Original airdate: January 10, 2010

The premise: Krusty is outraged at his new studio mandated co-host meant to cater to young girls, Princess Penelope, who soon begins to completely usurp his fame. But it turns out that Penelope is a devoted super fan, and the two begin a relationship. Meanwhile, a headhunter tries to lure Homer, Lenny and Carl away from Springfield Nuclear to the power plant in Capitol City.

The reaction: This episode aired before Morgan Spurlock’s special, acting as our 20th anniversary show of sorts. And man, is it ever illustrative of not only how bad the series itself has gotten, but how characters are now virtually their complete opposites. Remember Krusty, the degenerate, ill-tempered drunk who needed his mail sorted by death threat, paternity suit or both? Now it seems thanks to one insane super fan, he’s head over heels in love, willing to marry this Penelope person. Who is this woman? And why is Krusty so over the moon for her? The episode trots out this unbelievably cliche and saccharine ending, completely irony-free, where the two kiss and make up in Paris, which even if their relationship was completely understandable and made sense, it would still be frustrating. But none of it does; as usual, we’re just told things, not shown them. Meanwhile in our B plot, Mr. Burns not only cares if three of his dead-eyed, incompetent employees quit, but he gets on his knees and begs them to stay. Do I need to say a damn thing to explain why this is wrong? The episode ends with a thank you for 20 years of watching, and the warning, “The best is yet to come.” Oh dear.

Three items of note:
– I guess you could count this as a musical episode, except none of the songs are in any way funny. We have Penelope’s introduction, which feels endless. Bart and Milhouse plugging their ears and shivering in the fetal position watching as their beloved show is reduced to utter shambles… is this perceptive meta commentary? I doubt it. Then we have Krusty and Penelope’s new joint show, a lovey dovey affair with still no attempts at any humor. Then we have a somber Penelope at the end, busking at cafes in Paris. Again, no jokes. Have we gone from crippled attempts at humor, to just having none at all?
– Let’s have a guest star round-up, huh? Anne Hathaway stars as Penelope, a character we know nothing about. She enters as a prim, perfect princess, and then we see her speak normally in a (shaky) Long Island accent. All I can get from her is obsessed emotionally stunted super fan. None of this is Hathaway’s fault, she’s just reading words on a page, and admittedly she’s a pretty good singer. Elsewhere, Homer, Lenny and Carl are touring Capitol City’s power plant, who has on its payroll… Gary Larson, cartoonist of The Far Side. How did this happen? The Far Side is certainly among the greatest comic strips ever published, but its run ended in 1995. What was the origin of this booking? We also get a brief appearance from Eartha Kitt over a pre-recorded tape, as she died over a year before this episode aired. Was this story really in development for this long and this is what we got? And Jackie Mason returns briefly as Rabbi Krustofski, long enough to besmirch his future daughter-in-law for not being Jewish, and celebrate their busted non-union. Hooray!
– The B-plot is so stupid and empty. This headhunter finds Homer, Lenny and Carl at a bar and whisks them off, knowing nothing about their work ethic or if they’re good employees or not. We’ve seen Lenny and Carl are somewhat good employees, but surely this guy’s done zero research if he thinks Homer is a get. When Burns catches wind of this, as I stated before, he begs for them to stay. That’s right, the heartless old curmudgeon, with absolutely no regard for anyone with a smaller bank account than himself, grovels before three of his most worthless underlings. And he wins them over with special, artisan donuts. Homer loves donuts so much he’ll eat them off the side of a dirt road, what does he care about quality? What garbage this is.

One good line/moment: There were a few smirk-worthy moments in the first few minutes before everything went to shit, like the quick look at America’s Next Top Krusty (“Hey hey! I’m non-union!”)

Original airdate: January 3, 2010

The premise: Seemingly innocent journalist Marshall Goldman takes an interest in Abe’s rambling stories about his life, and it isn’t long before his tales become popular local literature. This leads to Homer getting jealous of this mysterious stranger, only to find his intentions may actually be of a sinister nature. Also there’s a B-plot about Bart and some stupid stuffed lamb.

The reaction: One of Abe’s hallmarks are his long rambling nonsense stories, so I’m kinda shocked it took until episode 450 for the writers to try to make a full episode about it. But where in the past, we got wonderfully ridiculous flashbacks of Abe as a cabaret singer performing for Hitler or his recently immigrated family filling the head of the Statue of Liberty with garbage, the tales here are decidedly less interesting. This episode plays this once hysterical character quirk much more seriously, and none of what the characters say or do makes me feel like it deserves to be. This is another episode where it feels like nothing is happening, because you never get a sense of who is enjoying reading Abe’s stories or why, and how many people know about the publications. So when things completely switch gears when we see Goldman is planning to kill Abe to get a Pulitzer Prize, it’s so out of left field that even if it was trying, it couldn’t make me care about the “dramatic” climax.

Three items of note:
– I couldn’t have less to say about the B-story. Krabappel gives out a stuffed lamb for kids to take care during the weekend? That seems too juvenile for fourth graders, yet they all go apeshit over it. Then by the end, we get more out-of-character Bart where he randomly feels remorseful about losing the doll. That stupid lamb ain’t no Mr. Honey Bunny.
– I feel like this episode could have worked had they laid more emphasis on how Homer and the family took Abe’s ramblings for granted. When you’re taking something that’s been used as a joke for decades, you have to do a bit more extra leg work to make it stick here when you’re playing it serious. They have two quick lines about it, before we quickly move onto dynamite material like Homer screaming at himself in the mirror and breaking it, or that endless bit at the beginning of Marge looking through all her camera photos. Twenty seconds never felt so long.
– We don’t know a goddamn thing about Marshall Goldman, who I guess is a main character in this episode. The reveal of his plans is so bizarre since absolutely nothing felt like it was leading up to that. And even that could have been excusable if they had developed his “aww shucks” innocent persona and then contrasted it with a short monologue about him being a selfish greedy crazy person. Instead, they just flip the cartoonishly evil switch for the duration of the episode. Also, Abe breaks a bottle on his head and he doesn’t even flinch. What is he, a fucking robot? Oh, never mind, he get incapacitated by a bunch of hat boxes that fall on him. Okay.

One good line/moment: I had to dig deep for this one. Uncovering Goldman’s evil plot, Homer spots a mock up poster for the film version of Abe’s series of stories. Subbing for Abe is a Jim Henson Creature Shop creation. The drawing of the stuffed Abe in a wheelchair with a wall-eyed expression made me smile.

Original airdate: December 13, 2009

The premise: Seeing how great a bond Lisa and Maggie have, Bart longs for that kind of connection with a brother of his own. Unable to trick his parents into conceiving one for him, Bart opts to check out the orphanage, where he peaks the interest of impressionable young lad Charlie (voiced by Jordan Nagai, Russell from Up).

The reaction: Similar to “Pranks and Greens,” writing for Bart seems to be really difficult. I feel like I could meet the writers halfway with Bart wanting a brother, but as this show is wont to do nowadays, everything is painfully spelled out to us, as we get a gigantic monologue exposition dump by Lisa about her irreplaceable sisterly bond with Maggie and how Bart will never have that. From there, we have a bunch of schemes he pulls to get his mother pregnant, which plays out more unseemly than presumably intended, at least to me. When Marge confronts him about it, Bart cranks it into “Bart the Mother” mode and the tears start flowing. Who is this kid, and where’s Bart? A lot of these episodes feel so thin and unmemorable so far. At least the horrible Marge/Flanders thing from “Nada” will stick with me. These last few episodes, what is there? The horrible South Park “parody”? Five seconds of the Plow King for nostalgia points? No dice.

Three items of note:
– It’s always easiest to highlight the diametric opposite nature of the show in its prime and the show now when they retread on jokes they’ve done before. Bart waits with bated breath for the announcement that his school will have a snow day, but to no avail. Back in “Skinner’s Sense of Snow” in season 12, they did the same joke, except it felt snappier and was told quicker (“Springfield Elementary… My Dear Watson Detective School. And lastly, Springfield Elementary… is open. And it’s open season on savings at Springfield Menswear… which is closed.”) Here, they do three fake ones, while before, they did only one before. Then we get see Chalmers and Skinner at the radio station, who are making these announcements for some reason, openly admit they were fucking with Bart. What? When you’re a kid, waiting by the radio to hear those sweet sweet words of freedom, it seems like it took forever. It’s funny in “Sense of Snow” because of the announcer’s complete lack of understanding that his phrasing and pauses were bizarrely misleading. The joke isn’t that your superintendent is messing with you on purpose, seemingly having nothing better to do with his time.
– This episode is on guest star overload: for Bart’s dream inspiring him to want a brother, we get the three Manning brothers and the Smothers Brothers, who do a little routine that eats up a good amount of screen time. I’ve seen bits they’ve done that are kinda funny, but here, they’re just… not. Their humor style doesn’t exactly fit the show. Kim Cattrall, not already having an abnormally huge part in a previous episode, returns to do one line as Bart’s hypothetical third sister in a dream. But the standout is Jordan Nagai as Charlie. He’s just a kid, but I thought he did a really good job. He certainly didn’t sound like Russell, it was a different character to me.
– The resolution to the story is kind of weird. Bart takes Charlie to a horror movie and freaks him the hell out, which for some reason makes him feel remorse. I guess he’s going to learn a lesson about responsibility? Then Charlie seems to betray him to Chief Wiggum, but he’s actually doing a double play and they run off. After our obligatory dumb “dramatic” climax, we see Charlie’s ultimate fate is being adopted by a family with six daughters. Alright, whatever. We’ll never see him again anyway.

One good line/moment: For once, I actually have a couple bits to choose from. “Be cool, he’s an orphan! You know, just like Annie, except he’s a dude and he hates tomorrow.” “I hate it so much!” Nagai’s emphatic read on that made me laugh.

Original airdate: November 29, 2009

The premise: Lisa stumbles upon a trio of Wiccans and becomes interested in their beliefs and practices, leading to her having to defend them when the town kicks off their own modern day witch hunt. Meanwhile, Homer becomes chummy with Cletus once he discovers he and his fellow hick folk’s penchant for underground beer brewing.

The reaction: What shocked me most in a lot of the season 20 episodes is how at times there would be no story. Things would be happening on screen, but there was no feel of progression, or meaning, or characters caring about what was happening. This is one of those episodes. There’s this stuff about the Wiccans seemingly having powers and making the town go blind (again, expecting us to buy this crap, and wait for the SHOCKING reveal), but there seems to be absolutely zero care in establishing who these characters are, what they do, or what they believe, apart from one or two paltry lines about the power of nature or some shit. On that note, Lisa’s affiliation with them, and her departing line where she considers them friends, rings completely hollow since you barely see them in the episode. More time is spent with Homer and Cletus, which at the very least crosses into the main story, serving as our explanation for the mystery. Why are Lisa episodes so damn empty? She used to be such a rich, soulful character. Then again, so did everyone else…

Three items of note:
– On the long drive home, the kids drive Homer and Marge nuts playing a handheld game “Bonk It,” clearly a “parody” of Bop It. But that thing came out in the 90s, I remember seeing commercials for it when I was a kid. Was there a grand Bop It resurgence with a new generation of kids that I don’t know about? Whatever. All I know is they’re playing that thing for over a minute of screen time, which the show in its prime would have used to tell more than one joke.
– Lisa’s skepticism of Wiccan powers is absolved when she miraculously gets a substitute teacher on the day she had forgotten to do her art project. Why not? Never explained. Just a plot contrivance. The substitute just keeps screaming “Which craft?!” until it hammers the point home.
– Desperate, sad, pathetic Moe takes an even darker turn in which he expresses disappointment that Cletus and his fellow hillbillies weren’t planning on gang raping him. I wish I were making this up.

One good line/moment: A quick shot of Ned’s speed dials, where we see one for the “Nipple-Slip Hotline.”

Original airdate: November 22, 2009

The premise: Bart is shocked to find out he’s not Springfield Elementary’s greatest prankster, an “honor” held by twenty-something manchild Andy Hamilton (voiced by Jonah Hill). Feeling bad for his poor lot in life, Bart attempts to help Andy get a job. Meanwhile, Marge comes under fire from her fellow Springfield mothers for serving their babies unhealthy snacks, so she resolves to go completely organic.

The reaction: This is another one of those episodes that really illustrates how the writers don’t know how to write for Bart anymore. He feels jealous of this Andy character, then enamored by him, then for some reason he’s goaded by Lisa into thinking he’s a loser and wants to help straighten his life out. Remember the great Bart fantasies showing him as a wandering drifter, betting all his money at a casino and losing, or becoming a literal monster from testing food additives? He’s ten years old, he thinks those are awesome depictions of adulthood. Why the fuck does Bart care about this guy’s life? By the second half, he’s like this stern parent figure to Andy, a role that just doesn’t make sense for Bart at all. And another tension-free ending that they try to play up for drama. You know as soon as you see that worm truck that it’s all part of Krusty’s act, but we’re stuck watching two minutes of them pretending it’s not. As for the B-story, it’s pretty much a collection of the most basic health food jokes (Buying organic is expensive! Carrying a reusable grocery bag is effeminate!)

Three items to note:
– We see right before Andy’s master prank, Skinner was actually a laid back, cool dude? That just doesn’t compute with me. Also, how could he have NOT seen the entire fucking pool was filled with worms as soon as he walked outside?
– Andy waxes on about how back in his day, they couldn’t film their pranks for YouTube. It feels like such an odd line, considering Bart has been ten since 1987. Seeing the Simpsons utilizing new technology has always felt weird to me. It took a while to get used to them just using a computer.
– At Marge’s Mommy meets, we see baby Gerald and his equally unibrowed mother. He’s Maggie’s infant arch-nemesis, but I guess you gotta work with the characters you got. Though there’s one token random mother and child thrown in there to fill out the group. Also ridiculous is you have Selma and Ling, who just wordlessly go along with the crowd in shaming and deserting Marge.

One good line/moment: Looking at old newspaper records on a monitor, Bart commands, “Zoom in and enhance!” Lisa shrugs, and simply pushes Bart’s head closer to the screen.