Scullyfied Simpsons: “The Parent Rap” (Season 13, Episode 2)

“Don’t spit on my cupcake and tell me it’s frosting!” – Judge Harm. Arguably the mantra of some Simpsons fans, not that they’ve taken it up… for obvious reasons.

Airdate: November 11, 2001

Written By: George Meyer and, apropos, Mike Scully

Plot: Bart and Milhouse find themselves on the wrong side of the law after getting into Wiggum’s patrol car… and driving it around. And crashing it. Milhouse manages to escape punishment thanks to a very lenient Judge Snyder. However, Bart winds up on the wrong end of Judge Constance Harm, who throws Homer in the mix after finding out he dumped the kids out of his car en route to school. He orders the duo tethered together.

Review:

And now we face the final curtain.

For the past seven years, I have posted ramblings of varying lengths and quality regarding every episode of the Mike Scully era of The Simpsons. I have watched the greatest series of all time implode and settle into episodes that were generally mediocre at best, and downright odious at worst. Why did I do this?

Morbid curiosity, I guess. So much has been written about the general decline of The Simpsons, I figured a bit-by-bit analysis of the showrunner era said to have signaled the fall from grace would be an interesting project. Whether or not it was in execution, I’ll let you decide.

But for now, we have one more episode. One that I briefly withheld partially because it was the last production episode of Mike Scully’s tenure. “The Blunder Years” was the last aired, and “How I Spent My Strummer Vacation” was a one-off return at the end of Production Season 13. But here, we get a big one to finish us off – a Scully-penned episode at the end of Scully’s last production season.

By all accounts, this is the end of an era.

And I’m more than happy to not stall further. Let’s dive into “The Parent Rap”.

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”.

Scullyfied Simpsons: “A Hunka Hunka Burns in Love” (Season 13, Episode 4)

No context needed.

Chinese Restaurant Waiter 1: “Hey, we’re out of those “New Love” cookies!”
Chinese Restaurant Waiter 2: “Well, open up the “stick with your wife” barrel!”
– “The Last Temptation of Homer”

Airdate: December 2nd, 2001

Written By: John Swartzwelder

Plot: Homer’s complaints about the cliched nature of fortune cookies drives him to write his own take on the words of wisdom, this time as predictions. One such recipient is Mr. Burns, who discovers that he will find true love on Flag Day. And he does – seconds before midnight, he falls head over heels with Gloria (Julia Louis-Dreyfus). The two go out, and Burns convinces Homer to be his wingman.

Review:

Mr. Burns falls in love with the apparent woman of his dreams because a fortune cookie told him that he would.

Where’s my Yuengling? Because just the concept alone is cause for immediate and grave concern. Charles Montgomery Burns. Falling in love. To follow the whims of a fortune cookie. One that was written by Homer Simpson.

On one hand, there have been many plots before and after that looked horrible on paper, but were executed in a way that made them competent, if not downright impressive. And this show has demonstrated a more human, albeit still menacing and callous, aura to Mr. Burns before. On the other hand, this show’s recent track record is not good with, well, anything. They’ve already messed around with Mr. Burns, either declawing him (“Monty Can’t Buy Me Love” and “The Mansion Family”) or turning him into a cartoonish manchild villain (“Homer vs. Dignity”, oh gods). So my hopes were admittedly low.

But maybe, just maybe, I would be surprised. Could Scully and company pull out a minor miracle?

Nope! This episode is quite poor, and it’s NOT any relief that there are worse episodes out there. Just.

Scullyfied Simpsons: “Homer the Moe” (Season 13, Episode 3)

Please note, for those that are wondering why I’ve “skipped” Episode 2 at the moment, I explain my rationale here.

Alright, I hate Jerkass Homer as much as the next guy, but threatening to stab him with a broken bottle is going a tad bit over the line.

“It’s PoMo… postmodern… okay, weird for the sake of weird.” – Moe.

Airdate: November 18th, 2001

Written By: Dana Gould

Plot: Moe finds himself in a rut with his career choice. Fearing burnout, he decides to consult an old bartending professor for advice. What he finds is refurbishment can go a long way to revitalizing his passion. Ergo, Moe’s Tavern becomes “M”, a post-modern club targeting an upscale clientele. This does not please the longtime inhabitants of Moe’s, one of whom – Homer – decides to start his own bar.

Review:

Let’s go way, way back to Season 7 before we start today – not just as a reminder of what the show once was, but to try and effectively compare-contrast between two episodes with similar plotlines, albeit with two totally different executions. Spoilers, one is brilliant, the other quite a ways less so. And by “the other”, I mean this episode.

“Homer the Smithers”, from Season 7, revolves around Homer being temporarily promoted to the role of Mr. Burns’s assistant. Said promotion was a cynical move from the Burns-obsessed Smithers, a gamble to make sure that Burns would never depart from his closest confidante. It works out too well – Homer and Burns go together so poorly that the latter finally decides to take matters into his own hands and start fending for himself. It’s a great Burns-and-Homer episode, a fine comedic pairing with some insight into the character dynamics between the two as well as involving Smithers. And while a part of me does think it wound up being an unfortunate and unwitting precursor to Burnsie’s character derailment (as I’ll dissect in “A Hunka Hunka Burns in Love”), it is probably one of the finer “Homer Gets a New Job” episodes, given how character-driven it was and how it still managed to flesh out a small bit of Springfield.

Unfortunately, “Homer Gets A Job” episodes became a major cliche during the Scully era and beyond. It really does work to showcase Homer’s decay as a protagonist from a fully fleshed-out and relatable character into a vehicle for cheap jokes and tropes, many of which are executed in a way that makes him unrelatable and unlikeable.

This, my friends, is not the last “Homer Gets A New Job” episode that we’ll be covering, but it feels like the natural endgame. Homer becomes Moe, Mark II.

Scullyfied Simpsons: “Treehouse of Horror XII” (Season 13, Episode 1)

Last one of these I have to do, huh? Finally, only took me seven years. (And a year since my last one, that’s a record turnaround!) I’m going to say this, my viewing of new Simpsons episodes really began to fall apart when I stopped looking forward to the Treehouse of Horror series. When that’s gone, what do you have left?

I honestly don’t know.

My advice to Simpsons fans looking for a good “trilogy” alternative is to either watch the two Gravity Falls trilogy episodes (“Bottomless Pit!” and “Little Gift Shop of Horrors”). You only get two of them, but given this THOH, both of them are improvements.

Enough stalling, let’s begin.

The Dying Days of Scullyfied Simpsons

Image taken from Wikipedia

“Hurry up and lose so we can get out of here!” – Homer Simpson, “Wild Barts Can’t Be Broken”

Almost seven years on, I’ve hit the homestretch. The last episodes of the Mike Scully era of The Simpsons. Where the hell did the time go?

Not much to say here, I’m ready to shove the collapse of this once-mighty series into the rear-view mirror for good. There are the five leftover episodes from Production Season 12, and one episode that Scully did for Broadcast Season 14. Six episodes. Then I can move on to better things. Better shows.