Scullyfied Simpsons: “Kill the Alligator and Run” (Season 11, Episode 19)

“This family has hit a new low! We’re on the run from the law, totally lost, no car, no money, no clean clothes, and it’s all your fault.” – Marge. Spoiler alert – the word “divorce” is not mentioned once in this episode.

Airdate: April 30th, 2000.

Written By: John Swartzwelder

Plot: After taking a test in a book of self-improvement quizzes, Homer begins to fear that he only has three years left on his lifespan. Emotionally disturbed, he goes off the deep end, to a point where a psychiatrist recommends that he takes a vacation down in Palm Corners, Florida.

OOPS, SPRING BREAK TIME! It sends Homer insane, to the point where he commits a couple of misdemeanors in the process, but gets off easily thanks to the town sheriff. After Spring Break, he is so excited, that in the midst of his party, he runs over the town’s mascot, the alligator Captain Jack. With the whole family facing arrest for something Homer has done, they decide to hide out in plain sight as workers at a diner in the middle of nowhere.

Review:

For the past five and a half years, I have been taking a look at the Mike Scully era of The Simpsons. In many ways, it is the dorkier equivalent to the study of the implosion of the Roman Empire. Everybody has their theories – some rational, others more theoretical, a scant few completely insane and rooted in somewhat odious rationales. What I ultimately am looking at in terms of analyzing the collapse of The Simpsons is what the symptoms reflect.

Right now, what I’m sensing is that the show collapsed due to a fatal combination of arrogance, inexperience, and the limitations of the traditional story engine, sourced from the writers’ room and the FOX Network executives, at war with both increasingly disillusioned fans and worn-down staff (animators and voice actors, respectively.) Sometimes, the writers thought they could go to war with fans. Other times, they thought they could juggle an ability to tell an emotionally moving story with revenge against an errant voice actor and the quest for ratings. As you can probably gather, the writers didn’t do a good job at many of these forays, because even in normal episodes, the show was becoming increasingly outlandish instead of silly, callous instead of merely cynical, and downright incompetent in terms of framing a story, characters, et cetera.

With around 60 Scully-era episodes under my belt, I’ve mulled over quite a few contenders for the show’s event horizon, the moment when the show’s collapse was cemented forever. And I’m not going to restate my arguments here, since it would be a waste of time for all involved.

All I know is that this time, I have watched a Simpsons episode that I sincerely believe would’ve been better off if it was penned and edited by a room full of cocaine users. It is so insane, so incoherent, so mad, and so incompetent that, for the first time in my years of reviewing this show, I have to question the sanity of Mr. Michael Scully.

I don’t know how else to guess the thought process that was behind “Kill the Alligator and Run”.

We are at the third episode this season that is almost universally considered a contender for “the worst episode ever”, and this one is probably the most universally and virulently despised overall. “Saddlesore Galactica” is reviled for the insanity of the plot twist, but there are those (including the writers) that defend it as a mockery of the silliness of South Park and Family Guy. (In my opinion, both shows were putting out better scripts than The Simpsons Season 11, invalidating that argument.) And while there are virtually no defenders of “Bart to the Future”, it did get some more recent recognition for its precognition related to the election of President Donald Trump. (To which I argue that they merely mocked his candidacy back in 1999.)

“Kill The Alligator and Run”, meanwhile, really has neither. In fact, Dead Homer Society has not once used the episode for a “Quote of the Day” – they’ve gone back to the aforementioned wells on some occasions, even though they consider Season 11 the show’s last gasp of dignity being stripped away. I think that makes this episode a good contender for that blog’s collective “Worst Episode Ever”, if you count “worst” as being absent of anything good.

The episode starts off on a less than stellar foot, with Homer facing his own mortality. In contrast to the believable midlife crisis seen in that episode, here, Homer is instead confronted with the possibility of dying at age 42… thanks to a quiz that he took in a magazine. Which Marge even buys into. (Yes, this is one of the starting points for Marge turning from merely “mildly oblivious” to “rock stupid”.)

Unlike most other bad Scully-era episodes which start off on a good note (or at least a good idea buried under zaniness), this episode already misfires at the starting gate. I mean, within the first three minutes, we have the recurrence of an earlier plot in the magazine usage. This wouldn’t irritate me as much if “Mr. Lisa Goes To Washington” wasn’t, you know, my personal favorite episode of the entire frigging show. Seriously – I think that episode is an absolute smash, combining American satire with great character work for Lisa.

This time, however, we have a magazine joke that is only used to focus on Homer and Homer himself, which would work if he didn’t give Ned Flanders a sex test, forgetting that his wife died. Y’know, his wife who died as a result of Homer dodging flying T-shirts and parking in the ambulance zone in one go. (Turns out, he fell into the grave at the funeral as well). In short, when he finds out that his lifespan is short, the response should not be to hope for a Mack truck to T-bone him. Nice character writing there.

(Have I told you yet that I’ve grown to despise this character? Scully-era Homer is to me what Captain Janeway is to SFDebris – anytime I think about the actions he commits, he becomes more and more deluded and deserving of a mental institution. At least Janeway had to deal with a ship getting launched halfway across space. Something that stressful would take a toll on anybody’s mental health.)

Anyway, that’s how we start off the plot. Or what’s left of it.

As after taking the quiz, Homer goes off the deep end. Oh, you thought he was insane before? Well, this time, he becomes legitimately disturbed – he encounters insomnia over his apparent impending demise, which feeds into his newfound paranoia to generate a quite frankly disturbing break from reality. I don’t mean “disturbing” in a good way, yet paradoxically, this might be the highlight of the episode. Change a few lines beforehand to make him less unsympathetic), and maybe make his mental breakdown a bit more realistic (as in, don’t put him in a burlap sack and have him pretend a baby doll is human on the grounds that being a mother would make him immortal, have you seen any Disney movies), and who knows, maybe you could have something slightly compelling here…

…unfortunately, this isn’t it.

What we get is a referral to go on vacation to Florida to rest. Because, you know, a Simpson going on vacation to restore their mental health hasn’t been done before. This, of course, works in theory, but is derailed by the fact that it is Spring Break!

Alright, let’s break this down… neither Marge nor the Plant Psychiatrist (who is not really played for humor, quite the contrast to Dr. Zweig) didn’t bother to research the whole concept of Spring Break? Or never paid attention to the burgeoning Spring Break culture? I mean, all through the 90s and 2000s, Spring Break was the legendary college experience, and nobody even noticed? I guess it speaks to how out of touch Springfield is, but come on, this is a stunning lack of common sense…

…which, of course, ends the “Homer is suffering a mental breakdown plot” in favor of the “Homer is a psychopath who should be tranquilized” plot. No kidding – two seconds into Palm Corners, Homer is not only cured of his paranoia but promptly takes part in a car-flipping. Of his family’s station wagon. End act 1, and any chance of me giving a damn about this character.

I’m serious – we had “Jerkass Homer” before, but this episode has him at probably his most sociopathic for a consistent length of time. Seriously – if you take everything he does here, Homer would check off a disturbing amount of boxes on a psychiatrist’s list for meeting the standards for Antisocial Personality Disorder, or Psychopathy disorder. Even without stretching it that far, the second act inadvertently demonstrates that Homer Jay Simpson didn’t belong in Florida so much as he belonged in a mental hospital. And no, I am not repeating or contradicting myself this time.

Let’s, for example, take his behavior at the Kid Rock concert.

Yes, I said Kid Rock Concert. Kid Rock guest stars in this episode. This is probably second only to Lady Gaga in terms of “most egregious guest stars this show ever did”, although at least this fits the spirit of Spring Break. Either way, pray to whatever deity you believe in because there’s no saving this episode.

Anyway, besides sticking out like a sore thumb because he’s so uncool (gee, how familiar), he first thinks Joey C’s a missing kid… and tries to tackle him. Then, when Kid Rock decides to pour a multi-gallon bottle of malt liquor out on a mock curb for those that were lost, Homer sneaks behind and begins drinking the Malt Liquor, all while shouting “All for Homer”.

You know what? I have to go on a tangent here – this time, about “Homer Goes To College”. It’s occasionally seen as something of a harbinger of Jerkass Homer, given how he becomes a party animal on campus. But as I mentioned in my review of “Take My Wife, Sleaze”, he was influenced by various college movies, and the universe rebutted him by showing a) actual consequences, and b) nerds being a part of everyday life.

Even with the excuse that this episode has a bunch of university students cutting loose, Homer goes beyond the pale of most of the partying students, and his behavior has Kid Rock and Joey C attempt to attack him, only to be held off by the sheriff… who admonishes the two rockers. I’ve read fanfictions that treat their original characters more realistically than this episode treats Homer Jay Simpson.

And just when you think there’s a small return to normalcy with the students going back to school, Homer decides to continue Spring Break for another few days…

…just take this frame in. It is so perfectly indicative of how this show considers its characters. There are none. The closest we have now is on the cusp of sociopathic disorder, and everybody else either enables him or is content with not stopping him in his completely insane antics. This is art, ladies and gentlemen. This is pure art.

Speaking of insane antics, Homer’s boating kills Captain Jack, a gator who functions the town mascot. Now, I will admit that Captain Jack does work as a joke, a riff on the quirkiness of small towns that need something to attract tourists in the offseason, and for that joke, Jack works.

Of course, he’s then turned into a plot device when he’s fatally struck, leading to the arrest of all of the Simpsons. Unless this was meant to be a riff on the strictness of the Southern legal system, this is taking the Sins of the Father cliche a bit too seriously, right? And how does nobody throw the madman under the bus? Seriously, even familial love can only go so far in defending what this jackass has done.

Seriously – this is disturbing reminiscent of Bio-Dome, where the supposed antagonist, while certainly with his own faults (the sheriff is bribed by beer companies) is more rational than the obnoxious numbskull jackass of a protagonist. It makes only slightly more sense, in fact.

Now, this next scene I’m about to describe is something that I did not make up for the review. It was scripted and animated. It passed testing. It aired on the FOX Network, in front of 7.46 million American homes – figure, at the very least, 15 million people. It has been repeated on many TV stations, on the FXX network, available for streaming online, and has been sent overseas.

This is one of the most expensive TV shows on the entire network.

Homer manages to break the chains, and the Simpsons get into the car and escape. A car chase ensues because we haven’t had enough chases this season already, and the sheriff begins to fire his gun at the mirror instead of, you know, at the tires. The family comes across closing train tracks, and despite Marge’s plea that the family will be killed by an oncoming train (as it prepares to strike on the passenger side), Homer decides to jump the tracks anyway. Seriously, this episode alone is a good argument that the show’s finale (if it gets one, and frankly it shouldn’t get a special finale at this point) should consist of Homer getting his ass tossed out onto the street with prejudice. Anyway, they jump the train tracks…

…and appear to miss the train entirely, as well as dodge the long, rather cruel arm of southern justice. Seconds later, without the car moving an inch…

I think it’s a testament to how FOX treats their properties that everybody involved in the production wasn’t fired the morning after. Seriously, from the writing to the animation, the sudden appearance of the second set of tracks to fit an Amtrak train, to even the voice acting… this is astonishing. If the Ambulance Zone joke in “Alone Again” marked the moment The Simpsons lost its soul and died spiritually, this is the moment when, to paraphrase Tom Servo, the zombified remains of the series threw up its hands and said, “I just don’t know”.

And from there, the episode clearly forgets to take its Focusyn, as it moves at simultaneously breakneck and laborious speed. Marge mildly chides Homer for the debacle, thus proving that this marriage is collapsing into something akin to Stockholm syndrome, all before they pick up odd jobs at a diner in the middle of nowhere, while the proprietor lets them live in her trailer. Whether they’re there for a day or weeks (they apparently were able to enroll in the school system, although that might just be a facetious commentary on Bart’s behalf), they turn into complete rednecks, complete with Homer suggesting that Bart and Lisa will get married to each other.

I’m not even going to make a snarky remark about that – let’s just move on. Because the show did, as apparently that night, the sheriff manages to hitch the trailer up to his sedan (just go with it), and still nobody singles him out as the cause of this whole nightmare. One attempt to defend himself and his family in court later (“Drunken hicks of the jury…”), they’re breaking rocks on the chain gang. For Homer Simpson running over an alligator.

Before you ask, yes, I know they escaped arrest and Homer endangered the welfare of everybody within a mile radius, but still… the whole family on the chain gang.

Alright, if it seems like I’m recapping the third act more than reviewing it… this is really just a bunch of stuff that happens. It’s a Frankenstein’s Monster of plot elements that were forced together in the most insane way possible, many of which were done far better in earlier episodes. In a way, it’s sort of like the show is having its life flash before its eyes as it slips into a fate worse than death. No time is given to let a scene have an impact before something else stupid happens, or when there is time given, the scene is so bereft of comic timing or so flawed with a character I want to see put in a psych ward that I am just stunned at what I’m seeing.

Let’s just get this over with… there’s a party, the Simpson clan are taken to aid the upper crust of the party, and use it as an excuse to escape. As the family is surrounded by a ring of fire after being caught (thanks to the whipper, who whips over a torch that creates a ring of fire), guess who else turns up, none the worse for wear?

Turns out the Alligator’s real name was Robert Ewing all along!

Seriously, it feels like the writers wrote themselves in a corner, and when coming up with how to resolve the episode, they decided “eh, make it so he wasn’t really dead”. Forget bad Simpsons, this is downright bad television. This is a more insane and nonsensical lizard-related end to an episode than “Threshold”, from the aforementioned Voyager… and that had two characters devolve into salamanders and mate with the theory that humans would evolve that way.

But, it does its job in wrapping up the plot, albeit in the most moronic way ever – the Simpsons are exonerated, and the judge decides to drop the other charges on the grounds that they never set foot in Florida ever again. So, yeah, for every idiotic, selfish, deluded, insane, and horrific thing that he did in this episode, Homer is allowed to practically walk scot free, leaving behind a stunned town, and taking with him a family that would be traumatized in any other show… by which I mean, earlier in this show, when the writers actively wrote moments for other characters rather than as add-ons.

What the else do I have to say here? I don’t even know what the hell I put down in this review. Really, it reads like a five year old describing how their day went while playing with friends at recess!

Seen here in “Kill the Alligator and Run” is an absolute trainwreck of an episode, one that dispatches the show’s prior standards of comedy, characterization, plotting, animation (which really feels stiff and lifeless in this episode), and even sanity in one of the most deranged episodes of non-Adult Swim-related television ever. The fact that this got past a room of writers, a team of animators, network censors, and even advertisers in the absolute state that it did makes me wonder what the quality control standards are at the FOX Network.

So, this is where I should declare it the new candidate for the “Worst Episode Ever”. And really, it just barely misses.

I mean, I personally consider “Alone Again” worse on the grounds that it was trying to be sincere, whereas this is just a bunch of stuff that happened in the worst way possible. Also, if the mood is right, “Alligator” might just qualify as “so bad, it’s good”. Regardless, it’s still probably the most consistently awful episode of the Scully era – a failure on virtually every level possible.

Tidbits:

• Remember when Burns would downright bribe plant inspectors with the option of a washer and dryer where the lovely Smithers stood, or whatever was in the box? (Politicians merely got a fur coat to make investigations go away.) Also, remember back when during plant inspections, he hid the most incompetent employees deep into the basement? Ah, good times. It also says something that Homer was more antagonistic in this episode than Charles Montgomery Burns.
• Besides Kid Rock and Joe C, the episode has two other guest stars as themselves – journalist Charlie Rose (since disgraced) and film producer Robert Evans as themselves, in what appears to be a pastiche of Rose’s PBS talk show. I wish it was funny, but guess what… the duo don’t have much to work with here.
• Oh, don’t forget Diedrich Baker. For everything just wrong with this episode, at least Deidrich Baker manages to sell me on the Sherrif. In fact, he actually gets some amusing lines, albeit drowned out by the sheer insanity of this episode.
• Probably the only other thing close to an amusing bit in the episode has to be one of the MTV Spring Break Hosts getting hauled away when she announces that she’s turned 25 (a reference to Logan’s Run) before getting replaced by a younger, perkier MTV Spring Break Host. The turn of the millennium was a bit weird.
• Also, I guess I could argue that Homer’s fascination with “We Built This City” actually almost works, as well – a quasi-rebel who instead comes off like a madman, singing a song about rockers arguing with executives, that just so happens to be written off by some rock publications as corporate rock. OF course, that also makes it ironic, given the path that The Simpsons took.
• A rather sad fact – Joe C. died a few months after this episode aired. Actually adds a very slight veneer of poignancy to Kid Rock’s desire to pour out some malt liquor on a fake curb… very slight.
• It’s pretty ironic that I’m reviewing an attempt to satirize Spring Break a few days after Lori Loughlin got nailed (alongside many other people) in a college application scam for her daughter so that she could experience partying and going to USC games. No joke – she said that.

Wrap Up:

Zaniness Factor: 5. What it lacks in Jockey Elves, Mole People, or Micronesians, it makes up for in sheer lack of coherence within the plot.

Jerkass Homer Meter: 5, although that’s really academic. Really, you could take his character from this episode and transplant it onto any other TV show. Boom, you have the Villain of the Week. When you invite comparisons to the Sixth Doctor, and the Sixth Doctor comes off the more sane character? Even if you compare his persona from “The Twin Dilemma”? Something’s off.

Favorite Scene: HAHAHAHAHA…

Least Favorite Scene: Again, this is one where I am flush with options. But I think the aforementioned train track scene stands out for indicating just how awful this show really has become.

Score: 1. No contest – even the few amusing lines can’t drown out the sheer awfulness surrounding them. Embarrassing.