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 Computer Wore Menace Shoes” (Season 12, Episode 6)

Plot twist – this bottomless peanut bag makes more sense than anything else in the third act of this episode. At least Homer loves his peanuts.

Homer: I did it! I’ve changed the world! Now I know exactly how God feels.
Marge: You want turkey, sausage or ham?
Homer: Bring me two of every animal!
– The appropriate response to blogging, I assume?

Airdate: December 3rd, 2000.

Written By: John Swartzwelder.

Plot: After missing a day off of work because he didn’t receive the email explaining the closure, Homer decides to enter the world of the INTERNET! Some experimenting later, he sets up his own tacky website. Initial slowness is corrected when he begins to report on rumors regarding the events of Springfielders. Aiding his crusade is that he disguises himself as Mr. X. But his fame is fleeting, and when he tries to keep the hits going, he gets in trouble with mysterious forces.

Review:

Well, here it is. The Simpsons episode that caused me to review all 17 episodes of a cult 60s British Spy-Fi show.

Why did I decide to take on that little project? I mean, a lot of people who watched “Computer Wore Menace Shoes” have never seen an episode of The Prisoner before. Some fans, however, have and have expressed joy at The Prisoner. I figured that, as somebody that never watched the series before, I would be able to provide some sort of buildup to this particular episode, create some level of excitement, all while trying to decipher what Mike Scully was getting on about by writing a very direct parody of one of the most cult-like of cult hits in the history of television.

The effects? For one, I finally got to realize what Prisoner fans were banging on about, as the show really is one of the most brilliant that I have ever seen. Even with the passage of fifty years, the advances in storytelling and cinematography that have occurred, and the shifts in geopolitics that we have encountered, the show remains highly relevant, provocative, and downright ingenious. So in that regard, I have to thank Mike Scully for getting me to sit down and watch one of the greatest cult hits of all time.

So with that, we reach the effective (for now) denouement of my Prisoner analysis – the reason why I reviewed that show in the first place. Homer Simpson takes on the Internet!

Oh boy.

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”.

Scullyfied Simpsons: “Missionary: Impossible” (Season 11, Episode 15)

Fair play to Homer – this show has become more insane than The Flinstones. No, I am not having a yabba-Dabba-do-time.

“If you watch even one second of PBS without contributing, you’re a thief! A common thief!” – Betty White. To be fair, PBS didn’t take the greatest show on television, drive it into the ground, and keep digging for twenty years afterward. I might slide them some cash.

Airdate: February 20, 2000.

Written By: Ron Hauge.

Plot: Homer’s excitement over PBS’s airing of laddish Britcom Do Shut Up is doused by one episode being interrupted by a pledge drive for $10000. Homer, naturally, fake-donates the money to try and get the episode back on the air. However, PBS merely uses this as an excuse to film him handing over the money… and chasing him down when he can’t come up with it. Facing certain death at the hands of the Sesame Street muppets (…yeah…), he manages to get driven to safety by Rev. Lovejoy. The cost, however, is that he must do time as a missionary in the Pacific Islands. As you can tell from the above screengrab, it goes over well.

Review:

Last time on Scullyfied Simpsons, I was left floored at the greatest bit of television incompetence I’ve seen ever.

No, seriously – barring some sort of anti-miracle, I honestly think that with “Alone Again, Natura-Diddily”, the Mike Scully era of The Simpsons officially bottomed out. For every bad episode that follows, nothing will be quite as destructive to what was once the greatest TV show of all time as Ian Maxtone Graham’s utter debacle of a half-hour that sent Maude Flanders off in the most humiliating way possible. Between that and “Saddlesore Galactica”, the show’s characters and reality have formally collapsed into an element of nothingness.

What I’m trying to say is that virtually anything, anything would have represented an improvement over the disaster area that has been the last two-three episodes of The Simpsons. Yes, even if the episode consisted of a test pattern all while the audio from Cartoon All-Stars to the Rescue aired.

So, what about “Missionary: Impossible”? Can this possibly surpass my rock-bottom expectations? Or at least, come close?

Scullyfied Simpsons: “Saddlesore Galactica” (Season 11, Episode 13)

What are the odds that somebody made that face when reading the script for the first time?

“I’d like to play me latest chart-toppah. It’s called, ‘Me Fans Are Stupid Pigs.'” – Dream Bart, “The Otto Show”. Who knew he would nail a Simpsons writer just eight years later?

Airdate: February 6th, 2000.

Written By: Tim Long

Plot: Springfield Elementary’s Concert Band comes in second place at the county fair, beaten by Ogdenville Elementary, who have recovered well enough from their Lyle Lanley Monorail related debacle to perform “Stars and Stripes Forever” with glow sticks! While Lisa is ornery about the failure, more pressing issues take precedent.

You see, Bart and Homer come across a trick-performing horse that is abandoned at the fair by his deadbeat and abusive owner. Rescuing him from destruction, the two decide to race him to pay the bills. Initial failures lead to the duo trying to remarket the horse, and soon, Bart and Homer become the team to beat. This results in the ire of the other jockeys, who kidnap Homer and reveal themselves to secretly be undergrown-dwelling elves.

Yes.

The jockeys are elves.

There are Jockey Elves in The Simpsons.

Who all live in a fiberglass tree and threaten to eat people’s brains.

…

No, I was not written under the influence of a controlled substance while watching this episode.

Review:

This review has been five years in the making.

The Simpsons has been on the air as a television series for twenty-nine years this December, sending out 639 episodes as of the publication of this post. With such a vast variety of episodes, there are bound to be both high points and low points, no matter what you make of the later seasons. While most of my favorite blogs despair about the current state of the series, the truth is that there are plenty of people who still like the new seasons. Opinions, indeed, have ranged from “this show is permanently dead” to “the show has rebounded” to “the show did decline, but it’s still pretty damn good” to “AL JEAN FOR PRESIDENT!” So unlike what you would expect from The Review Nebula and Dead Homer Society, Simpsons fandom is rather diverse in opinion. And you know what? If you like contemporary Simpsons, that’s cool. I disagree with you, but… that’s cool.

That said, if one speaks broadly, one can ascertain certain trends in episodic opinion. And with that in mind, I think I can safely say that no episode of The Simpsons is loathed more viscerally than “Saddlesore Galactica”.

Yes, “Kidney Trouble” is widely disliked for transforming Homer into an odious figure, but fans have provided arguments trying to excuse his cowardice (even though I personally disagree with said arguments). “Homer Vs. Dignity” gained a lot of hate for the infamous “Panda Scene”, but there’s still debate over what occurred there, as well. “No Good Read Goes Unpunished” does have a lot of people that agree with its message. And while “Lisa Goes Gaga” is universally despised, there is no denying by that point, most of the show’s fans had thrown their hands up and either accepted that an episode like that was bound to happen or quit the show in despair long before it aired.

“Saddlesore Galactica” is often cited as a certain threshold for the series. Many fans often poll it as the show’s event horizon – the moment when they realized that the show’s decline was irreversible. At the very least, it is almost universally described as the show’s most outlandish episode.

So… why do I agree with them? And to what extent?

Scullyfied Simpsons: “Hello Gutter, Hello Fadder” (Season 11, Episode 6)

“Mr. Simpson bowled a perfect game without the aid of steroids, crack, angel dust, or the other narcotics that are synonymous with pro-bowling.” – Edna Krabappel. You heard her, kids – stay off drugs, you’ll get your 15 minutes of fame. (Hey, better than nothing… I guess.)

Airdate: November 14th, 1999

Written By: Al “Recession-Proof” Jean

Plot: Homer’s most recent attempt to brush off a rough day at work (which involved being told to eat toxic waste) not only proves successful, it nets him a perfect game at the Bowl-O-Rama. His accomplishment nets him a brief dip into local fame. However, ego gets to his head (again), and when his fifteen minutes are up, he’s left in something of an existential crisis.

Review:

It was pop artist and professional Soup Can icon Andy Warhol who infamously remarked that everybody has their “fifteen minutes of fame” – they enter the public consciousness for some reason for a brief period or something, and then they move on to the next unlucky victim.

Being as wide-reaching as it is, The Simpsons has touched on these topics before, notably in Season 5 – “Homer’s Barbershop Quartet” took on the concept by throwing four of Springfield’s most notable adult males and mixing it in with one of the best Beatles satires of all time, while “Bart Gets Famous” took on the art of the catchphrase and how it turns people into shooting stars, sending them high only to carry a huge burnout factor. They were insightful, funny, brilliant, tightly plotted, all that jazz.

Six years later, we got “Hello Gutter, Hello Fadder”… which is not really any of those things. At all.