Nice to see Patty & Selma’s obsession with MacGyver revisited. And they remembered Ling. Though is was weird how he mentioned SG1 as his new show since he’s been off it for a year and there’s nothing new about it. The outsourcing stuff was funny.
The payoff for me was the Boat trip done the river as per Apocalypse Now. Had me laughing hard out loud. The MacGiver subplot was kind of Blah to me.
Jim
I likrd the Apocalypse Now riff with Burns and rest of Homer’s family coming to see Homer the god.
Pretty solid overall. And a musical at the end is classic Simpsons.
I’ve been enjoying the show more often than not this season. I think Groening and his band of Merry Men have adjusted to the new comedy landscape. For a show in its seventeenth (!) season, that’s just damned impressive.
I don’t know why they didn’t have him on the show ten years ago, maybe before they outed Patti. Still, it was funny. But I thought the extended Apocalypse Now thing at the end was the showstopper; I’d call that one of the great film references in Simpsons history.
I agree with Enfant Terrible; this has been a good year so far.
Harry Shearer said that they’d been shuffling the writers around because of the movie. Apparently, they wanted to get a fairly new group handling the show, while the more experienced writers tackled the film script.
the Apocolypse Now reference was clever, Homer misidentifying an Indian diety as “Papa Smurf”, Carl either had another person behind him in the dance number, or perhaps he was mutated by nuclear waste (he appeared to have 4 arms…)
Ah.
So desu ka.
I noticed that the representation of Ganesha had TWO intact tusks when one should have been broken off.
Unless, of course, the Hindu pantheon has a different elephant-headed god I didn’t take into account. I’m hardly an expert.
“Now I’ll have more time to play the lottery! Ka-CHING!”
This episode was the third written by Homer himself, Dan Castelleneta, and his wife Deb. They did a pretty good job.
I forgot…I loved the nonsensical metaphors Homer kept spouting from his gift from Marge, The Cereal is the Prize and Other Management Lessons I Learned From Breakfast.
Richard Dean Anderson is still producing SG-1 (as far as I know), so I guess it’s technically “his” show (plus, he’s got an appearance in at least one episode of season 10), and it’s newer than McGyver.
I remember my girlfriend telling me she read somewhere that he’d wanted to be on the Simpsons for a long, long time. Good to see they finally worked him in.
On a side note, Dan Castelleneta stars in an episode in season 7(?) of SG-1, “Citizen Joe” I think it’s called.
IMDb says it was the fourth. And this was probably the best of the bunch.
Perhaps it’s better if they do it the other way around. 
Anyone else smile at the Mac Tonight reference? It felt a little “Family Guy” but it had me laughing.
A decent episode, but the ending once again had me kind of shaking my head…until Burns let Smithers dance…“you know you want to.”
Not bad for a newer Simpsons episode, but the combination dance/acid trip at the end really irritated me. A whole lot.
-Joe
You need to see more Bollywood spectaculars, Joe - the closing scene was a tribute to one of the great film genres.
Nice ep - the show needs fresh writing, anyway.
It bugged me that the voice didn’t sound like RDA. It sounded like a generic Simpson’s voice to me.
I was waiting for one joke that never came - -
When the Indian workers were describing the terms of their new contract, Burns should have passed out and in a raspy voice whispered “the horror, the horror”.
Other than that, pretty good. And in general, this season is much better, on average, than the last few previous seasons.