Original airdate: April 10, 2011

The premise: Lisa stumbles upon the home of the Great Raymondo, an old jaded magician who begrudgingly agrees to teach her his old tricks. Becoming a magic natural, Lisa learns the secret behind Raymondo’s greatest illusion, only to accidentally reveal it to competitor Cregg Demon, a Criss Angel type.

The reaction: Oh boy, another “Simpson becomes an instant expert” show. So much of this episode is just Lisa, or other magicians, performing tricks expertly with no mistakes. Where’s the entertainment in that? Lisa goes from doing a coin trick to causing Bart to cough up a giant pair of gardening shears in the same scene. I guess she’s just so smart that she becomes a seasoned professional in less than 24 hours. There’s no tension, no real investment to be had in any of this. Raymondo teaches Lisa his signature trick, and then the next scene, she does it effortlessly. When Cregg Demon (terrible name) ends up stealing it, like, who cares? Upon performing it, he ends up sabotaged by a cavalcade of other magicians who hate him, who are basically just tick marks for the total guest voice tally at this point: Ricky Jay, David Copperfield, and returning guests Penn & Teller. The joke here is Teller speaking, but the show already did that joke, and much better, before (“I’m gonna kill you!” “He’ll do it! I’m not the first Teller!”) So Demon is drowning in the giant milk can for at least two minutes when four grown men try to attack and kill a little girl before Raymondo thwarts them and ultimately saves Demon. The episode ends with Lisa performing the magic show, and of course she does every trick flawlessly. What fun. There’s also a runner involving Raymondo’s old assistant/lover who’s dead, and the actual ending is him inhaling enough ether that she appears before him and the two dance. Like, what is this? The episode has these moments that are so trite and cliche, but they’re playing 100% straight. Earlier, before revealing his secret trick, Raymondo laments he never had children, but he’s glad he’s found a surrogate in Lisa. It’s such melodramatic schmaltz, and again, with no subversion. The show is perfectly fine just going through these trodden motions and calling it a day. What a snooze fest.

Three items of note:
– I was shocked to find there was no theme song at all at the beginning, a first for this series. “Life on the Fast Lane” and “Sideshow Bob Roberts” went from the logo to the start of the episode, but this one just started at the first scene. This is especially surprising given how much useless padding are in these episodes that they couldn’t cut this one to time. But come to find out, it takes three and a half minutes to get Lisa to Raymondo’s house. The opening involves the Simpsons ending up picking too many peaches, and then having to eat nothing but peaches. Certainly we can’t cut this absolutely spellbinding plot from the episode. This is born from Homer not realizing that he had to pay for all the fruit they picked. So, why not just leave it there? There’s also padding within the padding with Jack McBrayer as a good ol’ Southern boy singing a song about peaches that goes on forever and is not funny at all. I love McBrayer, and they just completely wasted him.
– The episode is seemingly gearing up toward Lisa being told the secret behind the milk can escape trick, Raymondo’s greatest feat. So then when she learns it, she decides to make a grand debut of it… at the Springfield Elementary playground. And then she performs it flawlessly. They’re doing the cliche “child meets old person expert, learns stuff” premise, but there’s no intrigue whatsoever because Lisa is also shown to be an expert immediately. What’s the point of this story?
– The guest star roll call (a literal roll call, as Lisa names each magician as they appear) is pretty much at its laziest here. Each celebrity gets their isolated lines, all of which are feeble little softball jokes done at their expense. There’s not even any reason for them to be there at all; Cregg Demon could have botched the magic trick himself and gotten himself stuck, the conflict would have been exactly the same then. Maybe the writers all recently went to the Magic Castle in Hollywood and thought they should write a magic episode so they can meet all these people. Keep raising that guest star count!

One good line/moment: I enjoyed Martin Landau as Raymondo, but scanning back through the episode, I’m hard pressed to name any line I thought was particularly funny. Maybe I was just waiting the whole time for him to start screaming about Boris Karloff being a limey cocksucker like he did in Ed Wood.

Original airdate: March 27, 2011

The premise: After publicly humiliating Bart, Homer is forced to go to therapy, where he is taken to task for his penchant for strangling his son. He ends up becoming a more docile father, which ultimately leads to Bart taking advantage of him.

The reaction: Homer strangling Bart is one of those show hallmarks that is pretty iffy when you think about it. This is a cartoon with a lot of exaggerated elements, but when you stop to consider what you’re really watching, a father physically assaulting his ten year old son, it’s actually pretty horrifying. As such, it’s probably best to not hold a lens up to something like this, but I guess no stone can afford to be left unturned when you’re trying to come up with more story ideas when you’re fast approaching 500 episodes. The other dads in therapy understandably react in horror as Homer talks about strangling Bart, and the therapist goes into full-on serious mode. I half expected him to call up Child Protective Services and have his son hauled away. But no, it just leads to non-stop therapy involving Kareem-Abdul Jabbar throttling Homer’s neck for hours on end. So in this case, the strangling is funny? This eventually leaves Homer mentally scarred, envisioning Jabbar’s face threatening him every time he gets an angry impulse. Because of this, Bart proceeds to take full advantage over Homer, using and abusing him because he knows he won’t retaliate. So, I don’t feel any sympathy toward Homer or Bart in this episode at all, they both act incredibly terrible. This all leads to a final last ditch effort therapy to try to get Bart to show he cares about his father. Homer literally hangs from a noose, but Bart is too engrossed in his cell phone. So Bart doesn’t care that his father is dying right in front of him? This is all too much for the therapist, who proceeds to strangle Bart himself, which I guess vindicates Homer? You shine a light on this horrible act of child abuse, but by the end of it, you have to view it as A-OK, because you know Homer’s going to be strangling Bart once again in a future episode with no consequence. Almost all episodes nowadays are ultimately about nothing and saying nothing, so trying to take such a cartoony staple of the series and treat it realistically is way out of the show’s wheelhouse at this point.

Three items of note:
– So, let’s talk about the impetus of the story. At a basketball game, everyone goes nuts for the Jumbo-tron except for Bart. Attempting to get him to laugh, Homer continuously tickles Bart, who multiple times begs for his father to stop. His pleas are intercut with his laughter, but as it keeps going, it becomes more and more uncomfortable. This scene feels like more abusive behavior than the strangling to me. Anyway, Bart is stimulated so much that he ends up pissing himself, and the entire stadium laughs at him. Homer has just directly caused his ten-year-old son’s horrible humiliation, and all he can do is give a hollow apology inbetween trying to start a wave. We see him throwing his hands up and woo-ing throughout him talking to Bart, and then Marge butts in, “Homer, just because everyone else is doing the wave doesn’t mean you have to.” It’s basically her just setting Homer up for the joke about him trying to start the wave, rather than, you know, try to comfort her son who’s sitting there devastated with piss in his pants. It’s just awful.
– Bart’s reign of terror is pretty aggravating to watch. He rides a tractor through the school while he’s got Homer writing on the chalkboard (why?!), but there’s nothing explaining why Skinner or Krabappel or anyone else at the school isn’t doing anything to stop him. Hell, where is Marge during all this?
– I guess because they couldn’t pad the A-story out long enough, we get a bizarre side plot where Marge proposes a girl’s night with Lisa: sundaes, painting each other’s nails, and watching old horse movies, which leads to a show favorite: a list! I suppose when you’re a minute short, you have to add something. I’m shocked that humorless feminist prig Lisa didn’t cry foul at her mother’s adherence to established gender roles. You know, like an eight-year-old would do.

One good line/moment: I’m not a sports guy, but Kareem-Abdul Jabaar got in a few good lines (“When he told me what you do to your son, I was so disturbed, I only scored 172 points!”) Also, seeing him dressed as Homer in a bald cap shouting “Why you little!” while throttling Homer, I feel like I have to give the show some points for doing something so bizarre.

Original airdate: March 13, 2011

The premise: When Cheech & Chong have a falling out during their reunion tour, lifetime fan Homer partners with Cheech, while Chong finds an unusual partner in a horribly unfunny Skinner. Meanwhile, Marge tries to help the Crazy Cat Lady with her hoarding problem.

The reaction: Being of a demographic too young to have experienced Cheech & Chong in their heyday, I only really know about their comedy through pop culture osmosis. As such, a lot of this episode had me really lost, for multiple reasons. Firstly, it seems incredibly reliant on the viewers being huge fans of the duo and being aware of their library of material. I know about “Dave’s not here,” but the bit with the headmaster? The long exchange about the van being made of pot, which is a reference to one of their movies? I hadn’t a clue what was going on. It was almost like fanservice, the writers paying tribute to a comedy act they love and respect by… just repeating their jokes? Secondly, Cheech & Chong haven’t been culturally active in quite some time now, outside of some choice appearances on late night shows and other one-off cameos. So why do this whole episode around them? This is yet another instance of a Simpson becoming instantly famous and revered, as Homer gets up on stage to take Chong’s place and do their comedy bits, and the crowd eats it up. Why would fans who have paid decent money to see these shows be thrilled that one half of their favorite comedy duo have been replaced by a nobody? It reminds me of “How I Spent My Strummer Vacation” when the crowd was more thrilled to see Homer on stage than the fucking Rolling Stones. The whole episode just seems filled with things that feel like inside jokes. Chong’s desire to reinvent his older bits and Cheech’s love of Latin art, I didn’t know what to make of any of it. And then at the end, the two reunite for no real reason. We don’t even see Homer confront Chong about mending fences, we just skip to the end, because that’s what’s supposed to happen. Why write scenes that connect story beats when you can just jump to the bare bones plot elements instead? Another sorry outing.

Three items of note:
– The subplot barely gets any screen time, and also makes no sense at all. Marge takes it upon herself to clear out the mountain of junk in Crazy Cat Lady’s house, which actually makes her lucid. So her hoarding problem was the sole cause of her mental disorder? But then Marge becomes enraptured by the pile of “treasures” and unloads them in the Simpson house. Bart and Lisa arrive to find the home full of garbage. Lisa surmises the only one that can help is Homer. Why? For what reason? And no reason is ever given for Marge being like this whatsoever. Is her obsessive compulsion related to her gambling problem? Homer arrives home with Crazy Cat Lady, still lucid, who I guess gives up her sanity to help Marge for some reason, becoming manic thanks to her beloved trash once more, and calling her army of cats into the Simpson house. Homer and Marge leave to wrap up the A-story, and that’s the end of it. We see so little of what actually happens in this episode that I didn’t even realize until writing this now, we end on the Crazy Cat Lady seemingly taking over the Simpson house with all of her cats and garbage. You’d think that would be something you would resolve, but why bother?
– Something that the show seems to love nowadays is lists. We get it with Lisa reading off the six comedy album titles, and then three separate occasions of Lisa, then Marge, then finally Crazy Cat Lady naming off items in the giant hoard pile. None of it is funny, and it all just stinks of the writers trying to kill time. Additionally, there’s Homer’s psychedelic 70s fantasy of him hanging out with Cheech that lasts a full minute which also seemingly exist just to run out the clock.
– When we got to Chong auditioning for replacements in the Springfield Elementary auditorium (why?!), I was really lost. We have Gil, Willie and then Skinner performing bits that may or may not be Cheech & Chong sketches, but I have no idea what the fuck they’re talking about. I felt like I was having a fever dream, I just could not understand what these characters were doing. Ultimately, Chong picks Skinner, wanting to turn the “Dave’s not here” schtick into some kind of bizarro performance art, which was equally as confusing. And we almost got away with a solo Skinner appearance, but Chalmers sneaks in right near the end shouting at Skinner in the audience. But, on another tangent, this whole conceit of a classic duo breaking up, with one wanting to just recycle the same material over and over, the other wanting to break out and do different things, reminded me a lot of the old South Park episode “Terrance & Phillip: Behind the Blow,” where the Canadian comedy duo have a falling out. An episode that aired ten years prior to this feels so much stronger and funnier than this slop.

One good line/moment: I honestly can’t come up with a thing. This episode is already extremely ramshackle, but put on top of that an extended tribute to a comedy team that I have basically no knowledge of, it just left me incredibly bemused for most of the running time.

Original airdate: March 6, 2011

The premise: On a field trip, Lisa discovers a type of flower that renders dangerous scorpions completely docile. This discovery is caught wind of by a pharmaceutical company, who hopes to synthesize it as a drug to make crotchety old people more sedate. Unfortunately, the miracle drug comes with one unforeseen side effect: dislocated eyeballs.

The reaction: I honestly don’t understand what this episode was about, so I might as well go through it beat by beat. Abe is kicked out of the retirement home for being too irritating, and proceeds to aggravate the rest of the Simpsons living with them. So Homer doses him with Lisa’s flower extract she discovered and it peps him right up. In an aggravatingly expository scene, Lisa confronts her father about it, and Abe reveals he’s just fine with it, that he wants to live his later years feeling fun and fancy free. So, this is something Abe is absolutely fine with, and earlier we’d seen Lisa and the rest of the Simpsons living on edge over Abe’s crotchety mood, so where is the downside to this? Lisa was fine testing on the scorpions, so is this like an issue of messing with a human’s free will, even if the subject is complicit? Beats me. She flushes her sample vial down the toilet to dispose of it, which is an absolutely fantastic idea. This dangerous chemical that can alter behavior, let’s release it into the water supply! But despite dramatic music playing when it enters the ocean and fish come into contact with it, nothing comes of it. Instead, a pharmaceuticals guy just happens to be at Moe’s and convinces Homer and Abe to mass produce the chemical as a drug. But ultimately it ends up being circulated by the elderly of Springfield, and it results in their eyeballs popping out. Yup. Not since Sideshow Bob’s entire face peeling off have I seen something this aggressively cartoonish from the series. The point of all this, I guess, is that the seniors view their dangling eye tendrils as an acceptable cost to their improved mood, but it’s just so goddamn silly. And then the very end of the show involves Abe doing an about face that he and his fellow geriatrics are of the greatest generation and they NEED to be crotchety and focused to pick up the children’s messes. This all happens in the last minute or so of the episode out of nowhere, and I don’t really know what to make of it. They even lampshade it with Lisa not exactly sure what the lesson is. Me too, kid. Me too.

Three items of note:
– The opening field trip is pretty annoying. First, it’s a mix of the second and fourth grade students just so we have Lisa and Ralph in there, chaperoned by Principal Skinner. And, of course, Chalmers is there too. I’m going to be shocked when we get to an episode where we see Skinner by himself. The rest are just a series of pointless scenes, including one where Nelson walks behind a cactus to seemingly jerk off to some ye olde nudie photos the boys find? Gross? The opening feels like something the show used to do in the past: establish a setting or an emotion or some kind of thing that will lead to the start of the plot with a bunch of one-off gags. The difference is they used to be able to burn four or five jokes in like a minute and a half. The field trip lasts three and a half minutes before we get to Lisa and the scorpions; everything before it just feels like killing time by any means necessary.
– So the pharma guy gives Abe some prototype pills before they hit the market, warning to not let them fall in the wrong hands, lest they be sold off. Cut to Bart walking around with a little suit selling them to everyone in town. His motivation is not quite clear, as Bart’s money hungry for no real reason. He’s a kid, what does he care about money unless he wants to buy something specific? Like that stupid dirt bike from a few episodes ago? It all feels so unnecessary. I feel like Lisa should have inadvertently been responsible for spiking the water supply of the town by flushing her sample down the toilet. You could get more mileage from a premise like that.
– The ending truly baffles me. Homer encourages Pharma Guy to let the seniors have their drug, claiming their generation has got everything under control. He then claims he’s off to get drunk, gets in his car, and drives over some parking spikes. He proceeds to poorly jack his car, and then Lenny and Carl show up for no reason to give him bad advice. This all felt like a bit that was going on way, way too long, but then by the end of it, we see Abe looking on in disgust, which leads to his speech convincing everyone to get off the drug and stay malcontent. But then when the geezers start approaching the car, Homer smiles and nudges Carl before they proceed to fix the mess they had created. So was this his plan all along? Why would Homer care about wanting the seniors off the drug? We establish there’s no real problem, but we reset the status quo regardless. I’m still at a loss.

One good line/moment: The childproof door of the pharmaceutical building was pretty amusing, but it did run a little long with Homer’s continuous struggles to open it.

Original airdate: February 20, 2011

The premise: The current intellectual property holder of Bart’s old Internet cartoon Angry Dad approaches him about making it into a film, later turned into a short. As the film sweeps awards season, Bart becomes discouraged that his father is assuming all the credit for his work.

The reaction: Here’s a modern-era series trope that I’ve missed (sarcasm), wherein a Simpson becomes a gigantic success apropos of nothing, in an episode based entirely upon Hollywood navel-gazing. “I Am Furious Yellow,” an episode from nine years prior, was a perfectly enjoyable episode featuring then-contemporary riffing on Internet companies and web cartoons. This episode is less concerned with Angry Dad itself and more about fame and the awards circuit. From the moment they walk in the studio, Bart and Homer are regarded as legends of the industry. Why? Is Angry Dad like a cult classic? It’s the equivalent of animators today shitting themselves over meeting the Joe Cartoon guy. None of the history of why people care so much about Angry Dad or the production of the short itself is really dwelled on; we get the decision to make it a short rather than a film, act break, then we find out it’s been nominated for a Golden Globe. We don’t even know what the fuck the film is, and if you haven’t seen or don’t remember “Furious Yellow,” you should have no clue what’s going on. The emotional thrust of the episode is Bart getting bummed out that Homer, as the voice and inspiration of Angry Dad, is hogging all the credit for all the awards the short is getting. Boy, what a relatable conflict! But it’s not clear what exactly Bart’s role in this film is. Two-thirds of the way in, we find out he was the writer/director of the film. What? We never saw any of that. Bart is busy crowing about not getting the recognition he deserves, but meanwhile we never saw him really putting any work into the film at all. But none of that matters. I’ve referenced it many times in the past, but the entire episode reeks of the classic Krusty line of trying to relate to the common man (“Like when your lazy butler washes your sock garters, and they’re still covered with schmutz?”) This is a show with a staff that’s won countless awards, and this episode is all about their world and their problems, far removed from the average American family the Simpsons are supposed to be. When Bart gets the call that Angry Dad is up for an Oscar, he goes into a little song and dance (“I’m going to the Oscars! Not as a seat filler! I’ll get a gift basket! But I won’t declare it!”) So this normal ten-year-old boy knows about the concept of seat fillers, getting gift baskets at Hollywood events, and declaring them on taxes he doesn’t have to file because he’s fucking ten. Terrible, terrible episode.

Three items of note:
– Instead of getting any actual plot or character motivation, we’re treated to extended clips of other cartoons, aping the likes of The Triplets of Belleville, Wallace & Gromit, Persepolis, and so on. But there’s not really any parody element to them, they’re just references, Simpson-ized versions of the actual articles that are effectively love letters. We love you, Mixar! I mean, Pixar! Ooooh, but we made a small dig at Cars! BURN! The easiest comparison one can make is to “The Front,” as both episodes involve an award show for animation. Remember the “How to Buy Action Figure Man” bit from that episode? It’s one of the most brilliant jokes the show has ever done, eviscerating the not-so-hidden agenda of 80s cartoons existing to sell toys in a mere four seconds. We see only a few seconds of each nominee, because that’s all the time they needed to tell their jokes and move on. Here, we get at least forty seconds each of four different nominees, where, as mentioned, there’s no real joke, it’s just a tribute to those actual films. A whole lot can change in twenty years. The writing staff of season 4 wasn’t as highly gilded, still bitter off their Emmy loss to a claymation Easter special, so they took great pleasure taking fire at their medium and the hokey pomp and circumstance of award shows. Nowadays, it’s just a big inoffensive love fest. It’s like the ending of “Radioactive Man” played straight, with a kind, ever-forgiving Hollywood set to “Lean on Me.”
– Lisa tries to encourage Bart about making Angry Dad into a short, listing great directors who started out making shorts: Wes Anderson, Frank Tashlin, and Tim Burton. One of these names is not like the other, isn’t it? Anderson and Burton are contemporary filmmakers, so I’ll accept that Lisa knows of them. But Frank Tashlin? Tashlin was one of the lesser known classic Warner Bros. cartoon directors, doing a lot of the old Porky Pig cartoons of the 1930s. I’m a huge cartoon nerd and I didn’t even know that after that, Tashlin went off to direct some successful films in the 50s, none of which are titles I recognize. The point is, there’s no fucking way Lisa knows who Frank Tashlin is. I try to not reiterate points that are constant problems in for this series, but Lisa’s compendium of world knowledge when the plot needs it was especially glaring here. And the joke isn’t over; Bart replies to Lisa’s list by asking, “Name one more.” Lisa replies, “Taylor Hackford.” I looked up Hackford, seeing that he did some short films, but then later directed such films as An Officer and a Gentleman, The Devil’s Advocate, and Ray. Hackford and Tashlin are both names unknown to the public, but I’d hazard a guess more of the general public have greater familiarity with those movies than they do of Tashlin’s work. Did it all come down to that they couldn’t think of a third name to go along with Anderson and Burton? She could have just said fucking John Lasseter, which would then tie into their later Pixar dick sucking. Done.
– This episode has a parade of superfluous guest voices. First up is Ricky Gervais, who previously played not-himself in an episode he kinda sorta wrote the outline for, this time just playing himself. Now, remember when Gervais hosted the Golden Globes and made Hollywood feel uncomfortable with the jokes he told at their expense? Remember how big a “controversy” that was? That’s basically the underlying joke in his scene, and it’s a real eye roller. More inside baseball humor. Also, both of his scenes run far, far too long; as was the case in his last episode, his very rambling, long-winded style of comedy does not really fit well with this show. It would also help if his lines were actually funny. Russell Brand and Halle Berry appear to present awards, and pretend to make fun of themselves. The most curious appearance is Nick Park, Wallace & Gromit director, who admittedly is the best guest of the list (“I’m more clay than man now.”) But it’s just weird considering not many people must know who he is. I guess they figure the audience will figure it out, but they don’t even say his full name, Lisa just says “Mr. Park.”

One good line/moment: This is pretty difficult, since this is definitely the worst episode so far. I guess I’ll go with the aforementioned Nick Park line. I love Aardman anything.