SIMPSONS NIGHT

A Made Maggie Season 33, Episode 10 | December 19, 2021

This one is about Maggie finding a new godfather in Fat Tony. This comes about after Fat Tony saves Homer and Maggie's life. Fat Tony loves Maggie, but the Simpsons family has reservations, of course, because he's a mob guy and mob guys are scary and act like mob guys all the time.

This one is admirably focused, but extremely unmemorable. None of the jokes landed for me, and they were all exactly of a single stripe. None of them were outright bad, just nothing in the episode made me laugh or even smile. The episode rarely strays from jokes about the mob, the jokes about child rearing, or hybrids of those two things. I forget how this one ends, and it's maybe possible I just didn't care and checked out mentally.

MAIL BAG

Homer Simpson dumbness as how did he not know who Michael Jackson was. Homer was a teenager in the 1970s, Jackson Five.

Mothers and Other Strangers Season 33, Episode 9 | November 28, 2021

This one sucked, mostly. The jokes didn't make me laugh, and the heartstring tuggy moments made me feel nothing. But I'm also one of the few documented haters of "Mother Simpson" (not hate, per se, I just think it's exceptionally weak for a classic era episode).

In this one, Homer recalls the time he went on a road trip with Abe to go and try to find his missing mother. Weirdly, this one seems to adhere to the Homer 70s canon, but it mostly just avoids splashy pop culture references. You do see a Kiss poster on Homer's bedroom wall, which certain suggests something. The episode is shown to take place shortly before he meets Marge, and then we see a little scene from the birth of Bart, with Dr. Hibbert in his Mr. T hair-style. I guess the show has dueling canons. It's a shame the episode sucked.

MAIL BAG

Marge Simpson having hazel eyes is more ridiculous than Bart, Lisa and Maggie's hair.

Portrait of a Lackey on Fire Season 33, Episode 8 | November 21, 2021

A Serious Flanders Season 33, Episodes 6 & 7 | November 7 & 14, 2021

I remember this episode getting noticed, seemingly kicking off a new round of people claiming that the Simpsons was "good again". This episode is fairly enjoyable, I will give it that. An agressively non-canon entry that begins with a fake "SimpFlix" menu, as if you're selecting a different show that happens to be populated with the familiar characters and locations from the Simpsons rather than a true Simpsons episode. The most telling examples of this are the deaths of a handful of characters, notably Mr. Burns, and the time leap 3 years at the end of the episode.

The plot is that Ned finds a bag of money and donates it to the church. Some mobsters come looking for him when they realize it's the money they've been looking for. They kidnap Homer, thinking he's Flanders, on account of him having a lot of Flanders stuff in his yard and home. This is a pretty brilliant pay-off to the "PROPERTY OF NED FLANDERS" recurring gag.

This is very solid. It's definitely one I'd call "one of the good ones" when talking about the bad era of the show. Is the show officially good again? I don't know, man. I guess time will tell, if I keep watching these. I did really like a few scenes. The scene where Ned's Grandfather is embroiled in a tense stand-off, and various things keep almost causing it to kick into high-gear is pretty great. I respect this episode.

Lisa’s Belly Season 33, Episode 5 | October 24, 2021

Hey, this one actually was alright. Points on the board, baby. The main story is Lisa frets because Marge calls her chunky. There’s also a B story about Bart being accepted by bullies after he says he’d been taking steroids. 

Bart and Lisa were both, indeed, on steroids. They were prescribed steroids over the summer after becoming ill at a water park. This opening act largely takes place at a water park, which Homer had fond memories of as a teenager. The park was wildly unsafe at the time; Homer used to work there and used to bust up his shit laughing at people getting injured. We’re treated to a flashback montage of waterslide fails set to a lively classic rock song (I forget which one). Lisa pulls up a documentary about the park on her ipad, in which we see the exact same montage of people being hurt, but set to serious music. Homer protests, because he remembers the music being different. I laughed! I laughed in the first act! Uh oh, I’m going to like the whole episode now…

Homer is disappointed that the park is now safe and babyfied, but quickly finds a decommissioned and more dangerous slide. He manages to turn the thing on. He and the kids go down it, having a great time in the process. Unfortunately the stagnant pool water at the end of the slide makes them ill, which is where the steroid prescription comes into the play. Bart and Lisa both become chunkified. What follows after the first act doesn’t reach the heights of the first, but is mostly fine. I appreciate the focused nature of the story, and a scene where Lisa has a childish tantrum at the mall is actually animated in a very funny way.

Biggest points loss is a terrible and unfunny song with Patty and Selma, who perform a musical number about not caring that you’re hideous looking. There’s pointless Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-in imagery thrown in. Please stop trying to be Bob’s Burgers, Simpsons. Please! This one has a somewhat satisfying ending, where we see the words that haunt each character’s psyche’s, but Homer being comforted by one of his, which is that he’s lazy. Come to think of it, this is maybe one of the more likable depictions of Homer in the whole series. He may be lazy, but at least he’s motivated enough to help Lisa that he enlists the help of Patty and Selma. 

The Wayz We Were Season 33, Episode 4 | October 17, 2021

Man, I really hated this one. The Simpsons becoming bland was a terrible blow for the unhealthily-obsessed-with-cartoons among us. But for better or worse, The Simpsons was ahead of its time with its initial blandness. Television, by and large, has become even blander than the blandest episode of the Simpsons, even, so they now feel actually contemporary, weirdly enough. 

This one is about a Waze-like app causing the family grief by routing too many cars through Evergreen Terrace. It quickly segues into a story about Moe crossing paths with Maya, and falling in love all over again. This time he proposes to her. It sorta reminds me of when the show took another bitter loser, Comic Book Guy, and married him off.

This ends with Moe asking her to marry him and her saying yes. I’ve focused on Moe as a way to criticize the show’s fall from grace. At the start he was mean and sleazy. Jokes in the classic era ironically showed him having a soft side. That characterization wound up sticking. Mr. Burns had a similar change, going from actually-evil to doddering and oblivious. Modern mainstream comedy programs are so queasy about depicting anything other than blue sky bullshit that all the changes to make the show more toothless are now actually welcome by the modern media landscape. It makes me ill just thinking about it. 

This one is full of overly wacky and pointless gags, and a corny James Taylor needledrop. They bring back Maya, a little person that I legitimately feel uneasy about. I made a half-joking post about the previous Maya episode, suggesting that Maya can easily or subliminally be seen as a minor, and that the show was attempting to groom children. Thank goodness nobody reads this blog, because I was truly just goofing around, and wasn't sincerely trying to give weird right-wingers ammo. It was just incredibly weird how that same episode features a baby wearing what could be perceived as S&M gear domming Homer, and a photo of two children scrubbing an elderly woman’s feet, which ties directly into the story about Matt Groening getting his feet washed by a teenage girl on Jeffrey Epstein’s plane. I haven’t concluded that Matt was aware of the implications of what he was doing, and I think the show’s sicko-mode was unintentional. But I still think it would have been a good idea to rethink this.

Treehouse of Horror XXXII Season 33, Episode 2 | October 10, 2021

Welcome back to "the blog I refuse to proofread"

Opening: A parody Bambi with Bart as Bambi and Marge as Bambi's mother. This specifically spoofs the scene where Bambi's mother gets her head cut off with a chainsaw. In this version, Homer is a deer who gores the hunter, played by Mr. Burns. It's only edgy on it's surface level, but the satiric point is that Disney sometimes makes scary stuff for kids. It's a soft ribbing of their parent company at best.

Story #1: A parody of Parasite, which I never saw. This one's okay, but it's just not leftist enough! Rainier Wolfcastle is the rich guy's house. I really do think the Simpsons writers, who probably all own houses exactly like his, do sorta seem to have more of an interest in dunking on the working class. See, I wasn't even kidding when I said it wasn't leftist enough. YOU THOUGHT I WAS DOING IRONY, BUT I ACTUALLY FEEL THAT WAY AND BELIEVE THE STUFF I'M SAYING ABOUT THIS. AAAAUUUUUGHHHHH

Story #2: In the second story, Bart scares Lisa and Maggie with a spooky story on Halloween, causing them to interrupt Homer and Marge's love-making sessions. Homer sets his sights on the tree-house, and decides to chop down the tree in the backyard, citing it as the cause for his woes. Every year is the same thing, "three scary stories. Two of them good, with a lame one in the middle". Hey, I smiled.

The tree gets zapped by lightening and comes to life, pulling it's roots out of the ground and going on a rampage. It can somehow zap alive other trees, who form a posse against the humans. This one is dumb but fun visually, so I like it fine. And ya gotta respect the fact that it contains their least offensive trans joke yet, when Audrey II from Little Shop of Horrors says he identifies as a tree, because he's a "transplant". Not the most incredible joke in the world, and it's maybe a little hubristic of the Simpsons writers to think they can pull off non-alienating trans jokes. But it's worth noting, I guess.

Story #2.5: OH! They did a short! Because of their weird-ass four-act structure where the third act is very very short. It was Vincent Price reading a rude story in the style of Edward Gorey. One of couplets is a recreation of Bart the Lover.

Story #3: "Dead Ringer" is a parody of The Ring, which I literally watched last Halloween for the first time. Good idea, Simpsons, to parody a thing I know about. Anyway, I found this one to be the weakest.

And that's this one. I'm back, baby! (I am probably going to abandon this blog again right after this post)

MAIL BAG

Aw. AW HELL NO.

People say "The Last Exit to Springfield" is one of the greatest it's not its one of the worst why The Big Book of British Smiles we do not have those teeth. I know Americans need to have theirs cosmetically whitened. It makes no sense the book.

I'm starting to think that no book in the whole world makes sense. I look at those things and I'm just, like, "what is this". You know what I mean? This guy gets it.

I know fans and former fans like to trash the show and even think the show will last forever and ever and ever. But if you have some common sense the show will end if either Matt or a voice actor passes away. Everything comes to an end sometime.

I would not put it past the corporate entities that own the show to have bullied the cast into signing away artificial intelligence rights to their voices in the events of their deaths. It's just a hunch that I have. It was probably the only reason they were able to reach a deal in the last strike or whatever.

How dumb was Marge in the soap box racer episode agreeing with her sisters giving Homer the father test didn't she get it was probably to break them up.

Marge loves her family and is inherently trusting. These are good qualities, unless you live in a world where everyone around you has refused god's grace. She inherited a terrible world that is not suited for her. In other words... can you blame her?

The real reason on why Springfield Stem Academy was a failure was because the idea was from Marge Simpson and the episode had the name Lisa Simpson The Miseducation of Lisa Simpson. Both of them females.

Many in the community will argue that it is canon that "Man smart. Woman Smarter" as sung by Our Favourite Family, but many forget that was a Halloween episode, and thus not canon. Man Smart. Homer/Bart.

Homer a jerkass suppose he didn't know that the word was jackass? Also Homer has always been an ass when he was supposed to get Lisa a new saxophone reed. But went for a beer first. Then it caused the pony incident Lisa always wanted one but it was an incident with ponies being too expensive.

Bart's in Jail Season 33, Episode 2 | October 3, 2021

Hey! SURPRISE! I am back, sporadically, to review episodes of The Simpsons from season 33. For the life of me I couldn’t figure out how to watch these as they aired, so I gave up and decided to wait for Disney+ to get them. A billion other things happened in the meantime, so lets get down to it, I GUESS:

This is a pretty simple episode, and it doesn’t really reach a satisfying conclusion, but that’s okay, I guess, because I laughed at it twice. All those laughs happened during the first act. 

Abe gets his social security check and is immediately scammed by a telemarketer who convinces him that Bart is in jail and needs bail money to get out. Homer, mostly acting selfishly because the money in question was to be his only inheritance from Abe (10 thousand bucks which is his winnings from games of chance he funds with said social security money), decides to go on a crusade to take this boiler room operation down. They do, sorta, but all they get out of the deal are gift cards (which the phone operators get paid in) for chain restaurants. 

The emotional core of the episode is mostly on Marge’s faith in humanity; she grapples with the fact that the Simpsons raiding the call center of it’s gift cards is in itself not justice but yet another scam. This development is fairly late in the episode, so it’s sorta safe to call this “tacked on”. Honestly, it’s another fairly bland episode of the show where they simply decided to pivot and go for a heart-stringy moment. It ends with Marge taking a leap of faith in a woman asking for cash at the gas station by giving her 20 bucks and her address, the woman promising she’ll pay Marge back. Surprise: she actually does get the money back. Double surprise: it was GRANDPA who forged the note and gave her 20 dollars of his own money so Marge wouldn’t lose faith in humanity. Okay. 

There are a few notable bits in this one. The episode actually starts out with a flashback to Abe and his friends as young men, working in a Meatball factory. This is where they learn the concept of social security, and we get some previously untold backstory to Grandpa’s youth. I have not kept up with the show at all this season but from what I read the show seems to be trying to unburden itself with the concept of canon. Make Grandpa a factory worker at a Meatball plant because it’s funny. It doesn’t have to jive with other Grandpa backstories. OR: he just had a lot of jobs but no real career to speak of, which also makes sense. Homer refers to Abe as a former “Meatball man” in the episode as though that’s always been his main gig, which is fine by me. 

Gags I liked: Homer imagines a life with $10,000 more and he looks at his toaster and imagines owning one just like it, but with 10 slots instead of two. That’s good. 

Another gag I laughed at was Principal Skinner explaining that his mother fell prey to a similar scam when someone called her pretending to be “punk rockers”, threatening to cut Seymour’s hair into a mohawk. Also very funny.

Two cameos: Grandpa’s is seen dozing off with a magazine that I forget what the title is, but it’s a reference to the Fuxley Archives, who are on facebook and do great hilarious work. The fella’s name is Chris Shapan and I know he’s worked on Tom Goes to the Mayor from covering it on my Adult Swim 2021 blog. 

The other cameo is Bill Cipher from Gravity Falls, who is among a rogues gallery of false idols. He’s played by what’s his name. The guy who voices him. Like, the real guy. I don’t feel like looking it up. He’s there! He’s real! He’s a real guy and I am going to start being scared of him!

MAIL BAG

TV Tropes said that The Simpsons was edited out on The Tracey Ullman Show when it came to the UK because of they lead into advert breaks which BBC never has advert breaks it is the first UK Channel from 1960 and started on radio in 1936. It is the reason why in UK we pay for television license.

I still am not sure how to watch the new season. I guess I’ll wait for it to show up on DISNEY+. Here’s some MAIL BAGS to burn off.

i'm all for the simpsons sliding timescale, i want it to keep sliding until all the characters are young enough to die in iraq and the show never exists

A little harsh, but this is the type of freedom of speech that our brave men and women in blue fought for and the cowardly Canadian cunt NEIL “SQUEAL” Young is trying to squash. MY MY HEY HEY, NEIL YOUNG IS FUUUCKING GAAAY

The Simpsons are cool as hell. I'm loving the new season already. Marge is on the move!

You love to get messages like this! DAMN STRAIGHT

Happy four year anniversary to Simpsons Night. It's a shame this blog ultimately ended with you recommending some disgusting lesbian porno, but I really enjoyed all the recaps.

I will update this blog when I figure out how to get the FOX app to let me watch the new episodes, or when the one private cartoon tracker I use actually manages to upload them.

But in the meantime, I will review "April O Neil And Charlotte Stokely And Layla Rose Girl On Girl On Girl.mp4" (an AMERICAN PERVERT production)

The Star of the Backstage Season 33 - Episode 1 | September 26, 2021

Hey everyone. It’s Simpsons time. For some reason. We’re still doing this. Okay. The Simpsons: Season 33. unlike SOME blogs, I don’t take this one seriously, so I can dash off some absolute TRASH.

some old drama teacher dies and Marge reconnects with the cast of her old show. (Lenny, etc.) Marge was the stage manager of a musical about Y2K in high school. YES! THEY WENT THERE! A lot has been said about the sliding timescale of The Simpsons. Last season there was an episode where Homer was depicted as a young teenager in the 90s, and people were like “what the fuck noooo he was a grunge star in the 90s what the HELL”. The sliding timescale has always more-or-less existed. In the early days of the show it’s effects were kinda invisible because those seasons were kinda close together and the past was still roughly the decade it should be otherwise. But usually the Simpsons seem like they’ve intentionally shied away from the idea of retconning Marge and Homer’s high school experience. Until now. Now they’re literally my age, who went to high school when I went to high school. Sick!

Anyway, the Simpsons seem like they are trying to carve a Bobs Burgers style niche of doing a lot of musical bullshit. Okay, the gimmick of this one is that Marge has an imaginary singing voice as an excuse to cast some Disney bitch to do her singing voice. And there’s a lotta singing and shit. And it sucks. It fucking sucks so much. Why do people still like musical theater. I fucking despise it and wish that people would WISE UP and realize how fucking gross and dumb it is. I hate it so much! CORNY.

MAIL BAG

the simpsons are back, homeboy. let's get cappin'

If you sent me a message about a, uh, collectable item that I own, please know that I tried to reply to you via email but the email didn’t go through and I stupidly deleted your DM. Get back in touch if you wanna. But the short answers are:

yes, I still have it.

The Last Barfighter Season 32 - Episode 22 | May 23, 2021

Boo to Bumble Bee man's new voice. But, boo-ray* to this episode, which isn't too bad, actually.

Bart wins a crystal-skull tequila (not vodka) bottle from Bumble Bee Man's show after getting picked from the audience to participate in a game. Homer steals it and brings it to Moe's and treats his friends, along with Moe himself, to a few drinks. They all get sloshed and run amok, and Moe drunkenly blabs a medley of secrets from various Simpsons residents. He also reveals his own: he and every other bartender in town belongs to a secret society of bartenders, all of whom hang out to blow off the kind of steam their regulars do and exchange secrets. This is the source of all this “hot goss” as the kids say. This secret society doesn’t take kindly to Moe’s lack of control, so they permanently cut off Homer, et. al by injecting them with an anti-booze serum which makes all alcohol poisonous to their system, essentially killing Moe’s business. Over time, the anti-booze serum only effects it’s targets in positive ways, but they miss Moe so much that they reconnect with him after months of sobriety.

I’m not saying it’s a perfect episode, but the story is fun enough, and there are at least a few good jokes. My favorite was Moe, after being offered the fancy tequila says something along the lines of “this is the most expensive thing I’ve had in my mouth since my dad’s gun”. GREAT joke! There’s also a great gag in the first act: Bart is refusing to let Homer drink his tequila skull (despite the fact that Bart can’t drink it himself being under-aged and all) and continually rubbing it in Homer’s face, and Homer is getting more and more upset. He starts driving his car and “Tequila” comes on the radio and he starts enjoying it and says something like “good thing there’s no lyrics to upset me” a few seconds before you-know-what. I was reminded of the “Two Tickets to Paradise” gag from the golden age when the scene started, yet they managed to write a joke that made me laugh. Thanks, everyone.

That about does it for this blog for a little while. I have some plans for the summer; I originally teased some idea of doing Simpsons-esque cartoons in the interim and... nah. Probably not going to do that. I kinda dipped my toe in that water and watched some episodes of The Critic and had this overwhelming thought of: “boy, it’d be nice to just watch these and not have to write about them.” So, I did that instead. I need some shows to watch that don’t require note-taking. I need to clean my apartment and passively enjoy a cartoon I’ve seen before. Sorry, but for now I’ll stick to just watching The Simpsons as it comes out. But if you wanna read my bad writing on a more daily basis, check out my blog Adult Swim 2021. I’m almost done with 2002!

*it's really too bad there isn't some kind of show-specific gag involving combining a word with "boo" to create a new word that I could reference right here. I had to come up with my own. There is simply nothing. Too bad....

MAIL BAG

This is Toasty's father. Our beloved Toasty passed away this morning at the age of 38. He wanted me to thank you for reaching out to him. He likes Krusty and Milhouse too. He also likes Homer, Bart, and Lionel Hutz. He hoped you would approve. Goodbye. Here's a link to his services gofundme: C:/Windows/Users/Toasty/PussyPics/

The Man from G.R.A.M.P.A. Season 32 - Episode 21 | May 16, 2021

An extremely boring episode. At this point about a third of the episodes they do are just written after browsing the menu of the Criterion Channel streaming service. This one is The Third Man, which they actually use real footage of, and they also put an orsen welles guy in there. The only laugh I got out of this one was I accidentally typed "The Man with Grandpa" when I typed the title just now, which sounds like the title of a VHS tape you show your elderly parent to prevent them from getting raped.

Anyway, this one is inanely boring. I'm sorry you waited so long for this write-up.

MAIL BAG

You were mean to my friend Toasty. Now I'm gonna be mean to you.

Toasty can suck my dick

i think lisa's hair looks cool in the smiths episode. too bad she becomes hillary clinton huh?

Mother and Child Reunion Season 32 - Episode 20 | May 9, 2021

We are riding the Simpsons train to the end of season 32 and beyond, with no end in sight. We will all die before the Simpsons does. It’s just a fact of life. 

It’s a future episode, which features Lisa deciding not to go to college. There’s many nods to the future canon of the show; Milhouse has large arms. Lisa becomes president. It’s a lot of stuff we’ve already sorta seen, which makes this episode feel kinda pointless. The main conflict is about Marge hanging onto animosity towards Lisa for deciding not to go to college, despite the fact that she becomes president of the United States of America, a job that only smart, non-retards have ever held. Anyway, the only decent joke in the whole episode was the part where George Popadopolous refers to Lisa as the Governor of the state that The Simpsons live in, but he very intentionally slurs what it is. That’s it! That’s all that I laughed at!

Werner Herzog is in this, who had appeared... once? twice? more? before in the show. He’s a magician who does a tarot reading for the Simpson family, which is the framing device of this particular future show. Sorry to you classic film fans who like to think of directors as PUNK ROCK. Lets face it, he is Disney’s bitch.

MAIL BAG

Panic on the streets of springfield. Panic on the streets of shelbyville. I wonder to myself....wow, really good stuff. No wonder you are such a big fan of late period Simpsons and The Smiths.

Shut up!

Hi, this is Toasty. I really like your blog I have a fun idea for a throwaway article you can do. You should rank your 25 favorite simpson characters in order.