(originally aired May 4, 2003)
Here’s another episode that I’m at a complete loss about, as it didn’t seem to be about anything. I guess I’ll go through the whole thing and comment as I go. Bart’s treehouse gets destroyed in an absurdist fashion, and Homer promises he’ll rebuild it. After some ridiculous and unfunny wacky Homer antics, Marge surmises that it’ll never get finished, so she figures she has to call in some pros. Ringing a bell summons a troupe of Amish folk, who build the treehouse bigger and better than ever, because that totally makes sense. The new treehouse has a grand opening, and now seems to be as large as an upscale loft. This is held up by one tree, how the fuck is it so huge? And everyone in town is invited, and everyone knows everyone else, as Bart greets Bumblebee Man and Hans Moleman like they’re old friends. I liked it better when Springfield was a normal town where not everyone was best friends. The treehouse catches fire, leaving Homer stuck inside. Santa’s Little Helper flees, but Snowball II gets Homer to wake up and manage to escape.

Snowball II is declared a hero for some reason, as Homer parades her around on a royal pillow, townspeople cheer for her, and Quimby holds a ceremony in her honor. Conversely, Homer disowns Santa’s Little Helper for his cowardice. So what’s the point of this episode? The dog has to get back in Homer’s good graces? Homer barely acknowledges the pets, they’re Bart and Lisa’s. You can’t do a Homer and the dog episode unless you establish a connection between them, since they really have none. But I guess they couldn’t get to this point without the treehouse first act, so whatever. By random chance, Dave Shutton, once seemingly a competent reporter, snaps a shot of Santa’s Little Helper drinking a beer can balanced on his nose, a photo that intrigues the Duff corporation, and Howard K. Duff in his second appearance. Outing the lazy, loutish Duffman, Duff’s new mascot is Suds McDuff, party dog. This is of course an allusion to Spuds MacKenzie, the Bull Terrier “spokesman” for Budweiser in the late 80s. Apparently it was quite controversial, with some saying the cute dog was targeting children, and also the reveal that the actual dog was female, but marketed as male. Reading Spuds’s Wikipedia page for thirty seconds is much more interesting than anything in this episode. Santa’s Little Helper as Spuds MacKenzie isn’t a parody, they just made the dog Spuds MacKenzie.

SLH is back in Homer’s good graces since he’s making him lots of money now, at least until the dog’s original owner returns to rake in his former mutt’s new revenue. You know, when SLH was No. 8 at the dog track in “Simpsons Roasting on an Open Fire.” It feels so weird to hear them talking about stuff from the very first episode, since thinking back it feels like a completely different show… because it is. Even though surely the Simpsons have ownership papers for the dog at this point, the old owner, who isn’t even given a name, takes the dog on the spot. Now an elaborate scheme must be concocted: reveal SLH as a coward, have a disgraced Duffman redeem himself to get his job back, and the old owner will disown the dog, having lost his gravy train. The only interesting part of the whole episode is seeing Barry Duffman, Duffman’s mild-mannered alter ego, teaching at a mission before he receives this call to action. He goes along with the stunt, SLH is shown to be afraid of water and the crowd boos the poor dog, Homer almost gets attacked by a shark, Duffman ultimately doesn’t get his job back but still has the costume, and the old owner gives SLH back, thinking it should be with a family that loves him, for reasons that escape me. This is another one of those episodes I can’t even be mad at because it doesn’t even feel like they’re trying. I can’t complain about how they fucked up because I don’t even understand what they’re trying to do. The storytelling has gone from ‘bad’ to just ‘inept.’

Tidbits and Quotes
– The clubhouse gang consists of Bart, Milhouse, Nelson, Martin and Database. Remember when Nelson was the bully that everyone on the schoolyard feared? And Bart would be embarrassed to be hanging out with the nerds? But they’re recognizable faces, so just cram ’em in there. Just as egregious is Sherri and Terri hanging out with Lisa. They hate her, don’t they? And they’re two grades above her.
– Homer removes planks of wood from the railroad tracks under the belief the track has been out of use of years. Of course, a train immediately barrels down the track, which then causes every single train to flip over in midair multiple times and land perfectly fine back on the track and rides off. It’s like the ending of “Maximum Homerdrive,” except even worse that because in “Homerdrive,” they wrote themselves into a corner and that was their stupid excuse for a climax, but here, it’s just a ridiculous joke at the beginning that we’re supposed to accept is fine and move on.
– Some of the dialogue here is just insufferable (“Did Frank Lloyd Wright have to deal with people like you?” “Actually, Frank Lloyd Wright endured a lot of harsh criticisms.” “Look, I have no idea who Frank Lloyd Wright is.” “You said his name two second ago.” “I was just stringing words together.”) Stupid and drawn out, those are the best jokes.
– Not only do the Amish appear from nowhere, so do the Mennonites, who just show up in the next door driveway for a quick joke.
– They spend all this time setting up the treehouse for it to appear for literally thirty seconds before it all burns down.
– Lisa reads over the Duff contract, because she’s the smart one, and an eight-year-old can read and understand an elaborately written legal agreement. Then we get a dream sequence of Homer on a private jet being horrified to find there’s no pilot. Simultaneously, I’m horrified to find there’s no joke.
– Why are they airing a Duff spot on the commercial break for a kid’s show?
– I’m surprised they even went back and bothered to match the voice for SLH’s old owner, but Hank Azaria done good.
– There’s a smidgeon of sentimentality here with Bart missing SLH, but you barely get any of it within all the wackiness. Instead of being the emotional crux of the show, it’s just yet another thing that’s happening in an episode where things happen.
– Nothing says an aimless, humorless episode quite like an aimless, humorless ending (“It was probably that stupid cat.” “That cat saved your life.” “What has he done for me lately?” “He woke you up when you stopped breathing last night.” “Yeah, but he ate the last can of tuna.” “Dad, you ate the last can of tuna.” “Everyone’s against me.”) Cut to black, cue theme, good work everyone! Also they keep referring to Snowball II as male when she’s a female. I buy Homer not knowing, but Marge certainly should. Though I don’t know why I keep thinking the writers give a shit about this.

(originally aired April 27, 2003)
The episode began. A bunch of stuff happened. Then the episode ended. That’s pretty much as good of a review as any for a lot of these shows. Most of the time I can scrounge up a couple topics of conversation, but I’m really at a loss for a majority of this one. I can’t make heads or tails out of the opening alone: getting struck down from singing copyrighted Christmas carols, Homer takes a crack at writing his own, but ultimately ends up writing an up-beat hate ballad about Ned Flanders. Incredibly random and silly, but hey, he’s still got some of that Be Sharps talent left, so okay. Then David Byrne shows up out of nowhere and turns Homer’s song into a big sensation. We’re like four minutes into the episode and I’m seeing Homer’s record being mass-produced and him performing on stage with a celebrity to throngs of cheering fans. How is this happening? Why is this happening? Why has a song directly referring to a man from a small town become a nationwide phenomenon? Oh, whatever. The ultimate point of this is the Simpsons get tired of hearing the song over and over and want to get away for a while, so they decide to spend a weekend at a dude ranch. I guess this was the most logical way to get to this plot point.

At the dude ranch, we get two stories. One involves Homer and Bart helping some native Americans get back their land by destroying a beaver dam. I have absolutely nothing to say about this story. It plays out like a Saturday morning cartoon, with Homer’s sorted plans to thwart the animals backfiring on him and him getting hurt because of it. There’s no point to it whatsoever, so why bother commenting on it? The other story involves Lisa, who initially is Little Miss Activist, complaining how the ranch glorifies cruelty to animals and the taking of native land. So yeah, Lisa’s not a little girl anymore, she’s a snotty, liberal killjoy. Her constant complaining makes her unlikable, and if there’s one character in this fucking show who shouldn’t be unlikable, it’s little Lisa Simpson. When asked if she’d like to ride a pony, she responds, “I’m sure she’d be happier without someone sitting on her back all day.” What the fuck? Do the writers remember “Lisa’s Pony”? Or care? Instead of being an eight-year-old with girlish dreams and desires who happens to be intelligent as well, she crows on about respecting her “animal equals” and screams about freeing Tibet. Which Lisa sounds more interesting to you?

Anyway, Lisa falls for thirteen-year-old Luke Stetson, a character whose name I had to look up because I couldn’t remember. Jonathan Taylor Thomas gives an alright performance, he just barely has anything to work with. Lisa is taken in by his consciousness of animal rights and call to activism, similar to Jesse in “Lisa the Treehugger,” but here it’s done in a more exaggerated and knowing fashion so it just feels completely false. There’s a big hoedown coming up and Lisa overhears Luke talking to a girl named Clara on the phone, and believes that she’s his girlfriend. She’s devastated, but upon running into Clara on the trail out of town, she sends her down the wrong path toward danger out of jealousy. Totally sounds like something Lisa would do. What is this? Partway through the show, Marge comments how her kids are acting more and more like teenagers, which can definitely be said for all episodes nowadays, but this storyline of Lisa vs. Clara for Luke’s affections feels way too mature for her. Lisa discovers Clara is actually Luke’s sister, she ends up saving her from drowning, Luke is disgusted by what she did, and the family high-tails it back home. Or actually they don’t. Who gives a shit. This episode sucks balls. Big, sweaty horse balls.

Tidbits and Quotes
– Homer is in the middle of banging out a new carol, then Flanders appears from nowhere inside the house, in an early instance of characters showing up randomly whenever they’re needed.
– For those who loved the joke about Homer taunting Ned about his dead wife last episode, we get another one here! One of the lyrics has Homer singing in a condescending manner, “Don’t yell at Ned! His wife is dead!” How tasteless can this show get?
– David Byrne sings and dances on the hood of his car, which stays in motion for some reason. Then he slips, falls into Moe’s car behind him, and is then kidnapped since Moe is a creepy weirdo and possible celebrity killer. Or something.
– The Lazy “I” Ranch sign is alright (“Formerly Wandering “I” Nudist Colony.”)
– Andy Serkis is wasted with a stupid Gollum joke. Why even bother getting these guest stars if you’re not going to make good use of them?
– Marge is with Homer and Bart and the native Americans in one scene, then in the next when Lisa and Luke are riding off somewhere far away, she’s hiding behind a cactus with her arms outstretched. What?
– The only laugh I got from this episode came from good ol’ JTT. After diverting Lisa’s eyes away from a bucket of cow tongues and Cookie about to shoot a chicken tied to a stump, he directs her gaze to the clouds. There’s a cloud shaped like a cute little lamb… who then gets its head cut off by a cloud axe. “Aw, dammit!” He gave the exclamation a real intensity, and in that accent to boot.
– Maggie dances to Britney Spears in a Spears-type baby outfit for some Godforsaken reason, but what the fuck’s that radio doing there? Didn’t they come to the dude ranch because it was cut off from the media where they could hear Homer’s song? Also, the first joke we get at the dude ranch is the Rich Texan telling Comic Book Guy he could get Internet connection there. Why have the setup if you don’t even give a shit about it?
– Why did they bother with the weird bit with showing Clara’s name all over her necklace, her ring, her saddle… she could have just introduced herself, instead of appearing like some crazy person with her name inscribed on everything she owns.
– The action sequence of saving Clara is really bizarre. The music keeps building and gets more intense when nothing is happening. Bart gets the beavers to cut the tree down, and that’s basically it, since Clara can easily walk over it to safety, which she does quickly. But the music is so present you think something else is going to happen… then it doesn’t. What a bunch of fucking shit.
– Lisa mourns over Luke, calling him her “first crush” (“All it did was make me do terrible things, and then break my heart.” “Lisa, welcome to love.”) The ending feels so cynical, then attempts to backpedal, but fails. I guess we’ve forgotten all about Mr. Bergstrom, Nelson, even her obsession with that punk kid from the library made more sense and was more entertaining than this fucking episode. All of these were back from when Lisa was a real character, and these types of stories made sense. Now we get an episode where Homer drives off with his car lifting on its back wheels like a horse.

(originally aired April 13, 2003)
This is an astounding episode, in that it got the closest to physically injuring me, as my brain was violently throbbing trying to process what was going on and what the intention of the episode was. My best guess is it was all meant to be a big gimmick, where they’ll have openly gay characters and have an animated gay kiss so they can appear progressive, but meanwhile rely on lazy stereotypes and gay jokes that have been told a thousand times over. But the fumbling of the controversial content isn’t even the worst part of this episode. Here we apparently see the worst falling out Homer and Marge have ever had, to the point where it seems they’ll never get back together. Except it’s over the most asinine reason: Homer discovers a note Marge wrote way back in their younger days of how she didn’t think the two could stay together. Why is this? Well she wrote it after a romantic date wherein Homer got blasted and played Asteroids all night, forced Marge to force-feed him nachos, and ends up getting carted to the hospital. Then a few days later she found out she was pregnant with Bart, leaving Homer to believe that that’s the only reason she stayed with him.

Throughout the episode, Homer acts like an irrational maniac. Some of the interplay between him and Marge is so bizarre I can’t even make sense of it (“It’s not always going to be perfect, we’ve been married for ten years!” “Oh, I didn’t realize you’ve been counting down the years! Is it that horrible living with me?” “Well, this morning isn’t a barrel of laughs!” “It is to me!”) The problem here is that Homer couldn’t be more in the wrong: Marge’s note came about from his rampant and dangerous alcoholism, which he still exhibits. Hell, the episode begins referencing her attempt at an intervention, followed by him chuckling about it while downing down a cold one. It’s all based on Homer’s narrow-minded childish perception of Marge’s note that he thinks that she never loved him, and that’s what makes him pack his bags and leave. After we milk some easy jokes about sad single men from Kirk Van Houten, Homer ends up moving in with two gay men, Grady and Julio, the former voiced by gay comic Scott Thompson, the latter by Hank Azaria, basically reprising his role from The Birdcage.

So Grady and Julio are gay. Gay gay gay gay gay. The village they live in is gay, and Homer begins to adapt the gay, by getting manicures, a Lhasa Apso dog, and dancing shirtless like a wild man at a dance club, despite the fact that he’s a lazy slob. Any semblance of his subdued homophobia from “Homer’s Phobia” is dismissed immediately so we can move the plot forward. Now Homer is one hundred percent accepting of gays everywhere! This episode could care less about actually writing material about homosexuals though, as its main focus is recycling the same old jokes (people in theater are gay!) and making up gag names for storefronts (Armistead Mopeds, Victor/Victoria’s). Then we have our finale where Grady kisses Homer on the lips, despite the fact that there’s been no build-up of him finding Homer attractive, or even why he would. Also it just feels so offensive, like Homer’s straight, but Grady can make him gay, because gay men want to fuck all men, regardless of sexual preference. Post-kiss, Homer jumps ship and we never see these two characters again.

Even though Homer is completely in the wrong, Marge is forced to do all the heavy lifting in repairing their relationship, so with the help of “Weird Al” Yankovic, she gets Homer to agree to go on a date with her. So what does Homer do before the big night? Get wasted. Yep. And Grady and Julio give him the drinks, then later remind him that he’s already late for the date. So did Grady sabotage the date so he could get Homer for himself? Maybe I’m thinking too much into this but it just feels so wrong. Homer shows up to dinner drunk and Marge leaves understandably upset. In this entire episode, I don’t feel one ounce of sympathy for Homer. The same shit he pulled on Marge in the past, he’s pulling on her now, with no regard or remorse until it’s way too fucking late. But Hibbert pulls a video tape out of fucking nowhere of young Marge tending to young Homer’s bedside that fateful night, and the two have a heartfelt reconciliation, even though Homer has been a childish dick to her the entire episode. This episode is staggeringly wrong on so many levels, it might be one of the series’ worst. And it won the Emmy. Against Futurama‘s “Jurassic Bark.” Let that sink in.

Tidbits and Quotes
– The puzzle piece opening is pretty dull. I kind of like sleep-deprived Homer mashing Lenny’s face into the puzzle though. Upon completion, Flanders looks over and says, “It looks like you’re missing a piece.” Homer retorts, “Looks like you’re missing a wife!” The most tasteless line ever used in the series ever. I’m basically disgusted by Homer right from the very start.
– The flashbacks with young Homer and Marge feel so sour. I imagine there were rough times for these two, but seeing Homer be so insensitive to the girl he was head-over-heels for in “The Way We Was” just feels so not right. Plus this really doesn’t help us feel any sympathy for Homer whatsoever. Marge had every right to write that letter.
– All of Homer and Marge’s arguments consist of Homer being a stubborn asshole, and Marge proceeding to bizarrely fan the flames (“So you mean our whole marriage you’ve just been resenting me behind my back!” “A little bit, yeah.”) But as negative as Marge gets, it’s mostly in response towards Homer’s accusations, who cuts even deeper than her, combined with the fact that he has no leg to stand on with his arguments. But in the end, it’s Marge who has to make things right, as encouraged by her own children. There’s an unbelievable exchange between Lisa and Marge that feels so, so, so wrong (“Mom, I know Dad cares about you, but his feelings are really hurt. Why don’t you just say you’re sorry?” “Lisa, marriage is a beautiful thing, but it’s also a constant battle for moral superiority, so I can’t apologize.”) If there’s a piece of dialogue that is more anti-Marge than that, then I’d like to hear it. Lisa talks to her mother like her father is a child, which he basically is. Also all of this family strife with the kids wanting their dad back and trying to mend fences, this serious storyline completely clashes with the episode’s tidal wave of terrible gay jokes. It’s like a tsunami of bullshit.
– Subtlety is long gone from the series at our new look at Bachelor Arms, the pathetic apartment complex populated by sad, single men that Kirk Van Houten lives at. We get an “X Days Without a Suicide” sign, then a gunshot, then the counter resets to zero. All in good taste.
– Homer arrives to the gay side of town, and who should he run into but… Smithers! Of course! I really think that sometimes the current-day writers really don’t understand some of these characters, and Smithers is definitely one of them. Smithers is not just a gay guy, he loves Mr. Burns. He’s an office sycophant, dedicated to his job and his boss, but to the utmost degree, that he is devoted to Burns and would do absolutely anything and everything for him, to the point that he is also sexually attracted to him. That’s the joke. But now, the only joke is that Smithers is gay. Super gay. He likes men, not women. He wants to fuck men. Do you get it yet? Should we milk it further?
– Speaking of which, they originally wanted Harvey Fierstein to return as Karl from season 2’s “Simpson and Delilah” in this episode, which he turned down upon reading the script. You can read the whole quote here, but it basically boils down to he felt that it was just a bunch of easy gay jokes we’ve heard a million times without that clever spin or twist that made it truly worth of The Simpsons. And you know what, he’s right on the fucking money.
– I love “Weird Al” a lot, and I’m really bummed he’s stuck in this shit episode. He works a lot better in his second appearance in the equally controversial “That 90’s Show,” in a flashback where he still sports his glasses and mustache 80s look. Plus it also gave us the great line, “He who is tired of ‘Weird Al’ is tired with life.” But he’s the only thing in the entire episode I like, he does a great performance with both his songs (“‘Weird Al’ had fun on this show / even if it was just a brief cameo!”)

(originally aired March 30, 2003)
Lisa may be incredibly intelligent and mindful of the world, but she’s still just a little girl. That’s what makes her interesting; in combining the bright and the childish, we’ve gotten great shows like “Lisa vs. Malibu Stacey,” “Lisa the Greek” and “Lisa’s Rival.” Episodes about everyone’s favorite starfish-haired girl don’t have to be boring… but this one certainly is. At this point Lisa is slowly losing her adorable child-like innocence, and is being written like a teenage brainiac, and others treat her as such. The episode opens with a visit from acclaimed documentarian Declan Desmond, who intends to shoot his next film about the dullard children of Springfield Elementary. Desmond is voiced by Eric Idle, and his character has reappeared once or twice in the future. He does an alright job, but there’s nothing really memorable about him. Lisa of course is put up front and center by Skinner as an exemplary student, but Desmond proceeds to tear her down for not having picked a specific topic of interest (“Pick a path and follow it, or you’ll just grow up, slog your way through Mt. Holyoke, and squeeze out babies.”) You realize you’re talking to an eight-year-old, right? I know Desmond is supposed to an asshole, but who does that?

Lisa eventually settles on astronomy as her study of choice, but quickly finds the skies of Springfield are unreadable due to excessive light pollution. She goes about town with a petition for a town-wide dimming of the lights. Boy, this is shaping up to be an exciting episode, isn’t it? Quimby is quick to comply, shutting the town’s power down at night. This leads to a widespread spread of hood ornament thefts from the fancy cars of Springfield. Oh yeah, I guess I should mention the subplot of Bart wanting to be cool by stealing a hood ornament. Except there’s nothing to say other than it kills time and none of it is funny. So even though this is the only negative side of the town black-out that we see, and we don’t necessarily see it as negative since it ties into the other story, for some reason the town wants the lights on again. Quimby does so, and for some reason cranks them up so high that it makes nighttime as bright as day. I’m not exactly clear why he does this, or why everyone seems to be fine with it. I just don’t know.

A week passes and the Simpsons are a sleep-deprived wreck, since they’re basically living in endless daylight. Or mainly just Homer and Marge, everyone else seems to be fine with it. Why is everyone okay with it being piercingly bright out at 3am? Why is this happening? So Lisa and Bart team up to get the lights back off. For some reason, electrical controls for the whole town were hidden in a panel out front at Town Hall, that’s where Quimby threw the switch. So they’ll go there, yeah? No, they trick a sleep deprived Homer to get them inside the power plant, then they overload the power grid and destroy every bulb in the entire town. Then an angry mob shows up out of nowhere out for Bart and Lisa’s blood. Where did they come from, and once again, why were they fine with it being daylight 24/7? But in the end, Lisa distracts them with a big meteor shower, which is why she wanted the lights off in the first place, and everyone is placated. I’ve got nothing on this episode, it’s the most boring I’ve seen thus far. I thought “C.E. D’oh” was unmemorable, but this one just takes the cake. And it sucks because Lisa will be forever pinned as this boring bookworm character, when she was always so much more than that. But I guess I should prepare myself for some more dull Lisa episodes down the pipe. Sigh.

Tidbits and Quotes
– It’s stupid, but I do like the footage of Krusty stapling together half-eaten Krusty Burgers from Desmond’s documentary.
– I’m not quite sure how the fake library curtain trick worked, as there are two curtains on an angle next to one another. Surely Desmond can see the sharp edge between them and figure it out. But now I’m just splitting hairs, but honestly, I don’t have much to comment on this episode, so I don’t give a crap.
– “Hysterical “joke where Flanders looks to the heavens and is shocked to see the Jewish star in the sky. Horror of horrors! He rubs his eyes and sees a cross instead and all is well. It’s funny because Flanders is a wacko Christian, one of his only remaining character traits. Also Lenny and Carl are still gay.
– So Bart wants to steal a hood ornament, and sets his sights on the one belonging to Fat Tony. How does he get it? With a ruse straight out of a bad Saturday morning cartoon. He and Milhouse stand out front of Luigi’s with fake mustaches, making like they’re a valet, and Fat Tony falls for it. The guy’s a fucking mobster, you think he’s that stupid? And then they comment on it later (“You mean that ten-year-old with a mustache was a phony?”), which of course they think excuses it… but it kind of doesn’t.
– The third act begins with a man being pulled out of Moe’s on a stretcher, presumably dead, and Moe laughing about it (“No one’s ever won Moe’s ‘drink-a-bottle-of-gin’ challenge, and no one ever will!”) He then places a photo of said dead patron on the wall with some other corpses. Rather grim, don’t you think?
– We end seeing Desmond’s documentary, which ultimately isn’t funny. We just see Milhouse injure himself playing baseball repeatedly.

(originally aired March 16, 2003)
Here’s an episode I barely remembered anything about, and after watching it, I understand why. It’s so aimless, with characters saying and doing things that don’t make sense, and the plot shifts so much, I have no idea exactly what the show is supposed to be about. We begin with Homer making a big to-do about Valentine’s Day, only to find Marge is far too tired to do the deed with him (perhaps it was the relaxing bath and all the liquor he pumped her up with). From this, for some reason, we get that Homer doesn’t think his wife finds him sexually attractive anymore, so he takes a stripping class at the learning annex taught by Dr. Hibbert. Confused yet? Don’t worry, a minute later, he ends up in a class about becoming successful, which is one of the only good things in the episode. The instructor is a loud, in-your-face self-made man hawking his seemingly helpful wares (“Friends, there’s a force that runs through the universe. We used to call that force God. We now call it… ‘Megatronics: The 48 Tips to Corporate Success’!”)

Homer vows to live more efficiently and follow the book’s code, for reasons that escape me. But let’s just say he wants to better his life, I can see him putting a modicum of effort into this. He performs a safety report, something as safety inspector he hasn’t done in years, and presents it to Mr. Burns, who coldly and predictably boots him from his office. Later, Homer sadly muses about how Burns is so ruthless and has no respect for him. No shit? You’ve worked for this man over a decade, this is something you’d think you’d have grown a callous over. So now the story is about getting revenge on Burns, but also tying into his get-up-and-go attitude, when Homer discovers that for ass-covering purposes, the power plant is actually legally owned by a canary in Burns’s office. Homer frees the canary, gets Burns to think there are nuclear inspectors afoot, so Burns makes him the new plant head as a cover. Homer then fires Burns, taking over the plant for himself. We’ll get to all that in a sec, but I’ll say that I like Burns being impressed before he gets angry (“So, the caterpillar has emerged from its cocoon, as a shark with a gun for a mouth. I only have one thing to say to that: bravo.”) Then Homer throws the old man off the balcony. Hrm.

I can buy Homer wanting to improve his station at work, but falling his way into CEO and then staying there? Act three switches gears once more to be about Homer becoming a workaholic and not spending enough time with his family. Shots of Homer sitting at his desk mulling over papers just does not compute. What is he doing? Does he even know? It would make more sense if this act had Homer knowing he’s way over his head and working on a scheme to get Burns back in charge, realizing he bit off more than he could chew and wanting to go back to his lazy ways. Instead we wrap things up with more sad Burns where the miser attempts to seal Homer into his mausoleum, but over an entire night only gets four lines of bricks completed. At one point in this series Burns actually presented a threat to the Simpsons with his power and resources. Now he’s just a doddering old fool whom they pity, as Homer just walks away and puts a blanket on the old man . Then everyone celebrates with a “Homer’s 305th Everything is Back to Normal BBQ,” which, like the counter in “Barting Over,” bothers me that this is the encapsulate of the series. Tune in next week on The Simpsons as that wacky Homer gets in another craaaaaazzzyyy scheme! TV off.

Tidbits and Quotes
– The “Strip For Your Wife” class is filled with a lot of familiar faces like Legs, Louie, Superintendent Chalmers, Lou, Arnie Pye, Martin’s dad, one of the barflies… almost too many familiar faces. Also there is Mr. Largo, which seems to be an error, because he’s gay, right? I’m sure one of the recent episodes has made this “canon.”
– “Successmanship 101” has most of the episode’s only good lines, from the instructor (“You see that car out there? That’s a Bentley Mark 12. They gave one to me, one to Steven Spielberg, then they shot the guy who made it.”)
– Marge’s “Woopdee-doo!” bit is really bizarre. I had the same awkward reaction as Bart and Lisa. Her callous reaction to Homer drowning his sorrows every night has this really sad undercurrent that the episode is not prepared to, or frankly cares to address.
– “Wait’ll Burns steps on this flaming bag of… Lisa’s college fund?!” Yep, that’s dumb Homer!
– Not sure why they made it Burns dumping toxic waste under Lego Land when they could have made it Blocko Land.
– The bit with Flanders sitting at the window staring in the Simpson bedroom with his flowing pipe is so creepy… is that a reference to something?
– “Check and mate! Now king me!” is a pretty good line I use often.
– As the super-intelligent know-it-all as she is, Lisa alerts her father to the plant’s earnings report as she goes over the books. She’s eight fucking years old.
– Man, I really don’t have a lot to put here. Really, this episode’s biggest fault is that it’s completely innocuous and disposable, two words that I really wish I wouldn’t have to apply to a Simpsons episode.