“Punish, punish, punish, and, when it’s too late, love.”
There are stories that move you for yourself and stories that tell you the movement you should be in, with clues and tradition to get the job done. “Eating Things” The Simpsons‘700th impossible episode, it does everything to mark its place in history, but it gives us a reason to celebrate. As a piece of television history, it is a novelty. As an episode of The Simpsons, is barely there.
Look, I don’t like that at all. After all, I am the Club AV reviewer that he spent his years covering final series Simpsons making the case of the intermittent well way out as proof that there is still some time in the old. And I felt really sad when the inevitable ax fell last year, which indicated that the AV Club’s decision to go back to normal Simpsons coverage from 2011 Season 23 he had allowed us to Simpsons paella stalwarts for golden television enough. As much heat as I occasionally got Simpsons online professionals to be contemptuous (I will never get over it.) angered Yeardley Smith—I won’t do it), I can point out a dozen or more episodes from the last six seasons where I would sink comfortably Simpsons‘binge of the good old days.
But we are not here to commemorate them on the occasion of a good episode with round numbers, we are here to talk about “Crib Things”. And “Manger Things” is barely recorded.
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Rob LaZebnik he is the accredited writer and I usually look at his name with hope at the beginning of an episode. The Simpsons it is a precisely steered ship at this point, with all its resemblance sharp, and our voice emitted overcoming the COVID process recorded remotely with a hiccup. I once really laughed, in the throwing gag, where Mr. Burns’s welcoming assurance that his employees’ Christmas party is full of goodwill is belied by a random bullet coming out of the railing of the power plant that has in front. It’s an old joke, but it came out well and I laughed.
Flanders, that the role of this episode that is not focused on the end is otherwise unlikely and is ruled out, makes appear the whole idea of Jesus, “Love your neighbor”, to convince the very pregnant Maude of Flashback that allows the released Homer to share his vacation, while reflecting on how the Guy “Looks like he never lives next to anyone.” And Homer, who spends the night in the cave of the “Son of Man” in Flanders, is momentarily tempted by a Bosch-painted demon, who responds to the little monster’s conversation about the lake of fire, immediately provoking: “A house in the by the lake? ” I could do some writing! ”I’m always on board to make a joke about the unexplored and unexpected corners of Homer J. Simpson’s mind.
However, this is no entertainment to post any episode. And “Manger Things” throws a bunch of logs into the fire to try to generate a “spectacular 700th episode” heat. It’s a Christmas episode. It’s a flashback episode. Marge expels Homer. It is an episode of Flanders. Homer plays the emergency doula for Rod’s birth, to shout out loud, a monumental retcon that brings Homer and Maude to such unexpectedly deep intimacy that it makes Homer’s infamous reaction to Maude’s involuntary murder much more. terrible in retrospect.
It’s a bit shocking, even for a wacky professional Simpsons spectator, the little that is encouraged in any of these plot lines. The Christmas angle exists to pile on Homer’s sadness at Marge’s decision to give her the boot (and to make sure Neddy is delivering Christmas roosters to the needy during Maude’s time of need) , but could have been set at any time. (If there is symmetry in episode 1 Homer, after being locked in a secret room in the Simpson garage by Moe (for some reason), ends up camping out there and spying on his family through the holidays. a conveniently conductive sound ventilation. But even though Dan Castellaneta diligently supplies Homer, a heart patient, with many cries and sighs for his situation, the central conflict between the couple is not dramatized as much as it is fabricated. Homer making a Clark Griswold style the Christmas nest alone in the crowded and forgotten space pretends to pathos without ever committing, and is so terribly flat and uninvolved. Also, as fans of season 32 know, Marge kicked out Homer just a few episodes ago, so her decision here isn’t just portrayed as wrong (Lenny and Carl secretly drunk Homer, reluctantly, in the party), this narrative bullet should not be to be shot willingly or not.
Similarly, there is no real comic hay made from the premise of the flashback of six years before. Homer has a little more hair. So does Abe, who, in this version of the story, was excited to be able to live indefinitely with his son’s family. We have this background story debating why Marge had to replace those kitchen curtains with those things. Bart (4 years old) and Lisa (2 years old) are small figures, Nancy Cartwright and Yeardley Smith raise their voices a little, but the brothers act in the same way in response to Homer’s sudden absence. There’s a slight effort to suggest that Bart’s bastard tendencies come (this time) from his brief fatherhood, but, like the rest of the character beats in “Manger Things,” it practically doesn’t exist. And when the climax spreads with the birth assisted by Homer, of Maude, the arrivals of Ned and Marge are so artificial and so superficial. (There is literally no reason why Marge is suddenly in the home of Flanders to witness the convenience of Homer’s help.)
In pre-big 700 promotional materials, “Manger Things” were sold with the idea that Homer would find an unknown room in the Simpsons’ house. This is the core of an evocative idea, which metaphorically promises that there is still something hidden and wonderful, even in something you imagine has run out of ways to surprise you. “Eating Things” barely explores the attic space of the family garage, as it turns out, wasting, wasting the hopes I allowed myself to rise, as they allowed me to re-immerse myself in The Simpsons (professionally speaking). 700 episodes and 32 years is an eternity on television. Damn, it’s one plenty of time for anything or anyone. Congratulations, even if another important number is a milestone as artificial as ever, so congratulations on one of my favorite shows. And, as always, next week will be better.
Lost observations
- Aside from Marge being chosen as the bad (unintentional) piece here, Maude is also terribly quirky and unchristian / without Flanders. Make no mistake: Homer eats the unwrapped raw Christmas ham from Flanders for snack at midnight, but his characterization here is just a big sour bite.
- Nor is it characteristic of Marge to tell children that what she needs in order for Homer to be able to return to her good graces is, “something fantastic: something fantastic to prove that all the nonsense I endure has a point.” As a general rule, yes, these grandiose schemes that end the episodes are what make the Simpsons ’marriage fall short of that week’s limit, but Marge doesn’t articulate it so explicitly. In the dynamics of the couple, Homer is the one who thinks that big gestures can fix a lifetime of abandonment and disappointment, while Marge succumbs because she recognizes that these deceptions are all that her loving but flawed husband can put together. Marge doesn’t want gestures and the writing here betrays the character in a truly discouraging way.
- Bill Plympton returns with the show’s opening show, “Homer’s Family,” his seventh guest entertainer sofa gag. I agree with The capture of Sam Barsanti that the hand-drawn cartoon fantasy flight is in its sweet way. The piece refocuses Homer as the heart of the show, his smiling face never changes even when his pieces explode (there is always element of bodily horror with Plympton) and then float around her noggin, Marge and the children eternally tied to their Homer-centered orbits through the strength of love and the sitcom tradition. That Homer is irrevocably transformed through this rest of Cronenberg and, although, without any doubt, he chooses to immerse himself in this new reality of wife, children and 32 years of ecstasy, is more a thoughtful and insightful reflection on The Simpsons that anything that is actually in “Eating Things,” an affectionately poetic and inventive riff on a subject whose weekly reality has become, too often, broken and mundane.
- Thanks for analyzing too much The Simpsons once again, you. It’s good to go back, even if it’s just for a visit.