(originally aired May 3, 2009)
Another episode that seems to have some kind of promising premise, but it just gets lost in a bunch of meaningless nonsense. Marge witnesses firsthand what a shithole Springfield Elementary is and ponders what can be done. There happens to be a much better school in a nearby city, so Homer and Marge decide to rent an apartment there so the kids can enroll. Where is this? Waverly Hills, an affluent, tropical area with a parody theme by Weezer. Have you guessed what this is a “parody” of yet? The eponymous sign, the various buildings, the city hall, all modeled after actual areas in Beverly Hills. So, is this supposed to be funny or clever that they just Simpsonized this place and replaced some letters in its name? Then we get there, and we barely even focus on the school. We see that it’s very rich and over-the-top, and that Lisa isn’t getting straight A’s like she used to, but rather than embrace a challenge, she whines and bitches about it. And ultimately that’s partially why she wants to leave in the end. Every character is oh so likeable nowadays…

For the back half of the episode, more time is spent with Homer, where the gag is that he’s like a single swinging bachelor and Marge is his new girl, who becomes more and more involved with his life, like when he gives him a key to his apartment, she cramps his style by redecorating. It’s a cute premise when the two were self-consciously joking about it (“So can I see you again?” “How about you, me and my wife have a two-way?”) But then it just keeps going, and it just feels weird. Are they still fucking around or are they believing their ridiculous premise? But whatever, the rest of the time is spent with a ludicrous Lisa story. After spending a bit establishing street cred in Waverly Hills, Bart, for some reason, tries to get Lisa popular, spreading a rumor that she’s best friends with tween pop star Alaska Nebraska. Again, whoever could that be a parody of? It’s not clear why Bart does this, or why Lisa allows the charade to go on so long, or what the point of any of this is, but at the end of the day, we’ve killed twenty minutes, and that’s good enough for this show as it is now.

Tidbits and Quotes
– On her morning walk, Marge is stopped and samples scienceWater. Once again, whatever could this be parodying?
– At the school, Marge sees a classroom with triple-decker desks, just as they will be in the future in “Lisa’s Wedding.” And speaking of random callbacks, in the quick shot of the telemarketing office the teachers work in, the Heimlich maneuver poster of the man choking up a whole lobster is on the wall, as seen in “Homer at the Bat.”
– More random singing after Homer mocks Bart about losing his elementary school friends, he and Milhouse sing, “Stand By Me.” Why would Milhouse be singing if he’s going to lose Bart?
– And more references instead of actual parody or humor, as the city inspector is based on Anton Chigurh from No Country for Old Men. He flips a coin, he uses a captive bolt pistol… there’s no joke other than it’s just this character that you recognize from that movie.
– Skinner is shocked to find Superintendent Chalmers meeting with the Waverly Hills Elementary principal. So was I, considering it seems that Chalmers is living at Springfield Elementary nowadays. This leads to a back-and-forth of the two and their fractured relationship, as if there wasn’t enough gay subtext between them at this point.
– There’s an endless sequence at the act break of Bart running from Wiggum and the cops, tracking him down for not holding up his side of the bargain of going to Ralph’s birthday party. It’s a minute of pure unleaded time killer, since it has no point to the story at all.
– The Alaska Nebraska shit is completely pointless. There’s plenty to joke about regarding the Disney marketing machine, selling an image to impressionable preteen girls, the vacuous artistic content of these pop icons… but no, there is literally no commentary about Hannah Montana or any of that stuff at all. It’s just a plot device for a Lisa story that makes absolutely no sense. And it’s subpar MAD magazine-type naming conventions too. Nebraska is voiced by Ellen Page, which makes it even more confusing, since her voice and candor doesn’t fit the character she’s playing. Is that supposed to be the joke? That she’s a bubbly pop star with a frank manner of speaking? Except we never see her perform or anything other than the one scene of her backstage. Oh, whatever.
– Homer plays Halo on Xbox! He also has a Wii! Oh wait, don’t you mean Funtendo Zii? Or Ybox? Fuck this shit.
– I love the ending, where the writers desperately wrap up all the loose ends as quickly and stupidly as possible. There’s really no reason for the Simpsons to go back home, but we’ll manufacture some anyway. Lisa needs to escape from the girls who want her blood for lying about the Alaska Nebraska shit, a problem she created herself, Bart has no reason other than a joke, and Homer’s roommates stop by randomly to tell him that they hate him. Status quo, whatever would we do without you?

(originally aired April 26, 2009)
So this is the show’s take on over-involved, over-protective parenting, and surprise, it’s actually a very creative, inventive satire! …just kidding, it’s over-the-top, blatantly obvious and absolutely not funny. So Homer decides he needs to get more involved in his children’s lives. How do we get to this point? Simple enough: Homer gets serious burns on his tongue, needing a comically large cast put on it, then when it gets removed, he finds his old taste buds burnt off, exposing new, extremely sensitive ones. Now with a painfully enhanced sense of taste, the only food bland and flavorless enough for his palette is what’s being served at Springfield Elementary. That makes him go to the cafeteria and learn his kids need help. What a hell of a ride. Wouldn’t something as serious as Homer, a man who lives to eat, discovering he can no longer eat anything, be more than sufficient as its own premise? Or at the very least come back into play at some point in the episode? Nope. Or, why doesn’t Homer get a bunch of meals in a Tupperware and eat them at work? Oh wait, he doesn’t go to work anymore. Whatever, this is already shit and the story hasn’t started yet.

So Homer meets a mother at the cafeteria who is hovering over her son, as she explains the plot of the episode to us, and manages to pin point what’s wrong with Bart and Lisa, because I guess she knows them. Bart is a drooling moron (literally) with no future, and Lisa is a loser outcast with no friends. So it’s Homer to the rescue! Everything is played so exaggerated and obvious, with parents huddled outside the classroom doors looking in, and the mother forcing her son to recite all the state capitals alphabetically. The light touch is gone; think back to the science fair in “Duffless” with the psychotic father usurping his son’s project (“I’ve worked too long and hard on this for you to screw it up now!” “But it’s got my name on it…” “Just stand over there. Over there!“) That’s one joke, and it summarizes the dynamic perfectly. By contrast, this is a whole twenty minutes that says nothing. Homer helps Lisa become a girly girl in a clique obsessed with decorating cell phones, Twitter and Facebook, but eventually admits she wants out (“It’s hard work staying this shallow.”) Then why did you bother to begin with? Homer also helps Bart build a model for a contest or something, and fucks it up and acts like a helicopter. Oh, whatever.

Tidbits and Quotes
– This episode was written by Rob LeZebnik, his first show after an eight-year absence. What was the last episode he wrote? Oh, “Homer vs. Dignity.” Okay, that makes sense. I’m surprised they let him back in the building.
– I love that not only do we get single shots of all three rows of outdated carnival prizes, but we also get ADR of Dan Castellaneta making reaction noises to each. Oh, and they’re dynamite jokes. Commie Swatter? To paraphrase Milhouse, whatever those writers get paid, it’s not enough.
– A “subplot” involves Marge discovering a door in the basement leading to a perfectly functional sauna. She finds it after replacing the water heater, of which she’s replaced many times. How did nobody know this room existed? Also, we see her lug the old water heater up to the attic and throw it on a giant pile of old ones, weighing down the floor that we see is right above Maggie’s room. There’s numerous instances where we see Marge, or someone who’s not commonly an idiot, do something stupid like this. For some reason, everyone’s a moron if the joke allows for it.
– Homer strangling his son whilst spitting giant amounts of fire into his face is so uncomfortable to watch. Like, this is what they think is hilarious now. Clearly so, it’s all the movie was.
– Lisa lists off all the comically named foods from the cafeteria, and the writers lampshade their shitty puns with a joke about how they’re named by old sitcom writers working in the cafeteria. We also get more of Tress MacNeille doing Lunchlady Doris, which is still sad to see. Again, why didn’t they just create a new fucking lunchlady?
– The only bit I laughed at was when the mother was forcing her kid to recite capitals on her claps, we cut to Homer staring dumbly, attempting to clap along with her. It’s so weird, it’s like he reverted to braindead mode, but it made me laugh all the same.
– I hate this episode. They make Bart out to be this complete moron, shoving spaghetti in his nose and lying his head on the desk drooling. He’s not a dumb kid, he’s actually very sharp and perceptive, he just doesn’t give a shit about school or tests or anything of the like. Here, he’s just a big dummy, at least until the end where he’s forced to give the moral of the story and quote Oscar Wilde, because he knows who that is. Ridiculous.
– Homer pours a gigantic jar of mayonnaise into his mouth, complete with close-up of the gooey mess slithering down his gullet. It’s fucking nauseating.
– Homer sprays a bottle of what he thinks is spray-on tan (?!) all over his face, but it turns out it’s ant poison! That wacky Homer!
– The episode feels like it’s just one long build-up to the punchline that Homer was so inept, his work got mistaken for a child’s, so Bart gets the prize. What a waste. “Homer’s Enemy” had a similar punchline, but had a zillion other great things going on before it.

(originally aired April 19, 2009)
Alright, what classic episode are we rehashing this week? Oh, it’s “Bart’s Girlfriend,” except if the first act was the entire episode with no interesting twist? Or anything interesting whatsoever? Great! So here’s the story: Bart meets this girl Jenny, who’s a goody two-shoes good Samaritan, and must pretend to be good to get her to like him. That’s the episode. That’s it. In “Bart’s Girlfriend,” we saw similarly with him trying to win over Jessica Lovejoy, but then it actually went somewhere. Here, it’s just… nothing. I’m not even going to try to compare these two, because it would be way too unfair. So who is Jenny? Why, another one-off character with zero personality to speak of who’s voiced by a celebrity, of course! She’s voiced by Anne Hathaway, and again, mighty fine actress, nondescript, forgettable performance. You could swap dialogue tracks with Natalie Portman from a few seasons back and I wouldn’t be able to tell the difference. It’s just another throwaway role.

The “conflict” occurs when Milhouse discovers the two together. He had previously taken the fall from Bart’s massive prank at the school and gotten suspended, and finds Jenny is the reason Bart stopped visiting him. He then goes into creepy stalker mode as Bart gets more and more nervous that his mischievous past will come back to haunt him. So, build-up, build-up… and then Bart just comes clean with Jenny. Then he makes up with Milhouse and the episode ends. It’s astonishing just how uneventful these shows are getting, there’s barely anything to speak of because barely anything happens. There’s a B-story featuring Lisa’s pessimistic world view being warped thanks to medication, reducing her into a whacked-out stupor where she can only see smiley faces… and then in the end, she stops taking them. Like, stuff will start happening, and then they’ll stop happening. Stories used to have arcs that made sense and were impacting. Now we’re lucky if we even get one at all.

Tidbits and Quotes
– Last season we had Skinner and Chalmers go through absurd, ridiculous lengths to get Bart suspended. Here, they’re so dumb they can’t figure out who Milhouse’s accomplice was. Whoever could it be? Ridiculous.
– The medication Lisa takes is called Ignorital, so we get more obvious product names. Also, it’s not a lot of fun to see Lisa completely out of her gourd, in this very, very subtle satire on mind-altering pharmaceuticals..
– Lenny visits his grandmother’s grave, which reads… “Lenny’s Grandma.” They already have the joke with him bringing the Duffman standee there, couldn’t they have just put a frigging name on there?
– I’m really at a loss here, this is one of the most empty, boring episodes I’ve ever seen. It may trump the astronomy show, actually.

(originally aired April 5, 2009)
And now, another one of those schmaltzy Moe episodes. “Moe Baby Blues” was effective because it managed to balance the lecherous with the sweet, so it still felt like the same bottom feeder Moe, but we got to see a more tender side to him. Here, through almost the whole running time, Moe is this vulnerable, inoffensive guy, where it doesn’t even feel like I’m watching the same character. He gets into a relationship with a girl online and is preparing for their first face-to-face date. To his surprise, Maya (another Tress MacNeille voice we’ve heard a billion times) is a little person, something that Moe comes to terms with and accepts quickly. Their relationship advances normally. Just normally. Nothing particularly funny happens, it’s just Moe making out with someone Lisa’s size, which I have to admit is a little disturbing to see. There’s “conflict” in that Moe is hesitant in showing her to the barflies, thinking they would ridicule her, but nothing ever comes from it.

After a non-disclosed period of time, Moe asks Maya to marry him, and she responds with a jovial crack about her height (“Are you asking me to be your little woman?”) Moe retorts with a few jokes himself, all seemingly in good fun, until Maya takes offense. You’d think at this point she would know he meant no offense. Also it seems she’s a weird trickster herself, in one bizarre scene where she pretends to be a lifeless doll to freak Moe out for no reason. Moe is crestfallen when Maya shuts him out, leaving him no other recourse than to have surgery to reduce his height. Maya arrives at Dr. Nick’s to stop him (“Moe, if you have to be like me to love me, then you’re not seeing the real me!”) Moe then gives a heartfelt soliloquy about how much she really means to him… and then Maya just leaves him anyway. It felt that considering Maya’s character (the very little of it we get to know), it made no sense that this relationship would fall apart. Moe had been nothing but earnest the entire episode, only joking around about her after she cracked wise first. It’s just a cop out ending, but considering Maya is not voiced by a guest star, they didn’t have to write her out. But then again, writing a new character is too much work, so get her out of there. A very boring, ineffectual outing.

Tidbits and Quotes
– The B-story involves Homer being a shitty father to Maggie. Discovering there’s a playground behind Moe’s (after Moe scrubs the back wall and finds a window there, which makes no sense), Homer dumps Maggie there every day so he can get plastered, leaving her at the mercy of some li’l bullies. Growing suspicious of what goes on during the day, Marge places a mini camera on Maggie’s bow, only to watch the footage at the end of the episode. Homer drops off Maggie, but then comes back to save the day from the bullies… but is beaten up himself, until Maggie saves him. He then says some sweet, completely natural-sounding dialogue into the camera, which is enough to absolve the continued abandonment of his infant child in Marge’s eyes.
– I like the initial awkwardness from Moe regarding Maya (“Oh, you’re a little person. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean that, what’s the correct term?” “Little person.” “Woah! Look at me bein’ polite!”) and the bait-and-switch with the car seat.
– There’s not one but two make-out scenes between Moe and Maya, which is kind of uncomfortable to watch. I guess it’s just a lot easier to cut to the chase with the relationship rather than see them talking and understanding why the two are in love.
– As is the case whenever we have a double date scene, we see Homer being a total ass of himself and embarrassing Marge, except the B-plot isn’t really about the two of them being at odds with each other. But basically whenever an episode is about a burgeoning relationship nowadays, we have to show how horrible Homer and Marge’s is for the ten thousandth time.
– So apparently Mr. Largo wanted a sex change operation. They’ve done this joke with Smithers too, with him wanting estrogen pills. I guess the writers equate homosexuality with actually wanting to be the other sex, and that both topics are hysterical to make fun of.
– Despite it mostly feeling empty, I can’t help but think the ending is a little sweet, with Moe making a rose out of his bar rag and putting it on the frame. I’m not made of stone.

(originally aired March 29, 2009)
One trick up this show’s sleeve is to simply rehash and reuse premises from older episodes, this one being particularly egregious. They take one of my favorite episodes ever, “A Milhouse Divided,” and flat-out say that it “didn’t count.” The Parson pays a visit to Reverend Lovejoy with some bad news, that due to some mishaps with his ministerial re-certification, any recent ceremonies he performed were actually fraudulent. This happens to include Homer and Marge’s second wedding as featured in “Divided.” How long did the Parson sit on this news before telling Lovejoy? Clearly this didn’t happen twelve years ago, but some considerable amount of time must have passed. Plus, wouldn’t Homer and Marge have a government-sanctioned marriage license outside the church anyway? There’s really no problem. But whatever, this gives Homer the chance to give Marge the wedding she’s always wanted. …but, he already did. In “A Milhouse Divided,” at home with her family and friends, it was wonderful. But no, here, Marge turns into a Bridezilla, crafting a wedding that’s exorbitant and self-indulgent, whilst being angry and yelling at her husband. Sounds like Marge alright.

The day of the wedding, Marge finds Homer missing, and believes he’s fled thanks to her overbearing nature. But, actually, he’s been kidnapped and chained up in a dingy bathroom and taunted by a gruff, menacing voice over an intercom, forced to do humiliating and painful things to earn his freedom. Hoo boy. Firstly, Saw came out in 2004, leaving the show embarrassingly late to the punch as usual. Second, we find out that it’s Patty and Selma doing this, and I guess we’re supposed to think it’s funny. The mind reels when you think about how ridiculous this show has gotten. Originally, they were Homer’s sister-in-laws, these two hags who constantly wore him down with their words, fueling his insecurities that he’s not good enough for Marge. Now, they’re criminals, chaining him up like an animal and laughing at his suffering. But of course, they’re uncharacteristically brought to tears when Homer mournfully reads out his intended wedding vows, and they let him go. In the end, Marge never apologizes, and still gets the lavish wedding she apparently has always dreaming of. Honestly, fuck this episode. “A Milhouse Divided” was so wonderful and heart-felt, and this one just takes a big shit all over it.

Tidbits and Quotes
– Good opening line by Lovejoy (“So, in summary, there are only two real Commandments, and the other eight are just filler.”) The congregation murmurs in interest.
– I guess the fact that the Parson acts and sings like Bing Crosby is funny. I guess? Also, more shitting on beloved characters: apparently Helen Lovejoy was once Harold. But she has a daughter, so does that mean she was once transgender and identified as male? Or was Jessica adopted? Why the fuck am I thinking about this?
– I know they make it a joke, but the whole conceit of this episode just feels so fucking stupid. Homer and Marge’s marriage “didn’t count,” so now they have to do it again. It’s like when a kid is playing a game and fucks up, but claims it didn’t count and wants another try. But it’s even worse than that, it’s as if the kid had a dynamite first try, then asked for another and did the worst job possible. Every time Marge talks about wanting the perfect wedding and Homer saying he’s gonna give it to her… they already did. It was a great fucking episode, and you REFERENCE IT IN THIS ONE GODDAMMIT.
– Marge is unbearable enough this episode, but they cap it off with horrendous dialogue (“Bridezilla? A combination of ‘bride’ and ‘Godzilla’?!”) At this point, with the show openly explaining gags and plot points left and right, I wouldn’t be surprised if that was put in so drooling morons would pick up on the joke.
– The bridesmaids are doing final gussying up on Marge when she looks in the mirror. Then afterward, she radios to the main hall, and we see that all the bridesmaids are there already. Boy, they must have run super quick. Also apparently she’s real good friends with Cookie Kwan now. I’m shocked we actually had two anonymous faces there, but I guess they ran out of the four adult female characters at their disposal.
– What a lame bait-and-switch with the Sideshow Bob thing, where he and Krusty are having some kind of homoerotic weekend together (“At night, we slept in the same bed for warmth.”) I guess Bob holds no hard feelings toward Krusty helping the Simpsons escape from Italy. But Bart and Lisa had the wrong “SB.” Who could it be? Selma Bouvier. And not only do we see her name plate at the DMV, but both “S” and “B” are in gold letters. I don’t think you made it clear enough, guys, there’s some morons out in Oklahoma who didn’t put it together.