It’s a good thing I’m planning on doing one big goodbye essay to The Simpsons next week, because otherwise we’d have the weirdness of ending on an incredibly horny episode about Homer and Marge’s sex life. Some people have argued … Continue reading The Simpsons, Season Nine, Episode Twenty-Five, “Natural Born Kissers”

This season has squashed the characters into caricatures of themselves, and nobody has suffered that worse than Lisa; the writers know she’s supposed to be principled and idealistic, but they often fail to forget what those principles actually are, and … Continue reading The Simpsons, Season Nine, Episode Twenty-Four, “Lost Our Lisa”

This is actually one of my favourite episodes, because it’s one of the purest expressions of what I find so sympathetic about Homer Simpson. In “Trash Of The Titans”, I talked about how Homer is loveable because he’s a creature … Continue reading The Simpsons, Season Nine, Episode Twenty-Three, “King Of The Hill”

If any episode acts as a convenient and easy shorthand for the problems of season nine as a whole, it’s this one. This, more than any other, is the episode people point to as an expression of the Jerkass Homer … Continue reading The Simpsons, Season Nine, Episode Twenty-Two, “Trash Of The Titans”

The better season nine episodes create a consistent reaction in me where my short term reaction is that they’re wildly entertaining and yet much dumber than they used to be. “Girly Edition” sits just above “The Trouble With Trillions” in … Continue reading The Simpsons, Season Nine, Episode Twenty-One, “Girly Edition”

I’m finishing these reviews with the end of season nine (after which I will follow up with an essay that both finishes off The Simpsons as a whole and analyses the pilot of Futurama), but when I announced that, people … Continue reading The Simpsons, Season Nine, Episode Twenty, “The Trouble With Trillions”

We’ve been riding a pretty good high for a while, but sadly this episode falls back into the season’s bad habits. The first act of this episode especially feels really slack in a way I don’t think the show ever … Continue reading The Simpsons, Season Nine, Episode Nineteen, “Simpson Tide”

A consistent theme in these essays over season nine is how well it continues to capture the mindset of children, which is something that The Simpsons has always done. The weakest element of the season is how it seems to … Continue reading The Simpsons, Season Nine, Episode Eighteen, “This Little Wiggy”

One thing that amuses me is watching older works and seeing proto-examples of ideas that have taken over the public consciousness. I watched Seinfeld for the first time this year, and was deeply amused by how much George Constanza’s actions … Continue reading The Simpsons, Season Nine, Episode Seventeen, “Dumbbell Indemnity”

I talk all the time about how The Simpsons has travelled so far and lasted so long in the public consciousness because it shoots for universal emotions and themes, and this is a rare counterexample – though not an unprecedented … Continue reading The Simpsons, Season Nine, Episode Sixteen, “The Last Temptation Of Krust”

One of the most consistent undercurrents to The Simpsons is how well it captures the strange, limited worldview of children and how well it exaggerates that attitude into absurdity. Living on a deserted island is a common children’s fantasy, because … Continue reading The Simpsons, Season Nine, Episode Fifteen, “Das Bus”

I feel like that, as the show is starting to run out of steam, so are my essays – they keep getting shorter, for one thing – so it’s a massive relief to watch a genuinely great episode that goes … Continue reading The Simpsons, Season Nine, Episode Fourteen, “The Joy Of Sect”

I don’t normally talk about the writers in the main body of the text, because I don’t normally have much to say about them beyond a few sentences. Professional television writers are often the first to observe that individual personalities … Continue reading The Simpsons, Season Nine, Episode Thirteen, “Bart Carny”

Look, I was dreading this one too, but let’s just get through it. I remember that era dubbed the “Golden Age of Television” – a period that began and ended with Breaking Bad for some reason – and perhaps its … Continue reading The Simpsons, Season Nine, Episode Twelve, “All Singing, All Dancing”

This is the last example of a Simpsons episode I found difficult to watch as a kid, and in fact it’s the most extreme example – I could always at least get through “$pringfield”, “Marge Be Not Proud”, and “Scenes … Continue reading The Simpsons, Season Nine, Episode Eleven, “Miracle On Evergreen Terrace”

You know, I think I prefer the straight-up bad episodes of this season to the blander entries like this. This episode’s concept isn’t even too far out from other Golden Era episodes – it reminds me a lot of “The … Continue reading The Simpsons, Season Nine, Episode Ten, “Realty Bites”

I always enjoy playing the contrarian, so I’m disappointed to admit that I fall in the general consensus of finding this episode really, really annoying in conception; I was kind of hoping that it would turn out to be more … Continue reading The Simpsons, Season Nine, Episode Nine, “Lisa The Skeptic”

From one perspective, this is the most interesting episode we’ve had in ages, because it’s the usual tug-of-war between Apu’s offensive creative foundation colliding with the show’s warmth and intelligence combined with the new tug-of-war between that same warmth and … Continue reading The Simpsons, Season Nine, Episode Eight, “The Two Mrs Nahasapeemapetilans”

This is the first episode of the show I’ve gone through that felt like they wrote the plot around good lines they came up with rather than letting lines evolve from the plot. Something I’ve been saying since about midway … Continue reading The Simpsons, Season Nine, Episode Seven, “Bart Star”

The Simpsons has always been better at capturing the foibles of everyday human thinking than taking on broad social trends, ideas, and policies, and this episode is a great demonstration of that. As a commentary on American gun culture, it’s … Continue reading The Simpsons, Season Nine, Episode Six, “The Cartridge Family”