(originally aired March 13, 2005)
What is it about “Bart vs. Australia” that makes it so perfect? It exhibits the same ridiculous stereotyping that other travel episodes have, but it feels so much less offensive than a show like this. I guess it’s all in the manner that it’s presented; “Australia” holds America and Australia in equal amounts of contempt, where in this episode, a lot of stuff just feels like, “Those Chinese sure are funny!” But before that, our set-up. Selma goes through menopause, leaving her despondent that now she can never have children. She decides she wants to adopt, so it’s off to the orphanage, but the baby she wants ends up being taken back by his father, Cletus. I guess they only had one infant so that option is no longer available, nor are any other orphanages in any other area. Patches and Poor Violet, anyone? Shock of shocks, Lisa suggests adopting from China, but as they will only allow children into the homes of couples, Selma claims Homer as her husband. Soon, she and the Simpsons are off to China to get her child, as well as keep up their charade.

Bureaucrat Madam Wu, played by Lucy Liu, oversees the Americans to make sure Selma and Homer are actually a loving couple. Act two is basically just scene after scene of exploring China, most of which involve Homer being a moron or getting hurt. Homer feels the need to lie that his profession is “Chinese acrobat,” and of course then we get a scene where he fumbles his way through a routine, which is just a bunch of time killing. Wu discovers that Homer and Selma are not actually married and takes away Selma’s new baby. The Simpsons devise a plan to get her back, which of course hinges on Homer, which of course results in him getting hurt. They almost escape, but are stopped by Wu, which of course leads to Homer making a heartfelt speech which of course sways Wu into giving the baby back. Isn’t it so hackneyed now that one thinly written touching speech can completely change the mind of the antagonist? I don’t remember that so much in the classic years, but it’s so overdone now. If Wu was raised by a single parent, why didn’t she have a little bit of sympathy about the situation? It took Homer to talk about what a great parent Selma would be, which he can’t believe to be true, and insult China by calling it another planet, for her to let them go? I dunno. Another forgettable episode, and for an episode that features the family going across the world, that’s saying something. Travel episodes used to be exciting, now they’re just another stupid thing that happens.

Tidbits and Quotes
– The opening is just awful. Selma is giving Burns his driver’s test, where he’s a neutered old man again. She goes through hot flashes and opens up the roof of the old automobile they’re driving. When the roof is upturned vertically, a gust of wind turns it into some kind of sail which causes the car to careen out of control. Totally makes sense. The scene then ends with Burns’s lungs shooting out his throat to act like air bags. Goddammit.
– Skimming through the episode for these quotes, I just noticed the credited writer: Lawrence Talbot. The Wolf Man wrote this? Actually, it’s just a pseudonym for Dana Gould. So, what, he was disappointed enough by this one to not use his name, but catastrophes like “Homer the Moe” and “The President Wore Pearls,” he’s more than happy to credit himself?
– This is the second episode in a row where we watch a tape hosted by a celebrity, this time with Robert Wagner talking about menopause. And both times they’re not funny.
– “Selma, I never realized you wanted a child so badly.” Remember “Selma’s Choice,” Marge? I guess not. One of Selma’s main motivations is that she wants to be loved, be it by a husband or a child.
– We saw it in “There’s Something About Marrying,” and now here, Homer openly making shots and cracking jokes at Patty and Selma. In the classic years, he’d only respond in kind if the sisters said something disparaging to him. Normally, he keeps his resentment to himself, usually for Marge’s sake. I’m sure someone will come up with a counter example, but his past behavior is definitely in stark contrast to now, where he just openly insults them at any given opportunity.
– How does Selma have $10,000 to shell out to get a child, and then enough money to send everyone to China for multiple days?
– Homer is intolerable in the second act: getting beaten up temple monks, including getting his heart ripped out, talking baby talk to Chairman Mao, then the whole acrobatic scene. He’s thrown on stage, and the performers make a giant tower of chairs. Watching this and standing on a plank, Homer comments, “Boy, this is easy! Maybe I am the world’s greatest acrobat!” Because he thinks that acrobatics is standing still? Is that the joke? He’s launched in the air and manages to magically land on top of the chairs. He then chants “USA!” until the tower collapses. Our lovable protagonist.
– Madam Wu is like a crazy person, spying on the Simpsons and tracking them down in a tank to get the baby back, all so we can get a stupid Tiananmen Square reference.
– Homer gets dressed up like a Buddha statue so the orphanage will bring him inside, which they do utilizing a giant hook in his nose. Aside from Homer’s muffled screams, wouldn’t they notice how fleshy and soft the statue is? These two guards have to be fucking morons to not notice this is a human being.
– Like all “big” changes in the show, Selma being a mother is never explored or developed at all. It’s barely even acknowledged. I think Ling has appeared in the show maybe three times after this, with either Selma holding her or showing her in their apartment. She’s basically a prop that the show is stuck with now.

(originally aired March 6, 2005)
Seems like we’ve had a Bart/Lisa episode for every season, and the writers just aren’t up to the task in writing a believable conflict and resolution for them, with this episode being the rustiest example of all. After being humiliated by her brother’s pranks on a field trip, Lisa decides she has little recourse than to issue a restraining order on him. In place of the rest of the family reacting to this, we have a videotape explaining restraining orders, hosted by Gary Busey, which is kinda disturbing. Homer wrangles together a twenty-foot stick to keep his kids apart, which Lisa uses, and quickly abuses, to poke and bother Bart relentlessly. I thought this would be kind of interesting, that now Lisa would become as big of an irritant as Bart was to her without realizing it. But the episode never really acknowledges it. We get a montage of Lisa abusing Bart and him feeling crestfallen, then we’re in court where Judge Harm increases the distance in the restraining order after Bart pokes fun at her. They just drop that angle completely, as Bart whiplashes from sullen to busting the judges ball’s for some reason.

The new distance is so great that Bart now must live in the backyard, which I guess Lisa and her parents are perfectly fine with. This eventually renders Bart into a wild animal, seeing as how he basically lives outdoors now. Finally acknowledging that this has all gone too far, Marge urges her daughter to lift the restraining order, but Lisa still feels slighted by Bart. Marge tells her to remember all the good things her brother has done for her, and Lisa cops that if she can think of three things, she’ll free him. Marge lists two, one which actually counts, then Lisa sees Bart building a giant Lisa statue out of straw in the backyard, which I guess he can do, much to her delight (“It shows he misses me! And this is the third thing!”) What a fucking arbitrary resolution. It’s like a video game, collect these three items and you win the stage. And plus, Lisa seriously can’t remember any of the nice things Bart has done for her? What about taking the fall for her in “Separate Vocations”? The flashbacks in “Lisa on Ice”? Writing her a birthday song with Michael Jackson? I could go on and on. Ultimately it turns out Bart was actually going to burn her sister’s visage in effigy, but Lisa forgives him anyway (“And I was kind of a pill. I guess.”) Aside from blatant cop-out endings like “The Great Money Caper,” this might be the laziest ending I’ve seen yet. A boring, ridiculous episode.

Tidbits and Quotes
– The Skinner/Krabappel drama goes on; it’s given an unusual amount of screen time here, like it’s actually going to develop into a story, except the writers don’t know where to go with it, so it ends with Skinner making out with a mummified corpse. Why have they turned him into such a pathetic sad sack?
– Liberal mouthpiece Lisa is in full swing here, as the class arrives at Springfield Glacier only to find it’s a pile of slush in the middle of a lake. Lisa immediately leaps that the culprit is global warming, and sermonizes her schoolmates (“How can you stand there eating snacks and being children when the world’s glaciers are vanishing?”) It casts her in such an annoying light, which is definitely something you don’t want for a positive character like Lisa.
– I don’t even want to bother with the Homer subplot. We’re back to Sprawl-Mart again, the first time we see it, there’s a banner reading “Not a Parody of Wal-Mart.” No shit? Dead Homers Society did a great write-up about how corporation and brand parodies in the past were so strong because they weren’t about one specific company, that they could be applied to a wider spectrum. Krusty Burger can represent all fast food or low-end restaurants, Duff can be all beers, Laramie can be all tobacco companies, etc. Sprawl-Mart can only be Wal-Mart, and the entire plot here of Homer becoming a greeter for some reason, the company abusing its illegal immigrant workers by locking them in the store overnight, all of it is specific to one thing. It’s lazy, uninspired, and ultimately just a piss poor piece of satire. Wal-Mart managers are dickholes and abuse their workers! Why? Because they’re eeeevil! Or something!
– Lisa pokes Bart so much to the extent that he has nerve damage in his arm, and she’s never reprimanded for it. That’s why it felt like the episode was turning into Lisa being as much of a terror to Bart as it was vice versa. It looks like it’s getting there, then it takes a wild turn into craziness at the end of the second act.
– I hate the second act break. I hated it when I first watched it, and I still hate it now. It might be one of the worst “jokes” in the show’s history. Bart is now forced to live out in the backyard, which is now a big woodland area for the sake of the episode, leaving him cold, alone and scared. This is after we see how much his life sucks due to the restraining order, so we really feel bad for him. He considers that at least his family must miss him. Cut to inside, the other Simpsons are joyously playing instruments, which I guess they can all play now. Two big reasons why this is fucking awful. First, it tears down the characters. Wouldn’t Marge be livid about this situation, considering how she fought to have the restraining order lifted? Even fucking Homer must be able to see how fucked up this all is. They all care about Bart, but for this one quick joke, let’s show that they don’t. Which brings me to my other point, it makes the family spiteful. One thing that sets this show apart is that the Simpsons are really a loving family, even in times when they squabble, they’re behind each other one hundred percent. It’s different than like, say, Family Guy, amongst its many, many problems, where it feels like the Griffins just don’t like each other, and that’s not very fun to watch. For this one joke, they make it like the family could get a rat’s ass that Bart is alone and terrified, and that defies a big theme of the entire series. And then just to specifically piss me off, they end the episode by bringing in the goddamn instruments again! I hate this episode. So much stuff in it perfectly exemplifies how much of this series is fundamentally broken at this point.

(originally aired February 20, 2005)
Following in the footsteps of “Three Gays of the Condo,” this is another episode that the writers hope will make the series look tolerant and progressive, but ultimately just feels hacky and gimmicky. To bring in more tourists, Springfield legalizes gay marriage, and when Reverend Lovejoy forbids to perform any non-hetero services, Homer steps in, having become an ordained minister over the Internet in less than a minute. Then it stumbles into this weird thing where Homer vows he’ll marry anything to anything else, and he goes on Smartline to defend his actions. He’s acting purely out of greed, but the deeper connotations are slightly disconcerting. Kent Brockman cites the recent surge in rash marriages, and Homer is defending the rights of callously handled unions, but because this is the gay marriage episode, it makes it seem like they’re directly connected. Homer even talks about marrying inanimate objects, even things that don’t exist, which is like those stupid arguments that opponents to gay marriage use. It’s all very confusing, it’s feels like the show is in the argument for, but in the most backhanded, negative way possible.

Alright, time for the big reveal: which of our characters is coming out of the closet? Turns out it’s Patty, although this is nothing we already didn’t know (“There goes the last lingering thread of my heterosexuality.”) Patty comes out to her sister, and reveals that she’s marrying a pro golfer named Veronica. So, alright, she was hesitant to come clean to Marge, and for some reason decided to drop that bomb and announce her marriage at the same time, but I’ll be generous and go with that. Clearly she and Veronica must have been together for a long time to want to tie the knot, but here’s the kicker: Marge discovers Veronica is actually a man, exposing her protruding Adam’s apple as proof. I don’t even know what to say. You’re telling me that Patty noticed this? This person that she’s about to marry, in all the time they’d have spent together, even if they never had sex, which they imply they haven’t, that she never ever questioned his gender? It’s just such a bizarre, unnecessary twist, I don’t understand why they would do this. They make like they want to normalize gay marriage, but ultimately just turn it into a gigantic farce. This show isn’t as aggressively offensive as “Three Gays,” but it’s just as awful.

Tidbits and Quotes
– The opening bit with Bart and Milhouse pranking that travel channel guy is so boring. Also Blinky is now a giant Creature from the Black Lagoon type monster now. Or at least a fish just like it.
– The map to star’s homes bit annoys me. The joke markers aren’t funny, then it holds on screen for a while until Homer asks the audience if they’ve read them all, which just annoys me further considering that the jokes weren’t funny enough to warrant holding the frame so we could read them all. It’s like a feedback loop of aggravation.
– It really bothers me that Lisa suggests the town accept gay marriage, and is armed with two supporting reasons (“We can attract a growing segment of the marriage market, and strike a blow for civil rights!”) Lisa is eight. Of course this isn’t a new complaint, but it’s especially bothersome here. At times like this, I think back to “Selma’s Choice” when Lisa was equally as eloquent, suggesting that Selma try artificial insemination, but there it was a joke that such a young girl would know about such a thing (immediately followed by Homer thinking that means having sex with a robot). But nowadays, Lisa has the mentality of a liberal college-bound feminist, so it’s no longer precocious, it’s just annoying.
– Like with “Three Gays,” the show hides behind its claims of acceptance so it can make a bunch of easy gay jokes. Right off the bat at the start of act two we have the Springfield pro-gay commercial, with men skipping toward the town underneath a rainbow, and then two men marrying wearing wedding gowns.
– Homer is completely fueled by cash this episode, but I really don’t understand a lot of the shit he does this show: forgetting what straight marriage is, telling Brockman to call him “Your Holiness,” childishly goading Lovejoy… Then at the end of Smartline, Marge tells her husband she’s proud of him. He flat out admitted he’s only doing this for the money, what exactly is she proud of?
– Was Patty hesitant to reveal that she was gay, and about Veronica, to Selma? To her mother? Did she do it all at once, or much earlier than when she told Marge? You’d think she would have wanted to have this conversation earlier. Why would she hide this long, up until she’s going to get married, to tell Marge she was gay? If my sister waited that long to tell me something like that, I’d be a little hurt by it. Is that why Marge is so upset? (“I just can’t believe my sister would keep me in the dark for all these years, then expect complete acceptance on the day she gets married!”) Perhaps, it’s not exactly explained well.
– Homer’s fantasy of him marrying himself, with two Homers making out with little Homer children running around… I don’t even know what to say, other than that it’s grossly out of character and incredibly disturbing.
– The Veronica reveal is so bonkers on so many levels. Like who are the people sitting on his side of the chapel? They must know that he’s a man, so are they all in on this ruse? Or maybe they’re not, maybe they’re other golfers that he knew from the women’s circuit. But what is this man’s life? Does he have any family or friends, does he lead a double life as a man and a woman? How did he think this marriage would work out, especially considering it wouldn’t take long after their wedding for Patty to discover he has a penis. Did he just think that she would accept it? A hundred questions are whizzing around my head that this show gives no answers to; it’s one of the most ridiculous and stupid things this show has ever done.

(originally aired February 13, 2005)
Because this is a show that truly has its finger on the pulse of pop culture, it’s time for our rap episode. They’re late to the game, so they cover it by Bart spouting out-dated street phrases and get called out on it. So he’s like an ignorant white (or yellow) kid who likes rap because it’s cool. It makes sense, I guess, but it kind of makes him feel pathetic. Beyond the concert and the torturous free-styling (twice by Homer and Marge, then by Bart), the episode really isn’t even about rap, as it’s more of a tired rehash of “Radio Bart” where Bart concocts a lie that riles up the entire town. To escape punishment of sneaking out to go to a concert, Bart sends his parents a ransom note stating he’s been kidnapped, and plans to hide out at Kirk Van Houten’s until the heat dies down. The difference is that Bart’s Timmy O’Toole shenanigan was just an elaborate prank, and of course had many other brilliant layers to it. Here, Bart’s just being selfish, and needlessly worrying his parents, bringing Marge to tears multiple times. It’s kind of uncomfortable to watch.

The other thread coming into play is Wiggum being a competent cop for once and managing to track down Bart, and arresting Kirk as the kidnapper. For solving this one single case, they throw him a big parade and make him commissioner. Kirk, meanwhile, has become a prison dreamboat since all women love bad boys, so it seems that everyone made off well in this, right? But Lisa’s on the trail of discovering the truth, and all involved in the lie have to keep her from it. Yawn. Homer is also randomly involved, because apparently Hollywood producers have paid him for the rights to Bart’s story. What a bizarre throwaway line. We’re just supposed to accept that a big Hollywood producer phoned Homer up and he arranged a deal with them over what ultimately seems like such a nothing premise? Just like this episode! Lisa corners Bart and the others in their lie at some rapper’s house, and everything is resolved by a big house party. By which I mean there’s no resolution, but next week Wiggum will be back to chief again. It’s like “The Great Money Caper” again, where it’s a cop-out ending, but they acknowledge it, so that makes it okay! Except it doesn’t. It just shows that you guys wrote yourselves into a corner and just said fuck it. Great work, guys.

Tidbits and Quotes
– Homer chases Santa’s Little Helper through the doggie door and ends up getting stuck. Patty and Selma are outside for some reason, and take this opportunity to plaster him with make-up… for some reason. The other Simpsons were in the room when this happened, and none of them comment on this or try to help him out. It’s more writing jokes without regarding anyone else in the scene if necessary.
– The show’s biting commentary on rap stars is that they’re super, duper rich and they’re violent. S’about it.
– Bart writes snippets of lyrics down like in 8 Mile, then is able to perform an elaborate off-the-cuff rap defaming Homer on stage in front of hundreds of people. Boy, oh boy. And it doesn’t even sound like something he’d write (“I’ll bust a spit wad up your epidermis!”) I’d compare this to Lisa’s song from “Moaning Lisa,” but there literally is no comparison to make.
– I really feel bad for Kirk. He was always kind of a lame character, but now every joke with him just makes him the saddest, most pathetic man on the planet. It’s just not all that funny.
– Should I comment on Dana Gould playing Barney Fife? …nah.
– More laughing at the misery of others: the end credits deleted scene shows Superintendent Chalmers acting like a rapper, making himself look like a fool, being paid by Alcatraz. He comments he’s doing this because his wife is very sick. Funny? What a callous joke. Then we cut to a wide shot of the party and Homer gleefully jumping into the pool. Then cut to black. What a piece of shit.

(originally aired February 6, 2005)
Sometimes an episode strikes just the right level of batshit crazy that keep me from hating them, like “A Tale of Two Springfields,” to a much lesser extent, “Bart-Mangled Banner,” and now this one. Lots of times the show does ridiculous, insane shit, but still wants to be tethered to some kind of grounded emotional story element, causing it to fail miserably. This episode begins bizarre right off the bat, where we see Homer beat his son at a carnival game, do an elaborate and painfully extended celebratory dance routine, and the crowd around him applauds and cheers him on. It sets you up for this kind of episode perfectly, and is almost bulletproof. Should I complain that Homer is acting out-of-character? Why bother? For brainless maniac Homer, the plot here actually makes some sense. His crazy video goes viral online, leading him to be approached by professional athletes for tips on how to showboat at games so their clips get shown on sports center highlight reels. Ridiculous? Of course. But it’s a good shot at the media semi-intentionally glorifying rowdy behavior, and uses nutjob Homer in a logical fashion: coaching others to be nutjobs.

Where I can bizarrely go with the Homer story, I hate the one running alongside it involving Flanders. Displeased by the state of sacrilegious TV and film, he decides to shoot his own Biblical films, depicting all the violence and gore the Good Book has to offer, eventually getting financial backing from Mr. Burns to make bigger and bloodier pictures. Clearly this is aping off of the success of the extremely graphic Passion of the Christ, and more of Flanders being the show’s outlet for wacko ultra-Christian gags. I don’t think Flanders would approve of the over-the-top violence in Passion, let alone make a film where one of his sons stabs the other to death with obscene amounts of blood. The two stories converge when Homer is called upon to direct the Super Bowl half time show, and with no ideas, he collaborates with Flanders to do a grandiose recreation of the story of Noah’s Ark. Their efforts are all for naught, as the show is universally reviled for being blatantly secular, in an admittedly excellent twist. I found myself going along with a lot in this episode, but there was just as much stuff there that annoyed me as well. But in such an aggressively bland season, this one stands out as somewhat of a good effort. Kinda.

Tidbits and Quotes
– This episode reveals Comic Book Guy’s real name: Jeff Albertson. In an interview, Al Jean said that they did this deliberately to annoy fans, and chose to do it in this episode specifically, which aired after the Super Bowl with a highly inflated number of viewers. It’s great to hear that the writers are intentionally trying to piss off their loyal fans. It really doesn’t matter to me, though. Did they think that hardcore fans would be enraged that they tell us what CBG’s name is? Who gives a shit?
– The joke was kind of labored and dumb, but I like the Donkey Kong bit with Homer throwing trash cans at Mario.
– Rod and Todd ask their father questions about the Bible, that if Cain and Abel were Adam’s only children, how did humanity continue? Flanders disregards them completely. It’s making jokes about analyzing the Bible, and hardcore Christian types side-stepping any and all logical fallacies within… but this is Flanders we’re talking about. He’s an admirable character, one we’re not supposed to harbor any negative feelings toward. Also he’s got Rod using a cardboard knife, but meanwhile his final film features a huge stack of burning animals, realistic blood splatter and part of his face melting off.
– I laughed at Homer using a pathetic crippled kid to garner the football player’s sympathy enough to stomp the opposing team’s mascot into the dirt, who is just a single mother in a costume. It’s so ridiculous in so many ways, I couldn’t be offended by it. Same with all the end zone dances; when you’ve got someone pulling a hibachi from nowhere to grill up the football, or ripping up the astroturf to take a nap (complete with Homer’s clipboard diagram of the play), I just had to go along with the absurdity.
– All the guest stars wear conveniently labeled hoodies so they can be easily identified, and none of them really stand out. It’s just a random assortment of sports stars they cobbled together. The only line of any of theirs I laughed at came from Tom Brady being randomly needy (“You guys think Homer’s mad at me? I waved at him in the parking lot and he stared right through me!”) Between that and his “Give all your love to Tom!” showboat, it makes it seem like Brady has an inferiority complex. It strikes me the days the show would make characters out of its celebrities, instead of just having them show up and be living in the Simpson house for some reason.
– Nice wordplay intro to the sports show (“Tonight on the Jock Center: Clipper and the stripper, a Jones that’s chipper, and did Joe Torre shoot Flipper?”) The drawing of an irritated Torre shooting the dolphin in mid-air is pretty funny.
– Homer watches a history of half time shows, from the very first featuring just one man and his tuba, to the marriage of Mr. and Mrs. Pac-Man, following by them and the ghosts dancing to “Let’s Get Physical.”
– Harry Shearer does Vin Scully at the Super Bowl, getting in some good lines (“This brand new $300 million stadium was completed just one short week ago, and is scheduled for demolition early next month. America’s priorities are a joke! Now here’s the kickoff!” “Don’t stop watching in the second half, points count double!”)
– The Noah’s Ark show is a lot more in-character for Ned then those gore fest movies. I like his modest “Thank you” after he reads the concluding passage. And I honestly love the twist at the end with people being pissed about the religious half time show (“You try to raise your kids as secular humanists but these showbiz types keep shoving religion down our throats!” “Mommy, why wasn’t I baptized?” “You see? You see?”) It’s extremely rare I’d call something in this show to be clever… but I gotta say, it’s pretty clever.