Not as good an episode as last week’s, but it had its moments. I especially liked how Homer’s new digs and the distance between them caused him and Marge to act as if they’ve never met before, starting to like each other and eventually falling apart. I also liked the VitaminWater spoof at the start, Skinner and Chalmers’s “relationship,” and Ellen Page’s brief perfomance as the sarcastic Alaska Nebraska (which I wish they had done more with).
“The label is all in lowercase! It’s like drinking e.e. cummings!”
Apparently the voice of the “city inspector” was Maurice LaMarche, and not Javier Bardem. If so, it was one of the greatest impressions I’ve ever heard; I could have sworn it was Bardem, and was surprised when he wasn’t listed in the credits.
Again, I’ll say great premise, weak writers. I don’t know why it’s so hard to hire good writers. I bet there are people on this board who could’ve taken that premise and write a better overall script. Yet they just overpay the same writers to do the same storyline over and over.
Simpsons move up (seen it). Bad school system (seen it), Lisa wants to go to a better school then realizes she’s not smart out of her element (seen it).
Actually, I would argue that the writer of this episode, J. Stewart Burns, is one of their best right now- he wrote the very-well-recieved-on-this-board “Eternal Moonshine of the Simpson Mind” episode, which won an Emmy, and he also wrote the Emmy-winning “Roswell That Ends Well” episode of Futurama. With that track record, I was expecting more from the episode.
The Simpsons were doing it first. There’s interviews out there with Simpsons creators saying that they purposely moved away from doing that all the time because Family Guy was doing it a lot.
Anyway, there was some funny bits in the episode. I would have liked to see more Alaska Nebraska, maybe her van should break down in front of the Simpsons house in a future epidsode. The way Homer and Marge started dating again and he took her to the party was pretty funny.
I noticed the past two episodes have Homer not really behaving like “Jerk Ass Homer,” maybe they’re starting to move the character away from that concept. Homer’s stupid and funny, but he’s more than a walking pratfall, you know.
When they said “Waverly Hills” I immediately had the Weezer song on my head with those lyrics, so it was awesome when the show did it! My wife and I had even jokingly sang it to each other. I thought the “Moochin on Waverly Hills” was a nice touch.
Agreed about J. Stewart Burns. He’s a good writer and he’s not (early) Ian Maxtone-Graham at all.
Interestingly, I think I liked this episode’s version of “college” Homer better than the one set in the '90s a couple of years ago. “Yeah, I was an astronaut for a little while.” Ha!
I liked the story here, maybe because I knew somebody in junior high school who did the same thing. A couple of really good lines, highlighted by “Those are last year’s shoes! Kill her! Also, it’s Lisa!”
But the funniest thing here was LaMarche (I realized it was him on second listen) as Javier Bardem. The character is there for no reason at all, which made it a lot funnier for me, and they used him just right. Anton Chigurh as a petty bureaucrat is very Simpsons.