KABF08 Written by Billy Kimball
A rather goofy episode, but The Simpsons has done a number of goofy-yet-entertaining episodes in the past, such as “The Springfield Files” and “Simpson Tide,” but this one manages to be entertaining too, despite its goofiness. The second (and, most likely, final) appearance of Angelica Button at the open was rather entertaining, especially for me, as I accompanied one of my friends to a midnight open for The Deathly Hallows- and it was funny to see Lisa…er, to use Internet parlance, “pwn” Comic Book Guy. The quick spoof of CSI: Miami reminded me of all the jokes The Soup has made about the whole “David Caruso puts on his sunglasses, makes a pun, cue theme song” thing.
Although Bart and Lisa have both been dancers before, the main story was rather entertaining- and even though they’ve done spoofs of tobacco executives before, it surprised me to realize it’s taken them 19 years for one of the kids to have a cigarette addiction. The ending with the girls attempting to smoke whatever they can find while suffering withdrawls was funny (especially the one dancer who attempts to smoke the cigarette on a “no smoking” sign), and the fact that Lisa knows of all the great writers and such who smoked, but learned about the dangers of cigarettes from kids’ shows (“They kill you! They did a whole episode about it on The Suite Life of Zack and Cody…Zack’s life wasn’t so suite then!”) is a good example of how Lisa is a smart girl, but still a child. And we get some typical Homer antics, too. Highlights include Homer attempting to use a crossbow while drowsy and putting a mask on a raccoon.
“Auditions are Monday, callbacks are Tuesday, Wednesday you see I’m a heartless bastard, Thursday you realize you love me, damn it. Friday we’re closed.”
I thought it veered towards too-preachy-to-be-entertaining, but remained entertaining. Although not mentioning at all that Bart was once a young male ballet prodigy seemed a bit out of character. (Although perhaps they’d rather forget that embarassing excuse for a B-plot.)
What a steaming pile of shit this was- the reason why they haven’t done a Simpsons kids takes up smoking episode is because its a was a hackneyed sitcom plot when Greg Brady did it 40 years ago- the Simpsons used to above such dreck. Didn’t they once do a whole show mocking lame 70’s sitcom plots, back when the show was funny? And as the Op noted, not only have we had a Lisa dance episode before, but a Bart does ballet episode- I know ideas are hard to come by for this bunch, but holy christ.
And doesn’t whoever approved this script written by a reject from the staff of Life Goes On know that Godboy Flanders wouldn’t be on-line to buy an Angelica Button book, unless he was going to buy them all and burn them? I thought they were going to correct it when Flanders pulled out a book, but it turned out to be a Hardy Boys nonsequitur. And oh yeah, the lighter side of Nelson schtick got old with his Andy Williams fascination and the tutorial on how to prepare huckleberries.
Next weeks epsiode- Marge finds a tin of Swedish lutefisk with her picture on it, Lisa takes jazz dance class, and Bart sees Homer kissing a strange woman and thinks he’s cheating on Marge, but get this, it turns out it was his cousin- hilarity ensues!
And oh yeah, I’d like to have a fly on the wall when the brainstorming session for the secondary plot was going on- "I got it, Homer and Bart make batches of beef jerky in the basement, and they get stolen by a family of raccoons that look like the Simpson family’! Brilliant!
For the most part, I agree with Wee Bairn about this episode’s lameness. I’m certainly not an “every Simpsons episode since season #4 is crap” guy either. But I just didn’t laugh at this one much. However, Bart as a luchador totally cracked me up.
My favorite jokes in this one all came early - I think Marge’s stethoscopes were my favorite. I wanted the ballerina’s nic fit to be crazier, but I did like the twist they put on it at the end by having Lisa decry ballet instead of cigarettes.
The production cycle for an episode is about 6 months (or at least it was, they may have gotten the time down faster by now). It’s entirely possible (and probable) that they could have approached him last year to do the voice.
Stop saying things, Wee Bairn. That’s the TV’s job!
I really enjoyed this one, although yeah, my Inner Comic Book Guy did keep objecting that Bart has already done the ballet thing.
Originally Posted by Wee Bairn
something akin to Worst.Episode.Ever
I’m not offended, Gozu, but just curious how you did this quote- I didn’t write that?
