Scullyfied Simpsons: “The Blunder Years” (Season 13, Episode 5)

Homer: “There have been so many classic Simpson moments. I remember that time I tried to jump over Springfield Gorge…”
(flashback to “Saturdays of Thunder”)
Homer in Flashback: “I’m gonna make it!”
Lisa: “No, dad! Everyone’s sick of that memory!”
– Lies, damn you!

Airdate: December 9th, 2001

Written By: Ian Maxtone-Graham

Plot: While going out to dinner with the family to make up for an unfortunate paper towel mascot incident, Homer finds himself in the clutches of a local magician. His tricks manage to dredge up a haunting memory from his past that results in him screaming through the night. One tea ceremony later, he reveals that at the tender age of 12, he discovered a dead body blocking an inlet pipe heading out to the local quarry. But who was he? And how did he wind up in the inlet pipe?

Review:

We have reached endgame.

While I have two other episodes and a movie to go, this is really the last dance of Mike Scully’s tenure – the last episode to be aired before Al Jean took the helm indefinitely. One other episode that was produced later was aired weeks earlier. He would helm another episode at the start of Season 14. But this, my friends, is effectively the end of the most controversial era in Simpsons history.

Kind of moving, in a way. Even with a lot of the clunkers that I’ve reviewed, you can’t deny that the end of any era is going to be rather poignant. Reminds me of the last few seasons of Eli Manning’s tenure at the New York Giants – his play got rustier, the team didn’t play up to par, and yet when he was benched for Daniel Jones, I was still rather moved. He played a few more games before hanging it up, but it was still a changing of the guard. Still my QB, forever and ever.

But enough about sportsball, we’ve got The Simpsons to take care of. And this time, we’re flashing back to the late 60s/early 70s! Let’s get some mood music going, and dive into “The Blunder Years”.

First off, I have to admit that the title surprisingly amused me. Yeah, it’s a stupid pun, something that The Simpsons would embrace in the Jean era. But it actually sort of works. It serves as an overall analysis of the plot, how a screw-up impacted the lives of many. Maybe it’s a bit of self-deprecation on Scully’s part as he moved towards the exit. Or maybe it’s a reference to the late 60s and early 70s, where turbulence slowly faded into a perceived (rightly or otherwise) American Malaise.

At least, I’m assuming that this is the era that parts of this episode are set in, given that “The Way We Was” is set in 1974. The weirdness of a floating timeline, ladies and gentlemen. (And before you ask, no, I refuse to recognize that episode that has Marge and Homer’s relationship set in the 90s.)

Anyway, this flashback stems from a family trip to a local restaurant. A rather jerkass-ish magician is using his tricks on the various patrons of the eatery. One particular recipient of these tricks is none other than Homer Jay Simpson, who finds himself hypnotized back to his twelve-year-old self. What initially seems like a pleasant throwback turns horribly wrong, as a repressed trauma causes him to scream. Constantly. Over at least twelve hours. Taking up a minute and a half of screentime.

It’s like they were trying to recapture the spirit of Sideshow Bob stepping on rakes. Except that didn’t feature an ear-grating scream. And was actually repetitive. And a punchline to Bob getting injured en route to Terror Lake. And didn’t involve trying to mix in substantial psychological trauma with comedy… and failing at it. What I’m trying to say is that I hope Dan Castellaneta got compensated for stretching his voice out. (Given that he was paid $125K per episode in his contract for the season, he got a cool $2.75M for Season 13… I think if he blew his voice in the studio one day, he could retire comfortably.)

In short, Homer’s screaming unnerves everybody. Even in-universe, he’s dragged home from work for being a nuisance. Hence, we get to see Yaqui Tea-induced flashbacks! More specifically, we get another take on the show’s floating timeline.

Now, this isn’t necessarily a bad thing in concept. “The Way We Was” is one of my all-time favorite Simpsons episodes, providing a fascinating introduction to Homer and Marge’s relationship and the world of 1970s Springfield and some of the character dynamics that existed back then. Here, though, it comes off more like The Simpsons meets A Pup Named Scooby-Doo, except… not good. We have the same BB Gun-toting Moe, same mafia, same Homer/Lenny/Carl best friends dynamic unaltered from the start, same everything, and not much is done to explore the nuances that could’ve existed in their youth beyond “huh, Moe has a BB Gun instead of a shotgun” and elements like that. I know they were going for a Stand By Me parody, but it feels like potential was traded off in favor of pop-cultural awareness. (Also, maybe it’s just my nitpick, but wouldn’t Moe be at least five years older than the rest of the group? And, also, working on his acting career?)

The twist is rather simple – at the local quarry, Homer dives straight into mud. Amazingly, this does not cause any long-term injury and is NOT the cause of his trauma. Looking to see why there’s no water, he winds up undoing a blockage in the inlet pipe. The cause of said blockage? A decaying corpse.

Yeah. I typed that. We get to see a decaying body in The Simpsons. A regular, everyday Simpsons episode to the unsuspecting viewer. Complete with maggots eating away at the deceased person’s corpse. And his skin having already been ebbed away, exposing elements of his skeleton. And all of this landing straight into the lap of a 12-year-old child.

Congratulations, man committing suicide by drowning in a college lake to avoid being eaten away by cancer. You are no longer the most unnerving thing to come out of Season 13 of The Simpsons.

I’m sorry, this to me is up there with Homer being dragged off and molested by a panda on the list of “most disgusting Simpsons moments ever”. There is a difference between “dark” and “gory”, and this episode goes over that line with vigor. This is not The Simpsons. Not even Family Guy would go this far until, what, their revival? (They were always provocative, but I don’t recall them going this far until they got brought back.) And at least South Park could get away with such visuals due to its idiosyncratic art style. This just makes me die a little inside.

I can do shock humor. I can do the morbid from time to time. The Simpsons can’t do either of these things outside of Treehouse of Horror, and even then, the returns have been less impressive over time.

Before you ask, no, I’m not linking a screenshot for that particular scene. It is The Simpsons going into shock value, which quite frankly, it should never do. I give it props for being visually memorable, but by that logic, I should give Bubsy 3D props for being a visual disaster. You barely get points for making an impression if said impression is utter revulsion with little to redeem it.

(Oh, it gets even better. Apparently, an earlier draft of this episode had the corpse look even worse. They edited it, I suspect in order to keep some aura of surprise as to who the body was. If this is restraint, oh, man…)

Anyway, that’s our backstory revealed. Homer saw a dead body. I guess it was an attempt to try and explain his more erratic behavior and lapses in judgment. It could work – traumas can often stunt psychological development and failure to cope with them appropriately can lead to decisions detrimental to one’s overall health.

However, we already have a good backstory – his father was less than attentive and verbally abusive, his mother left him at a formative age in the middle of the night to escape jail, he suffered crayon-related brain damage (if you count Season 12), and The Simpson Gene from Season 9. His parents were a relatable tragedy, same with the Simpson Gene (even if it’s not my own favorite plot twist), and “HOMR” worked as a riff on anti-intellectual elements in American culture. This? I appreciate the attempt, but it feels a bit worn for me… a bit less natural. I think the immediate attempt afterward to play it off for some comedy (“My occasional overeating, my fear of corpses!“) kills it. In a way, it’s a major issue with the show – the comedy is so forced that it kills any attempts at character introspection.

Anyway, we still have an entire act left to dissect the impact that this has had on Homer, maybe even attempt to find closure. Which is a nice way of saying that this episode suddenly becomes a murder mystery. And The Simpsons conduct said mystery. Uh, yup. The Simpsons has decided to go the Hallmark Murder and Mysteries route. Instead of exploring any potential side effects, we decide to dive into hi-jinks.

Whatever. Honestly, this plot twist really registers nothing with me. I’m not angry, I’m not elated, I’m not upset. It’s a thing that is happening. It almost feels like I ran out of damns to give.

Anyway, a series of events leads the family (and Chief Wiggum, who joins up mid-investigation) through the pipe to a hatch that opens up into… Mr. Burns’s office. This is actually sort of blatantly foreshadowed in the flashback sequence, as the four kids remark on the opening of the nuclear plant. (Continuity error, yeah, but what else is new?) After “A Hunka Hunka Burns in Love” completely neutered his character, this episode could be a decent rebound for writing Mr. Burns.

Could being the operative word. The past tense is imperative because, surprise surprise, they give the ball away again in their own end. For, you see, the man who once managed to engender such hatred among his fellow Springfieldians that the entire town was suspected in his shooting… didn’t actually kill a guy that was in a pipe that led out from under his office. I give them props for subversion, except the truth is still rather out of character.

Time for FLASHBACK ROUND TWO!

It turns out the body was that of Waylon Smithers Senior… who died trying to prevent a nuclear disaster at the then very new plant. For one, this makes me want to watch the vastly superior Wrath of Khan, although that says more about me than anything else. But more importantly, this is framed as a tragedy from Mr. Burns’s point of view, him losing a close friend. This man once forced an entire Brazilian soccer team to work in a reactor core (“That plane crashed on my property!”), was quick to fire Smithers Jr once he gained the confidence to function at a reasonable level, and has violated nearly every labor law in the book.

And this is how you sell your attempt at character development? Having Mr. Burns suddenly concerned with trying to protect Mr. Smithers from finding out what happened to his father and having Burns mortified by this tragedy when he barely runs his plant to legal standards? The writers might have been going for an “exception that proves the rule” route, but it would’ve worked well in, say, Seasons 2 and 3. And guess what? The writers were defying that route then, demonstrating Burns as a miserable and callous miser. Even his moments of humanity (“Rosebud” and even “Simpson vs. Delilah”) never went this far. Subtlety is the watchword, and this is another example of that episode ignoring the pleasures within in favor of broad strokes. Yes, Burns dumped the body in the sewer because “cover-ups were all the rage”, but everything else here is just off.

Also, it’s implied that Mr. Burns became a father figure for Smithers after the latter’s father died. Given Smithers and his feelings towards his boss… did you think the implications through, Mr. Maxtone-Graham? It might explain his sycophancy, but the crush? It was already weird before – you have a young man falling for a much older man, his boss, and I talked about the missed potential of exploring a large age gap within a heterosexual relationship in my last review – but this, again, crosses a line straight into unnerving territory. A man wants to go out with a father figure.

(Oh, it’s also implied that the story Burns told to perpetuate the cover-up – that Smithers Sr. was killed by a tribe of Amazon women – was a catalyst in forming Waylon’s homosexuality. I don’t think that’s how it works, but this episode is almost over, let’s move on and hope it was intended as a discussion between less-than-enlightened characters.)

Maybe it was intended to showcase a thread of trauma, and how two characters were affected by a rather horrific death in two different ways – one dramatic, one unknown – but the path there is just too scattershot for it to work for me.

In short, we get a murder mystery that was meant to add depth to the show’s characters. An admirable effort, but so much of what is laid on the table here serves more to damage than anything else. The comic edge is lost, the development is either not potent enough or actively rebuts the essence of these characters, and the end result is a less interesting town. Combined with the labored aura more pleasant in comedy and plotting? There’s really less and less to go back to as the show continues.

Honestly,, this episode doesn’t have a totally poor idea behind the plot. Exploring more of Homer’s psyche is never a bad concept, and some of my favorite episodes of The Simpsons actually did this in varying ways. He was, at one point, one of the most fascinating characters in comedy, and maybe this episode was meant to try and bring some of that back. So many complaints of Jerkass Homer, this could have gone a way to almost redeem the character. But the execution is very scattershot, with so many missed opportunities and a less-than-satisfying payoff.

Some fans have snarked that the title of this episode could serve as a meta-commentary for the controversial Scully era of the series. And yet, “The Blunder Years” is not the worst episode of the era, in that there is a good idea here that fell apart in production. But it did fall apart in the end. And, quite frankly, that negates everything else.

What happened? This is a show that took the concept of Bart getting a pet elephant and managed to make it hysterical. Now, it’s doing the opposite. It makes the imminent end of this project all the more of a relief.

Tidbits:

• This episode actually starts with a seemingly (alright, almost entirely) unrelated plot thread involving Marge crushing on a paper towel mascot – the Burly mascot, whom Homer christens as Chad Sexington. Less than pleased that Marge is fantasizing about a paper towel mascot, Homer pranks her by setting up a dinner with the family and Sexington, only for it to be Barney in flannel. Naturally, Marge is quite embarrassed by the whole ordeal. I guess it fits in with the aforementioned theme of trauma present in the episode – Marge’s embarrassment, while minor, would still be considered upsetting by most people – but not only does the story brush it under the rug rather quickly, it also serves to (surprise, surprise) make Homer a less sympathetic figure.
  • Oh, the plot thread isn’t totally abandoned, mind you. After all, when searching the quarry to get into the inlet, they have to drain the body of water. Cue Burly towels picking up the entire quarry. At least something carried over from the first act?
• The singer in the restaurant is Julie Owens, a professional singer as well as Harry Shearer’s wife. Which, I guess, is a cute little detail. I’m more perplexed that the Simpson family can casually go out to the Pimento Grove, a restaurant that is associated with Springfield’s most glamorous citizens (not a high watermark, but still worth noting). We’re drifting away from our working middle-class family roots here.
• The reference (quoted above) to “Bart the Daredevil” really makes the difference between the golden era and the Scully Years (if not the Zombie era in general) even starker. In that episode, Homer’s famous jump was an accident, but it was built up to with a surprisingly emotional and relatable plot thread between Homer and Bart. Not only that, but Homer barely survives the fall down the gorge (twice, mind you), and he takes every single hit rather poorly. The fact that he’s speaking at the end of the episode (albeit in a full-body cast) is a miracle. Now, Homer routinely faces life-threatening scenarios that would cripple if not kill a man (jumps many feet into a dry quarry, has a wild animal eat at his stomach, takes several snowbanks to the groin) and is none the worse for wear. I know the status quo is paramount in The Simpsons, but when your protagonist can get injured in one scene and walk like normal seconds later, it sort of makes anything that happens to him utterly inconsequential.
• Oh, remember back in “Pygmoelian” when I said that Moe’s character development wasn’t poorly executed there because I could see where the writers were coming from and they kept it reasonable? Well, that’s out the window, as he’s formally descended into a sheer loner in this episode.
• Seriously, that inlet pipe went up to Mr. Burns’s office? On the top floor of at least a ten-story building?

Wrap-Up:

Zaniness Factor: 2, and that’s half for some plot inconsistencies. (That inlet pipe…)

Jerkass Homer Meter: 2.5. Oddly enough, the attempts at generating sympathy for the character via the exposure of a tragic facet of his past are somewhat nullified by his behavior in the first act. And the ceaseless screaming…

Favorite Scene: Oddly enough, I can’t think of a single scene that stood out as being good. So I’ll just give props to Dan Castellaneta for his screams of terror in this episode. They got old quickly, but I can tell he was trying his best to sell the sheer terror of the trauma. In fact, much as I might remark on how the voice actors declined in the later years, that’s more age than lack of effort on their part.

Least Favorite Scene: The body should get this, but at least that elicited a reaction from me. So I’m just going to go with the reveal of who the body was. I could only groan.

Score: 3.

A quick note before I sign off – I am going to be writing my review of The Simpsons Movie simultaneously with writing my reviews of “Strummer Vacation” and “The Parent Rap”. Ergo, there could be a slightly longer wait between the next few reviews than there has been recently.