(originally aired May 14, 2006)
As he has gone from goody two-shoes neighbor-eeno to psycho Christian conservative, Ned Flanders ends up the subject of greater scrutiny nowadays, even filling the role of minor antagonist from time to time. Marge staunchly opposed his ultra-violent religious films in “Homer and Ned’s Hail Mary Pass,” now Lisa butts heads with him in this episode covering intelligent design. In another example of how this show tries (and fails) to tackle hot button issues, Flanders is shocked to find an evolution exhibit at the museum without one mention of the Bible. As such, he and Lovejoy pressure the school to teach Creationism. Seeing the two of them stand by glaring as Skinner delivers the news to the students is unsettling to watch. Organized religion was always poked fun at in the show, but never was it vilified or truly belittled in the way it’s done here. Lisa opposes this curriculum change, citing several conservatives who believe in evolution, because it makes sense for an eight-year-old to know that. When she resorts to teaching evolution in secret, she is promptly arrested for it and prepares to stand trial.

The third act becomes a shitty Inherit the Wind riff with the two representatives that not only mirror the Brady and Drummond characters, but they also share their fucking names in case you didn’t get it. The trial is a farce, none of it makes sense, and we’re never told what will happen to Lisa if she loses. What could happen? She’s just a kid. Around this, barely, is Marge and Lisa butting heads on their beliefs, kind of like “Lisa the Skeptic,” but more shoddy and disingenuous. Marge finally ends up reading “The Origin of Species” and manages to help Lisa prove her innocence. Established in the trial is the missing link between ape and man, so when Marge gives her husband a bottle of beer, he hollers and thrashes it about like an animal trying to open it, mirroring said missing link completely. This settles the entire trial, and the case is dismissed. I thought the ending of “The Call of the Simpsons” way back when was a bit of a stretch, but this is just ridiculous. In the end, Lisa makes amends with Flanders, though I don’t recall them having one conversation in the whole damn episode. It’s stunning how the show can’t even mock such an easy topic like intelligent design. In the past, this series managed to deride groups of all kinds, but here all they can come up with is that creationists are dumb. How biting.

Tidbits and Quotes
– The opening with Bart’s last-minute summer vacation fun, I believe was left on the cutting room floor of “I’m Spelling as Fast as I Can” from three seasons back, so rather than waste such great material, they slapped it on here. Never mind the bit where Bart watches a Men in Black type film seemed dated at that point, no one will notice a thing!
– Before Flanders becomes our maybe antagonist, Homer gets in his share of assholery, cutting Ned in line at the museum and getting aggressive when he meekly objects (“Dude, I was totally here! You calling me a liar? In front of my kids! ‘Cause I’d take a bullet for you, man! Right in the mouth!”) The rest of the line takes advantage of Ned’s wishy-washy nature, and to the back of the line he goes.
– Everything at the museum is so painful to watch. Maggie pulls a switchblade on her mother. Homer shoots himself repeatedly wearing a bulletproof vest, because it’s safe to have live ammunition at a museum, terrorizing the entire room. Bart uses a medieval body stretcher on Milhouse that audibly dislocates his bones. I could not stop cringing. After that, Flanders is stuck in the horrifying Hall of Man, full of depictions of human ancestors and fossil records. He then proceeds to yell at his kids as they ask dumb questions and do dumb things. The only laugh I got is when museum guard Raphael points out the only mention of creationism in the museum: an animated diorama of God’s finger erecting life on Earth to the tune of “What a Fool Believes” by the Doobie Brothers.
– Lisa and Marge’s discussion at the kitchen table is an incredibly bizarre scene. It’s like “Skeptic” where the two have differing beliefs involving science and religion, but here Lisa asks her mother point blank, “You really have to choose here between science and belief.” Then we get slow push-ins on them as Marge thinks and emotional music plays… and we end with her running outside and joining her husband bouncing on a trampoline. End of scene. What?
– Act two ends with Wiggum watching and joking as Snake stands atop the Kwik-E-Mart gunning down innocent people. Hysterical!
– Marge finishes reading “The Origin of Species” and she’s truly enlightened. What is her commentary? (“Darwin’s argument is incredibly persuasive! And his ship was the Beagle, which reminds me of Snoopy, my favorite Peanut!”) I honestly don’t understand not only how a writer comes up with a joke like this and deems it funny enough to pitch in the writer’s room, let alone for it to end up in the actual show.
– Nelson’s disguises and the puzzle piece transitions is probably a reference to something. I thought about looking it up, but by this late in the episode, I was so worn out I don’t even give a fuck.

(originally aired May 7, 2006)
As if the gender swapping episode wasn’t cliche enough, now we have Marge getting amnesia. How does it happen? It doesn’t really matter, as the five minutes building toward it aren’t paid off in any way whatsoever. The episode is invariably a Homer-Marge episode: Marge quickly regains her memory of her children, but is unable to recognize her own husband. So the conceit of the show is Homer must make her remember their marriage and love for each other. His first attempts involve showing her photos of him savagely beating people up and suggesting that they have sex. You see, this is aggressively violent and moronic Homer, so the fact that there’s a mental block keeping Marge from remembering him seems more like a godsend than a problem that needs to be resolved. Given how much crap Homer has put her through over the years, it’s become almost impossible to believe that he truly deserves to be with Marge at this point, and nothing he does in this episode makes me feel any different.

The final act involves Marge being pushed by her sisters into a speed dating event, where she meets a seemingly nice guy, who abruptly ditches her when she eventually tells him about her condition and that she has kids. Sure, whatever. Homer shows up and delivers some nice pleasantries about Marge, which is kind of nice, and he gets back into her good graces. But how do we wrap things up? Marge remembered her kids by specific triggers: Maggie’s pacifier sucking, Lisa’s intelligence, all telltale traits of their characters and what they mean to Marge. So what’s Homer’s? It’s beer! (“You get drunk all the time!” “But you also remember that you’re an enabler?” “Of course I do! That’s why we’re such a great team!”) So the thing that makes Marge finally remember the love of her life is that he loves to get wasted, and that’s our heartwarming ending. On top of that is her gleeful admission that she enables that behavior, it’s like “Co-Dependent’s Day” all over again. This moment is really the whole crutch of the episode, and this is what their relationship is hinging on. Homer does stupid, reckless shit, and Marge puts up with it. That’s what the writers think of the core essence of their marriage now. These Homer-Marge shows are just making me depressed…

Tidbits and Quotes
– The opening is ridiculously stupid. Bart, Nelson and Milhouse come up with a “scam” of spray painting people’s house numbers on their curbs and demanding pay after the fact. Homer refuses to pony up, leaving a “74” on the front curb. This results in him getting all the mail for 74 Evergreen Terrace, because if you’re a mailman, it makes perfect sense for the house numbers to go 740, 74, 744. Marge receives a house cleaning contest winner notice, but is confused as to why she got it. Then nothing is ever made of it. Four minutes of stupid, stupid filler.
– I feel like the idea of Marge tidying up the house before the professional cleaners get there is kind of amusing and within her character, but then it just gets pushed way too far. And that’s how she gets amnesia. Alright then.
– Once more they play around with the severity of Homer strangling Bart, where an amnesiac Marge is alarmed by it. Bart weakly comments, “It hurts when I swallow,” prompting Homer to strangle him again. Hilarious!
– I mention it every time they use it, but Homer’s elongated moan seems to be a favorite clip in recent years. It wasn’t funny the first time, and continues to be not funny every time.
– A rare Dubya Bush mention in the photo album: first a picture of Homer fighting Bush Sr. from “Two Bad Neighbors,” then a picture of Homer fighting Bush Jr. in the Oval Office. It’s an amusing joke that would have worked a lot better in another context.
– Homer takes Marge out on a date to get her to love him again, which is the first sweet thing he’s done the entire episode. They go to Luigi’s, who sings them a backhanded song (“That Homer Simpson is quite a guy / He paid me ten bucks so I would lie / The truth is he’s not so great / He is the one man I truly hate”) It’s another instance of showing how Homer’s gone from just some random schmo to a town-renowned asshole. What run-in could Homer and Luigi have had that would cause him to hate him this much?
– Act two ends with Skinner and Krabappel crawling out of the mini-golf castle, having just fucked. Krabappel coldly comments, “Birthday’s over, Seymour.” Then she leaves. Funny?
– The nice guy at the speed dating builds an immediate connection with Marge. He even has two brothers who bear resemblance to Patty and Selma. Then in case you didn’t pick that up, we show Patty and Selma adjacent. Why explain it? We get the joke.
– Lenny and Carl phone up Homer to tell him about Marge’s date. This has been going on forever now, but it’s just ridiculous how these two are joined at the hip. Do they lead separate lives at all? They were just Homer’s two work chums, now they’re like hetero (maybe) life partners.

(originally aired April 30, 2006)
Ho-hum, another boring episode. It’s sad the series has gotten to this level of unremarkable where entire episodes (whole seasons, even) feel like they can be completely written off. The Simpsons see the Itchy & Scratchy musical, which is a big Lion King rip-off, and though a bit too on-the-nose, it’s probably the only interesting bit in the whole episode. After the show, Skinner has a bizarre conversation on stage with the director Juliane Krellner (or Julie Taymor, continuing the show’s tradition of taking a name, tweak it slightly, and there! Instant joke!) Here’s what’s said (“It’s no surprise you became such a success. You always got straight A’s in school!” “Well, I remember getting a B or two in math.” “Well, of course you did. You are a girl!”) I honestly can’t figure out why he would say that. The road to our main plot hinges on this, and it feels so flimsy, and eventually becomes nonsensical in multiple ways. People are outraged by Skinner’s accidental sexism and he’s replaced by a new principal (voiced by Frances MacDormand, another fine talent wasted), who jumps to the conclusion gender integration is to blame for the grading disparities between the sexes, and demands the school be split in two: a boy’s school and a girl’s school.

Lisa is excited for a challenge in girl’s math, but is shocked to find the class is focused on getting in touch with feelings and instilling confidence boosting (“What does a plus sign smell like? Is the number seven odd, or just different?”) On the surface, this is mildly clever, but I don’t get how we got to this point. If the offense was taken by statements that girls weren’t as smart as boys, what’s the deal with this class? I guess the response to the criticism was that women need to be split from the aggressive, rowdy men, except that doesn’t tie into wishy washy Skinner. Anyway, in order to get intellectual stimulation, Lisa masquerades as a boy, where the show reaches She’s the Man levels of comedy. I guess that’s not fair, She’s the Man is actually kind of charming and funny. By the end, Lisa receives an award for her outstanding mathematics and reveals her true identity. Bart stands up and declares he deserves the credit for teaching his sister to act like a boy, then Lisa throws the award at him, then she quickly realizes what she’s done and what she’s become. Except we never see any of that. Her truly blending in with the boys is told over a montage toward the end. Maybe if more time had been spent on that, showing her going native and being terrified of it, it could have been interesting. Instead it’s just a dry, dull affair.

Tidbits and Quotes
– The musical at the beginning has some good stuff in it, like the giant puppet knives and the guys in organ suits doing curtain calls at the end. I also like them alternating between using Itchy & Scratchy’s real voices, and their actually musically inclined equivalents.
– Exactly why Skinner so uniquely shot himself in the foot is strange to me, but I like his fumbling to cover up his missteps to a bunch of angry feminists (“It’s the differences, of which there are none, that make the sameness exceptional! Just tell me what to say!!”)
– I guess the school had the money to reconstruct the building, creating two separate entrances, two separate cafeterias, amongst other things.
– There’s a small running bit of Marge’s annoyance with Homer, thinking he believes women are mentally inferior. It’s silly and goes nowhere. We also get a flashback lifted from “Mr. Plow,” where we see young Marge studying for calculus before she’s whisked away by Homer, leaving her undereducated forever. It feels a bit more devastating than funny here, but the line following it is pretty good (“Since then, I haven’t been able to do any of the calculus I’ve encountered in my daily life!”)
– The boy’s school is a feral, violent, animalistic society, which I guess is the gag, but it wears thin pretty quickly. I like Nelson’s obsessive gun drawings, but that’s about it.
– Bart instructs Lisa how to be a boy in the third act. First he teaches her about eating dirty disgusting food off the floor. Then we get a Homer-Marge scene. Then we get Lisa’s final test: pick a fight with a boy. We hear her thoughts (“A fight! That would mean rejecting the last part of me that’s still a girl!”) That sure explains it. Also, what? We’ve seen none of that whatsoever in this episode. Maybe if we had, it would have been interesting seeing her transformation, but like modern Simpsons always says: tell, don’t show. Lisa gives a big speech at the end that’s supposed to be our message, about how she compromised everything she believed in, even though we didn’t see any of it, then they cut her off anyway, so if the show could care less, than I care even less than that. Whatever.

(originally aired April 23, 2006)
I really don’t like these anthology episodes, they’re just absolutely not interesting to me. They were mildly amusing and novel at first, going over Bible stories and tall tales, but now it’s just like random stories that the Simpsons happen to be in. This time it’s three stories that all involve boats. First is the Mayflower’s voyage to America, second the infamous mutiny on the Bounty, third is The Poseidon Adventure. It seemed like the idea with these episodes was putting our beloved characters in the roles of famous fictional or historical figures, like Milhouse as Moses or Homer as Odysseus. It doesn’t really apply in this case, it’s just going through the motions of these stories you sort of know, with Simpsons characters in it as they crack insufferable joke after joke. The first segment is about how Puritans talk funny and are crazy religious types, the second is Skinner vs. the kids a la “Skinner’s Sense of Snow,” and the third, I don’t even know what to make of it. The characters take the time to introduce the story and their roles within the story itself, so it couldn’t be more lazy. I can’t even pad this more than a paragraph, I feel nothing for these episodes. Just twenty minutes of white noise.

Tidbits and Quotes
– The wrap-around story involves the family waiting for their meal at the Frying Dutchman, and with Captain McAllister’s lack of knowledge of sea stories, the family takes their crack at telling some. Makes sense. The trilogy format also has started becoming self-referential, which for most running gags means it’s probably about time to stop doing it (“Homer, you can tell the third story. Bart will tell the second, which is usually the weakest.”) But why do that when you can run the same shit into the ground for years to come?
– Flanders is at the helm of the Mayflower, and with the joke being that the crew are religious fanatics, it’s quite the feat that they made Ned even more psychotically devout, whipping himself merely for acknowledging Marge is a woman, pouring salt into the wound as he does.
– I’ve been noticing over the past few seasons, but especially in this one, there’s an abundant use of “gay,” mostly by Homer, to be used as an insult. Bart and the bullies use it too, but at least it makes more sense with them since they’re kids, but even then, that alone doesn’t work as a joke. Think back to “Lisa’s Date with Density,” where the bullies taunt Nelson (“You kissed a girl? That is so gay!”) That’s using the slang term and making it ironic. But now, calling someone gay and homosexuality in general is kind of treated as a big goof. There’s three gay “jokes” here: Homer calling the ship the “Gayflower,” one of the kid’s drawing of Skinner making out with a merman, and at the ending with Bart saying Dolph is gay for Kearney. None of these are funny whatsoever. I’d hesitate calling it homophobic, but it just feels unnecessary and misguided.
– There’s one joke I chuckled at. Flanders goes down to the brig to find the crew drunk and gallivanting about (“Horseplay! Rough-housing! Horse-housing?!”) We see a drunken horse with a little house over him. A dumb visual gag, but it worked for what it was.
– As these are three stories that we’re generally familiar with, we get a lot of “hilarious-in-hindight” jokes: Homer mentioning how fundamentalists will rule America by the twenty-first century, Skinner’s incredulous nature about a possible mutiny (“On the Bounty?!”), and the entire first half of the third segment is literally all jokes about the ship will soon be tossed upside down.
– Similar to the last episode, there’s also many jokes involving Homer’s blind ignorance toward the misfortune of others. He celebrates the new year surrounded by dozens of dead shipmates, then he kicks Comic Book Guy into the water and ignores his dying plea after he had just saved his ass. What a guy!

(originally aired April 9, 2006)
With some of these episodes, I feel it’s enough of a review to just post the synopsis, as the stupidity and silliness as presented usually can speak for itself. There’s glimmers of interesting ideas in this episode, but they’re completed buried under nonsensical plot turns. We open with Burns announcing he’s outsourcing the plant to India, but he’ll need to hold on to one American employee. Who do you think that will be? I feel like “Homer gets picked for something he’s grossly unqualified for” is almost like a running gag, but like almost all the running gags in this series, it has run out of gas and just descended into goofiness. “Homer the Smithers” in season 7 was poking fun at this, now ten years later, Burns tosses a bouquet into the crowd to see who gets the position. He’s a smart businessman, why wouldn’t he just pick the most senior man? Doesn’t matter though, since this is a strange new kind of Burns. Not cartoon supervillain, not frail old man, but an unusually affable self-identified showman: making a big entrance in India, chumming it up with Homer… what happened to the joyless old miser? He’s long dead at this point.

So Homer is off to India, and despite knowing nothing about management or how to run a plant, he ends up doing fine at his job. Some of the gags are effective, like how the Indians seem to just be humoring Homer so they can get to work, or the many outsourced jobs Apu’s cousin has picked up, but the plot making no sense blares over any bright spots. Then we have our ending, where Homer believes he’s a god and the employees seemingly worship him. The entire third act is one great big “WHY.” Why does he think he’s a god? Because someone mentioned power corrupts and he says he’s a god. Why does he not think he’s a god anymore? Because he says so at the end. The end with the plant being “ruined” by the Indians finding out about American work benefits is kind of clever, but again, it makes no sense through the plot. How did they find out? They claim it was through a binding contract Homer gave out. How could he put together such a message? I feel the core idea of this episode is pretty strong and could have worked, but it’s in completely incapable hands.

Tidbits and Quotes
– The pro-outsourcing video is pretty good, with the American workers whining that their jobs are too hard (“Hey, America! Why not let some of the other countries carry their share of the load!”)
– It’s a small moment, but it bugs me when Lisa, or Bart, can identify things that no kid would be able to know about. How does Lisa know about Mac Tonight? Those commercials ran in the late 80s.
– The B-story involves Patty and Selma meeting the man of their dreams, Richard Dean Anderson, MacGyver himself. When he rejects their fanatical advances, they resort to kidnapping. Anderson is able to escape his confines just like his character, and finds it so thrilling that he has the sisters restrain him again and again, until even they get sick of him and come up with a plan to get rid of him. I like the idea of a revered celebrity getting on a fan’s nerves, like Stan Lee in “I Am Furious (Yellow),” and as a B-story, I’m willing to forgive the silliness a bit more. There’s a fair amount of mention of his other show Stargate, almost to the point that it feels like promotion. Anderson is a good sport, and he gives a pretty great performance. I certainly liked it more than the main story, but under it all, it almost feels too-little-too-late. When was the last time Patty and Selma even mentioned MacGyver? We barely see them anymore as it is.
– The best joke in the episode is when Homer must find Apu’s cousin: medium height, dark complexion, brown eyes, black hair. Shouldn’t be too hard to spot out in the middle of India.
– Patty and Selma return to their apartment to find Anderson is gone. Selma panics, claiming she can’t face jail. Patty shrewdly responds, “I can.” Because she’s a lesbian and she would love women’s prison! So her being gay is now her default character trait, I guess.
– There’s more weird jokes in this episode that we’ve seen in the past, of horrible things happening or being mentioned to Homer and him just shrugging them off or ignoring it. Bart calls his father in fear of a bully who breaks into the house, Marge mentions Chief Wiggum was mortally wounded, is any of this supposed to be funny?
– None of the ending makes any sense whatsoever. Why did they paint the tower like Homer’s face and dress like him? It’s just building to the big cop-out at the end, and then everything can go back to normal. And also the obligatory Bollywood ending, which doesn’t feel earned at all.