“Punish, punish, punish, and when it’s too late, love.”
There are stories that move you on your own and stories that tell you how excited you should be, based on lines and tradition to do the job. “Manger Things” The Simpsons“Episode 700 impossible, does everything to mark its place in history, but it gives us a reason to celebrate it. As a piece of TV history, it is a novelty. As an episode of The Simpsons, is just there.
Look, I’m not enjoying this. After all, it’s me Club AV reviewer who he spent his years covering the late series Simpson supporting the case intermittent good trip as proof that there is another blow to the old girl. And I was really sad when the inevitable ax fell last year, signaling that the AV club’s decision to give up the regular Simpson coverage from 2011 Season 23 he allowed us Simpson stalwarts pan for long golden TV sufficient. How much heat I got from time to time Simpson online professionals to be repulsive (I will never get over Yeardley Smith annoyed him– I just won’t), I can show a dozen or more episodes from the last six seasons in which I would slip comfortably in any Simpson‘binge din good times.
But we are not here to remember on the occasion of a beautiful episode, with round numbers, we are here to talk about “Manger Things”. And “Manger Things” is just being recorded.
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Rob LaZebnik he is the credited writer, and his name is one that I generally regard with hope at the beginning of an episode. The Simpsons is a ship driven at the moment, looking completely sharp, and our voice throws past the COVID process recorded remotely with a hiccup. I laughed once, at the thrown gag in which Mr. Burns’s comfortable assurance that his employees’ Christmas party was full of goodwill was refuted by a random bullet that clung to the railing of the plant in front of him. It’s an old joke, but it turned out well and I laughed.
Flanders – whose role in this unfocused final episode is unlikely to be eliminated – brings into question Jesus’ entire idea of ”Love your neighbor” to persuade Maude, in charge of the flashback, to allow Homer to be thrown away. to share their holidays, thinking at the same time as “He never seems to live with anyone.” And Homer, who spends the night in the “Cave of the Son of Man” in Flanders, is currently tempted by a devil painted by Bosch, who responds to the little monster’s speech about the lake of fire by immediately sparkling: “A house by the lake? I could write something! “I’m always on board for a joke about the unexplored and unexpected corners of Homer J. Simpson’s mind.
However, there is a lot of entertainment to support any episode. And “Manger Things” throws a lot of logs on the fire to try to generate a “spectacular 700th” heat. It’s a Christmas episode. It’s a flashback episode. Marge tossed Homer. It’s an episode from Flanders. Homer plays the emergency doula for the birth of Rod, because he shouted out loud, a monumental retcon that brings Homer and Maude into such unexpected intimacy that it causes Homer’s infamous reaction to be accidentally killed on Maude, much worse in retrospect.
It’s kind of shocking, even for a tired professional Simpson spectator, how little food is made for any of these plots. The Christmas angle exists to add to Homer’s sadness at Marge’s decision to give him the boot (and to make sure Neddy delivers Christmas turkeys to the needy during Maude’s need), but it could have been fixed at any time. (If there is a symmetry for episodes 1 and 700, both set during the holidays, that’s all he has.) Homer, after being pursued in a secret room over the Simpson garage by Moe (for some reason), ends up camping there and -espion the family through a convenient vent. But while Dan Castellaneta offers Homer, who has a heart condition, a lot of moans and sighs because of his situation, the central conflict between the couple is not so much dramatized as fabricated. Homer doing a Clark Griswold style the solo Christmas nest in the narrow and forgotten space of the attic heads towards pathos without ever committing and everything is so terribly flat and uninvolved. Plus, as fans of Season 32 know, Marge threw Homer out just a few episodes ago, so her decision isn’t just presented as wrong (Lenny and Carl secretly drank Homer without reluctantly, drunk at the party), that narrative bullet shouldn’t be shot willingly or unwillingly.
Similarly, there is no real comic hay made from the premise of flashback six years ago. Homer has a little more hair. So did Abe, who, in this version of the story, was under the illusion that he would be able to live with his son’s family indefinitely. We get that much debated background story about exactly why Marge had to replace the kitchen curtains, for those in something like that. Bart (4 years old) and Lisa (2 years old) are small numbers, Nancy Cartwright and Yeardley Smith raising the voices of their characters a little, but the brothers act differently in response to Homer’s sudden absence. There is a hiss of effort to suggest that Bart’s bastard tendencies come (this time) from his short father, but, like the rest of the character in “Manger Things,” he barely exists. And when the climax comes with Maude’s assisted birth of Homer, Ned and Marge’s arrivals are just as ingenious and functional as such things happen. (There is no reason why Marge is suddenly in Flanders’ house to witness Homer’s convenient use.)
In promotional materials that led to the great 700, “Manger Things” was 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 what you imagine was left with no way to surprise you. “Manger Things” barely explores, as it turns out, a completely remarkable attic space in the family’s garage, dispelling hopes that I allowed myself to get up because I was allowed to sink back into The Simpsons (professionally speaking). 700 episodes and 32 years is an eternity in television. Hell, it’s a long time for anything, or for anyone. Congratulations are due, even if another big number is as artificial as ever, so congratulations on one of my favorite shows ever. And, as always, next week will be better.
Lost remarks
- Aside from the fact that Marge is thrown as the (unintentional) villain of the play here, Maude is also terribly snippy and non-Christian / a-Flanders everywhere. She’s not mistaken – Homer eats uncooked, still-wrapped Christmas ham from Flanders for a midnight snack – but her characterization here is just a big, sour beating.
- It is also unusual for Marge to tell the children that what it takes for Homer to win his way back in her good graces is: “a great thing – a great thing to prove that all the nonsense he- I endured they have a point “. Usually, yes, such grandiose schemes that lead to the end of the episode are the ones that bring the Simpsons’ marriage back to the edge of that week, but Marge is not one to articulate this so explicitly. In the dynamics of the couple, Homer is the one who believes that great gestures can solve a lifetime of negligence and disappointment, while Marge gives in because she admits that such shenanigans are all that her loving but flawless husband can do. Marge doesn’t want gestures, and the writing here betrays the character in a really discouraging way.
- Bill Plympton returns with the show’s opening program, “Homer’s Family,” his seventh guest gag on the couch. I agree with Taking Sam Barsanti that hand-drawn cartoon fantasy flight is kind of sweet in its own way. The play recreates Homer as the heart of the show, his smiling appearance never changes, even if pieces of him erupt element of body horror with Plympton) and then float around Noggin, Marge and the children eternally bound to their Homer-centered orbits by the force of love and the sitcom tradition. The fact that Homer is irrevocably transformed by this Cronenberg-ian decline and yet chooses without complaint to sink into this new reality of his wife, children, and 32 years of stasis is more of a thoughtful and insightful thought about Simpson than anything else. fact from “Manger” Things “, a poetic and inventive emotional riff on a subject whose weekly reality has become, too often, simple and banal.
- Thank you for analyzing too much The Simpsons Once again, you old people. It’s nice to come back, even if it’s just for a visit.