Original airdate: October 3, 2021

The premise: Abe falls for a phone scam, wiring $10,000 to supposedly get Bart out of jail, money that he originally was saving for his family’s inheritance. Homer is outraged at his father’s gullibility, but when he falls for a scam himself, the Simpsons decide to track down the swindler and get their money back.

The reaction: As this episode entered its third act, it began to remind me a lot of the morality play episodes of the show’s early years, where the family deals with right and wrong and the karmic consequences within. I’m not looking to do any comparing and contrasting, but the way this episode builds to its finale feels so much more heavy-handed and schmaltzy than I care for. But I’m getting a bit ahead of myself. The premise and character dynamics of this episode aren’t really that bad to start: Abe is swindled by a phone scammer who pretends to be a random grandchild on the phone calling from jail. Learning he’s been hoodwinked, he feels ashamed, while Homer, discovering his newly lost inheritance he never knew existed, can’t berate his father enough for it. He cockily claims that he’s too sharp to be scammed, and we know it’s only a matter of time before he easily falls for one himself, in the form of a MLM scheme involving fancy cutlery. This all feels logical and within character, and it might have worked if the storytelling were tighter and they peppered some more jokes in. When the family ventures to find the scammer and confront them, Marge affirms that this is a matter of good winning over evil, and how the good apples outweigh the bad. Upon discovering a sea of soulless telemarketers working under an unknown entity who all leave the office with zero consequence, Marge breaks, giving into the inevitable sin of existence, going along with the rest of the family’s absconding with the scammers’ swindled gift cards. This is all pretty ham fisted enough, before we get a food-induced mass hallucination of Loki, God of mischief (thankfully not appearing like the Marvel character), who flat-out says his “prize” is obtaining “an honest woman’s belief in the good of mankind.” Marge’s faith is seemingly shattered, but upon seeing a seemingly honest woman at a gas station asking strangers for $20 and being ignored, she has an important choice to make (“Is this it? From now on, I live in a world where nobody trusts anybody? …no, not me!”) She lends the woman money, who pledges to mail her the cash back, and two weeks later, sure enough, Marge gets an envelope with $20 and a note, “THANK YOU FOR THE TRUST.” I honestly thought this pathetic pablum would just be the ending, but in our final moment, it’s revealed that Abe sent the letter (“I’m out another twenty bucks, but I gave them something to believe in.”) This is overly saccharine enough, but I feel like it could have landed better if there was any sort of interplay between Abe and Marge, or him reacting to her repeated attempts to restore her faith in humanity. Marge stood up for Abe against Homer’s anger toward him in her trying to get him help, but there was no connection between the two beyond that. It just comes off as another aggressively sentimental ending that feels very unearned, and even worse, with no jokes. I don’t expect these emotional moments to be undercut with a gag, or sabotaged in some humorous way, but there’s a way to balance the honest sentiment with humor in the way that great comedies should, and as this show was once the champion of. But here, it’s just played straight and we’re expected to be touched, I guess? This is definitely a more successful outing than the premiere, but the final act is a perfect representation of how this show settles for easy sentimentality over real substance.

Three items of note:
– This episode was written by Nick Dahan, who was a producer’s assistant for about a decade before getting a chance to write a script of his own. There actually were a couple of jokes that landed in the first two acts, which I was surprised to see (Homer pontificating about his money dilemma in bed, causing “whip-cash,” the different people in the scammers support group, Homer’s overconfidence in his ability to not be scammed). Looking ahead, this season’s actually got a bunch of first time writers coming up, but then again, there were a bunch of those last season too, and as I continue to repeat, the credited writer doesn’t seem to matter much as all these episodes end up coming out more or less the same flavor of bland slop. Also, I think Matt Selman is now the joint showrunner with Al Jean for either most or all of this next season, so I’m prepared for more treacly bullshit endings like this one going forward.
– The family’s weird shared fever dream ends with Loki announcing his leave to add more blackout days for Disneyland annual pass holders, before morphing into Mickey Mouse and bolting out the door. Some people worried that after the Fox acquisition that Disney would “ruin” the show and exert more creative control, but it seems like with jokes like this and the ending of “Bart the Bad Guy” last season where we saw a bomb planted under Homer and Marge’s bed care of Disney/Marvel, it seems like the writers are still doing their “bite the hand that feeds” jokes. But it all definitely feels much more fang-less, given the Disney+ Simpsons shorts that are full-on lovefests for Disney’s most beloved IPs: Star Wars, Marvel, and a newly announced third short to be released on “Disney+ Day” this November. I can’t wait to see what beloved Disney property they “parody” next!
– A one-off gag with Loki involves him showing off his many other forms, which includes Jesus Christ, as well as Bill Cipher, the triangle demon from Gravity Falls, with a three word bite by Alex Hirsch, show creator and voice of Bill (“Buy crypto, suckers!”) It’s a rather odd guest appearance, although since I assume most Simpsons diehards nowadays skew on the younger side and are overall animation fans in general, I can see how a lot of them would appreciate this cameo. I love Gravity Falls, and knowing how big a Simpsons fan Alex Hirsch is and how big an influence it was on his work, I’m sure he was absolutely thrilled to be on the show. It’s kind of funny how Bill looks just like his Gravity Falls self, sadly lacking a mouth to slap a Simpsons style overbite on. I guess it’s not too different than the King of the Hill cast’s appearance in “Bart Star” where they’re just sitting there in their flesh-colored, Mike Judge-drawn glory. It’s kind of weird, but whatever.

Original airdate: September 26, 2021

The premise: Marge yearns to relive her high school glory days as stage manager by putting on an encore presentation of their showstopper, “Y2K: The Millennium Bug,” but quickly finds herself ousted from the close-knit reunited cast, headlined by returning student and Broadway star Sasha Reed.

The reaction: There have been several musical episodes of the series before, but this one was promoted as the show’s first “full” musical, which is kind of accurate, as at least half of the episode’s runtime is comprised of songs. The writer, recent addition to the staff Elisabeth Kiernan Averick, previously wrote for Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, and the music was co-written by the composer of that series. Despite that impressive pedigree, the songs here are largely joke-free, which is really bizarre given how absurdist some of the numbers in Girlfriend could get. The story is very rudimentary, so I guess that doesn’t help spice things up: Marge has fond memories of being stage manager back in high school and is thrilled to revisit the role, but is quickly upstaged by the returning star of the show, Sasha Reed, where she is ostracized from the rest of the cast. Marge then exposes that Sasha lied about her Broadway career, making everyone else turn on Marge even more, and then they all make amends and do the play and everyone loves it and everyone’s happy. As common with episodes these days (and especially Matt Selman-run shows like this one), there’s no ironic twist or subversive take to a cliche, simplistic story such as this; it’s just played completely straight, and as such, is very boring. Marge’s first song introduces us to her singing voice for this episode, Kristen Bell, and our next song is performed by guest star Sara Chase, so for the first act, it didn’t even feel like I was watching The Simpsons. Normally I give the show a little credit with experimental episodes like these if I could appreciate the impulse of what they were going for, but I don’t know about this one. It’s their honest tribute to Broadway with songs that feel like they could be in actual musicals… except they’re really not that entertaining or creative or funny. Again, it’s not the show actually doing anything interesting with the genre, it’s just a musical episode that looks and sounds like a musical, with the characters doing perfect choreography and singing their little hearts out. I just don’t see why I should care.

Three items of note:
– Marge’s singing voice is Kristen Bell, for obvious reasons. Last season, I feel like I talked about Julie Kavner’s weakened voice a bit too many times, and I resolved not to harp on it at all going forward, just because it was getting redundant and I didn’t want to come off as mean-spirited. The in-universe explanation is that Bell is Marge’s inner singing voice, which she cheekily compares to that of “a Disney princess,” which is fair enough. In the instances before she switches from Kavner to Bell, they visualize a weird effect where there’s a magical colored mark on her throat. I get they were trying to make this cheat feel as “authentic” as they could, but it seemed a little unnecessary. It’s a musical episode, I can go along with the cheat. But like I said earlier, with Bell and Sara Chase singing for a bulk of the first half, it felt so unlike this show. The “best” song comes from Homer in the last act trying to talk some sense into his wife. It’s not particularly funny, but the concept of a song about a husband trying to talk delicately to their stewing wife is kind of cute, and it was a little fun actually hearing a regular cast member do a whole song for once.
– Floating timeline bullshit: Marge having done a Y2K musical in high school feels incredibly strange, but it is accurate. Given she has been bumped in age to 38, if she graduated at age 18, that would make her part of the class of 2001. I’m not a fan of the writers’ gradual increasing of Homer and Marge’s ages over the Mike Scully era, but the timeline does track. I feel when they do flashbacks now, they just shouldn’t mention anything era-specific, or at least not put a big highlight on it. I mean, the show already did an entire Treehouse of Horror segment about Y2K. I get that the idea of a Y2K musical itself is meant to be the joke and that’s it, but it just seems silly to me.
– There’s not a whole lot specifically to talk about in this one, given how the bulk of it is the songs. The Y2K cast consists of Barney, Dr. Hibbert, Smithers, Helen Lovejoy, Kirk Van Houten, and Lenny (who has to drop out after getting injured), characters who, to me, feel like are a wide range of ages, but, as we’ve seen many times over, they conveniently are all the same age when we see flashbacks to them as teens or as kids. Since saying maybe like two or three lines last season, we also get a good amount of dialogue out of Kevin Michael Richardson as Dr. Hibbert, and like most of the other recastings, it’s just going to have to take getting used to over time. He’s trying his best to match Harry Shearer’s cadence, and Richardson is an incredibly accomplished voice actor, but his Hibbert is definitely shaky at times. Richardson’s voice is too distinctive in the world of voice acting, he just ends up sounding like a bunch of other similar characters he’s done in my head by default.