I missed the opening, so I don’t know how Homer lost his job and became an ice cream man. Really only one good line in the ep., “This is the most fun I’ve had giving you wood.” Not a great ep, but not horrid, either.
The pop culture references (Pimp My Ride, Ali G) felt more like attempts to keep the show current than actual jokes, which is the way it’s been for the last several years. But I cracked up at the cat falling down the stairs, and a couple of other things - the “giving you wood” line, Comic Book Guy’s Star Wars rant and the iPods.
When was the last episode that bothered to depict Homer working at the nuclear plant?
Homer was fired because he wanted ice cream rather than working. The old ice cream man died while giving Homer $100 in quarters.
Like several recent episodes, many good jokes and such. But lack of originality of overall plot line. Marge feels ignored by Homer, Homer wins her back. Etc. I also liked that the initial story didn’t drag on too long before the main story started.
It is interesting that Homer didn’t get his job back by the end of the episode. Usually they “reboot” the key facts by the end unless they are doing a joke about not resetting.
YAWN…
yet another tedious “Homer fraks up, loses his job and takes another throwaway job” episode
i got bored about a quarter of the way in, and ended up sharpening my Spyderco Delica that i had been rust-testing and only watched it in glimpses, the Delica really needed a touch-up
the bizzare “iPods take over the world” ending was thoroughly pointless and yet another sign that the Simpsons writing staff have simply run out of ideas, it’s something that’d be more appropriate in Family Guy (and i’m saying this as a fan of Family Guy)
In the episodes where Homer loses his job at the power plant, they no longer show him getting his job back at the end. They stopped doing that a few years ago. In the next episode, he’ll just be back at the plant with no explanation.
Although, as Snooooopy noted, they rarely show him at the plant at all these days. The last episode I can remember doing that is three years old.
What was up with the dressing scene? It had “reference” written all over it, but I couldn’t place the movie or TV show that it was parodying.
I don’t know what show you guys are watching. There for a few years, the Simpsons got BAD. It wasn’t displaying a lack of humor, the jokes were actually the opposite of funny. They were blatantly, in your face, offensively not funny.
Some of the episodes this season may have fallen a little flat but none of them have proudly flaunted their unfunnyness. I’m enjoying the Simpsons more right now than I have since probably the late '90s.
On a scale of 1 to 10 - 1 being an average sitcom and 10 being an outstanding episode of Futurama - I give this episode about a 6.
It was Da Ali G Show, which explains Homer’s accent in the sequence. I didn’t get it either, but my mother did.
I agree that a bad episode of The Simpsons* beats the rest of television 99% of the time. It is a little sad, however, to see them going from being the brightest light in TV history, to just being better than everybody else.
Like Cisco said last week. . .if you’re not enjoying Simpsons this year, you’re just hating.
This episode was fucking funny.
The rules of “Cincinatti Time Waste”.
The photo montage was funny (“I’m laughing in the last one but that’s because the cat fell down the stairs”) .
Tons of great ice-cream man gags. . . .The funeral was classic. When Burns is talking to him, and the sounds of the ice-cream man are coming out.
“Yeah, this economy is tough on everyone. Can you break a hundred?”
The Ali G intro spoof was great. He gets the new pants, turns the coins into the change machine with the hand-roll.
Some good Brockman, some good Moe. Solid episode end to end.
And how anyone managed to NOT see what the rest of the episode would involve as soon as Homer chased after the ice cream truck with Mr. Burns yelling “You’re Fired!”, well…
Pfft.
I did laugh pretty hard at “I’m a unitard!”, but that’s because I’m a bad person.
-Joe
There are a limited number of plots, and after all these years, there isn’t a lot of ground that the Simpsons hasn’t covered plotwise.
But that’s completely irrelevant, and it’s third-rate ignorance to be complaining about the plots. The big question is: is it funny?
The episode was funny. The season so far has been pretty good, and certainly better than either of the lame Seth McFarland shows.
I’m reminded of a comment made back in the 80s about Peanuts, where one of the cutting edge comics creators was asked about the strip. What he pointed out was that Peanuts was just as good as ever, but that the rest of the comic world had caught up, so it didn’t look as innovative as it once was (and Peanuts may not look that way now, but it was very innovative and highly influential; without Peanuts, the no Get Fuzzy for example).
The Simpsons are still good, but they set the bar so high that even a show that’s better than all the copycats disappoints. This particular episode was funny and entertaining with plenty of funny bits.
I’d say what the show should do is hire a new voice actor to create some new recurring characters, but overall, they still are funnier and more entertaining than most TV.
Was it funnier than The War at Home? By a mile. Would it be in the all time Simpsons Top 100? Not even close. The attempts to relate to current events (the Ali G bit) are laughable and an insult to the memory of great Simpsons episodes. Early episodes didn’t pander to current pop culture because they didn’t need to- they were hip and funny without resorting to such crap. When the highlight of a Simpsons ep is a throw away one liner about wood, you know it blows. And when diehard fans are in agreement that there were two or three good gags, that also tells you something- classic episodes had two or three good gags per minute. But alas, this is the Simpsons that we are stuck with, and it still beats other mindless sitcoms, but we all know it could be so much better.
Pure revisionist, selective-memory shit.
What you said about the Ali G spoof. . you would say the exact same thing if they ran “The Flaming Moe” today with a parody of the Cheers theme. The early years were predicated on send ups of current events.
Just admit it. . .all you supposed “diehards” are really just old cranks, and you can’t even get on the same page with your criticisms. If you give last night’s episode and one of your supposed classics to a person with no familiarity with the show, they couldn’t tell the difference.
Poochie!
Another line that made me laugh because it doesn’t make sense (it does to Homer, of course): “Will America accept a British James Bond?”
[sub]Product contains neither ice nor cream. May contain traces of Mexican cheese. Do not consume.[/sub]
How is it a “current event” when Da Ali G Show has been out of production for two years? (Of course, Sacha Baron Cohen is in the news again because of a Fox-released film that was probably in production when this episode was, but I’m sure there are a number of people who were introduced to Borat without knowing he originated on da show.)