feel like that was enough.

One good line/moment: I think the animation is pretty strong in the black hole segment. The scene of the family at the breakfast table actively ignoring everything being sucked out of the room was great. If only there was a good story to hang onto it.

Original airdate: September 30, 2012

The premise: Bart seeks out all his old ex-girlfriends to see if any of them still hold feelings for him. The only one unaccounted for is Cletus’s daughter Mary Spuckler, who has run off to Manhattan, which means the Simpsons are going to New York! Again!

The reaction: How many ten-year-olds do you know that think their love life has peaked and want to track down their exes to get emotional closure? This is yet another episode where they write Bart as a teenager, but it’s also a story born of this show’s absurdly long lifespan. At this point, Bart’s had seven or eight “girlfriends,” but where does that work in the show’s timeline? Episodically you can accept it, but showing the whole roster of girls here just raises some weird questions. But whatever, the main one here is Mary Spuckler, who if I remember correctly, wasn’t really a love interest of Bart’s, as her father Cletus just strung the two together for a hillbilly arranged marriage. But why bring back this character at all? It couldn’t possibly have anything to do with her voice actress Zooey Deschanel now having a hit FOX comedy, could it? Mary, who once was one of Cletus’s naive and innocent hick children, now, for whatever reason, has gone off to New York, is a talented musician, and a staff writer/performer on SNL. And she’s… eleven? Twelve, tops? These stories just don’t make any goddamn sense with children. Earlier, Bart watches a video of the two of them in Cletus’s hay loft; “I don’t know if we should be up here, Bart Simpson…” Mary coos in Deschanel’s sexy adult Southern drawl voice. It’s like the set-up of a bad porno, as well as reminding me of “Natural Born Kissers” as the place Homer and Marge got their mojo back. But that creepiness aside, this story just doesn’t work with Bart at all, showing him so cloying, awkward and desperate. And like in “Beware My Cheating Bart,” they give him a line that undercuts everything and reminds us he’s still a young child (“Girls don’t like me. I don’t really like them either, but I think I’m gonna.”) This is after he’s been pouting for days, putting cut-outs of his exes faces onto Lisa’s dolls to psychologically torture himself with, and guilt-tripped the family to go across the country for the sole purpose of seeking out a girl he kinda maybe liked this one time. None of it adds up whatsoever.

Three items of note:
– The inspiration for Bart looking back over his failed love life is some kind of town ball where he realizes he has no one to dance with. He continuously taunts Milhouse for dancing with Lisa, which I guess is supposed to be him deflecting his own misery, but it just feels very uncomfortable. I know Milhouse is everybody’s punching bag, but the two are supposed to be friends, right? And I guess Lisa at this point reciprocates Milhouse’s feelings, at least to a slight degree. What happened to the Lisa that sees him as a big sister? It reminds me of hearing that in early drafts of the movie, Lisa’s crush Colin was originally going to be Milhouse, and I remember being confused by that. But after seeing recent shows featuring the writers clearly shipping the two closer and closer together, it makes a little more sense now. I guess they expect fans to see themselves in Milhouse, and him making headway with Lisa is like a “win” or something? I’m still not entirely sure.
– So the Simpsons return to New York, roughly fifteen years later. They make hinting references at them repeating themselves, as well as the return of the Khlav Kalash guy, but no reference to Homer’s blind, uncontrollable rage toward NYC. He basically acts as Bart’s distant chaperone as he tracks Mary down. Meanwhile, Marge and Lisa attempt to see the sights on a shoestring budget, one of the few times the show remembers that the family are hard-up for money. This leads to Lisa spearheading a public recreation of Romeo & Juliet once their Shakespeare in the Park show is cancelled? Which they prepare for and perform in like a few hours? I dunno, it’s just dumb. And all of their New York jokes are either softballs, or just variations of jokes they’ve already done before. Why go back to Manhattan if you don’t have anything new to say?
– I don’t understand why they didn’t have Zooey Deschanel voice a new character. Why not? Did they think fans were that attached to Mary Spuckler? They just throw Zooey attributes onto her old, mostly empty character: she can sing, she has a new trendy outfit each scene, she’s introduced doing a lady dowager bit? But where did all this come from? We don’t even get a scene explaining how she left, or her talking about how she felt unfulfilled with her hillbilly family and wanted more out of life, blah blah blah. Cletus randomly appears two-thirds in to bring Mary back, and Bart helps her escape on a train. But why? Again, we don’t know anything about Mary’s character, her wants or ambitions. If she goes back to Springfield, that’s a win for Bart, but you need that scene where she expresses why she’ll be unhappy there, which would lead to Bart helping her get away. Instead, it’s like watching a threadbare story with big patches just missing.

One good line/moment: I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I got a surprise laugh out of an awfully tasteless 9/11 joke (“Dad, you love New York now that your two least favorite buildings have been obliterated: old Penn Station and Shea Stadium!”) I couldn’t believe they actually did that, but the joke actually kind of works, given Homer probably harbors negative feelings toward World Trade Center Plaza after the whole booted car fiasco.