Simpsons 12/7: "The Burns and the Bees"

[cochrane]

I actually don’t get the hate for recent Simpsons episodes. And yes, I have been watching the show for its entire 20 season run. I thought this one was very good. The whole story was tight and coherent. The unexplained disappearance of the bees actually is a cause Lisa could get behind. I liked how Burns bet Smithers against the Rich Texan’s basketball team. I liked how the bees called Bumblebee Man an Uncle Tom. And I liked how Burns’ loss on his sports arena because of the bees dropped him out of the Billionaires’ Club by $4 million.

I don’t get it. Maybe the Simpsons has turned into one of those things I don’t know that I’m “supposed to hate.”

[Little_Nemo]

This one’s my favourite:

My favorite play of this joke was when Burns ran into the Simpson family in public. He recognized and greeted Marge, Bart, Lisa, and Maggie by name and by referring to past encounters with them. But he still needed Smithers to tell him who Homer was.

[Marley23]

@Not_A_Tame_Lion

Folks, that’s just plain awful writing. Why the hell do you have the cameo character blandly introduce himself directly to the audience, when you’re going to have him introduced in dialogue literally 5 seconds later?

Sounds like a joke to me. I’m not sure when the Simpsons started doing those, but I agree it’s an alarming trend that takes the show away from its roots.

Seriously - the show has gone very heavy on the guest stars in recent years, which often leads to awkward and unnecessary introductions of very famous people and characters saying and knowing things they would not ordinarily say or know. (The worst was the intro for Tom Wolfe.) So here they made fun of that convention and actually got a good joke out of it. Not seeing the problem here.

Other than that, I’d like to watch the show again, but I got a favorable impression of this one and I still think this is a very strong season.

[smiling_bandit]

@Tuckerfan

Given that folks like the USDA, as well as the agricultural ministries in a number of countries, say that there is a serious threat of honey bees going extinct, I’m going to go with what they have to say on the matter.

Tucker, CCD is a complete non-starter. The words don’t even mean anything. All it says, and all anyone can say, is that, if there is a problem (of which there is no evidence and ample counter-evidence) and if that problem has a cause and if that problem is not actually controllable and if that problem affects bees, then it mysteriously kills off colonies, supposedly, then is is bad.

[Tuckerfan]

@smiling_bandit

Tucker, CCD is a complete non-starter. The words don’t even mean anything. All it says, and all anyone can say, is that, if there is a problem (of which there is no evidence and ample counter-evidence) and if that problem has a cause and if that problem is not actually controllable and if that problem affects bees, then it mysteriously kills off colonies, supposedly, then is is bad.

The USDA says there’s a problem, various governments say there’s a problem, bee keepers say there’s a problem, and I’ve seen no evidence to suggest that this is in any way incorrect, so if you’ve got cite, lets see it. Otherwise, I’m sticking to what the scientists say.

The Agricultural Research Service (ARS) and the Apiary Inspectors of America have conducted a combined survey of beekeepers to get a snapshot of how well managed colonies made it through the winter of 2007-08.

Surveyed beekeepers reported a total loss of about 36.1 percent of their honey bee colonies, up about 13.5 percent from the previous winter. Losses attributed to Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) appear to be about the same, with just over one-third (36 percent) of the operations reporting some lost colonies in which all adult bees disappeared, a primary symptom of CCD, according to Jeff Pettis, research leader of the ARS Bee Research Laboratory in Beltsville, Md.

The combined survey, which was conducted by telephone interview, checked on nearly 19 percent of the country’s 2.44 million colonies.

ARS is continuing to vigorously seek the cause or causes of CCD.

[Nars_Glinley]

Let’s not forget Doug’s Staff Report Why are the bees disappearing? which he updated to include the following:

@Doug

In short, what’s happened is pretty much what I expected would happen: the CCD threat got blown out of proportion; lots of people came up with wild conjectures to explain it, none of which panned out; the dramatic phenomenon didn’t repeat itself; and now people only dimly recall what all the fuss was about. I very much get the feeling that what many of us were saying about careless or incompetent beekeeping – i.e., that hive management skills had a lot to do with which beekeepers were affected – was right on the money, and the reason that the die-offs weren’t as severe this year, and that the research has not been altogether revealing, is because all those incompetent beekeepers either (a) are out of business or (b) wised up when they realized that people were now paying attention to their iffy practices.

[Tuckerfan]

First, I didn’t state it was something of the level of “OMG! We’re all going to die!” concern, only that it does exist. There’s certainly a good case to be made that shoddy bee keeping practices are at least partially responsible (the whole business of shipping colonies around the country strikes me as a Really Bad Idea[sup]TM[/SUP]), but none of that negates the fact that large numbers of bees are dying. Notice that my cite talks about “well managed” colonies showing an increase in bee deaths, so its not simply bad bee keepers being responsible for the deaths.

[Marley23]

Not to distract anyone from a scientific discussion of a show where people fall down cliffs and Homer once caused a nuclear accident in a testing truck that contained no nuclear material, but there’s another explanation for the bit Not a Tame Lion was complaining about: Cuban was doing his schtik on the court while Burns was behind plexiglass in a skybox. Burns wouldn’t have heard it in the first place. Didn’t come off as a parody (and that would’ve been pretty damned funny), so I agree it’s clumsy. Cuban’s flamboyant personality is obvious anyway and didn’t need that kind of introduction.

Overall I’d say it was a fair episode - the storyline was undistinguished, but Muck Mu and the billionaire’s camp were funny. I also liked Homer’s “Anyway, brace yourself” comment about Lisa’s beard of bees.