Original airdate: March 30, 2014

The premise: An impassioned speech from Lisa about her father’s brief stint as a referee from eight seasons ago gets Homer tapped to work for FIFA at the World Cup in Brazil. During the season, he is pursued by local gangsters to fix the games, but he refuses, determined to stay in Lisa’s good graces.

The reaction: A major sports organization contacting Homer to work with them after seeing an online video… I guess if it worked nearly ten years ago (!) for “Homer and Ned’s Hail Mary Pass,” why not a second time? Though I would much rather be watching that episode. As dumb as both examples are, Homer being an obnoxious, crowd-pleasing ham brought on to teach professional athletes how to showboat actually has some coherent connective narrative tissue, rather than Lisa offhand mentioning her father calling her out once during a soccer match during a B-story in an episode nearly a decade old leading to Homer reffing the fucking World Cup. Without the context of “Marge Gamer,” this narrative leap makes even less sense. Lisa gives a speech on the fly about the nice things her dad has done for her, and him giving her a red card way back when is just one throwaway example. It’s not like she was espousing how honest and unflappable Homer is. But whatever, this is our insanely flimsy excuse to get the Simpsons to the World Cup, so maybe we can get some sweet cross-promotion with sports fans, just like their Olympics show a few seasons back. We also get the family back to Brazil, where we get a handful of callbacks to “Blame It On Lisa,” including reappearances from Teleboobies and the samba instructor. Does it count as fan service if they’re bringing back jokes from episodes that aren’t fondly remembered? Once they’re international, the beats of the story are presented so ham-fistedly, the worst we’ve seen yet. When the family is out to eat, Homer walks outside apropos of nothing so gangsters can randomly appear to offer him a bribe to rig the game. Then we get over a minute of a montage repeating over and over that Homer won’t play ball. After that, we get a scene where Bart unnecessarily tells Homer that he wasn’t Lisa’s first choice for her hero, with some just plain awful lines (“I’m just examining what kind of person I am and whether I should destroy your happiness forever.”) As usual, we don’t see Homer actually emote and get sad, instead they just keep expositing lines to do the work for them. Later, we get the exact same type of scene when Lisa appears to stop Homer from cheating, and then later again during the showdown with the gangsters, and them being saved by a completely ridiculous Chekov’s gun. It all feels like the minimum amount of effort to push a threadbare story along, with none of the humanity plugged in. Characters just say their lines explaining what’s currently happening, scene after scene after scene. It’s like watching an episode of Cliff Notes.

Three items of note:
– The opening act was pretty bad. There’s a school assembly that Skinner can’t get control over (remember when he actually ran the school with inflated authority? Wasn’t that a more admirable and humorous character quirk than spineless wuss?) featuring a fake Lincoln-Douglas debate. The joke is that they stay in character in trying to appeal to the kids, but repeatedly get heckled and have things thrown at them. Over and over again. After the fiasco, the school holds a contest to award the student with the best speech on who their hero is, sponsored by a sandwich chain so they can do a Jared Fogle “parody.” Forgetting the awkward in hindsight nature of this, it feels far too late to be doing Jared jokes. In fact, the show already did one in a Treehouse of Horror episode in 2005, so maybe this was an old discarded post-it someone found under a couch or something. Then the conflict is that Martin takes Lisa’s idea to do Marie Curie as his hero, which is revealed so laboriously slow. Is this supposed to be tense or something? And they play it up like Martin gave a fucking awesome presentation with the kids cheering and going nuts, that Lisa has to top that. What school is this? Then Lisa gives her stupid speech, and because we can’t tell from the writing that it’s supposed to be good, we get shots of the judges and the crowd confirming that they indeed do love it. Again, we can’t tell just from looking at the screen, we need to be told what we’re supposed to feel. As usual nowadays, it’s always tell, not show.
– This episode was the first official reveal of Lunchlady Doris being renamed to Lunchlady Dora through a headline in the school newspaper. When asked on Twitter whether this was just a typo, writer Michael Price replied, “The show introduced Lunchlady Dora after Doris Grau passed away. So we did the opposite of forget.” I’ve talked about this multiple times, and I believe the staff to be full of incredibly compassionate people, but this whole thing feels wrong to me. They retired her character for a decade, and then one day figured that enough time had passed, dusted her off, and brought in Tress MacNeille to do a half-baked imitation of Doris Grau, and went about their merry way. And I’ll say again, why not bring back Troy McClure and Lionel Hutz? What’s the difference between keeping them silent and bringing Doris/Dora back?
– There’s a quick joke that feels really vindictive to me: on the plane to Brazil, an old woman (later revealed to be the gangster’s mom for some reason) switches seats with Lisa so she can watch premium HBO. We then cut to a very quick shot of a screen displaying three shows, Hung, Bored to Death, and Enlightened. She lets out a disgruntled “Meehhhh!” and that’s it. What’s with this motivation-less dig on HBO? And, per usual, this show has lost all privileges to make fun of any other show on the air. You can’t take shots up when you’re at the critical bottom.

One good line/moment: This exchange from the gangsters was smirk-worthy (“We will get to him. We have our ways.” “Well, what other ways besides guns and money?” “We have two ways. Two very good ways.”)

Original airdate: March 23, 2014

The premise: When the sailboat painting above the couch is destroyed, Marge buys a replacement piece at the Van Houten’s yard sale. When they discover the painting is actually worth a fortune, Homer and Marge debate whether they should inform the Van Houtens, or keep the information to themselves.

The reaction: We start off with a five minute section (no opening theme this time) of Lisa wanting, then getting her own guinea pig, which is ultimately pointless other than being the reason the sailboat painting gets damaged. There’s a lot of that stuff here; later, Homer and Marge try to buy Milhouse’s silence with cartloads of toys when he overhears their plan to sell the expensive painting they bought from the Van Houtens, but that one minute is immediately wasted when the angry parents show up at the door after Milhouse squealed. They don’t even give him a funny line about what happened (something like “I’m sorry, Mr. S! I cracked!”) And of course, the episode is full of characters just recapping the story and their feelings over and over, especially Marge, who is the dissenting opinion of the whole painting fiasco, and never lets anyone forget it, again and again (“That painting has torn the town apart, destroyed Kirk and Luann’s marriage, and everyone’s very worried about Milhouse!” “That picture has brought out the worst in everyone!”) When the true ownership of the painting falls into question, Homer ventures to a tropical island off the coast of somewhere to find out the truth. He eventually discovers that the piece is actually a fake, painted on the island by a local artist, voiced by Max von Sydow, famous for his incredibly accurate fakes. He debates Lisa on why what he does is okay (“Beauty is beauty. My forgeries give pleasure to people all over the world. The only real question to ask about art, whether it’s in the Louvre, or on a freshman’s wall at Cal State Fullerton, is did it move you?”) This, accompanied with a montage of various peoples enjoying art in different ways, is actually kind of stirring. His whole scene, though full of more expository dialogue, I actually really enjoyed. It’s just too bad that the episode was never really about any of the things that he’s talking about.If the groundwork had been laid to lead to this ultimate meaning, it would have been more effective. But seeing the very ending, with Homer coming back to Marge with a new sailboat painting done by the forger, I thought that was nice. With that and the final end tag sequence of Sydow talking about the horrible locally brewed Stuppo, it was probably the best three minutes I’ve seen from this show in a long, long time. Too bad everything before it was as ramshackle as always.

Three items of note:
– As I’ve mentioned before, this show has a habit of taking something that has the potential to be funny, and then driving that shit into the fucking ground. The worst example I’ve seen yet is Lisa’s trip to the guinea pig rescue. With so many fuzzy friends to choose from, she goes on overload, approaching each one with childlike glee. It’s a really adorable performance by Yeardley Smith, and the scene seemed to have a final button with a Homer joke. But then it just keeps going… the same joke with Lisa going nonstop… still going as night falls, the family drives to the motel next door to stay the night for some reason, and then them returning in the morning, with Lisa never stopping for a second. They killed it. I actually was enjoying myself for a few wonderful seconds, which then was ruined when they dragged me through the cactus field for another forty seconds of the same extended joke.
– There’s a plot element involving the town being divided about the painting issue once the Van Houtens pay Kent Brockman to do a hatchet piece on Homer and Marge. Outside the auction, half the town are pro-Simpson, and the other half pro-Van Houten. But in the end, nothing really comes out of this. And again, if this was somehow turned into some kind of debate or something derived from the painting itself and how people were affected by it, or relating to something about the supposed real artist, it would have better set up the ending with the forgery and the discussion of art’s true authenticity. Instead, like the guinea pig opening, it just feels like more stuff to fill time.
– The Van Houtens are split when an old fling Kirk had when they were separated reappears, claiming she actually owns the painting. Luann is upset with Kirk, as he claimed he was never with anyone when they were apart. Fair enough, I guess, but she’s incredibly pissed at him, repeatedly smacking him with the auction paddle. I’m sure Luann got plenty of action during their separation, what’s the big deal? Later, Kirk is planted on the Simpson couch because of course he is, and then a scene later, we get a joke with a despondent Milhouse involving him playing DDR without the TV on, which we see right after Bart explains the entire joke beforehand. Kirk was just in that room, is Milhouse visiting his dad or Bart? Or both? Despite Marge’s outrage, the episode is barely concerned about the Van Houtens and their problems, as splitting up and getting back together again is basically their thing now. The show used to do it with Skinner and Krabappel, now it’s their turn. Kirk’s lying and Luann’s overcritical nature don’t really matter, as in the end, a family portrait is enough to keep them together for one more week. Yaaaaaay.

One good line/moment: Like I said, I do really like elements of the ending, even if they’re surrounded by garbage juice. I also like Homer’s constant protection of the precious painting: he buckles it in with two seat belts, he chains it to a chair at the dining room table, then brings it to the auction wrapped in bubble wrap.

Original airdate: March 16, 2014

The premise: Marge lets Abe, Jasper, and the Old Jewish Man stay with at the house after the retirement home gets shut down, but she grows worried when Homer starts to adapt their elderly lifestyle. Meanwhile, Bart is inducted as an honorary bully and gets into hot water at a late night bully summit.

The reaction: Homer reaps the perks of being old… “The Two Mrs. Nahasapeemapetilions,” anyone? Marge brings the three old men home, and the writers crack open their ancient tome of old people jokes and go to town. They take a whole bunch of pills! They eat bran and fart on the couch! They walk the mall for exercise! The humor is so baseline. We see a montage of Homer continuously resuscitating the old men’s hearts, followed by Lisa admonishing him for complaining about it (“Dad, did it ever occur to you that we’re learning how to take care of you when you’re older by watching the way you treat Grampa?” Sweet, sweet exposition.) This leads Homer to hang out with the old geezers and slowly become like them, worrying Marge. Where is this going? No matter, because the B-story creeps in and engulfs the entire last third of the episode. The side story starts with a poor street urchin Nelson bit of him being embarrassed having to wear his mother’s second-hand pink underwear, and Bart standing up for him. For this, he lets Bart join the bully inner circle, and they go to a creepy bully summit after hours at Krustyland. They have beef with this other kid, he tries to frame Bart for attacking their leader with a slingshot, and then they have to get out of dodge before the other bully groups beat them up. I knew this was a “parody” from the get-go, but it took a while to realize they were doing a take-off of The Warriors. I have never seen the film, so I had no fucking clue what was going on. Of course in the olden days, the show would utilize characters, entire scenes even, taken from classic movies and television, but they worked on their own within the show’s universe. You can watch “The Shinning” and enjoy and understand it completely without never seeing the source material, as I did when I was younger. But this is just insanity; this cabal of teenage bullies driving around in apocalypse tricked out buses and a radio station devoted to reporting on bully news… it’s just way too nonsensical and crazy. The rival bullies corner Bart and the others on the beach, and then finally, six minutes later, the A-story reappears with Homer and the old men walking and seeing the boys. Homer steps in, punches the main bully in the face, they all run off, Homer tells Bart, “Now let’s go home,” and then they do. And then that’s it. We get our now standard end tag of Homer and Marge making out, so I guess the Homer’s-getting-old problem just solved itself. But the three old men are still living there. What will happen with the Retirement Castle? Is Bart still a bully? I guess the writers have reached a point where they don’t even bother to reset. You know everything’s going to be back to normal by next episode, so why bother giving stories a resolution? Just have the two stories collide at the very end and call it a day. See you next week, you fucks!

Three items of note:
– There’s two weird orphaned references that felt a little weird. Homer waxes on about how Abe mistreats his own grandfather, to which Lisa incredulously asks, “Your grandpa’s alive?” Homer says yes. Then Lisa goes no further with this surprising revelation that she has a living great-grandfather she never knew about. I thought it was going to lead to something in the story, but of course it didn’t. Later on at the bully summit, Nelson is surprised to see his two former weaselly underlings from “Bart the General.” I certainly wasn’t expecting that, but I wasn’t surprised to hear them spout a lame joke and exist purely for fan service purposes.
– We get an Itchy & Scratchy episode, a “parody” of Downton Abbey. Didn’t the show already take their shot in the MacFarlane episode? This one in particular was especially gory, with the Itchys just brutalizing the Scratchys horribly and for no real reason. That could be the joke, but not when it’s just over and over and over again. In recent years when the show can get away with more graphic violence, it seems they’ve been pushing the shock level up more and more with these, but that’s not really why Itchy & Scratchy was funny. Plenty of the older cartoons had more elements to the humor, but nowadays, I guess we’re just meant to laugh at Scratchy’s bloody corpse as he’s mutilated, and that’s the only joke.
– Bart’s slingshot being a crucial part of the plot in the bully story got me to thinking about how antiquated it is. I’ve said before that as the show progressed through the decades, the characters never progressed with the times, leaving these old remnants of a 90s world in modern day, and they just don’t feel right. Entire characters start to feel bizarre and out-of-date, like Apu or Comic Book Guy. Give any fourth grader a slingshot nowadays, and most of them probably won’t know what the hell it is. But it’s one of Bart’s character hallmarks that you just can’t get rid of, even though it must feel completely alien to any kid watching now.

One good line/moment: As usual, the only humor I think is still fairly solid nowadays at sign gags. We got Count Branula cereal, and a sign hanging over Abe’s new bed for Neptune Outboard Motors (Three Pulls and You’re Off!)

Original airdate: March 9, 2014

The premise: Lisa’s advocacy for genetically modified food gets her a visit to a local chemical engineering facility, where she’s shocked to find a supposedly reformed Sideshow Bob as their chief scientist.

The reaction: Guess there’s more drops of blood to squeeze from the Sideshow Bob stone. His last appearance was four seasons prior in that face swapping episode (referenced here in his first scene when his face falls off and Maggie attempts to eat it like a Fruit Roll-Up. Thanks for that!) But really, what’s the point anymore? It’s always the same: Bob appears to have turned over a new leaf, then he turns evil, each and every time, to increasingly stupid and crazy results, which is especially the case here. We start out with the show’s take on GMOs, which honestly, between the anti-GMO video and the visit to Monsarno, it seemed to have a bit of potential. But then Bob appears, who for some reason is on work release as chief scientist. Why would this huge company hire a currently convicted felon who, as far as we know, has no STEM background whatsoever, to such a position? No matter. The emotional thread is that Bob appeals to Lisa’s intellectualism, pulling her into helping him with his research. The show had never explored pairing these two eggheads together, so I was actually curious to see where this was going to go. But when we get towards the end, my hopes started to fall real fast. When Bob effortlessly saves Lisa from a falling art installation, his scheme is revealed: he had been altering his DNA during his time at Monsarno, and seeks to raid the museum of samples of the strongest, most brilliant people throughout history to be a genetic superman. Uhhhhhh huuuh. He also has animal DNA in him too, with a grasshopper hop and an unhinged jaw, which he uses to attempt to bite off Kearney’s head with in the finale. So, what in the fuck is going on here? Bob’s last bunch of episodes have all centered on him trying to get revenge on the Simpsons, that’s his thing now. But here, his plan is just to be “the wisest and strongest maniac ever to bring the blessings of dictatorship to the world.” So now he’s literally a generic cartoon supervillain. I guess his character degradation is complete, we can check him off the list. And his whole kinship with Lisa was basically pointless too, all it did was hinder his plan in the end. For some reason, he seemed unusually pleading to the Simpsons to hang out with him, but it didn’t play into his scheme at all. I’m pretty sure this is the last Bob episode to date, and I sure hope it stays that way. Bob was once such a marvelous character; a snobby sociopath who committed heinous schemes he believed for the greater cultural good. Now, we end on him lying at the bottom of the ocean. With fucking gills. And he steps on a rake, because fan service. Aggravated shudder indeed.

Three items of note:
– There’s an inane subplot here starring Marge: she arrives too late for first dibs at the church volunteer board and ends up getting stuck teaching abstinence to teenagers. The group are our usual suspects, the bullies, and everyone’s favorite character Shauna. Forget that it makes no sense for them to be at the church in the first place, just go with it. Marge tries to appeal to them with finger puppets for some reason, and the plot kind of just ends when Marge gets an unintentional win because the teens are grossed out by her and Homer showing light intimacy. Or something. I dunno, whatever.
– The episode is pretty much heavily lampshading itself as they have to write their sixth or seventh scene of the Simpsons shockingly yelling “Sideshow Bob!” and Bob explaining how he got out. Bart says, annoyed, “This is getting boring. Either murder us or tell us how you got here!” Remember “Cape Feare” when Bob was a legitimate threat? But that’s an unfair comparison. At this point, nothing is treated seriously anymore, be it positively or negatively emotional, and the moments they do try to play something serious are laughably empty and trite. His character progression was slower than the rest of the cast’s given he only shows up every couple seasons, but this truly felt like Bob’s last stop to being a one-dimensional cartoon character.
– The ending is so fucking bad. Bob reveals his whole plan to Lisa and Bart just happens to appear at the museum, slingshot at the ready to stop him. Then Bob chases them down the street and uses his stupid grasshopper leaps to catch up to them. He leaps up, then cut to the next shot where he lands in front of them, and they’ve somehow been transported to the middle of the Springfield dam. Oh, is that located directly next to the downtown area? Certainly doesn’t look like it from the wide shot. So he’s going to throw Bart and Lisa off the dam now. This whole thing came completely out of nowhere that I can’t even tell if they’re intentionally referencing “Brother From Another Series” or not. Then Homer and Marge pull up, because they somehow knew what was happening, with Marge commanding her obedient army of teens to beat up Bob, which they do. Then we get Bob sucking Kearney’s entire head, as mentioned above. Ugh. This leads to Bob labeling himself a genetic freak and going to commit suicide, which comes completely out of nowhere. What use did Bob think he would have for all this animal DNA? What was his plan to become dictator of… Springfield? America? The world? What is the pooooooiinnntt?
– Oh, we also get Marcia Wallace’s final appearance, in an end tag featuring Ned and Edna tangoing, then we see Ned sitting sadly with a black arm band on, next to a side table with framed pictures of Edna and Maude. It certainly was a nice send-off, which felt very weird coming directly at the end of such a batshit crazy episode.

One good line/moment: I genuinely did enjoy some of the moments between Bob and Lisa. Again, I really wish they had actually done something with that that made sense within the story. Before things go sour, they seem to be having a swell time at the museum, and we get a glimpse of Bob’s snobbery at Lisa’s tastes in art (“I like the Impressionists!” “The boy bands of the art world. But for you, Lisa, I shall face the Renoir with sangfroid.”)

Original airdate: March 9, 2014

The premise: A socially ostracized Bart befriends Digby, a transfer student with a love for falconry, but over time, he learns his new friend might not be quite right.

The reaction: Yawwwwwn… it’s been a while since we’ve had a boring one. Episodes nowadays are pretty tepid and un-engaging to me at this point, but this one was a good ol’ fashioned snooze fest, which is saying something when the episode culminates in a child being locked in a mental institution. Bart is swayed by the words of a guest minister from Indonesia to donate some money, for some reason. He borrows a twenty off Homer, who then hounds him incessantly to pay him back. Bart gets so frazzled to pay his debt that he takes to eating things for money on the playground, resulting in him swallowing a frog full of formaldehyde, putting him in the hospital. They show Homer’s comeuppance is having to pay a four thousand dollar medical bill, but it really doesn’t excuse how fucked up the whole scenario was. But none of that opening matters; after that, Bart’s bullies are thwarted by a falcon, and his trainer Digby, or Diggs. The preceding seven minutes truly were meaningless. Bart takes an interest in falconry, and he and Diggs become friends. Alright, so what happens next? The two are up in a tree, and Diggs says, “You wanna see something cool?” He then proceeds to dive and fall straight to the ground. Later, Diggs tells Bart that he was trying to fly, and then later Bart finds out he’s being sent away to a mental hospital. What’s all this about? There was no real build-up to this, like of Diggs’s obsession with birds to the point he wanted to be one, so none of this resonates. Also, does this boy have parents? Bart’s at the hospital by himself when Dr. Hibbert comes in with the psychiatric specialist to speak with him alone. Later, Bart encounters Diggs, who conveniently has a one-day pass from the crazy house (???), and they go to the falconry contest that had never been mentioned prior, so they can open all the cages and let the birds be free. Okay. And then Diggs leaves to go back to being institutionalized as melancholy music plays. And that’s it. What the fuck was that all about? Is this a happy ending? This seemingly orphaned, possibly schizophrenic kid rides off into the sunset back to being locked in a psychiatric ward against his will. What am I supposed to feel here? This whole scenario is pretty fucked up, but even more so that the episode doesn’t seem to even acknowledge it. I don’t know what that hell this episode was supposed to be, but I’m pretty sure the writers didn’t know either.

Three items of note:
– I’m pretty stunned that they didn’t even bother to come up with a terrible punny title. Did they just forget? I guess someone just wrote ‘Diggs’ as a placeholder and no one went back to change it.
– There’s a montage of Bart and Diggs with the falcon, and for some reason, all the shots aren’t stabilized, they’re wobbling like someone’s filming with a camera, and the color is washed out a little bit too. Maybe it’s a parody of something that uses the same music? I could look it up to see, but I don’t care to.
– At the dinner table, Bart mentions he has a printout of the hospital they sent Diggs to and shows his parents. They try to play him as hopelessly naive, but surely Bart can figure out what “Twisted Meadows Psychiatric Hospital” means. For some reason, Marge gets incredibly uncomfortable when Bart asks if he can visit his incarcerated friend (“If this is what I think it is, it’s not a place we should ever ever take a little boy.”) In addition to her apparently being a-OK about a kid being permanently sent to the nut house, it’s incredibly odd of Marge to not be reassuring to Bart, telling him that his friend is getting the help he needs, and he can go visit him. Instead, she’s so ridiculously callous about this house of horrors too horrible to even speak of, making Bart feel even worse about the whole situation.

One good line/moment:
– The couch gag was directed by Sylvain Chomet, the French animator behind The Triplets of Belleville and The Illusionist. It’s very beautiful and weird, and I’d much rather watch a whole episode animated like that.