Original airdate: September 26, 2016

The premise: Following a town wide catastrophe, Mr. Burns agrees to foot the bill to rebuild Springfield in exchange that he put on a children’s variety show, hoping it will help him live down a traumatic event from his past.

The reaction: To me, the biggest character casualty outside of the Simpson family over the years has been Mr. Burns. Springfield’s very own heartless plutocrat was once treated as an actual threat. Frail of body, but ruthless in spirit, he reveled in his superiority over all the slack-jawed troglodytes who live beneath him. The classic years made plenty of jokes de-fanging Burns, yes, but never at the expense of his formidable nature. But here we are now: the times where Burns is actually an antagonist, he’s easily foiled, sometimes even by himself (getting the plant shut down by incriminating himself, openly pointing out an unsigned form thwarting his fracking operation.) But even worse, he seems to have no real issue dealing with Homer, Lisa, or any of the other poor loathsome individuals he would never have wanted anything to do with over twenty years ago. The set-up here is that the entire town of Springfield is destroyed except for Burns’s mansion, and the Simpsons plea for him to help fund the rebuild. Burns had previously used a trap door on them, but now is perfectly fine with continuing to speak with them. He agrees to help on the condition he hold a variety show at the Springfield Bowl (why he didn’t just arrange this himself is not explained.) So we get Burns watching child acts and arranging this big production… it feels the farthest removed from this character we’ve seen yet. Lisa is suspicious, and eventually she’s shown the truth. As we see through various flashbacks, Burns performed at the Bowl as a child, which ended with his pants falling down to raucous laughter. Even though this was perfectly understandable from the first flashback we see, this point is reinforced again and again (“I think you’re trying to make up for what happened to you then by putting on a perfect bowl show now.”) In the end, Burns sets out to perform his same act from decades ago to redeem himself, his pants fall down again, to enormous derisive laughter. After that, he tells Lisa he’s over it. Makes perfect sense, right? He tells Lisa that he’s too old to hold a grudge. So not only does this feel completely alien to Burns’s fundamentally vindictive character, it goes against his characterization through this very episode. He harbored this painful memory for decades, let it fester and enrage him, and now all of a sudden, he’s fine? It’s also implied that that one event is why he’s been evil all these years? What a load of fucking shit. I just don’t get why they bother writing for Mr. Burns anymore, they’ve completely watered down or removed all of the great things about his character. When your show’s biggest villain happily interacts with your protagonists and is a big pushover, what’s the damn point?

Three items of note:
– The couch gag is a recreation of the Adventure Time opening title. As I say over and over and over, this is not a parody. When you recreate something shot for shot and change nothing but add in your own characters, that doesn’t count as a joke. You’re just making a reference. Also, the long opening shot traveling through the various different landscapes of Springfield is played almost at half speed compared to the Adventure Time titles. The theme music doesn’t kick in until 20 seconds in. And it’s not like it’s going slow to pause for jokes, it’s just moving really slow just to kill time, I guess? They also barely changed the character designs, it’s just the Groening-style heads slapped onto weird noodle arm bodies. Adventure Time creator Pen Ward sings the new “Simpsons Time” theme song; having just read the Art of Adventure Time book and learning he was a huge Simpsons fan as a kid and it being a big influence in his work, I’m sure this was a great honor for him. Stuff like this and the Rick & Morty couch gag are like a win-win for both parties: the creators of new and fresh TV are thrilled that a show they used to love is validating them, and The Simpsons gets to pretend they’re still relevant by crossing over with a popular contemporary show that is actually watchable.
– The beginning of the episode doesn’t really matter, it’s just the stupid excuse to start the Burns story. Lard Lad gets a makeover thanks to their Japanese holding company, transforming the mascot into a gigantic steel post-postmodern monstrosity. The reflective ring of the donut ends up acting as a gigantic magnifying glass, and as the statue is on a turntable, it ends up lighting huge fires, which due to some “hilarious” chain reactions, result in the utter decimation of the whole town. You’d think the Lard Lad owners would fit the bill for this, or at least have some kind of joke of them leaving town, but they’re immediately forgotten. I’m just guessing that Burns Manor is only safe because of its high elevation, but again, that’s me adding in details that the show just doesn’t bother with. Also, throughout the episode, we see the Simpson house, the power plant the school, the Springfield Bowl, all of which seem perfectly fine. We’ve gotten to the point where the entire destruction of the town can be turned into an afterthought. It’s just a dumb cartoon, who cares?
– The Springfield Bowl is obviously modeled after the Hollywood Bowl. They had a Simpsons live show there two years before this aired, I’m going to guess that was a big inspiration for this show. Burns’s show opens with a pre-recorded skit of he and Smithers getting to the Bowl, just as the real-life Simpsons one did. Burns walks out and his opening joke is about how hard it is to park at the Hollywood… I mean, the Springfield Bowl. It’s just more making Springfield into Los Angeles Jr. Why the hell does this jerkwater burg have a performing arts bowl that size?

One good line/moment: I got nothing, this episode was just awful. There’s still plenty of bad stuff I didn’t get to, like all the boring acts by the kids being played straight with no jokes at the end, or Amy Schumer as Burns’s mom licking his face over and over for no reason other than to be creepy as hell. Ugh, ugh, ugh.

Original airdate: May 22, 2016

The premise: After sending Bart outside to play unsupervised, Marge is put in prison, where she ends up thriving in an environment with no chores and no responsibilities.

The reaction: Sometimes I try to avoid direct comparisons, but in episodes like these, it’s almost impossible. Marge in a women’s prison? Been there, done that. But now, there’s a popular Netflix drama we can pretend to be parodying. Make it the episode title, and perhaps we can glom onto another culturally relevant show! As pictured above, we get characters that look like Red and Suzanne from Orange is the New Black, but the “parody” stops there. The initial set-ups of this and “Marge in Chains” are identical: Marge is the beleaguered workhorse of the family who has a thousand things to do in a day, and one minor slip-up gets her in trouble with the law. Here, she gets Bart out of her hair by sending him outside, but when Wiggum finds him at the park without a parent, he promptly arrests Marge. I guess there’s some social commentary to be made here, but as usual, the surface is barely even scratched. Once in prison, Marge is naive at first, but later gets pushed too far and knocks out a brutish inmate with her hair (there’s barely any build-up to this.) After that, the plot shifts to her being a peaceful influence to the other prisoners by taking up gardening, and her being thrilled about early bedtimes and exercise time. So her knocking that woman out was just to get their respect? It doesn’t matter. In no time at all, she finds she loves it in prison, so much so that when Homer manages to have her sentence cut short, she steals a guard’s gun and fires it in order to get more time. Even if the plot were better developed, this would be a hard pill to swallow. “Marge in Chains” was one of those episodes more focused on wall-to-wall gags than its story, so I guess the core difference is this episode’s attempt to do the opposite. With Marge needing a break, it’s like they blended it with “Homer Alone,” but then that brings the tally to two classic episodes they’re retreading in a much poorer fashion.

Three items of note:
– Just like “Chains,” we devote time to Homer and the kids to see how they’re faring without Marge. But unlike the wonderful quick gag of the entire house going to shit within seconds, it’s multiple scenes of just bland nothingness. Neighbors chip in with gift baskets and baked goods to keep their spirits up, and eventually Homer decides he should probably get off his ass and do something, but not before envisioning a Ned/Marge hybrid to lust after. Between this and “Fland Canyon,” I guess these two are friends now? And like “Chains,” Marge makes friends with her fellow inmates, but none of the three pictured above have names or any real personality. Remember Philips? Tattoo Annie? And that was all within the last five minutes that Marge was actually in jail, compared to a whole two-thirds of this episode. Again, when the plots are this similar, it’s impossible not to think how fucking inept this is compared to the original.
– To kill time, we get an elaborate sequence of Homer envisioning himself as a retro 50s housewife, spurred by him vowing to step up as a parent. We then revisit it again for the end tag, which I promptly turned off. I’m still not sure why they do this four-act bullshit. Other FOX shows don’t, even comedies airing the same night. They’re just a waste of time. The story reaches a conclusion (in some cases, just barely), and then there’s just this worthless vestigial piece at the end of it.
– The ending involves Bart getting all the other kids to play without adult supervision, just in time for a tornado to roll into town and endanger them all. This occurs during a riot at the prison, where Homer just magically appears, having disguised himself a guard. But when the two of them hug and make up, the tornado magically disappears. And Marge is free to go just because. Why bother giving an explanation? We also see Wiggum talking to all the other parents, and I guess they get off with a slap on the wrist for losing their kids, unlike Marge. The very ending involves the family all hugging in the pantry, as Marge quips, “I want to say two things. I love you guys, and we’re out of peanut butter!” They all laugh. They end on a group laugh. And the line is a sub-par version of that awful sitcomy set-up for a group laugh. Once again, tired old tropes that the show mercifully skewered in the past are now embraced and played 100% straight.

One good line/moment: Michal Socha returns for another guest couch gag, featuring the family and the assemblage of the couch in the style of IKEA building instructions. A very cute and clever sequence.

Original airdate: May 15, 2016

The premise: Homer combats his fear of public speaking by turning to imrov comedy. Plus, in the episode’s final few minutes, Homer appears LIVE to take a few audience questions.

The reaction: Depicting stand-up comedy on your comedy television program is a pretty big challenge, since it kind has to be funny on multiple levels. “The Last Temptation of Krust” had the fresh new wave of comics do their set, but the humor came more from audience reaction and their being contrasted by Krusty’s old hacky material. Now, over fifteen years later, we have an episode about improv, where we’re forced to watch the troupe performers, and later Homer and company, go through these stupid, unfunny skits, to enormous applause and laughter, I might add. Homer gets enamored by improv and joins a class, and whaddya know, he’s an instant hit! He immediately “nails” the comic scenarios thrown at him, including the “one we could never crack,” so I guess this counts as a “Simpson-is-an-instant-success” episode. But here’s the big issue: Homer’s bits aren’t really that funny. Like, the entire show isn’t funny, but trying to be as objective as possible, his material is mildly clever at best, but the audience is just going apeshit over it. Soon, we see he’s formed a troupe with Lenny, Carl and Skinner, and they’re an instant success. After that, Lisa informs them they’ve been invited to perform on the main stage at the Springfield Fringe festival which I guess they have. Remember, all we’ve seen of Homer’s “talent” are three quick bits he did with the improv people, then him on stage doing a Paul Prudhomme “I guah-ron-tee it!” to monstrous cheering. But in the story, he’s an accomplished and respected improv performer. Still nervous, Moe proposes he feed him scenarios from the audience, but Lisa interferes, wanting to protect the sanctity of… improv comedy (“You can’t let your troupe down! They need your space work, your strong choices and scene-building skills!”) We saw Homer’s “troupe” in one scene, never saw them perform, and we’ve barely seen anything of what Homer can do. I’d say this feels flimsier that normal because they had to devote four minutes at the end for the live segment, but this episode also had a B-story with Marge fixing Bart’s treehouse that is so thin and superfluous I have nothing to say about it. The episode has no ending either, Homer just performs, camera pull out, gotta rush to get to the live section. I’m going to assume they came up with the live gimmick first and then figured they had to also write a main story to make it tangentially related. Maybe they shouldn’t have even bothered.

Three items of note:
– The impetus of the plot is that Homer has to give a speech for a seminar at the plant, one that apparently he gives one every year. What’s that about? He’s the safety inspector for one part of the plant, and a terrible one at that. They don’t even bother to make it into some kind of joke, or have Burns or anyone mention what the speech is about, it’s just “Homer has to make a speech.” Again, it’s just having the bare bones of a story in place so things sort of kind of make sense played in sequence. No need to develop anything, details are too much work and don’t matter.
– I guess since she’s been so underutilized this season, they crowbar Lisa into the story halfway, acting as “CREW” for the troupe’s show at Moe’s. At that point, I guess she’s their manager or main stagehand or something since she’s the one that gets informed that they’re gonna perform at Fringe (“This is going in my log! Yaaaayyy!”) At the festival, she’s in some kind of hipster get-up with a hat, vest and tie, and gushing about all there is to see and do… even when she’s not being bitter or smug, she really is just an insufferable character. And they try to cram in an emotional conflict with her in the little time they have left, I guess to try to give the episode some weight (“I need an occupation!” “A father I can look up to!”) It’s cheap, but no cheaper than the out-of-left-field, wholly manufactured emotional endings we’ve seen before. They’ve pulled the Lisa card to generate false sympathy many, many times before, and the fact that they think they can cram the same hollow nonsense in with so little time is just telling that they either think it’s a quick and easy solution, or they don’t care, or both.
– So, the live segment. Viewers were prompted to call in, and at the end of the episode, we cut to Homer seated behind a desk ready to answer some questions. This was done twice the night it aired, once for the east coast feed, once for the west coast. There’s a great article talking about how it was done, but explained simply, Dan Castellaneta performed live, and based on the audio coming in, Adobe Character Animate would register his words into phonemes linked to the proper mouth shapes to make Homer look like he’s actually talking. The result is kind of neat, but it’s more of a proof of concept than a polished piece. It feels too static; aside from a slight head tilt and a raised arm or two, Homer doesn’t move all that much. Perhaps a few different poses they could have switched between would have been neat. I guess the solution to this was to have characters randomly pop onto the screen to distract you, some with sign gags who just walk in and then leave after a few seconds, like Lisa (“We Parked in Bill O’Reilly’s Space”) and Kang with some more fan service (“Don’t Blame Me, I Voted For Kodos.”) I can at least give them credit for trying something new, though. For all the awful gimmicks we’ve seen from the show, this one at least feels like it came out of an earnest interest.

One good line/moment: Homer nervously walks to the stage for his speech, the entire room dead except for the sound of his footsteps. Not being awkward enough, Burns turns a dial on a speaker reading “Footstep Amplifier” to make it even louder.

Original airdate: May 8, 2016

The premise: Homer shakes up Marge’s doldrums with a family trip to Paris, but to pay for it, he agrees to act as courier for two bumbling (and familiar) French crooks.

The reaction: I continue to be amazed as we near the 600-episode mark, how surprised I am that this show continues to get worse. You’d think I would be numb to it at this point, but as bad as this show has gotten, it feels like as the seasons go on, these episodes get flimsier and flimsier. A lot of defenders cry hyperbole when people complain about how low the show has sunk, but I feel like people aren’t nearly harsh enough. The fact that these episodes make it to air, that the people making them watch them and think they’re good enough, is baffling to me. So this episode features Homer wanting to make Marge (and later his kids) happy, and then they are. To afford to go on Marge’s dream vacation to Paris, he agrees to deliver a secret package while he’s there. At the airport, Homer encounters his clients: Caesar and Uglion, Bart’s abusive captors from “The Crepes of Wrath.” Fan service, I guess? Also the briefcase contains a rare blue snake that the two crooks want to turn into a belt. Based on a cutaway joke, I guess they’ve expanded their operation from tainted wine to a whole animal cruelty factory. Lisa wants to save the snake, so she and Homer take off, being pursued by them a few times through the episode. But there’s never any tension; when the two crooks show up, they end up distracting themselves, look away, and Homer and Lisa are gone. At a point, they’re looking for a place to hide, Lisa points out a local jazz district she wants to check out, and then they just go and watch music. I’m not expecting high action drama, but it’s important if your story has… y’know, stakes. Lisa ends up playing on stage, and her inner monologue narrates, “I’ve never been happier!” Bart thinks the same line when he sneaks into a fashion show and baits the skinny models with a sausage on a fishing line. And later, Marge comments the same when she’s on a romantic night walk with Homer. So, as usual, it’s tell, not show. Caesar and Uglion end up having the police ransack the Simpsons’s hotel, they find nothing, and Homer surmises it was the best trip ever. And the snake was in Marge’s hair. And then that’s it. What was the point? Just so they could cross off another country on the map? There aren’t even a lot of French jokes, it’s mostly a lot of surface level stuff, like Lisa inexplicably dressed like Madeline and them sight seeing with no real gags. What was the significance of the blue snake? To appeal to Lisa? It wasn’t even about that. And they didn’t even bother to write an ending about what they did with it. These episodes are just a bunch of disconnected nonsense with something partially resembling a story going on around it. But none of this is new. I feel like so many of these points I end up repeating again and again. But I can’t just stop after I’ve gotten this far. It’d be like walking out in the middle of an autopsy. That would be rude.

Three items of note:
– Things start off aggravating as the Simpsons clean out the garage. They move the old Olmec head out of the corner, which now is like half the size that it used to be, and they uncover a classic roadstar under a sheet that apparently belonged to the old tenants. Now, the family has had this house for over eight years, and they never noticed this? And it was covered by the Olmec head, an item they acquired since they lived there. The car is there for Homer to hop in, have a fun little song about, and be emblematic of his wacky, carefree adventures that Marge envies. So where do we go from here? Have Jay Leno show up at the door, of course! You see, Jay loves old cars, so much so that there’s a whole TV show devoted to his collection, because what better way to spend your time than watch a millionaire show off all his cool stuff? So Jay wants to buy Homer’s car, pays in cash and takes it away. Homer goes back inside, proposes to Marge they go on a trip, and then the doorbell rings again. Jay’s back and he doesn’t want Homer’s car anymore. Plus, he tried to register it, found out it wasn’t Homer’s, and the police repossessed it. All within the span of… ten, fifteen seconds? There’s just so much about all of this I hate. As the “payoff” of the “bit,” Jay wants to rescind the deal because he discovered how convenient new modern cars are. So all of this just feels like him gleefully taking the piss out of his rich celebrity hobby. Remember when Jay Leno gave Krusty advice about joking about everyday life stuff? Me neither.
– Marge comments how she for once she wants to have a great vacation, echoing her sentiment from “Itchy & Scratchy Land.” She then runs down a list of all of the places/countries they’ve been to over the years, walking off and reappearing in the background still talking. Lisa takes her place in the foreground to talk a bunch of exposition with her father. As they talk, a man being hoisted by balloons floats by and ends up having them all popped by the floating house from Up. What is that doing there? Were the writers bored of their own story and felt they needed another Pixar love letter to fill the space?
– Sometimes when an episode seems particularly awful to me, I check the review thread on No Homers to see what the commentary is like. Reviews were mixed; positives seemed to rely on people liked seeing Caesar and Uglion again (so I guess transparent fan service does work) and they enjoyed seeing famous French landmarks animated. So… watch a travel special? They should just make the show a travelogue, these guys would love it! But I also came about a bunch of posts debating whether or not the end tag featuring caveman Matt Groening carving the final scene on the wall was “canon,” as well as Marge mentioning “outer space” as a vacation destination from “The Man Who Came to Be Dinner,” so I don’t know what that says about that caliber of fans. Like, honestly, who gives a shit?

One good line/moment: The one smirk I got was from when Marge wanted to indulge in plenty of pâté while her guilt-tripping daughter is away, so the waiter recommends she pick from the Extra Cruelty menu (“We have a coq Au vin made from an old rooster who was kicked to death in front of his wife and children. Very nice.”)

Original airdate: April 24, 2016

The premise: We flash back to two years ago: Ned Flanders wins a trip to the Grand Canyon and invites the Simpsons along, and the two families must learn to get along.

The reaction: I once again find myself finishing another episode wondering exactly what the point of it was. Narratives usually have to be about something, right? So this is a flashback episode, even though there’s really no need for it to be, pairing the Simpsons and the Flanderses together on a vacation. We get a lot of beauty shots of the Grand Canyon which the background artists worked hard on and did a very nice job. The usual predictable nonsense ensues with Ned being a namby pamby wuss, and Homer and Bart being maniacs. One bit involves Bart somehow suction cupping himself to the bottom of a glass walkway above a giant chasm just to moon his father. Homer moons him back, security knocks him out and drags him away, much to Marge and the Flanderses horror. “Stupid kid…” Homer grunts as he’s slowly being pulled from the foreground with his head sunken. It seemed weirdly serious, but then we quickly cut to our next wacky scene, and all is well. So there’s two things happening in this episode. First, Maude is a side-eyeing and judgey mom, with Rod and Todd being perfect little angels compared to the rambunctious Bart. She calls Marge “checked out” in her treatment of her little hellraiser. Does anything come of this story? Nope. No resolution at all. The conflict arises when their tour guide falls off the mountain, leaving them stranded. Homer and Ned go off to find help, and eventually come upon a caravan of rich assholes at the bottom of the canyon. Ned is hesitant to steal food from them, but Homer convinces him to do this “his way” for once, and they do. I guess this counts as the second story. Homer is mildly annoyed with Ned as usual, but then they… get along? A lot of times in these recaps I make the story sound more coherent than it is, but here, there’s barely any narrative tissue I can attempt to connect. There’s basically nothing to the Homer-Ned story, and the Marge-Maude story had like two scenes devoted to it, and nothing else. Homer and Ned bring the food back, then we cut to the next morning and they’ve been rescued. Does it matter how? Nah. I guess I can’t fault an episode for having no ambition (you can’t fail if you don’t try, after all), but what a sorry statement to make. These kinds of episodes are the most forgettable, but stuff like this and “Peeping Mom” irritate me the worst, stories that are about nothing but killing twenty minutes, but that are apparently good enough to air.

Three items of note:
– I really don’t understand the rich people element of the episode. They appear as a joke earlier, with a huge caravan of cars driving down the mountain, then later Ned observes them with binoculars being extremely wasteful and hurtful to the environment. Is this supposed to be some kind of commentary? It felt like an orphaned idea that they threw in and didn’t bother to connect with anything. It’s not like it’s contrasted with the Simpsons and Flanderses truly embracing roughin’ it. It’s just kind of there as a solution to their food dilemma. And they just take the food and leave. No chase, no repercussions. They could have just found an abandoned truck of food and it would have been exactly the same.
– There’s a gag at the end that you can file in the sizable folder of jokes the show immediately ruins by over-explaining them. Homer and Ned present their bountiful feast they stole to their families and they dig in. Among the shots, we see six-year-old Lisa gorging herself on a pile of bacon. Alright, that’s kind of cute. But then right after, we cut back to the present where Homer and Lisa explain to Maggie (ie: the audience), remember, this story happens before Lisa’s vegetarianism. Now do you get it? You may now laugh retroactively at the previous joke. Ugh.
– Like I said, there’s absolutely no reason this story couldn’t have worked in the present. None. Also, pre-Maggie Homer should have three hairs on top of his head, but he only has two here. Boy, I sure hope someone got fired for that blunder. Minor nitpick? Yeah, of course. But I’ve run out of things to say about this episode, so there you go.

One good line/moment: This latest guest couch gag was animated by veteran Disney animator Eric Goldberg, as we see each Simpson paying tribute to a different Disney hallmark, from Maggie in glorious Mickey Mouse black and white, Lisa as Cinderella, Marge as Snow White (using a vacuum cleaner as a broom), Homer as Baloo the bear, and Bart appearing as the Sorcerer’s Apprentice to fuck everything up and return us to the horrible sterile HD designs of the regular show. The way Goldberg animates the characters is so appealing. Beyond the fun Disney tribute, even seeing regular red dress Lisa wave goodbye to the pumpkin carriage before she transforms into Cinderella is a sheer delight. As great as some of these outsourced couch gags are, they almost work to the show’s detriment, since they’re so well done and enjoyably animated that they only make the actual show look that much worse. It also seems like the best pieces are always placed in front of the blandest episodes (the Michal Socha one before “What to Expect When Bart’s Expecting,” Rick & Morty before “Mathlete’s Feat,” etc.)