(originally aired March 22, 2009)
Yet another travel episode… yawn. This was a pretty anticipated episode, airing overseas days before it aired here, a first for the series. At least it didn’t seem quite as offensive as past travel shows, instead it was just boring and uninspired. The Simpsons forget about their special day with Grampa for the umpteeth time, and promise to make it up to him. So, it’s off to Ireland in the blink of an eye! Abe wishes to go to the bustling tavern he visited back in his army days, only to find it’s been practically abandoned in the new modernIreland. The innkeeper is delighted to have Homer and Abe’s business though, and after a drunken night, he manages to stick the two with the deed and leave town. Determined to turn the place around, they ship in Moe in a crate (seriously) to determine how to run a successful bar. Why Moe’s is considered successful, I’m not sure. They allow smoking at the pub, which is illegal in Ireland, then they get caught, and the charge is deportation, so that’s another country the Simpsons are banned from returning to.

The “satire” here is so softball. They don’t even get on the ground in Ireland before showing the pilots donned in green with shamrocks. We get plenty of references to leprechauns, Guinness, the Blarney Stone… my goodness, how lazy. And when all else fails, puns! Marge and the kids go sight-seeing, which kills time, but most of the focus is on Homer and Abe and their eventual new ownership of the tavern. I’ve noticed a big issue with episodes this season is that every plot turn must be openly narrated by a character, and it’s particularly offensive here. “What can’t people do in bars in Ireland?” “Look, smoking isn’t allowed in bars in Ireland!” “Well, then we’ll open a smoking bar in Ireland!” That’s barely an exaggeration, that’s pretty much the dialogue. And it’s so ridiculous, they allow smoking in the bar, and through the windows you can clearly see the billows of smoke. Any cop walking by would shut it down immediately, but it’s open just long enough so we can show it’s getting successful. And ultimately, what’s the point? Homer and Abe succeed by breaking the law, then nothing happens to them, per Simpson immunity. And the judge is Mr. Potato Head. Yawn. Another lifeless outing. I hope the Irish were happy with it.

Tidbits and Quotes
– The Simpsons flopping like fish out of water is one of those gags where they felt that if they let it run long enough, it would be funny… but it really just runs too long.
– I don’t get the Kathy Ireland bit at all. They show her accompanied with big text on the screen describing how that’s not her voice, she didn’t want to do the show, and best wishes to her. Two possibilities: the show asked her and she simply said no, and the writers got in a huff (“How dare someone not want to do our show!”) and this was their petty “vengeance.” Or, she gave a more adamant “no” regarding her voice or likeness, and this was their idea of a compromise. But whatever the reason, the joke is terrible.
– I’m sure the writers were really pleased with “yupp-rechauns.” And the goddamn puns… The Simpsons drive past upscale Irish stores like Colleen Secret and Mac’s Fifth Avenue, those are bad enough. Then they’re highlighted as jokes in the dialogue. Hewlett Fitzpackard, Mick-rosoft, Cisc O’Systems. Enough. Enough with the fucking puns.
– I kind of enjoyed the Giant’s Causeway gag being like the layout of Q-Bert, but maybe only because I enjoyed the seemingly obscure reference. Or maybe just because it made me think of Wreck-It Ralph.
– Lisa sneaks into the brewing room at Guinness to see the secret ingredient… why would she do that? It would make sense for Homer, but he’s not there. But why not Bart?
– When they run out of actual Irish landmarks, they make ones up: McEllis Island, with their own Statue of Liberty: a leprechaun holding a pot of gold and a shamrock. Come on, you guys… Then later Moe announces he’s going to look for his long lost relative based on a photo… on a Lucky Charms box. Come on, you guys…
– The only thing I chuckled at were the cops vacuuming up the smoke at the bar into evidence bags, then holding one full bag up to camera.

(originally aired March 15, 2009)
I guess this is the show making fun of the likes of The Da Vinci Code and National Treasure for being too silly. Once again, guys, pot to kettle. At least I didn’t feel as aggressively annoyed as I was during the last couple of bombs, this one’s just kind of innocuous and boring. Following a sequence of dumb events, Maggie is left on the doorstep of a Catholic church, and brought in by nuns who refuse to give her back to a befuddled Homer. So… call the police? Or, we’ll have Lisa masquerade as a nun to infiltrate and rescue her. She’s immediately sidelined from her mission by a quest for some ancient gem or something. Then we get smarty-pants Lisa who is oh-so-satisfied with herself as she solves clues and narrates them as she does it. Within seconds, she can decipher Latin, play the organ and recognize patterns and riddles, and I think we can all agree nothing is more entertaining than a story about problem solving where our lead character instantly deciphers clues and is incredibly pompous while doing it.

During her sleuthing, Lisa encounters Skinner and Comic Book Guy, who are part of some mystery group or something who tell her the history of the gem: it’s been sought after since colonial times, so much so that the Revolutionary War was just a cover so the Americans and English could uncover it before the newly arrived nuns could. I’m not so bothered by this, as it’s just silly enough to be funny to see King George and George Washington play acting fighting each other while they search for the treasure. Long-time Freemason Burns gets in on the action, and eventually it’s concluded that the “gem” is actually Lisa. As if her head wasn’t big enough, she returns to the church as smug as ever, but finds she decrypted it wrong: Maggie is the chosen one, and her placement on the throne brings instant peace and happiness to the town of Springfield. Until Marge takes her away and everything goes back to normal. It’s a conflicting ending, one I felt could have been more satisfying if there was more focus on the Marge-Maggie relationship, in place of Marge being rendered blind when an eclipse literally burns her eyes. Goddammit.

Tidbits and Quotes
– The CG with the Earth and the moon actually looks pretty good, mostly because they’re just simple spheres. I chuckled at the bats fleeing the Washington Monument, and the solar car stopping on the tracks, and almost being hit by a solar train.
– The Simpsons are ready to see the eclipse through their shoebox things, and of course Homer breaks his. Feeling bad for her petulant man child husband, Marge gives hers up, and Homer rubs the majesty of the event in her face (“We’ll be talking about this together for years! I finally feel like part of a family!”) Then Marge looks directly at the eclipse, and we see her eyes burn. Wonderful. It’s even more disgusting than Homer’s eyes crusting over in “Last Tap Dance in Springfield.”
– There have been a lot of Pixar references as of late. We had Homer’s horrible honey-less future dream with a WALL-E knockoff robot, now we have him re-eanct Ratatouille with a rat controlling him in his rat-infested kitchen. Not only does he openly reference the movie, but he narrates what’s happening as it happens. If I were Brad Bird, I’d be very disappointed.
– Homer runs his car off a bridge and down by the river, completely totaling it. He gets out and then immediately switches gear, pondering about out how he’s going to get across the river. No injuries, no wailing about his destroyed car, just keep pushing the stupid plot forward.
– I hate everything about Lisa’s sleuthing. Though I did laugh at the endless Rube Goldberg device that even she gets bored waiting for. The CG on the machine and later on the Springfield sign also aren’t too bad.
– After the world is at peace, we see the prison warden tell the executioner to just set the electric chair to “massage.” He was previously voiced by Charles Napier, and now I think it’s Hank Azaria doing him here, but he’s not even trying to do a sound alike. Napier was still alive, but I can understand if they didn’t want to bring him in for one line. So then, make it another character, or have one of your actors do a Napier impression. Or, do neither of those things, because who gives a shit.

(originally aired March 9, 2009)
We’ve seen many instances of Homer being an aggressively unlikable protagonist, but here’s an example where it spills onto Marge, and we also see the Simpson family are town-wide pariahs for some reason. We start annoyingly enough with Homer’s annual backyard Mardi Gras party, which is absolutely humungous, both in attendance, and the size of their frigging backyard. This is just another exorbitant expenditure that Homer thinks he can get away because with his home equity, but when he finds his mortgage rate has gone through the roof, he’s forced to give up the house. Immediately it’s hard to feel bad for him despite his gross ignorance because he was so smug and self-righteous about seemingly pulling a fast one on the bank. Also, Marge appears to be out of the picture, or just an idiot. We see her worry about the cost of the party, then she proceeds to get drunk anyway. Lovely. At the auction for 742 Evergreen Terrace, a sympathetic Flanders buys the house, offering to rent it to the Simpsons.

With Ned as her new landlord, Marge uses this opportunity to take advantage of his good will by putting him to work on numerous odd jobs around the house. She even gossips to her sisters about having her own little personal assistant. Ned understandably gets worn out, leading to an angry phone call from Homer (“Landlords like you are the scum of the Earth! You lounge around in your egg McMansions and we never see you unless the rent check’s late!” “The rent check is late!”) They then proceed to get a news piece on Channel 6 vilifying Ned. Infuriated, Ned wants the Simpsons out of the house by the end of the month. Looking for a loophole, Homer finds he can’t be evicted if there is a senior living in the house, so he carts Grampa over and openly shoves it and laughs in Ned’s face. Ned retaliates by inviting Abe to live at his house, and the Simpsons are out on the street. Again, am I supposed to feel any sympathy toward Homer and Marge given how both of them are completely responsible for all of their hardships? Ned nearly signs the house to two new perfect tenants, but I guess because he’s an eternal push-over, he invites the Simpsons to move back in. What fucking garbage.

Tidbits and Quotes
– I hate the stupid Mardi Gras party. Marge and Lisa apparently can build a gigantic metallic float on their own, and the backyard is big enough that Homer can ride around in that thing. And Marge is such a responsible parent for not only allowing the entire town to get drunk and party all night, but we see her dancing wildly all boozed up herself. Remember how horrified she was at Homer’s drunken antics in “War of the Simpsons”? That and she of course never questions how Homer can afford such an exorbitant event. And the ending features everyone on the block deciding to move now that the Simpsons are back, yet they seem to be a pretty big hit with this party. I could be leaving stuff out, but my teeth have ground into dust so I should probably stop.
– I’m confused why Gil works at the mortgage company and is in a position of power over the Simpsons. It’s not as bad as “Homer and Lisa Exchange Cross Words,” but it still betrays him being a put-upon loser. Why are they using him like this?
–  The evening before the auction, Homer tries to hang himself from a tree in the front yard in front of his children. I can’t fucking believe it… I mean, we’ve never seen trees on their front lawn before! And we’ve never see them since! Come on… But seriously, I’m glad the show thinks this is funny and acceptable, just like all the other incredibly tasteful jokes they’ve done about suicide. Class act, guys.
– Homer yells at Ned on the phone holding a cigar has got to be amongst his most jerkass-iest moments. I just can’t see how the writers, throughout the entire process of making he episode, didn’t realize how unlikable this paints him through the whole thing.
– Should I even comment on Bart’s hair color being naturally red? Nah.
– Ned’s only rationale for getting the Simpsons back is, “You can’t be a saint unless you live amongst the lepers.” As in, let me invite back this horrible family who abused my kindness and good will so I can feel better about myself. And that family are our lovable main characters. The first three HD episodes out of the box and all of them make my skin crawl.

(originally aired March 1, 2009)
Man alive, these last couple episodes have been quite boring, with no engaging or interesting stories to be found. Skinner and Chalmers put Springfield Elementary on alert of a government-mandated aptitude test that could get them much-needed funding, so to make sure they get as much cash as possible, they drill the answers into every kid’s mind by any means necessary. This conceit could be amusing satire, of educators teaching test answers rather than practical knowledge, but like most material on the show nowadays, it’s so ham-fisted and the jokes are made so blatantly obvious that it becomes groan-worthy. To better hedge their bets, Skinner plans on hiding all their more troublesome students, Bart, Ralph, and the bullies (“Whacking Day,” anyone?), and cart them off to Capital City. But Chalmers sweetens the deal and has Skinner exported too. Meanwhile, Lisa suffers massive test anxiety during the exam.

It really feels like nothing happens in this episode. Nothing. Skinner, Otto and the kids end up stranded in Capital City by means of stupidity, Ralph gets stuck on a barge and just sits there because he’s brain damaged, then Skinner must do a thing to save him that requires acquired knowledge and the other kids are instantly impressed. Everything is explicitly narrated so that the audience knows exactly what’s happening, and none of it sounds natural or makes sense. From this, Skinner realizes that kids don’t learn from tests, and rejects the national exam. What exactly did he learn? And how will this not affect Springfield Elementary at all in coming episodes? It’s all an exercise in futility, and I’m not even sure what the meaning of any of it was. Or if there was any meaning at all. Probably not, since we end with a minute-long recreation of the Footloose ending. No other jokes to go with it, they just do the ending with everyone dancing. Jesus Christ, and I thought the random dance ending of “Tales From the Public Domain” was intolerable. One of the emptiest episodes ever, completely bereft of any kind of… anything.

Tidbits and Quotes
– We get a minute-long clip package at the beginning of all the times Homer has gotten hurt on the series, and surprisingly most of them are from the classic years. Despite the show’s over-reliance on terrible physical comedy nowadays, whoever edited this still realized how much funnier it was done in the past.
– The VPAT is part of the No Child Left Alone Act… boy, that sounds familiar, doesn’t it? They’ve mentioned actual legislation like the Patriot Act before, why not just call it by the actual real name?
– There’s a B-story, kind of, involving Homer forgetting to mail out his insurance renewal, and upon frantically delivering it weeks later, he becomes a paranoid wreck, making sure no one is injured on his property until he becomes insured again. Or at least until he believes he will be. He envisions an insane bloodbath occurring at home during Marge’s book club, where everyone is killed by Marge and Lindsay Naegle… who then make out. Talk about cheapening your characters. Next they’ll have Marge pose for Playboy. …oh wait. We end with a knife pegging Mr. Burns in the skull, who for some reason was walking outside the Simpson house, followed by a great bit of blood spurting from each open orifice of his body. Later, Homer apologizes, but of course not only does Marge forgive him, but she acknowledges that it’s her fault (“Sweetie, at this point in a marriage, a wife should know what her husband can do and what he can’t. Who was I to think you could mail an envelope?”) That’s our Marge, spineless enabler to a reckless, irresponsible ape.
– Everything about the Skinner & company stuff is wrong. Everyone acts like morons, they all go into the bathroom with Ralph for some reason so they can not see the bus get taken apart, then of course Ralph can’t do anything he’s told because he’s mentally handicapped. Skinner slingshots a balled up note to a crane operator to help out, which flies through the window, hits the guy driving and knocks him unconscious. A paper ball. Then we get more shitty CG with the crane swinging the container ship around. Skinner builds momentum on top of it by running around in a circle, and the kids are learning! How do I know? Because they openly say it (“Learning can teach you things!” “Education rules!”) Fuck.
– The paranoid Lisa stuff sucks too. There’s a joke that I really hate where she comes to the first problem, but all four possible answers appear correct (“That can’t be. In life, everything only has one answer!”) The joke is about narrow-minded institutionalized teaching… but it’s coming from Lisa’s mouth. They could have done this joke earlier and had Krabappel or Chalmers say it, but why Lisa? Speaking of Chalmers, he’s completely apeshit in this episode. During his loud panicked tirade to the kids, Hank Azaria is really straining his voice. I guess we’d never heard him get loud before, but he doesn’t sound right at all.

(originally aired February 15, 2009)
So the show finally makes its leap into high-definition widescreen, and wouldn’t you know, it’s just as shitty as ever. Springfield honors successful businessman Vance Connor, and Homer recalls how he was their class president in high school, back in… 1974. I was willing to accept a floating timeline for that goddamn 90s show last season, now Homer and Marge’s past is in the 70s again. Come on, you guys, what the fuck? So the episode is about how Homer laments having lost class president to him, which I guess he wanted. What? Homer was a lazy smoking slacker in high school, why would he want to run in the first place? Anyway, turns out Principal Dondelinger rigged the election, and Homer actually did win. He had Lenny and Carl bury the ballot box, instead of just throwing it out for some reason. Apparently it was to protect Homer, as the jocks pulled off a mass vote for him so they could ridicule him. But even after hearing that, Homer still believes his life would have been amazing if he had been class president. Why?

Turns out there is a way for Homer to see what could have been… by way of some weirdo cook at Luigi’s, who can show you alternate futures in his special sauce… okay, this totally makes sense and is completely believable. We see that Homer would be a great class president and go to prom with the head cheerleader, but drop her the instant he laid his eyes on Marge, who is basically falling over herself to be with President Homer. So much more romantic and satisfying than “The Way We Was,” huh? Mr. Burns gives him a high-ranking plant job due to his position, and now he lives in a gigantic mansion with no children. What? How the fuck could he afford that? Oh whatever, it’s just a pasta sauce hallucination. So Homer bemoans his current life and his family, and the others try to cheer him up and reward him in spite of his selfishness. Hey, it’s happened before. He said awful things about his wife and kids, they send him to go play with the Rolling Stones at rock ‘n’ roll camp. Here he wishes his kids were never born, we install a plaque for him on the town wall of fame, and apparently pay some father and son to take a picture of him, because that’s the only reason that makes sense. The first episode in HD and this is the slop you start off with? How embarrassing.

Tidbits and Quotes
– Okay, so here it is: the show is finally in HD, and it’s as stiff and lifeless as ever. High-definition worked for the movie because it had a budget, and David Silverman directing, so it actually looked pretty sharp for the most part. Now, the clarity makes the un-detailed backgrounds, unmoving extras and rough drawings stand out even more. There’s also the matter of the new opening. I could dissect it scene by scene, but why bother? My thoughts can effectively be summed up in this heavily passed around gif. Just look at the old version. The arc in Marge’s hair as she turns, and her look of relief that her baby is safe. The stretching of the cashier’s arms, bounce of the bag and how Maggie pops out, all of it so visually appealing. And look at it now. Marge rotates her head at a perfect angle, and smiles. Maggie emerges from the bag and shakes her fist at Gerald in a manner so empty and soulless it defies description. There’s also a blog post by an animator who worked on several shots, and his frustration of having being told repeatedly to tone his work down and make it “less cartoony.” Astonishing. The only connection the show used to have to its classic era was the opening titles, and now that’s long gone too. I remember after seeing the new opening and this episode, it was the first time I seriously started reconsidering watching the show. I just felt so bewildered by the whole thing, but I figured I’d give it until the end of the season to decide. The show’s new HD beginning was the beginning of my end…
– In addition to the new opening, we have the new four act “structure.” I hate it. Act one, act two, act three. It’s a natural order of storytelling, used in every film ever made ever. Now everything’s all mixed up.
– The episode is immediately annoying from the start with the Springfield Wall of Fame, which honors Hank Scorpio, who isn’t from Springfield, Poochie, widely reviled cartoon, and Lisa’s dance instructor, Chazz Busby, who for some reason is now in the opening titles. Who the fuck cares about that guy?
– Al Gore is at Moe’s bar, and no one acknowledges a fucking ex-Vice President sitting there until he opens his trap. This is the world this show exists in now.
– Homer announces his revenge on Principal Dondelinger (“I know what he did last summer… twenty-two years ago!”) From 2009, that would make Homer’s senior year 1987. Which we see it’s not. Come on, you guys. What the fuck.
– We see teenage Maude asking Homer out in high school, despite a few episodes ago we see her and Ned as adults picking up a twenty-something Homer and Marge. Oh, whatever. Also, I’m shocked at the attention to obscure continuity with showing us Debbie Pinson, who Homer got a call from way back in season 10’s “Homer to the Max.”
– The alternate future of everyone loving Homer and him being amazing makes no sense whatsoever. Suddenly Patty and Selma are taken by him, and we get this gem (“Who’s that side of beef munching on our sister?” “I don’t know, but in this reality, I am not gay! Hubba hubba!”) Ugh.
– My God, I fucking hate the ending (“Dad, do you think I could be elected class president?” “Well, we can’t all be Homer Simpsons, son.”) Where did this father and son come from? It’s so pathetically saccharine with no attempt at irony or jokes or anything. This show used to tear this kind of cloyingly phony material apart, now it’s what we settle for an ending.