Purple
(She/Her)
I'm dealing with some nasty health stuff this week and apparently I'm bored enough as I recover to get morbidly curious enough to catch up on The Simpsons. I can't remember exactly when I stopped watching, but I think it was when Sideshow Bob used superscience to give himself gills and it wasn't a Halloween episode. But all I could readily access is the most recent season. And it's not even like I'm going "wow, this is really bad now." It just feels like everyone is just kinda done. Writers, actors (a hell of a lot of characters have actually been recast and Julie Kavner sounds like she can barely even speak anymore), and it feels like absolutely no idea pitched by the writers gets shot down. And I mean, I'm not NOT saying it's bad, but it's kinda fascinating that all of the following really happened.
"Undercover Burns"
Mr. Burns uses a robot suit to impersonate a new employee, becomes friends with employees, and thus friendly. Some guy I don't know plays the robot's voice.
"I, Carumbus"
Rather than a Simpsons episode have some weird Roman fantasy thing where Homer is a slave-owning gladiator who eventually murders Bart.
"Now Museum, Now You Don't"
Rather than a Simpsons episode have some weird anthology of shorts about mashups of Simpsons characters and famous artists... starting in Rome. Wasn't out of their system.
"Treehouse of Horror XXXI"
Directly spoofing Toy Story, Into the Spiderverse, and Russian Doll (specifically, song and everything). Toy Story gets into like actual horror territory at the end where they hollow out Bart's corpse and add a pull cord making him say uncharacteristic things. We don't get the Spiderpig callback you'd expect but we DO get "Disney Princess Homer" which... at least comes without any weird transphobic jokes? And then we just... spoil the whole plot of Russian Doll without really any jokes.
"The 7 Beer Itch"
Rather than write an episode of The Simpsons here's this thing about some woman everyone wants to sleep with. Eventually Homer has an affair with her. Nothing comes of it.
"Podcast News"
Kent Brockman starts a true crime podcast to investigate Grandpa murdering his former soap star girlfriend. Turns out she faked her own death. They have a happy ending (and then Grandpa is on a date with someone else a couple episodes later). Yeardley Smith guest stars as herself, somehow.
"Three Dreams Denied"
Comic Book Guy goes to a comic convention, with dreams of asking a question on a panel so well appreciated that he is hired to write for Marvel. He loses his reminder card, is embarassed, and briefly loses his mojo before being annoyed by Ralph. In a B story, Bart somehow gets cast as the lead voice actor in a cartoon, records all lines in advance, and only later realizes he's playing a princess. Everyone makes fun of him/beats him up ("Do you go be him, or her?" "Him." "Get him!") but then turns out the cartoon is super violent and everyone decides it's rad that Bart is a murder princess. The title suggests a third plotline where Lisa becomes a street musician but they basically forgot to write it.
"The Road to Cincinnati"
Skinner and Chalmers go on a road trip and become good friends.
"Sorry Not Sorry"
Lisa calls Ms. Hoover out for being 100% checked out and is repeatedly sent to detention. Eventually realizes her life is incredibly bleak and apologizes by buying her a massage chair.
"A Springfield Summer Christmas for Christmas"
Rather than a Simpsons episode have a totally played straight formulaic Hallmark movie, entirely from the perspecive of a random woman making a Hallmark movie, who kinda flirts with Skinner a little.
"The Dad-Feelings Limited"
After she briefly holds Maggie and wants a baby, Comic Book Guy refuses to sleep with his wife, and moves back in with his father, Postage Stamp Fellow. One extended Wes Anderson movie riff later, he learns a lesson about fatherhood and does sleep with his wife, while they are respectively dressed as a beaver and the trans gremlin from Gremlins 2.
"Diary Queen"
When Flanders has a yard sale to unload all his worldly goods but particularly those formerly belonging to his dead wives, Bart obtains Mrs. Krabappel's diary, which with the help of some deepfaked/repurposed voiceover reveals she really liked Bart and had high hopes for him, causing him to totally turn his life around. Then Lisa torpedoes that by pointing out he jumped to conclusions and she was actually expressing adoration for a cat.
"Wad Goals"
After Ralph discovers a secret golf course, Bart becomes a caddy, as does Skinner who admits that he has secretly always thought Bart is awesome. Marge arbitrarily hates this development and tries to have the golf course destroyed (via a petition which via very convoluted and forced setup is labeled "Stop Coddling S.J.W.s" and this has absolutely no payoff despite a really labored setup with Lisa explaining what that means). Bart convinces the owner to make golf a religion, then is backstabbed, attacks the course with dirt bikes, and then the police shut it down because a sex cult spontaneously formed in it.
"Yokel Hero"
Homer becomes the manager of a dirt-poor country singer, again. But this time rather than a new character it's Cletus. No that didn't already happen, that was Cletus' kids becoming a variety act. No I'm not thinking of the time that happened with Apu's kids, that was another episode going to this well. It plays out basically just like all of those.
"Do Pizza Bots Dream of Electric Guitars"
Flashing back to the late 90s, a 14 year old Homer has dreams of reprogramming an animatronic pizza band to rap dashed because Gil is secretly using the robots to sell cocaine. Also a child is wearing a Bart T-shirt. Back in the present, a concerned family and Moe hunt the robots down, notably having to obtain one from Disco Stu, who is shamed with reference to his dead father Doo-Wop Steve by his mother Public Domain Debbie, one from Sideshow Mel who is sleeping with it, and one from J.J. Abrams who we're pretending isn't a talentless hack, and who steals the rest of the robots to use as the basic for a new Marvel-style movie franchise.
"Manger Things"
In this Christmas flashback episode, nebulously set "6 years ago," Homer delivers one Todd Homer Flanders in a home birth because he's trying to do one decent thing.
"Uncut Femmes"
Marge ends up hanging out with Chief Wiggums wife who turns out to be cool sexy jewel thief and ropes her into a heist movie situation to get revenge on her double crossing ex-partner Lindsay Naegle. There's a very minor and honestly kinda sweet subplot about Fat Tony befriending Ralph, and a throwaway line about the other mobsters seeing a hot genderfluid model and saying "I wouldn't mind asking them their pronouns!"
"Burger Kings"
Mr. Burns tries a hamburger for the first time after stealing it from Homer, becomes addicted, has a heart attack, is brought a fancy vegan burger by Professor Frink at Smithers bequest, redubs it the Excellent Burger, and starts his own wildly successful fast food franchise. Eventually it's revealed that these are made from endangered plants growing only in the rainforest which is being clearcut to produce them and this is a genuinely disgusting way to take this. Burns is relieved he can just be evil again after this is discovered. Meanwhile Marge becomes a soulless insider trader, and there's a weird random throwaway bit with Krusty trying to regain burger chain customers with "LGBTQBLTs" for pride month and asking Sideshow Mel why it isn't working because he's "3 of those letters."
"Panic on the Streets of Springfield"
Homer is diagnosed as having low testosterone (and many more serious health risks) and decides to buy a ridiculously giant truck again. It comes with a free Spotify subscription which causes Lisa to discover an obscure new wave vegan jerk, become obsessed, become a smug goth "teenager," hallucinate the singer as an imaginary friend, and go to see the real version of him in concert after stealing Homer's credit card, becoming horrified that he has become an anti-vegan activist and massive racist. This leads to nothing really besides being less obsessed with just this one guy's songs.
"Mother and Child Reunion"
When the family goes to have a tarot reading performed by Werner Herzog as himself, we get another of those future episodes, covering Lisa deciding not to go to college, causing a rift with Marge, and then going on to become president because future-Simpsons plot continuity is weirdly well-maintained. Still being jaded about a lot of stuff, she smokes some pot with Bart (which he now manages a distributor for) on the White House roof (and I forgot to mention it but a bunch of random episodes this season also involve her music teacher sneaking off to imbibe such). She then patches things up with Marge and returning to the present, Werner Herzog produces a crystal ball in which the face of Nate Silver gives odds on whether she'll actually become president, go to college, have a boyfriend, have a girlfriend (and she's very pleased with how high those last odds are).
"The Man from G.R.A.M.P.A."
A British spy suspects Grandpa is a secret Russian sleeper agent. Turns out he is not.
"The Last Barfighter"
Bart and Milhouse get bored and go to a taping of Bumblebee Man's show. Bart is picked from the audience for a gameshow type thing and wins a choice of prizes, taking, as anyone should given the chance, a crystal skull over a vacuum or mountain bike. Turns out it's full of Tequilla, so Homer steals it to share at the bar. Moe also has some, then starts blabbing about people's personal confessions. This proves to be a violation of the sole rule of a secret bartender club Moe belongs to and the whole rest of the episode is just full on John Wick parody, with Moe fighting off other bartenders with cool martial arts trying and eventually failing to keep them from injecting all of his customers with a drug that makes them unable to consume alcohol. They all massively turn their lives around and become better people. Then since they eventually check in on Moe, the head secret bar guy decides to restore the status quo. The crystal skull, which had been dropped and shattered earlier, reforms and tells the Simpson kids, in Spanish, that a tendency to alcoholism is genetic and they should all keep that in mind.
Overall the whole experience of watching this was just really surreal. Depressing with the many reminders of voice actor mortality. Oddly prone to recycling very specific jokes and even entire episode premises from as recently as literally the previous episode. Clear if muddled efforts to do multiple trans-positive jokes. A lot of... kinda blatant and shameless cross-promotional stuff with other Disney properties. Lots of forgetting to tell jokes or resolve stories.
And it's just really freaking weird to me that we have both Homer and Bart as magic princesses. That and the double Rome thing. And the double Comic Book Guy spotlights. And going to that parent with similarly structured name joke again later. What the hell even was all that?
Also worth noting with the voice recasts- A lot of these are due to deciding they shouldn't have a couple white guys playing a bunch of non-white guys, so that's cool, but it's still really jarring in context:
And the actress for half the kids died a few years ago apparently.
"Undercover Burns"
Mr. Burns uses a robot suit to impersonate a new employee, becomes friends with employees, and thus friendly. Some guy I don't know plays the robot's voice.
"I, Carumbus"
Rather than a Simpsons episode have some weird Roman fantasy thing where Homer is a slave-owning gladiator who eventually murders Bart.
"Now Museum, Now You Don't"
Rather than a Simpsons episode have some weird anthology of shorts about mashups of Simpsons characters and famous artists... starting in Rome. Wasn't out of their system.
"Treehouse of Horror XXXI"
Directly spoofing Toy Story, Into the Spiderverse, and Russian Doll (specifically, song and everything). Toy Story gets into like actual horror territory at the end where they hollow out Bart's corpse and add a pull cord making him say uncharacteristic things. We don't get the Spiderpig callback you'd expect but we DO get "Disney Princess Homer" which... at least comes without any weird transphobic jokes? And then we just... spoil the whole plot of Russian Doll without really any jokes.
"The 7 Beer Itch"
Rather than write an episode of The Simpsons here's this thing about some woman everyone wants to sleep with. Eventually Homer has an affair with her. Nothing comes of it.
"Podcast News"
Kent Brockman starts a true crime podcast to investigate Grandpa murdering his former soap star girlfriend. Turns out she faked her own death. They have a happy ending (and then Grandpa is on a date with someone else a couple episodes later). Yeardley Smith guest stars as herself, somehow.
"Three Dreams Denied"
Comic Book Guy goes to a comic convention, with dreams of asking a question on a panel so well appreciated that he is hired to write for Marvel. He loses his reminder card, is embarassed, and briefly loses his mojo before being annoyed by Ralph. In a B story, Bart somehow gets cast as the lead voice actor in a cartoon, records all lines in advance, and only later realizes he's playing a princess. Everyone makes fun of him/beats him up ("Do you go be him, or her?" "Him." "Get him!") but then turns out the cartoon is super violent and everyone decides it's rad that Bart is a murder princess. The title suggests a third plotline where Lisa becomes a street musician but they basically forgot to write it.
"The Road to Cincinnati"
Skinner and Chalmers go on a road trip and become good friends.
"Sorry Not Sorry"
Lisa calls Ms. Hoover out for being 100% checked out and is repeatedly sent to detention. Eventually realizes her life is incredibly bleak and apologizes by buying her a massage chair.
"A Springfield Summer Christmas for Christmas"
Rather than a Simpsons episode have a totally played straight formulaic Hallmark movie, entirely from the perspecive of a random woman making a Hallmark movie, who kinda flirts with Skinner a little.
"The Dad-Feelings Limited"
After she briefly holds Maggie and wants a baby, Comic Book Guy refuses to sleep with his wife, and moves back in with his father, Postage Stamp Fellow. One extended Wes Anderson movie riff later, he learns a lesson about fatherhood and does sleep with his wife, while they are respectively dressed as a beaver and the trans gremlin from Gremlins 2.
"Diary Queen"
When Flanders has a yard sale to unload all his worldly goods but particularly those formerly belonging to his dead wives, Bart obtains Mrs. Krabappel's diary, which with the help of some deepfaked/repurposed voiceover reveals she really liked Bart and had high hopes for him, causing him to totally turn his life around. Then Lisa torpedoes that by pointing out he jumped to conclusions and she was actually expressing adoration for a cat.
"Wad Goals"
After Ralph discovers a secret golf course, Bart becomes a caddy, as does Skinner who admits that he has secretly always thought Bart is awesome. Marge arbitrarily hates this development and tries to have the golf course destroyed (via a petition which via very convoluted and forced setup is labeled "Stop Coddling S.J.W.s" and this has absolutely no payoff despite a really labored setup with Lisa explaining what that means). Bart convinces the owner to make golf a religion, then is backstabbed, attacks the course with dirt bikes, and then the police shut it down because a sex cult spontaneously formed in it.
"Yokel Hero"
Homer becomes the manager of a dirt-poor country singer, again. But this time rather than a new character it's Cletus. No that didn't already happen, that was Cletus' kids becoming a variety act. No I'm not thinking of the time that happened with Apu's kids, that was another episode going to this well. It plays out basically just like all of those.
"Do Pizza Bots Dream of Electric Guitars"
Flashing back to the late 90s, a 14 year old Homer has dreams of reprogramming an animatronic pizza band to rap dashed because Gil is secretly using the robots to sell cocaine. Also a child is wearing a Bart T-shirt. Back in the present, a concerned family and Moe hunt the robots down, notably having to obtain one from Disco Stu, who is shamed with reference to his dead father Doo-Wop Steve by his mother Public Domain Debbie, one from Sideshow Mel who is sleeping with it, and one from J.J. Abrams who we're pretending isn't a talentless hack, and who steals the rest of the robots to use as the basic for a new Marvel-style movie franchise.
"Manger Things"
In this Christmas flashback episode, nebulously set "6 years ago," Homer delivers one Todd Homer Flanders in a home birth because he's trying to do one decent thing.
"Uncut Femmes"
Marge ends up hanging out with Chief Wiggums wife who turns out to be cool sexy jewel thief and ropes her into a heist movie situation to get revenge on her double crossing ex-partner Lindsay Naegle. There's a very minor and honestly kinda sweet subplot about Fat Tony befriending Ralph, and a throwaway line about the other mobsters seeing a hot genderfluid model and saying "I wouldn't mind asking them their pronouns!"
"Burger Kings"
Mr. Burns tries a hamburger for the first time after stealing it from Homer, becomes addicted, has a heart attack, is brought a fancy vegan burger by Professor Frink at Smithers bequest, redubs it the Excellent Burger, and starts his own wildly successful fast food franchise. Eventually it's revealed that these are made from endangered plants growing only in the rainforest which is being clearcut to produce them and this is a genuinely disgusting way to take this. Burns is relieved he can just be evil again after this is discovered. Meanwhile Marge becomes a soulless insider trader, and there's a weird random throwaway bit with Krusty trying to regain burger chain customers with "LGBTQBLTs" for pride month and asking Sideshow Mel why it isn't working because he's "3 of those letters."
"Panic on the Streets of Springfield"
Homer is diagnosed as having low testosterone (and many more serious health risks) and decides to buy a ridiculously giant truck again. It comes with a free Spotify subscription which causes Lisa to discover an obscure new wave vegan jerk, become obsessed, become a smug goth "teenager," hallucinate the singer as an imaginary friend, and go to see the real version of him in concert after stealing Homer's credit card, becoming horrified that he has become an anti-vegan activist and massive racist. This leads to nothing really besides being less obsessed with just this one guy's songs.
"Mother and Child Reunion"
When the family goes to have a tarot reading performed by Werner Herzog as himself, we get another of those future episodes, covering Lisa deciding not to go to college, causing a rift with Marge, and then going on to become president because future-Simpsons plot continuity is weirdly well-maintained. Still being jaded about a lot of stuff, she smokes some pot with Bart (which he now manages a distributor for) on the White House roof (and I forgot to mention it but a bunch of random episodes this season also involve her music teacher sneaking off to imbibe such). She then patches things up with Marge and returning to the present, Werner Herzog produces a crystal ball in which the face of Nate Silver gives odds on whether she'll actually become president, go to college, have a boyfriend, have a girlfriend (and she's very pleased with how high those last odds are).
"The Man from G.R.A.M.P.A."
A British spy suspects Grandpa is a secret Russian sleeper agent. Turns out he is not.
"The Last Barfighter"
Bart and Milhouse get bored and go to a taping of Bumblebee Man's show. Bart is picked from the audience for a gameshow type thing and wins a choice of prizes, taking, as anyone should given the chance, a crystal skull over a vacuum or mountain bike. Turns out it's full of Tequilla, so Homer steals it to share at the bar. Moe also has some, then starts blabbing about people's personal confessions. This proves to be a violation of the sole rule of a secret bartender club Moe belongs to and the whole rest of the episode is just full on John Wick parody, with Moe fighting off other bartenders with cool martial arts trying and eventually failing to keep them from injecting all of his customers with a drug that makes them unable to consume alcohol. They all massively turn their lives around and become better people. Then since they eventually check in on Moe, the head secret bar guy decides to restore the status quo. The crystal skull, which had been dropped and shattered earlier, reforms and tells the Simpson kids, in Spanish, that a tendency to alcoholism is genetic and they should all keep that in mind.
Overall the whole experience of watching this was just really surreal. Depressing with the many reminders of voice actor mortality. Oddly prone to recycling very specific jokes and even entire episode premises from as recently as literally the previous episode. Clear if muddled efforts to do multiple trans-positive jokes. A lot of... kinda blatant and shameless cross-promotional stuff with other Disney properties. Lots of forgetting to tell jokes or resolve stories.
And it's just really freaking weird to me that we have both Homer and Bart as magic princesses. That and the double Rome thing. And the double Comic Book Guy spotlights. And going to that parent with similarly structured name joke again later. What the hell even was all that?
Also worth noting with the voice recasts- A lot of these are due to deciding they shouldn't have a couple white guys playing a bunch of non-white guys, so that's cool, but it's still really jarring in context:
