Original airdate: April 24, 2022

The premise: The new fourth grade teacher causes Bart to act out in ways he can’t explain, triggered by a previous interaction he had with her. Meanwhile, Lisa directs a well-received documentary short about an octopus and its tragic end, however, she is actually keeping the creature in secret as a pet.

The reaction: I’ve talked about the awkward subject of replacing Mrs. Krabappel several times at this point. Nine years after Marcia Wallace’s passing, there’s been little movement in regards to creating a new permanent fixture in Bart’s class. Ned Flanders was christened the replacement a few years ago, but I think we’ve only seen him in that role maybe three times? If that? Considering he was married to Mrs. K in the end, you’d think that inheriting his deceased wife’s job and teaching his neighbor’s kid would have lent itself to some new or interesting story lines, but instead they just decided to do nothing with it. But hey, that’s fine, now they’re going to try again with an all-new character, Rayshelle Payton, voiced by Kerry Washington. Promotional articles about this episode have called this character “permanent,” so it seems this is the series finally being proactive in filling this hole in the cast. So who is Rayshelle? She’s an incredibly earnest and caring teacher who wants to help all her students do the best they can. Are you laughing yet? Her only “humorous” quirk is sometimes blurting out her unfiltered thoughts and stammering to backpedal them, like insulting her husband’s shitty musical abilities or directly calling Bart a problem child. Very funny stuff. So for her debut episode, she’s not giving that strong of an impression, but the story here is more on Bart’s reaction to her. When he first lays eyes on her, he gets a weird flashback to having seen her before, then proceeds to act absolutely bonkers in every scene with her going forward. It feels really awkward, with him getting incredibly anxious and losing himself, making strange noises and smacking his head onto a piece of paper drowning in glue. But then his behavior turn to jealousy, destroying Milhouse’s model project after Rayshelle compliments him. All the while, I’m just waiting for them to finally reveal where Bart knows her from, as they teased from the beginning. I hate whenever they do this stuff. Are they expecting the audience to be glued to their seats wondering what the reveal will be? So it turns out that while sneaking into a fancy beachside resort, Bart almost drowned in their pool and was saved by Rayshelle. Embarrassed by having to be rescued, he shouts at her (“Why did you do that?! I was fine! I’m an amazing swimmer!”) and runs off. As he recounts this story to Homer, Bart feels remorse (“I feel awful. I ruined her dress, I yelled at her… She doesn’t recognize me yet, but when she does, she’s gonna hate me.”) All this feels so wildly out-of-character for Bart, even with it obviously heading toward the added “reveal” that Bart has a crush on his new teacher, as when he sees her interacting with her husband, he gains Hulk strength and rips the water fountain out of the wall. We’ve seen Bart feel vulnerable, we’ve seen Bart in love, but this pathetic, sniveling display here feels so off to me. He hides his head in his shirt as he eventually confesses his crush (“Barf emoji,” he concludes). Rayshelle uses this as a teachable moment (“You know, a crush on a teacher just means you’re coming to love a new part of yourself that I’m bringing out in you.”) Bart found himself actually doing homework and liking it, so I guess this is part of him learning to be a good student! Based on this episode, it appears that Rayshelle’s role as Bart’s teacher is to help him teach lessons about life and grow as a person. This also seems to be the motivation reflected in quotes from Kerry Washington and writer Carolyn Omine in the aforementioned articles about this episode. So… this is a show that’s lasted for over three decades. I don’t expect the series to stay exactly the same for its entire run. In fact, the best long-running series are the ones that shake things up to make things feel fresh. But the very ethos of this show is that it was the anti-sitcom, filled with miserable characters in a world full of misfortune and indifference. Springfield Elementary acted as a scalding critique of education in America, staffed by teachers who hated kids and an administration who cared even less. You could definitely work in a teacher character who actually wants to do their job in a world like this. You can even have them form a kinship with Bart in some way, it’s definitely possible. Instead, everything just feels incredibly sanitized. In the again aforementioned articles, Omine compares Rayshelle’s character to Leslie Knope from Parks and Recreation, where the comedy comes from them being overly positive and super into their jobs. The humor from Parks also relied on characters like her grumpy polar opposite Ron Swanson and other weirdos butting up against Leslie, something we get none of here. Rayshelle is just the most caring and awesome teacher who’s gonna stick around and help all the kids with their problems! That ending scene with her and Bart is easily one of the most schmaltzy, cliche sitcom scenes this show has ever done. Again, I’m all for this show growing and changing in new ways. Even though I didn’t care for them, episodes this season like “A Serious Flanders” and “Pixelated and Afraid” were ambitious departures for this show in trying something different. But for the most part, any changes the show has done is to devolve more and more into a boring, traditional sitcom, and the addition of Rayshelle seems to be a pretty big indicator of such.

Three items of note:
– There’s not a whole lot to talk about with Lisa’s story, especially compared to Bart’s. The plot was clearly inspired by the Oscar winning documentary My Octopus Teacher, chronicling the relationship between a filmmaker and his octopus subject. While the octopus in the film naturally dies, the twist here is that Lisa’s film depicts the octopus being dragged off by shark, while in reality, she keeps the creature in secret, manipulating the narrative of the film in order to win an award. I guess we’re just supposed to think Lisa bonding with the little octopus is cute, but nothing happens and it’s just boring. She tries to keep the octopus safe in her room, then she overhears Homer giving Bart an uncharacteristic pep talk about accepting the reality of things no matter how much it hurts or fucking whatever and she decides to set it free. We see their tearful departure over the credits as Lisa lets the octopus go in the ocean as the music swells… hey, remember when this show was funny? Some of the writers were clearly touched by the documentary, so they decided to pay homage by just ripping it off.
– This episode really shines a light on how small the staff of Springfield Elementary is. Our focus has always been on Bart and Lisa’s classes, but in the classic era of the show, we used to catch glimpses of the rest of the faculty that filled out the school, just enough to make it feel like a real place (the teacher who jubilantly tells the kids we won World War II at the start of summer break, the burned out hippie teacher telling his students about the sixties, and of course, Mr. Glasscock). But as of the last twenty years or so, unnamed one-off characters have been mostly exiled in favor of the sixty or seventy rotating members of the established cast. Rayshelle busts into the teacher’s lounge where we see Groundskeeper Willie, Miss Hoover, Mr. Largo, Lunchlady Doris (or Dora, whatever they decided to call her now), Mrs. Pommelhorst, and Coach Krupt. Only one of these characters is an actual academic teacher, alongside two gym teachers. Where the fuck is everyone else? There’s five entire grades of kids being taught at this school, right?
– The promotional articles talk about Rayshelle being recurring to the same degree Mrs. Krabappel was, so I guess time will tell as to how her character will develop and ingratiate herself with the rest of the cast. They mentioned that her husband, the terrible oboist, could have a future plotline with Lisa, but who knows if they’ll actually do that. It’s too soon to call any of this, but if this episode is any indication, I can’t say I’m looking forward to her next appearance.

Original airdate: April 10, 2022

The premise: Lisa is outraged that one of Bleeding Gums Murphy’s songs is being used in a lottery commercial. She is later shocked to find out that Murphy has a deaf son, and goes on a crusade to get the rights to his father’s music back in his hands.

The reaction: Bleeding Gums Murphy is a curious character. He feels like such a timeless fixture of the show (especially since he used to appear every week in the opening theme), an integral figure in the first episode to really explore Lisa’s character, but he only really featured in season 1’s “Moaning Lisa,” and season 6’s “‘Round Springfield,” where he was killed off. We actually learned a lot about Murphy in his second outing, almost purposefully to give more weight to his upcoming death: his mentor, Blind Willie Witherspoon, his possible relation to Dr. Hibbert, his fledgling mainstream success appearing on The Steve Allen Show and The Cosby Show, and his crippling Fabergé egg habit. All of these bits, in addition to being funny, further served to flesh Murphy out and make him feel more like a real person. So here, posthumously, we have another chance to learn more about him, so what’s up? Well, despite Lisa priding herself to be the biggest Bleeding Gums expert around, she’s stunned to discover he had a son. And a wife, apparently, who we see only in pictures in his house. Where were these two when he was on his death bed? What’s the story there? We’re never told, with our only flashback involving Murphy taking his son to the doctor to find out he’s deaf. Who was his wife? Is she still alive? In the last episode, we had an extended flashback sequence of Cletus and Brandine’s courtship, but we can’t delve into this material? Whatever. Monk Murphy is a deaf man with a healthy relationship with his deceased father, and Lisa pries her way into his life to try to get the rights to his father’s music back. Lisa is in 100% insufferable idealist mode here (“I was destined to find you. My new mission in life is to make you happy! You’re my new cause!”) The point of the episode is that Lisa’s childlike optimism hits hard against a harsh reality, but she’s written less like an innocent child and more like the 30-something grad student the writers have spent the better part of two decades writing her as. Lisa’s search for answers of who owns Murphy’s music is just so boring. They go to the Jazz Hole to talk to his old colleagues, we have to endure an unfunny scat session, then Lisa happens to look at one of Murphy’s album covers on the wall and they decide to go to the record label’s office. She didn’t think to go there first? It’s not like it was hidden information. For a huge Bleeding Gums expert, she doesn’t seem to know about this obvious stuff. The record label is a humungous scam created to steal shit from artists (as made obvious by endless sign gags), where Monk eventually calls it quits and tells Lisa to just stop bothering her and it’s not her business. Lisa learns a lesson not to pry, I guess, and makes up with Monk, who later gets a cochlear implant, then Lisa plays his father’s record and he cries. Hooray. The thing is that this structure could have actually worked. In her apology, Lisa tells Monk that her father helped her when she was sad, and he wanted to return the favor by helping him. We even see a recreation of “Moaning Lisa” at the beginning of the episode, but it doesn’t feel like it translates to Lisa actively recalling how much Murphy’s kindness meant to her, outside of being a music snob who’s pissed off that Big Lotto is appropriating the music of her people. It’s just a big wasted opportunity, given how strong the Lisa/Murphy connection is, despite their screen time being so brief.

Three items of note:
– This episode got some minor buzz for featuring deaf actors playing Monk Murphy and the characters at his non-profit, as well as featuring sign language (which must have been a challenge adapting to the four-fingered characters). In principle, I’m all for the inclusion of different types of people on any kind of show. It’s also fortuitous that this episode is coming off of CODA winning Best Picture at the Oscars. As we saw in that film, as well as Troy Kotsur’s speech after his Best Supporting Actor win, there’s plenty of ways to be humorous with deaf characters, and the subject matter itself. But Monk Murphy, much like almost all one-off characters this show creates now, is pretty uninteresting. It’s not entirely his fault, as he basically functions as the silent tagalong as Lisa drags him around to fight a cause he doesn’t even care about until he puts his foot down. But finding out more about him and his father would have been interesting, and he could have had some funny moments along the way, but he just doesn’t. The closest we get is when he tells Lisa he can tune her out at will by closing his eyes, as he won’t be able to read her lips, which he demonstrates. It’s not a bad joke, but it reminds me too much of a much, much funnier real life story from my wife about one of her students, who happens to be deaf. In class, the girl was getting annoyed by some other students who were being loud and obnoxious, who insulted her when she asked them to be quiet. She then shot back herself, saying, “I don’t have to listen to this,” then turned her cochlear implant off. What an absolute badass moment. It’s pretty much the same as the joke done here, but not as cool. Anyway, the writer of this episode, Loni Steele Sosthand, pulled this story out of her real life: she has mixed race parents, a father who loved jazz music, and a deaf brother, all of which were made part of this story. The golden years of this series were built on the writers remembering elements of their childhood and amplifying them to comedic purposes. A stable of younger writers could definitely harness this power again to create new and different stories like this one to breathe life into this decayed husk of a show, but for whatever reason, it’s just not coming to life for me.
– I think Kevin Michael Richardson did a pretty solid job voicing Bleeding Gums here, especially with the “Moaning Lisa” recreation (in 4:3, no less), and even with Richardson repeating some of Murphy’s other previous lines (“You’ve made an old jazz man happy, Lisa!”) It’s not a perfect match, but like Grey DeLisle’s Martin Prince, it captures the essence of the character enough to work. Also, this is the first time that I haven’t been bothered by his Dr. Hibbert. It still doesn’t sound like Harry Shearer at all, but my brain has just stopped hitting the brakes whenever I hear it at this point, so that’s progress, I guess?
– There’s a bit late in this episode that feels like the most damning example that this show should just never, ever do pop culture references ever again. The spirit of Bleeding Gums tells Lisa that he’s always magically here for her, citing The Legend of Bagger Vance and Driving Miss Daisy as examples, basically labeling himself as Lisa’s Magical Negro. Before we get into the actual scene, this set-up feels wrong to me. Lisa is a little girl who loves jazz, so it’s appropriate she would look up to and idolize an old jazz man. In his two appearances, it never felt like Bleeding Gums filled the Magical Negro role at all, other than just being a black man who “helps” a white person. He acted as a sympathetic ear in “Moaning Lisa,” and gave Lisa his saxophone on his death bed. That’s all. But whatever, from there, we cut to a recreation of Miss Daisy featuring Bleeding Gums and Lisa, where they do a really annoying joke where Lisa just says what happens in the movie (“Teach me about equality and civil rights in a way that doesn’t make me feel too guilty. In return, in thirty years, I will ask you your last name.”) Wow, way to take down a prime target for ridicule, Driving Miss Daisy, a film over thirty years old that nobody cares about anymore. Would you believe that it’s outdated in its racial politics? Just as I mentally griped about the show carting out such an old reference, Murphy’s car slams into that of Frank Vallelonga from 2018’s Green Book, helpfully holding up a copy of said book as he’s driving. Even being a four year old movie, this feels super outdated too. Everybody already had their fill ragging on Green Book when it was out, many of which were parallels to films like Miss Daisy. Even outside the age range of the references, the pop culture jabs are always just so surface-level, stuff that has been observed and ridiculed millions of times over already. Then we get stuff like the scene over the credits, where a black-and-white Lisa, Bleeding Gums, his son and the whole band of jazz musicians and deaf kids sing at a jazz club. The other Simpsons are in attendance, Bart complains to Lisa, and Lisa makes him disappear by nodding her head in an I Dream of Jeannie reference. I Dream of Jeannie! A show that went off the air over fifty years ago. Who is this joke for? Despite featuring more and more scripts by writers in their twenties and thirties, this show still manages to make time for jokes that only appeal to people in old age homes.

Original airdate: March 27, 2022

The premise: Cletus is shocked to find that Brandine is actually smart and has been hiding her intelligence from him, causing them to break up. Meanwhile, Lisa stumbles upon an underground overachievers club at school, who do their best to act unassuming at school to avoid getting bullied.

The reaction: Watching last season’s “Yokel Hero,” also featuring Cletus and Brandine, made me think that perhaps not every secondary character needs to be fleshed out beyond their two dimensions (or in some cases, one). The slack-jawed hillbilly cousins (or mother/son, or whatever variation of relation they’re joking about this week) have always existed, and worked, as quick and dirty jokes, but for some reason, in recent memory, we’ve seen a couple of Cletus B-plots pop up featuring him for more than one or two lines at a time, followed by a complete plot line in “Yokel Hero,” and now this episode a year later featuring his lovely wife Brandine. After speaking eloquently about A Farewell to Arms at Marge’s book club, word spreads fast that Brandine actually has a brain in her head, working its way to Cletus. Confronting her, she admits that she started reading a few years ago, and that she likes actually knowing things. She and Cletus split up, and she moves in with the Simpsons, because of course she does. So what exactly does Brandine like about being smart? We’re never really told. We see her indulging in the very stereotypical “smart” creative pursuits like watching ballet and visiting art museums. She’s also reading the Grey’s Anatomy textbook, so is she interested in medicine? If they could narrow this down to a specific subject matter, or actually elaborate on Brandine’s feelings on why she likes all these things, maybe we could actually gleam some kind of character off of her? Instead it’s so intensely broad, like something out of a subpar kid’s cartoon. She’s smart and she likes learnin’! Does she want to actually do something with all her gained knowledge? I have no idea. She comes home from book club to pay the babysitter, who is actually a goat (“You free next Saturday?”) so I guess she’s not smart enough to know that goats can’t fucking talk. So what does Brandine want? Instead, we eat up time with two subplots, the first being Lisa and the secret smart kids society, and honestly, the whole premise of them laying low to avoid the bullies’ wrath also kind of feels straight out of a kid’s cartoon. Lisa has been the outspoken school-wide teacher’s pet for over thirty years, so this feels like a weird story to pull out now. Alongside that story is yet another goddamn Homer-Marge plot, where Marge realizes that everyone thinks she could have done better than Homer, and she starts to doubt her relationship herself. It’s all a complete waste of time. “Yokel Hero” was terrible, but at least it was an episode with some kind of crazy ambition. This one felt like it didn’t even want to try.

Three items of note:
– The Brandine and Lisa plots really feel like they’re tailor-made to go hand-in-hand, but they barely do. Lisa lets Brandine borrow some books when she comes to stay with them, and then toward the end, Brandine convinces Lisa not to hide her intelligence. The latter might have been sweet if it actually felt like it mattered. Showing Lisa and Brandine actually bonding over their brains would have actually meant that they’d have to actually have Brandine express a specific interest in something, so I guess that was out of the question.
– We get an extended flashback depicting how Cletus and Brandine met, which I guess is meant to be sweet? Going back to my first point, I honestly don’t give a shit about how these two characters met and fell in love. They’re the slack-jawed yokel characters, they’re the last people I want to be emotionally developed! Also, in yet another instance of this show feeling out of time, it feels really strange doing jokes about hillbillies in 2022. Cletus takes Homer to the “Hillbilly Pica-ture Palace” museum (Sponsored by Mountain Doo), featuring an exhibit on mullets and an exhibit on Hillfolk in Media (featuring busts of Hank Hill and Bill Clinton). I can’t even think of a contemporary example of hillbillies in media. What is this satire of? Cletus was created as a joke in “Bart the Elephant,” and kept around because Hank Azaria did a funny voice, and it was funny seeing him randomly pop up every now and again. But now I guess I’m supposed to be emotionally invested in him (“I want you to look at me not as a hick or a bumpkin, but as a human being, with feelings just like you!”) Sorry, Cletus, but in your words, I cain’t. I simply cain’t.
– Homer makes it up to Marge in the end by actually completing his neglecting home renovations, and as a cherry on top, he got “Elton John back, and he’s here to play for you again!” Except in “I’m With Cupid,” Homer usurped Elton John from arriving in Springfield to play for Apu and Manjula, who he ended up serenading at the end of the episode anyway. Ah, who gives a shit. Sir Elton is actually Lenny behind a piano, obscured in shadow behind the curtains. Also, it felt a little confusing that we go from upstairs where Homer’s fixed the big bedroom window, and cut immediately to the living room downstairs window. I had to remind myself that they had switched locations, since the windows appear the same and Homer and Marge are standing in the same place in both rooms.

Original airdate: March 20, 2022

The premise: Bart is humiliated when he finds the new trendy Slipreme sneakers Homer bought him are knock-offs. This leads to him meeting Orion Hughes, the rich kid of a movie star who owns the company, and the two develop their own new shoe. Meanwhile, Homer, feeling the sting of his son calling him “un-cool,” teams up with the other middle-aged men in Springfield to wear Slipreme clothing themselves.

The reaction: As Bart stormed into the not-Supreme shoe store to livestream on his smartphone his outrage to the cashier, only for the rest of the store to pull out their smartphones to film the debacle… it all just feels so wrong. I know this is borderline “Old Man Yells at Cloud,” but seeing Simpsons characters utilizing modern technology in a modern way always feels wrong to me. I feel like there could be stories written where it would feel more palatable, but between this and the last episode featuring similar scenes of mobs live-streaming a scene, these ain’t it, chief. So, I’m not entirely sure what this episode is really aiming for, but I guess it boils down to a very thin Bart-Homer story. Homer fucks up by accidentally buying knock-off shoes, causing Bart to erupt at him how much he sucks and how lame he is. Then the kid owner of the brand shows up, Orion Hughes (voiced by The Weeknd), playing damage control by getting Bart a ton of free stuff to make up for the bad press. The two bond when Bart teaches him how to skateboard, and then they’re developing their own shoe. The commentary about “Slipreme” is extremely surface level (“A sneaker that all my friends will buy?” “No, a sneaker that all your friends wanna buy, but can’t, because we won’t make enough of them,”) and Orion isn’t really much of a character. But a lot of the second half involves Homer co-opting the Slipreme look with him and his fellow middle-aged schlubs, which ultimately threatens the big launch party for Bart’s sneaker. Said event is being held in Springfield, with an appearance by Orion’s big movie star dad. Why is such a huge event for a big brand being held in some nowhere town? Ah, who cares. Then we get Marge giving a speech to Homer embracing his true self instead of trying to be cool, and then Bart and Homer make amends because the episode is ending and I don’t care. It felt like a couple different premise ideas strung together (making fun of shoe culture, Bart befriends a rich kid, Homer laments he’s “un-cool,” middle-aged dads try to be trendy) until they realized they had officially hit the 21-minute mark. It also feels weirdly cross-promotion-y given the new line of Simpsons shoes by Adidas, but that may have just been a coincidence. …maybe.

Three items of note:
– Who manages to fuck Homer over selling him counterfeit shoes? Why, none other than Mike Wegman, the character voiced by Michael Rappaport from a few seasons ago. This seems to confirm that the writing staff must just love Rappaport that they invited him back for more. I really don’t understand it, that episode was fucking awful, and his character was a big part of that. He even makes a reference to his first appearance, insulting Bart by calling him a “bed-wetting nobody,” as a call-back to his verbal abuse of a ten-year-old that made him a fan-favorite character. It’s not like I expect him to be punished or anything, but he came off as really emotionally unbalanced in “Go Big or Go Homer,” which went completely unaddressed through the whole story. Here, Mike just shows up without much introduction as if he were a Springfield regular like Cletus or Comic Book Guy, with an incredibly rushed mention that his food truck was apparently pushed off a bridge. Remember his brilliant concept of just selling one slice of pizza at a time? What a classic episode! Can this character please never come back?
– The Weeknd voices both Orion and his movie star father Darius. His voice for Orion is alright, though weirdly, his first couple lines it almost felt like he was doing a Michael Jackson impression? Was that just me? But his voice for Darius is really bizarre. It’s hard to explain, but it almost sounds like someone doing an impression of another voice. It’s just… off. Also the tag before the credits has this incredibly bizarre sequence where Darius reveals that Orion is a clone of him? It starts off with Orion bemoaning that “he’ll never be like” his dad, to which his dad replies, “I know exactly how you feel, because you’re me.” I thought this was a cheeky reference to them being voiced by the same guy, but then it turns out, no, he’s actually a clone, inspired by Darius’ “Clone Cop” movies. Did someone find an old script page from an American Dad episode on the floor and accidentally mixed it into this script?
– There’s an odd scene in the middle of the episode where Homer, Marge and Lisa attempt to eat hard shell tacos at dinner, only for them to exaggeratingly explode all over their faces (with Marge and Lisa being especially incensed, “Why do I keep buying hard shells?!“) I guess it served as the impetus for Homer needing to put on a clean shirt to leave the house, and him putting on the Slipreme hoodie, but I dunno, it felt like a weirdly specific attack, like they found “hard shell tacos are hard to eat” written on a note card under someone’s desk and decided to work it into an episode. Y’know what though, sometimes a nice hard shell taco can be pretty good. It’s like a loaded nacho folded in on itself!

Original airdate: March 13, 2022

The premise: Homer becomes the latest target of the social media outrage machine after a series of mishaps painting him in a bad light. He is approached by “The Institute” to help rehabilitate his image, being paired with fellow social pariahs to be documented doing good deeds, all unaware of the Institute’s actual sinister motives.

The reaction: The first chunk of this episode feels like a modern-era adaptation of “Homer Badman,” where an innocuous action by Homer leaves him trapped in a reactionary media hells cape that even his own family distances himself from. Here, Homer’s innocent candy ass-grab has been replaced by leaving Santa’s Little Helper in the car to go get the dog some ice cream, with a manufactured set-up that he was actually a good guy by cracking down all the windows and leaving the AC on but then the dog turns and shuts them all because he’s bouncing off the seats, and the car is immediately swarmed by dozens of passerbys filming and shaming Homer. Lisa writes up an apology for Homer to deliver at church, but he just ends up digging his own grave deeper by going on a rant about all the thin-skinned busybodies harassing him, ending with him accidentally nudging Reverend Lovejoy out his stained glass window. The image instantly becomes a worldwide meme, further tarnishing his image. Now, there’s definitely more to be said about outrage culture from the time of “Homer Badman,” but what’s here doesn’t feel all that more scathing or insightful than what we saw in 1994. Performative outrage, people documenting such events for their own clout, getting off on your own dissatisfaction, obfuscating the truth, all of these topics aren’t really delved into, instead either lightly touched upon or not explored at all. Eventually, rather than getting a call from God… frey Jones, Homer is randomly approached by a man from “The Institute” (I don’t believe he ever said his name, but he’s voiced by Kumail Nanjiani), a sprawling facility devoted to rehabilitating people’s public perception. He’s paired with some fellow social outcasts, with some familiar faces like Helen Lovejoy (now rebranded a modern-day Karen) and some new ones, like a Congressman who I guess accidentally flashed his dick on Zoom, and a short man who constantly flies off the handle on-camera, who I think is based on that guy who fucking lost it at a bagel store three years ago. When acts of public service don’t seem to be doing the job, the Institute guy reveals his ultimate plan: sneak into the headquarters of the biggest ad-farm Internet company to install a flash drive that will scrub all footage of Homer and company from the web. All of this is also clearly a riff on both the 2016 and 2021 versions of Suicide Squad, with the laborious introductions to each team member being like the former, and full scenes seemingly referencing the first trailer of the latter, like the team being briefed in a big lecture hall and two montages set to Steely Dan’s “Dirty Work.” Then Kirk says they’re like a suicide squad, just to make sure you get the reference. So they break into the headquarters and the rest of the team gets suckered into the clickbait articles the company makes… I don’t know, is this really a ripe topic for parody anymore? It’s based on those big blocks of random ads that appear on the bottom of lots of major websites with grabbing headlines like “You won’t believe how much this child actress weighs now!”, which also serves as the inspiration of the episode’s title. I dunno, I feel like more people are reading stuff off of social media versus going to actual websites, like this feels like it would have been a bit more potent if it were done five or six years ago, but maybe that’s just me. Although sometimes ads like that pop up on this very blog because my cheap ass has never upgraded to premium WordPress, so there’s also that. Anyway, Homer’s plugged in the flash drive, but then discovers the Institute’s real plan: to scrub the negative history of actual monsters the world over (including a groan-inducing “I think that guy was just President! And those are his kids!”) In the end, Homer aborts mission, and pushes the “Worldwide Broadcast” button to read Lisa’s apology note, and all is forgiven, and I guess the evil cabal that secretly runs the world has Kumail’s character executed. Unlike the last two episodes which I could sort of understand the appeal to certain viewers, this one feels like more back-to-basics, sleepwalking through topics that could be better torn apart, with a flimsy emotional center that barely feels like it’s there at all. I was surprised to see this was a Matt Selman show, I would think that button would have been mashed even harder.

Three items of note:
– Every time I think I’m not going to talk about voices, I end up talking about the voices. Homer runs into Lenny at the dog park, who typically doesn’t have that many lines of dialogue in a given scene, but Harry Shearer sounded particularly tired to me, but I don’t know if I blame him. We also have a one-off line from Drederick Tatum, here voiced by comedian and former SNL cast member Jay Pharoah. Unlike the other re-castings, this one’s kind of unique in that it’s just Pharoah doing his own impression of Mike Tyson, as Hank Azaria was doing his version. I feel like my brain automatically thinks of Azaria’s Tatum anytime I think of Mike Tyson speaking, so it’s tough to disassociate. Also, the lip sync was weirdly off, like you could tell by the phonemes that he was saying the same sentence, but it didn’t match the speed of Pharoah’s delivery, so it would drift once or twice off his dialogue. Anyway, it’s still weird to me that Drederick Tatum is still a recurring character. I was really surprised when he popped up in a major role two seasons ago as the owner of a dispensary, since Mike Tyson seems like a really played out celebrity to poke fun at in the 2020s, in the wake of the Hangover movies and Mike Tyson Mysteries seemingly having salted the earth. This weirdly almost felt like the staff has a list of all their semi-recurring POC characters and is trying to give them all reappearances so they can try out new voices. Excluding Apu, I feel like they’ve hit them all at this point. The only other one I can think is Cookie Kwan, and they’d be doing the world a favor if they just dropped her in a ditch and left her there.
– There’s lots of lines with Kumail’s character at the Institute that feel incredibly clunky, which I guess are supposed to be intentionally bad quips that you’d find from a blockbuster movie as they’re going through describing the big plan, but they’re pretty indistinguishable from a ton of dialogue from the last twenty years that was definitely meant to be funny (“You’d have to invent something to do that!” “Funny you say that, I did invent something to do that.” / “So we’re kind of like a suicide squad?” “You’re exactly kind of like a suicide squad.” /  “The upload is nearly complete! I can think of almost nothing at the last minute that can stop us now!”)
– Speaking of Bagel Store guy, doing a search for that video brought up a couple of podcast interviews he did, and it reminded me that after the video went viral, he tried to somewhat embrace his image and use his newfound fame to platform himself. He beefed up his social media presence with a YouTube channel where he ranted a bunch, he got paid a lot of money for a boxing match in Atlantic City, and probably profited a lot more from other endorsements and deals he made. All that seems to have abruptly stopped after he suffered a stroke about five months after the incident though. But that’s the opposite end of the social pariah spectrum that this episode could have touched on a bit more, but the closest we get is we see the only place that will welcome Homer is the bluntly titled “Right Wing Podcast House.” A+ writing, guys.