(originally aired January 11, 1998)
A pretty big thing about this season has been the shift in Homer’s characterization. I don’t mean to belabor this point, but he’s been an integral character in pretty much every episode so far, and each one features him pushed to a new limit of either stupidity, recklessness or inconsideration. There have been plenty of moments in the past when his exaggerated antics have garnered big laughs, but the problem is when it runs through almost every scene in every episode. This show features a lot of childish and braindead Homer, and while some of it works, a fair share of it doesn’t. The Simpsons spends an evening at the carnival, where Bart ends up wrecking the star attraction: Hitler’s staff car. The owner demands Bart work for him to pay off the damages, and for some reason, Homer wants to do it too. He begs and pleads him like a child, to be specific. Totally makes sense. It just seemed like the writers needed to have Homer there for the plot, so it just happened. We get no scene of Marge hearing about this, or why he’s not at the plant, it just happens. That’s a problem that would emerge with later seasons, stuff would just happen.

Homer and Bart end up befriending a fellow father-son carny team: Cooder and his boy Spud. Jim Varney gives a fine performance as the former, but on the whole, there’s nothing too memorable about these characters. They previously scammed the two with their ring toss game, now they hand the reigns of their booth to them while they attend their AA meeting. Another concept featured here that I don’t really care for: Homer and Bart as a team. The two have always generally been adversarial, and the times when they work together typically have some kind of meaning or specific reason. Here, they’re like an odd comedy duo, where Bart’s the straight man and Homer’s the dummy. It works for a line or two (I like Cooder’s quick decision to give Bart the money box rather than Homer, with Bart responding, “Good call,”) but it’s just a strange dynamic. The attempted bribe scene with Wiggum is also conflicting. I think it’s well timed and kind of amusing, but I kind of felt it was too much. Homer can’t possibly have any functioning brain cells at that point.

With the ring toss booth repossessed by the police, Cooder and Spud are homeless, leaving Homer “no” choice but to let them stay with him. To repay them for their kindness, the carnies give the Simpsons ticket to a glass bottom boat ride, but when the family returns, they find Cooder and Spud have changed the locks and boarded up the windows. I guess this whole episode is about the art of the swindle, going from a cheap carnival game to a much larger scale, and it pays off in the end with Homer’s ring toss challenge for the deed to the house. But around that, there just seems to be a lot of dead air. There’s the yard work opening that has no bearing to the actual plot (we’d see plenty of that later on), and the carnival set piece only really has a few jokes, though it carries on for the first two acts. There were a few laughs along the way, and I do like the ending, but I’m not really a big fan of this one, carny code be damned.

Tidbits and Quotes
– Bart and Lisa’s petulant “Ding ding ding!” followed by Homer dashing through the room thinking it’s the ice cream man really made me laugh. In that scene and specific context, I believe Lisa’s laziness, and I’m fine with Homer acting like a child. A little goes a long way.
– I like how Marge getting the upper hand when Bart and Lisa need money is immediately undercut by Homer dashing to the rescue with his exploding wallet, and them all dinging as they run out. But then we get to the carnival and Marge is being pushed around again. I kind of felt she should have stayed home, she’d have no interest in a carnival anyway.
– The Tooth Chipper is great, but I kind of felt it went on too long. You get the joke after one shot, then they have it twice and we hear Homer on it.
– I like Homer coming to tears over his novelty comb, and the sight of him later combing his two hairs with it is pretty funny.
– The morning montage with the classical music is pretty great, with the blossoming burger wrapper, shifting the lettering on the signs, and spraying the rats off the hot dog warmer.
– Bart’s first mark for the ring toss game is Skinner and his mother (“All right, Simpson. Be honest with me. Is it actually possible to win this game?” “If I like it, it is.” “Hot dog! Let’s go.”) Agnes berates Skinner the entire time he’s trying to win a lamp for her, and with his last few rings, takes aim at a large knife instead. Seems like almost too dark of a joke, but I like it.
– I love Marge’s hyper-aware shudder after Homer agrees to let Cooder and Spud stay with them. Somehow, she knows something is amiss…
– The glass bottom boat ride starts out strong, then ends weak. We see the mysteries of Springfield’s briny deep: shopping carts, nuclear waste, a barrel of Li’l Lisa Slurry, and an old glass bottom boat (I love how the tour guide cavalierly mentions how “eight-eight souls” were lost on it). Great stuff. Then we end with Homer and Bart being brats taunting a shark through the glass. Not only is it the two acting as partners in crime again, but it’s such an obvious gag. And not funny.
– Cooder in Homer’s clothes is kind of amusing (“Look at me! I’m a millionaire!”) as is he and Spud using a flaming barrel for heat instead of a fire place, with photo albums for kindling (“‘Precious Moments’ or ‘Treasured Memories’?” “Quit your yappin’! I’m freezing!”)
– I love the fish eye lens animation of Homer’s proposal to Cooder through the peephole. It’s visually interesting, and kind of puts you in Cooder’s head, thinking about whether you would accept Homer’s deal. I really do like this ending, where the tension just builds and builds, then the Simpsons just run into the house. It’s a pretty good ruse, at least Cooder is impressed (“Well, there’s no shame in being beaten by the best.” “But, he didn’t seem…” “We were beaten by the best, boy.”) I buy that Homer was clever enough to think of that, but this is also the same episode where his brain was shut off during the bribe scene, so questionable, I guess.

(originally aired December 21, 1997)
Hey, another Christmas episode! We sure have come a long way since “Simpsons Roasting on an Open Fire,” and this episode, which apes a few elements from the previous two Xmas shows, is sure indicative of that. With its ridiculous premise and overt pushing of manufactured drama, it’s a bizarre episode with not a lot present to redeem it. Getting up early to sneak a peek at his gifts, Bart inadvertently burns down the Christmas tree, presents and all. He covers up the evidence and, to hide the truth from the family, makes up a cockamamie story involving witnessing a burglar robbing the house blind. When news of this spreads, the people of Springfield open their hearts and wallets to the Simpsons, which makes Bart even more remorseful. It isn’t long before his lie is exposed to the family, and later to everyone else, making them all town-wide pariahs. But in the end, the citizens of Springfield make things right, by stealing every item in the Simpson house to repay their debt.

Absurdities are abundant from the get-go, as the broken car heater spews snow into the car for some reason and Jerkass Homer selfishly bamboozles shoppers out of their gifts (at least he shoved some money in the cash register, but it doesn’t absolve that apparently he’s a thief now.) There are some parts of the Simpson family Christmas that are actually kind of nice though, like Marge’s two different kinds of Xmas cookies, and the extra-stretchy plastic tree. But the most telling moment is Homer setting up the outdoor decorations, like he did way back in the very first episode. Contrast, if you will: in “Open Fire,” Homer takes a minor spill off the roof (to adorable applause from his children), plugs in the lights, and only one or two works. This is then contrasted by Ned Flanders’s incredibly elaborate and garish display. In this episode, we see plastic reindeer plummet from the roof, followed by Homer, then followed more scaffolding in a loud, violent mess. Bart and Lisa laugh derisively. What was once a quieter, more subtle moment is now more bombastic and obvious, and it’s just not as funny. I’m not saying that no comedy should be overt, some of the best bits on the show have been over-the-top, but it’s interesting to see the two styles of joke telling over nine years and how much has changed. Though we did get the word “craptacular” out of it. Silver linings, folks.

Speaking of jokes, there aren’t many to be had here. Act two is dominated by Bart’s ever-increasing guilt as the town’s gratitude gets ramped up more and more. I guess just how pushed to the extreme it is, like the orphans giving Bart their only dollar, should be funny, but Bart’s tremendous remorse kind of dampens it. You can critique “Marge Be Not Proud” as insufferable due to Bart feeling bad for most of the episode, but at least in that storyline, it’s for a reason that’s relatable and logical. Everyone’s disappointed their parents, but no one’s sold a bullshit story of this magnitude. In the end, the Simpsons get theirs, but it’s really such a strange end. The townspeople are stealing picture frames, silverware, medicine, stuff that really won’t sell for much. So is it just vindictive nature that they’re doing this? Apu stealing the family pets? Ned participating in all of this? It’s an incredibly sour end, and not just because it’s a Christmas show. For all the ridiculous stuff in this episode, there was just a weird emptiness to it, compared to the richness of something like “Open Fire,” or even “Marge Be Not Proud.”

Tidbits and Quotes
– Homer parking across three handicap parking spaces led Marge to arrest him. Here, she just murmurs and goes along for the ride with her craaaaaazzzy husband.
– A minor point, but it seems here that Bart believes in Santa Claus. Remember the great line in the first Christmas show? (“There’s only one fat guy who brings presents and his name ain’t Santa.”)
– Bart’s dream lasts so long and is relatively joke free. I guess except for the firemen wildly flailing their hoses, which seemed surprisingly graphic to me. But in all, Homer’s toilet fantasy in “The City of New York vs. Homer Simpson” was shorter, funnier and more efficient.
– I did kind of like a panic stricken Bart disposing of the evidence (“Snow covers everything. Pure, white snow…”)
– I like Lou’s Christmas tie. A little detail, but it’s not like I have much to quote here.
– Kent Brockman is pretty good in this one with his news reports about the robbery. I like him goading Marge for a quote on how she feels, then just making one up for her on the spot (“So when you realized Christmas was ruined, how did you feel?” “How do you think I felt?” “Absolutely devastated? … ‘absolutely devastated’: the words of a heartbroken mother.”)
– I like this exchange between Sideshow Mel and Apu (“You only live once!” “Hey, speak for yourself.”)
– The time frame of this episode is a little odd too. It seems to happen over the course of a few days, but it must be a bit longer since we see Lisa back at school. But then there’s still Christmas shit up everywhere.
– To try and raise the money to pay back the town, Marge goes on Jeopardy!… and loses a few thousand dollars. Besides the fact that apparently the family just drove to California and that this is another harbinger for five-second celebrity cameos, I like Alex Trebek in this and how ruthless he is (“I asked you before the game if you knew the rules and you said you did.”) After chasing the family out, I love his smirk and twinge of his mustache (and one of his goons gruffly commenting, “She ain’t gettin’ the home version.”)

(originally aired December 7, 1997)
I think Marge is an incredibly interesting character, but she seems like one of the hardest to center an episode around. Wanting some excitement out of her life, she takes a job at Red Blazer Realty, but finds that her frank honesty is getting in the way of the little white lies needed to make a sale. I’ll circle back to this main story later, because I have to address two major points first. Let’s get the dumb subplot out of the way first: Homer, sitting comfortably in jerkass mode, buys Snake’s fancy hot rod at a police auction, drives around like a maniac and abandons his wife on the sidewalk. Always keep your lead likable, right? Snake busts out of prison and attempts to reclaim his beloved vehicle, ultimately resulting in an all-out fist fight between the two while the car remains in motion. Their fight lasts sooooo long, with no real jokes along the way, and it’s just so tedious. I do like Snake’s great affection for his baby, but all the Homer stuff is just aggravating. It’s just amazing how low he’s sunk in just a few short episodes.

Marge works under Lionel Hutz, in pretty much his final appearance. Surprisingly, he’s in a weird authoritative mode, not the pathetic shyster we normally see him as. At first it was a little strange, but I kind of think it’s fitting as his swan song. He actually has a job he’s somewhat competent at (“The law business is a little slow, and since most of my clients wind up losing their houses, this was a natural move for me.”) His smarmy persona fits perfectly with his new practice (the best scene is his terminology for questionable homes: “dilapidated” is “rustic,” and a house in flames is just a motivated seller.) Phil Hartman is fantastic as always, every line of his is hilarious. We only have one or two Troy McClure bits left, but this is it for Hutz. He will be missed. Oddly enough Hutz’s last show is his pseudo-replacement Gil’s first. Based off of Jack Lemmon’s character from Glengarry Glenn Ross, Gil basically stepped in as the Simpson family’s incompetent lawyer. He’s definitely a horse of a different color, and has sort of worn out his welcome a bit over the years, but I think he’s a strong character, and I can think of plenty of great Gil moments over the next few seasons (“I brought this wall from home!”)

Okay, so back to the main story. The conflict ends up being Marge selling Ned Flanders a beautiful spacious mansion, while omitting the minor detail that an infamous multiple homicide occurred in it. The drama is so heavy-handed here, with tense music and voices in Marge’s head before she forgoes mentioning it to Ned before he signs the check, then all of the dumb fake-outs… Like why would Marge think they would be in danger? I’m all for idiotic fake-outs, but the one here takes the cake: Marge finds the Flanders family lying on the floor covered in blood, but it turns out they were painting Todd’s room red and they just happened to pass out in the middle of the foyer. Totally makes sense. Marge tells them the truth, but discovering the house’s history only makes Ned more pleased. Then Homer and Snake, followed by Wiggum, smash their cars into the mansion and it collapses. Totally realistic, huh? Of course I’m not going to be a stickler for realism in all cases, but it’s just such a lame and dumb ending. This episode has a few good points, most of which being the always incredible Phil Hartman, but I feel like this is the first show of the season I can truly place in the ‘dud’ pile.

Tidbits and Quotes
– Homer eats popcorn just like I do, with a lizard tongue. I don’t choke quite as often as he does though.
– There’s a few funny bits at the police auction (“These prestigious wrought-iron security gates are bullet-proof, bomb-proof, and battering-ram resistant.” “Then what happened to Johnny D?” “He forgot to lock ’em.”)
– We get a pretty classic and quotable Homer line out of the gate: “Trying is the first step towards failure.”
– Cookie Kwan makes her first appearance in this show. She oddly became a somewhat regular character, not that she has much of a personality, but I think the writers were just glad they came up with a new female character, considering the show has about… six.
– I love the Lumber King billboard and its hypnotic moving buttocks (“Lumber… we need lumber…”)
– Dang, Sideshow Mel’s got a hot wife, with hair to match his. His scene is so damn ridiculous. The writers needed scenes of Marge talking people down sales, so logically, a house with a bowling alley and someone who doesn’t care for bowling. Lots of homes have bowling alleys, right? But I’ll take any excuse to get more lines out of Mel, I love him so much.
– Homer egging Skinner on to drag race after he admits his high school sweetheart was killed in a similar fashion? Stay classy.
– I love Snake breaking the honor system (“NO ESCAPING PLEASE” on the unlocked prison gate) and his loud shout out to a driving off Homer (“She needs premium, dude! Premium! Duuuuude!!“)
– Classic bit with Hutz’s two versions of “the truth,” and his glib attitude toward Marge (“You’d better sell something, because cubicles are for closers, Marge. Anybody that doesn’t sell a house their first week gets fired. I probably should have mentioned that earlier.”)
– Kirk getting his arm sliced off feels like a pivotal moment, when the writers figured they could do ridiculous (and violent) cartoony jokes like that and get away with it. Bending the reality of the world you’ve established is really dangerous: if it works, it’s amazing, but if it doesn’t… well, not so good. I don’t care for the joke, or similar ones down the pipeline.
– I like Homer’s cold attitude toward Ned leaving, and his comment moments after they leave (“That old Flanders place gives me the creeps!”)
– Great small bit with Wiggum calling in a 318: waking a police officer.
– The end at the unemployment office with George Bush, and the old TV-style freeze frame and music… it’s kind of weird. A pretty bizarre ending, and not in a good way.

(originally aired November 23, 1997)
I gotta tell you, we’re barely into season 9 and I’m already kind of bumming about the immediate road ahead. It’s just that there’s so much good about these episodes but for some reason or another, it doesn’t work as a whole. It makes me marvel at the amazingness of the earlier seasons more, that now we see if a few elements are removed or dampened, the show becomes that less memorable. Lisa arranges an archeological dig on the site of a future mall to make sure no important artifacts are being paved over and makes a shocking discovery: a human skeleton with wings. The townspeople immediately think it must be an angel, a notion that Lisa scoffs at. Homer absconds with the discovery, keeping it in his garage and charging admission to see it, but soon it disappears. It turns up elsewhere in Springfield with a foreboding inscription: “The End Will Come at Sundown.” Everyone save Lisa awaits the apocalypse, but ultimately the angel is revealed to be a prop in a cheap publicity stunt for the newly opened mall. But with 20% off everything, including rat spray, the people of Springfield don’t seem to mind.

Premise-wise, this episode is a slam dunk. Heartless corporate entities exploiting a poor gullible populous and their faith to make a few bucks selling loofahs and cheap vases? Perfect. The ending is the best part of the whole show (“Prepare for the end! The end of high prices!”) With the suspenseful tone and dramatic music through the entire episode, it’s just such a stupid but brilliant reveal that almost makes up for everything else. Almost. The running theme before the ending is basically science vs. religion, as blatantly stated in the third act. As such, we get fair play by Flanders and Lovejoy, who both are very staunch in their beliefs and frankly kind of act like jerks to Lisa. Once more, she’s the town pariah, the bearer of bad news, but I felt it should have come full circle in the end. Where are their reactions at the reveal that they were duped? With all that build-up, you’d think there would be something, but no, the two are running off with the rest of them to lap up sweet, sweet commercialism. Just seemed like kind of a let-down.

There’s also an attempt for a more personal conflict within the story, where Marge puts her faith into the angel, only to be met with confusion and scorn by her daughter. I get what they’re going for, but the result really rubbed me the wrong way. Marge tells Lisa that if she can’t make a leap of faith, she feels sorry for her. Really? To an eight-year-old? Marge has never come anything close to a negative thing to say, especially that unprompted. Meanwhile, Lisa, staunch on her beliefs, acts quite horribly to her mother (I always cringe when she rebuts, “Don’t feel sorry for me, mom. I feel sorry for you.”) But their reconciliation at the end makes up for it, right? I guess a little bit (although because I’m a big wuss, I do like, “Any time, my angel.”) So while the storytelling and some of the characterization sits on shaky ground, there’s some parts of the episode that work. We get to see Lionel Hutz again after a long absence, I like the dumbness of the police’s sting operation at the beginning, and while a completely random-ass guest star, I enjoyed how they made Stephen Jay Gould a jerk for no discernible reason. All and all, I love the idea of this episode a lot more than its execution, but it still ain’t bad.

Tidbits and Quotes
– Homer’s in complete idiot mode in falling for the police sting: responding to Marge’s valid suspicions about it (“You’re the most paranoid family I’ve ever been affiliated with,”) requesting a yellow boat “with extra motors,” screaming about his boating arm upon being cuffed, and after all that, still demanding he get his boat. Cut to him bitterly driving home. When asked where the boat is, he claims the mast had termites.
– I guess the mall planners must have had the angel skeleton already made for the building, but it’s very impressive that they came up with the ruse of burying it presumably on the spot like that. Clever bastards.
– Great bit where Skinner announces the archeological dig to be a simultaneous reward and punishment depending on the student. I also like Bart shoveling mounds of dirt down the shorts of a sleeping Martin. Crude, but hilarious.
– Moe always seems to be prominent in crowd scenes, as he’s the perfect lowbrow dope to sway the mood of the crowd. When Lisa protests his loud claims about the angel, he gives an articulate response (“Well if you’re so sure what it ain’t, how about telling us what it am?”)
– Lionel Hutz’s appearance is brief, but he gets in a classic line (“It’s a thorny legal issue alright, I’ll need to refer to the case of ‘Finders vs. Keepers.'”)
– Homer’s safe deposit closet is full of relics from older episodes. Curiously, the Dancin’ Homer outfit is hanging on the wall. Guess he must have dug it up. Also, we get another reference to Billy Beer (“We elected the wrong Carter.”) I also like Bart’s response to Homer’s plan of hoarding the angel to wait for it to increase in value (“It’s probably a million years old dad, I think it’s as valuable as it’s going to get.”)
– I lve Homer’s horrible decorative arrangement of the angel, with Christmas lights and fuzzy dice, and his recorded anthem (“Here’s the angel, see the angel, it’s my angel, no one else’s, next to the rakes!”)
– Lisa on Smartline is a pretty good scene (“Miss Simpson, how can you maintain your skepticism despite the fact that this thing really, really looks like an angel?” “I just think it’s a fantasy, if you believe in angels, then why not unicorns, sea-monsters and leprechauns?” “That’s a bunch of baloney, Lisa, everyone knows that leprechauns are extinct!”)
– There’s a Ned line that I love, but feels kind of forbearing (“Science is like a blabber mouth who ruins a movie by telling you how it ends. Well I say that there are some thing we don’t wanna know. Important things!”) It’s kind of like “Homer’s Enemy,” it works in the science vs. religion context of this episode, but I can’t help but be reminded of how Flanders would soon devolve into a super-staunch conservative Christian caricature, and that line fits him to a T.
– The last act is really so heavy-handed. Look! The angel on the hill! Look! There’s a message! Heavy dramatic music abound as all the characters look scared. At least we got the great ending, but it’s kind of a heft to get there. I like the quick bit in Vatican City though, with the Pope cavalierly reading the paper in a lawn chair (“Your holiness, there is word from America, they say an angel has foretold the apocalypse.” “Errmm… keep an eye on it.”)
– Having Smithers kiss Burns kind of pushed it too far. At that point they should have just stopped all Smithers gay jokes, because really, where could you go from there? Might as well show him banging a dude. Although I do like Burns’s questioning look when afterward Smithers admits the kiss was “merely a sign of my respect.”
– I keep praising the ending, but one thing to tear it down a bit. I get they had to hide it, but not only is there twine or rope holding the angel up, but it’s also on a giant aerial track that nobody ever saw? Come on.