(originally aired November 5, 2006)
Another year, another Halloween show. I’ll once again say that my biggest issue with these specials is the tone. Despite the fantastical and insane things that are happening, characters seem to be nonplussed and casually crack wise like they would in any other episode. Take the first segment, where Homer, infected by an alien spore, gets an insatiable hunger and grows into a gigantic blob creature. Not only does he not seem very affected by his gross transformation, neither does anyone else. The family just sits and watches Homer, now a gargantuan green blob, slug through downtown with a single comment. Throw in a random appearance by Dr. Phil and it just feels like any old episode. The second segment has a similar issue, where Bart takes control of Krusty’s giant stone Golem to do his biding, but upon being given a voice, he becomes a Jewish guilt-ridden mess. This ancient monster is fretting about the Simpson dining room and no one is really batting an eye about it. The last segment, told entirely in sepia tone, features a Great Depression-era Springfield being horrified by Orson Welles’s infamous War of the Worlds broadcast, believing it to be real. When the misunderstanding is revealed, this leaves Kang and Kodos an optimal opportunity to strike and lay siege to the planet. It’s an idea with promise, but what we got is everyone wallowing naked in the mud making animal noises, and a beaten-to-death final gag about the alien invasion mirroring the Iraq War. Another disappointing Treehouse of Horror. At least I don’t have many left to sit through.

Tidbits and Quotes
– Even the opening feels wrong. Once we get past the awkward CG cel-shaded stair case and corridor, we get Burns as our Cryptkeeper surrogate, this whole thing being a reference to Tales of the Crypt. It’s cheesy and lame, but then all of a sudden ends with Moe being gruesomely killed in an iron maiden. Though I do like his astonishment of his blood spelling out the episode title (“Woah, look at that! My blood’s a genius! With fancy Roman numerals and everything!”)
– The very cavalier tone of the first segment isn’t helped with a Sir Mixs-a-Lot parody, “Baby Likes Fats” as Homer gobbles down a group of umpires and the guests at the Facts of Life reunion.
– I’ll admit, I laughed at Dr. Phil’s final line before being digested (“Food does not equal love!”) He’s a good sport, I guess. Then again, he also did Scary Movie 4, so I’m pretty sure he’s up for doing just about anything if you pay him.
– I kind of like Richard Lewis as the neurotic Golem (“This is the voice I’ve got? Sounds like I should be selling egg creams at Brighton Beach! …that’s what we call Jewish humor. You don’t have to understand it because the words sound funny!”) And who better to play his Jewish bride than Fran Drescher? I like the concept of this segment, but not much was really done with it.
– A lot of the jokes in the last segment really fall flat: Grampa referring to the First World War, Homer flat-out calling it a “war of the worlds,” Krabappel handing the kids cigarettes, Homer randomly killing people in a panic, and later feeling proud of it, and of course the horrible bit of the townsfolk nude in the mud, an idea that Marge of all people pitched. There’s a few jokes I did like though (“Astronomers say the ominous capsules originated from Earth’s closest neighbor.” “Flanders?”)
– The great Maurice LaMarche voices Orson Welles, and does a spectacular job as always. Though it’s kind of lame, I like the inclusion of “Nose bud…” Another good gag is his live sound effects artist quitting mid-show upon being given an overly complicated stage direction (“Now they’re playing the xylophone while bowling near an airport!”)
– I feel the ending with the Iraq allusion could have worked if they had cut it off short. Kang lamenting how he thought they would be greeted as liberators, and the hearts and minds gag all work, but then it keeps going with talk about Operation Enduring Occupation and weapons of mass destruction and it kind of ruins the bit. Also, I swear I remember in the original airing, over the final shot of the decimated city, there was a voice-over by Kodos saying, “This is just how Iraq will be.” Or something like that. I remember being furious after watching that. The joke had been made some incredibly obvious, and they felt the need to clarify it in case any dummies in the audience didn’t get it. It’s not in the version I have, so maybe they cut it out of future airings. An unusually smart decision from Zombie Simpsons? How odd.

(originally aired September 24, 2006)
This is another one of those crazy episodes that hinges on entire groups of characters acting maddeningly bizarre for the plot to make “sense.” Marge becomes incredibly proficient at carpentry, in about as much time as Bart became a drumming superstar last episode. She decides she can use her skills doing contract work, but every job she’s called on, she’s turned away because she’s a woman. The citizens of Springfield, from Superintendent Chalmers to Professor Frink, have inexplicably become latent misogynists for no other reason but what the script dictates. So what’s Marge to do? Use Homer to act as her stand-in while she does the work. So people don’t trust Marge to do a good job, but they will trust Homer, who is known town-wide as an incompetent boob? Over time, Marge becomes more discouraged that she’s not getting the credit she deserves, while Homer fears for his masculinity and wishes to keep the charade going. Homer’s a fuck-up, hijinks ensue, the two make amends, blah blah blah.

This is three episodes in a row with third acts that are completely dumb. After getting no respect from anyone, including her husband, Marge “quits,” leaving Homer to have to repair an old roller coaster by himself. We see him attempting to lead a team of workers, which ends in him hiding in the giant tool box screaming and crying. He has absolutely no idea what he’s doing, and he knows it. But for some reason, he’s so insanely pig-headed that he will not ask Marge for help. At the grand opening, he proudly presents his shoddy workmanship, while Marge stands in the crowd gleefully awaiting her husband to be exposed as a fraud. Their relationship is either way too close knit for the amount of shit Homer puts Marge through, or Marge is depicted as petty and vengeful, which is not in her character at all. But Homer isn’t letting up yet, because he’s still an asshole (“Dad! Put aside your selfish male ego and tell the truth!” “I’ll tell them the truth. The truth is: I’m perfect, and everything I touch is perfect!”) Only after Marge uses her apparent superpowers to fix all the damaged areas of the track as Homer is riding the rickety coaster does he actually come clean. Then the coaster collapses and he ends up in intensive care. It’s the best part of the whole episode.

Tidbits and Quotes
– Oh right, the subplot. Peanut products are forbidden from Springfield Elementary when it’s revealed that someone has a deathly allergy. Bart quickly deducts that it’s Principal Skinner, and before long, he makes him bend to his will with a mere peanut on a stick. I know Skinner’s his nemesis and he likes pulling pranks, but it quickly tuns into uncomfortable torture when Bart shows up at his house and forces him to eat garbage, or the wonderful act break joke when he shoves lit dynamite and kittens down his trousers. Wanting to fight back, Skinner finds out Bart’s own kryptonite, shrimp, and the two have a stick duel to the likes of the grand finale of Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith. At least I can say it’s nowhere near as overly indulgent as the source material, and the two landing in a vat of peanut shrimp is kind of a clever ending. But in all, another worthless B-story.
– This week’s filler opening? Exploring the abandoned Springfield mall, where Bart plays old video games, and Homer deep throats a gigantic log of gummi worms, which almost made me want to vomit. That’s Homer the Food Monster for you.
– The impetus for Marge to take up carpentry? She knocks over her end table by stepping on a shoddy floorboard in the bedroom. The hardwood floor in the bedroom. We’ve seen their bedroom in almost every fucking episode, every room in the house appears to be carpeted. What the fuck is this shit? I feel like a continuity Nazi when I complain about this stuff, but when we’ve seen something in every episode and then you change it, it just feels unbelievably lazy.
– The scene with Lenny and Carl ends up feeling incredibly awkward. The two of them inexplicably make sexist remarks, causing Marge to murmur angrily. The gag is that it sounds like a buzz saw in the tool box, but then it just gets extended longer and longer as the two bang on it and rock out. It’s like a full minute of Marge murmuring nonstop as these two imbeciles roughhouse the box she’s stuck in. Then later we find that it was rolled down a steep hill, seemingly endangering her life. And Homer doesn’t seem to really mind too much, simply giving a paltry apology before immediately ignoring Marge’s plea for them to come clean and continuing to belittle her (“Nice job installing this wall chart bracket. If the kids ask, I did it.”)
– You really just feel sorry for Homer in the third act, in that he’s so unbelievably pathetic. The scene with him and the workers ends with him hopping inside the tool box and falling into a ditch. We get a closeup as he’s jimmied the door slightly and we just see him crying. But he won’t ask his wife for help. He’s like a stubborn little kid who won’t admit he’s wrong, going so far as almost getting himself killed before confessing he’s a fuck-up. Also, as Homer boards the roller coaster, Marge delivers this gem (“Oh my God! He’ll kill himself! He’ll never hear me say ‘I told you so!'”) Yep, totally in character.

(originally aired September 17, 2006)
There’s an odd thing with these new episodes that our characters can succeed or become proficient at something very quickly if the story dictates it. In minutes, Homer can write and release a hit song, Lisa can arrange an entire newsroom to print a town-wide newspaper, and in this episode, Bart becomes a natural drummer almost instantaneously. I remember the days of “The Otto Show” where Bart dreamed of being a rock star and got himself a guitar, but gave up when he realized it would be too much work, very believable, kid-like behavior. Here, the drum set is offered to him as a kind of therapy, and he just absentmindedly goes and starts playing it without saying a thing. The premise is basically a rehash of “Smart and Smarter,” where a Simpson sibling usurps an unusually petty Lisa from her wheelhouse. It’s actually very similar, in that like Maggie, Bart goes through the whole episode completely ignorant about anything regarding jazz or his sister’s reactions or feelings. The excuse with Maggie is that she’s an infant, but with Bart, I have absolutely no clue what’s wrong with him this show.

The entire first half of the episode is just a dump truck of “fuck you” unloaded onto a tortured Lisa, which is so much fun to watch. To counteract her sadness, or out of her new disaffected attitude, or some other third reason, Lisa takes to adopting unwanted animals, hiding them away in the attic. This leads to Bart getting his arm bitten by a tiger, and he is unable to play anymore. By the third act, I have no fucking clue what to be feeling or why. Should I feel bad that Bart lost his drumming ability? I wasn’t sure why he liked it in the first place, and the episode was never really about him. Lisa doesn’t go back to playing the sax, now she’s wrapped up in trying to get these animals good homes, which I also don’t care about due to how random that story element was. In the end, a benefit concert is held for Bart to get some operation, but he instead vows to use the money to open a wildlife preserve in Lisa’s honor. Did they honestly raise tens of thousands of dollars? Who gave that money? Oh I don’t give a shit, this episode sucks.

Tidbits and Quotes
– We open with the funeral of Amber, Homer’s Vegas wife, and my only solace is that now hopefully they will never bring her up again. Also it makes total sense that they’re holding it in Springfield, a town she visited once where she knew no one. It’s there when we get our Bart “prank,” involving paddle balls shooting about the church, lodging down people’s throats before they’re Heimliched out and shot into another person’s throat. It’s handled as clumsily as it sounds.
– Marge labeling every part of the drum as a “joke” is just like Otto rattling off the different radio stations from last episode, just serving to kill time. Same thing with the endless list of comedy jazz names Krusty rattles off later on. Imagine all the time in the writer’s room it took to come up with all those names… all those hours they’ll never get back. Ever.
– The White Stripes parody, and their guest spot, is somewhat enjoyable, I guess. It’s more of the writers just taking the idea from the clever music video and not really adding anything to it, but the Stripes chasing down Bart and falling victim to their own gimmick was kind of amusing.
– Homer turns on a white noise machine, which he mentions he bought Marge when her father died, I believe the first time they’ve ever mentioned whether Mr. Bouvier was dead or not. Outside of “The Way We Was” and “Fear of Flying,” we’ve heard and seen nothing of him. I’m surprised the show’s run this long and they’ve never further addressed anything about him.
– Smug, cocky Lisa is not adorable, it’s just annoying, asserting to her brother that he’ll never be as good as her. It’s like when she shrewdly insisted to her amnesia-ridden mother that she was her favorite child.
– Fate repeatedly slapping Lisa in the face is further compounded by Bart not even seeming conscious of what he’s doing or what’s going on. He can’t even pronounce “jazz” and he’s the talk of the town. I guess that’s the gag, but is he some kind of idiot savant or something? That’s not Bart.
– “My arm! It hurts where the tiger’s biting it!” I know I must have said it before, but this time I’m serious, this is the worst line of dialogue in this history of the series. And it’s our act break joke. I remember when I first watched it, I was floored, I could not believe what I had just heard. Read it back. Then read it again. That’s supposed to be a joke. I’m flabbergasted.

(originally aired September 10, 2006)
What’s with these premieres being especially terrible? They don’t exactly fill me with any confidence for the season. Not that I have much confidence left anyway. We open with Bart stealing the school bus and Otto getting fired for spanking him in retaliation. But Bart thinks Otto is cool, why would he do this? But no matter, Otto is a prop character now, only showing up if the plot needs him, or if they need to make a drug reference. With the parents are stuck car pooling, we meet the new kid Michael, who turns out to be Fat Tony’s son. Despite him being meek and harmless, all the kids are terrified of him. Feeling bad, Lisa warms up to him, and finds out he’s a talented cook, but he’s afraid to tell his father about it, who wants him to continue the family business. All of this is pretty boring, and considering the kid’s name is Michael, I know it’s going to turn into a Godfather ending where he shuts the door on Lisa. It’s just a matter of waiting through the other bullshit to get there.

When Michael’s gift is revealed, a rival mafia family perceives it as a weakness and guns Fat Tony down. While he’s recovering, Legs and Louie leave to allow Michael to run the business. Umm, what? He’s a ten-year-old kid and they just leave him alone in the hospital with his critically ill father? But not to worry, Homer steps up and volunteers to be the surrogate mob boss! Oh boy! Then in the next scene we see him working the beat, assisted by Legs and Louie. So what’s going on here? Why don’t they run things themselves, why do they need Homer and Bart to work with them? It’s just so they can cross another occupation off the long list of jobs Homer’s bumbled through, and so they can promote the episode as “Homer in the mafia!” This turns the two into sadistic monsters for some reason, with Bart volunteering to shoot Flanders and Homer suggesting he knife him instead. It’s just very nasty and weird. Another garbage premiere episode.

Tidbits and Quotes
– It’s amazing how despite these episodes clocking in at under twenty minutes, there’s so much filler and elongated jokes. Otto singing Grand Funk Railroad, flipping the dial through every station and naming them, the interminable bit where Homer and Bart laugh maniacally while holding bigger and bigger weapons. It just shows how paper thin most of these stories are.
– I thought Metallica was pretty actually funny for the short scene they had. James Hetfield telling Otto “we don’t take rides from strangers,” and the band being able to recognize him from a concert from ten years back (“I was about to quit the band when I saw your lighter. You saved me that night!”)
– Skinner asks Otto to hand in his beaded seat cover, which we never seen before that point. I try not to be a stickler for this stuff, but we spent the first three minutes of show focusing on Otto at the driver’s seat, and we clearly saw a bare seat.
– Milhouse uses a car seat and tries to hit on Lisa using it… like, come on…
– The dead return in this episode. After over a decade of silence after the passing of Doris Grau, Lunchlady Doris has a brief speaking role, voiced by, you guessed it, Tress MacNeille. I was stunned the first time I saw it, because it comes from nowhere. They pan over quickly in the lunchroom for her to speak her first line of dialogue in ten years (“There’s a double-A battery in my macaroni and cheese!” “It counts as a vegetable!”) Then she opens a wartime tub of beans filled with wailing ghouls and she demands, “Yeah, yeah, yeah, get in the bowl.” This is the material they bring her out of retirement for? She’s had sporadic speaking roles since this point, and I find it pretty disrespectful. They wouldn’t dare recast Troy McClure or Lionel Hutz. Was Grau any less of a performer than Phil Hartman? And besides that, if they wanted to do jokes involving a school cafeteria worker, why not just make a new fucking character? It could even be a different chain smoking disgruntled older lady. But I guess due to laziness, they kept it as Doris. It just upsets me on multiple levels.
– Lisa, Michael and the other kids stand by the curb to get picked up by Fat Tony. His car pulls up, then when we see the kids again, Michael is gone. Again, not being a continuity stickler, but the shots were within five seconds of each other, how could no one have noticed this?
– Two Sopranos stars voice members of Tony’s rival family. They’re alright. Whatever. Not like they have much to work with. Every joke involves making analogies to killing (“The flavor just drove my sweet tooth to a vacant lot and whacked it!”) We also get another gay slam, where one of them mocks Michael calling him “Chef Boy-are-gay.” I guess it works in context here since they’re mob guys, but again, I wish the show would ease off on the gay jokes.
– Tony gets shot in the back multiple times and falls forward, but we see absolutely no bullet holes or blood. What, does this show have a limit for how much blood shed they can show per year, and use it all up every Halloween? What about in “Homer the Moe” when Homer bled profusely after hitting the jukebox? Whatever.
– The most disturbing bit in the episode, and one of the entire series, is a fantasy Homer has after Johnny Tightlips mentions a “dirt nap.” He imagine himself with his head in the ground like an ostrich, ignoring his wife’s pleas to help save their kids from their burning house. We then see the Simpson house on fire, with Bart and Lisa at their windows panicked, screaming for help. Homer’s muffled response (“Sorry, Marge, can’t hear yah! Heh heh heh…”) This is his happy fantasy? Imaging his kids burning alive and doing nothing to stop it? I remember in one of the few Family Guys I was misfortunate enough to watch, it ended with an elaborate daydream of Peter smothering his wife and disposing of the body. This bit is basically on the level of that, it’s so absolutely wrong in every respect.
– Michael rips up his recipe card after the mobsters are killed. Lisa reads it: Meats, Spices, Poison. Give me a fucking break…

(originally aired May 21, 2006)
Just as the season began, we end with another shitty Homer-Marge episode. Kinda. The best I can say it’s nowhere near the abomination of “Bonfire of the Manatees,” but it is pretty boring and stupid. The Springfield Isotopes’s new best player Buck Mitchell’s game is getting affected by his hot pop star wife, and he’s in need of some marriage counseling, and why ask a trained professional when you can consult two random strangers who showed up on the stadium kiss cam? Homer and Marge help the young couple out, sort of. But, through misunderstanding, Buck believes he overhears his wife and Homer fooling around, which is not a cliche hackneyed premise at all, or poorly executed and ridiculous, and things go sour one more. This also gets Homer in Marge’s bad graces. But everything gets resolved in the third act one way or another, as it always does, whether we believe or care about it or not.

This whole episode… just, who cares? We meet these two new characters: Buck we know nothing about, and Tabitha is just a pastiche of sexy pop stars, hoping to keep the audience awake by flashing as much yellow skin as possible. We see Homer and Marge “counsel” them twice, which consists of Marge reading from a therapy book and dispensing simple pleasantries and ideas. Around this, the characters just tell us the information rather than show it: Lisa comments how weird it is that her parents are dispensing marriage advice when their own is so shitty, Kent Brockman talks about how Homer and Marge are responsible for Buck’s improved performance, and then a sportscaster comments on how they screw it up. Do we care about Buck and Tabitha, these two strangers, and whether they’ll get back together? No. Do we care for the sake of Homer and Marge, who worked so hard to keep them together? No, because we barely see any of it. Do we even care if Homer and Marge stay together? At this point, I honestly don’t give a crap. Three more seasons to go…

Tidbits and Quotes
– “You remember when we used to kiss like that, Carl? With our respective girlfriends.” Please stop, writers. Just… please. Stop.
– I’m confused why Marge’s gossip circular has a photo of old Groucho Marx Krusty as we’ve seen in the future episodes with the headline “Krusty’s Sad Last Days.” Is this a periodical from the future?
– The main issue seemingly is that Buck feels embarrassed and uncomfortable with his wife’s music career involving her wearing as little amounts of clothes as possible. It’s what makes him lose focus at the game, and the first thing he brings up in consoling. Is it ever brought up again, or resolved, or discussed further? Nope!
– Buck hearing Tabitha and Homer’s moans through the door as he gives her a neck rub is unbelievable, like how lame and unoriginal can this show get? And the “protection” bit is just stupid. I could hear the trombone “wah waaaahhh” sound when it’s revealed to be a bib.
– There’s a bit toward the end where Tabitha volunteers to polish Marge’s lamp, and proceeds to just do a pole dance. There’s some satire to be had involving vacuous pop stars, that perhaps their sexy demeanor and behavior is more absent-minded, like just a compulsion they can’t control. It could have been delved into, considering it’s the main source of Buck’s frustration. Instead, it’s just a gag. Whatever.

Season 17 Final Thoughts
Not much left to say at this point. The series is broken in nearly every respect and shows no sign of any attempted repair. A token chuckle or two every episode is the best I hope for, and sometimes I don’t even get that.

The Best
“Milhouse of Sand and Fog,” “My Fair Laddy”

The Worst
“Bonfire of the Manatees,” “See Homer Run,” “Million Dollar Abie,” “Regarding Margie,” “The Monkey Suit”