The Couch Gag: The entire Simpsons family turns into a bunch of giant cockroaches and scurry away.
Number of out loud laughs: 2
The Plot: Bart is seen opening cereal boxes in order to get the toy prize and then feeding the rest of the cereal to the dog. When questioned on why he is so wasteful Bart’s only response is that he doesn’t know, but that he also only eats the eyes of the lobsters. Marge chastises the boy by saying “Your father works very hard to put lobsters on the table.” We then cut to Homer playing a game of chair hockey with the rest of the gang at the nuclear plant.
Mr. Burns after walking in on the game chastises Homer for goofing off, but Homer is unable to pay attention as an ice cream truck is driving by. When Mr. Burns yells some more, Homer looks back at him only to find Mr. Burns looks just like a giant ice cream cone and is commanding that Homer lick him. He does and this gets him fired.
Running after the ice cream truck, the owner gladly stops, knowing Homer by name. Homer buys a popsicle but only has a hundred dollar bill to pay for it. The man dies of exhaustion making change out of actual coin change.
Out of a job Homer takes up driving the truck and finds his new dream job. Meanwhile Marge has watched an episode of Opal (an obvious spoof of Oprah) where her guest demeans women who stay at home making Marge feel terrible.
Trying to better herself Marge begins making sculptures out of the leftover popsicle sticks and becomes quite good at it. Kent Brockman takes notice after reporting on Snake being chased by the cops. Marge sets up a big presentation of her sculptures and makes Homer promise he will be there for it.
Homer makes the promise, but says he must make his route first or his kids will think he neglected them. Finding a divorced dad picnic he takes advantage of the fathers by saying that ice cream will make up for their neglect. He makes big money, but forgets about the time. With only moments to spare he races back home through the back woods. Unfortunately he hits an owl, a boy scout and a bear which causes him to skid out of control and wipe out all of the sculptures.
Marge is furious, but Homer wins back her heart by pleading with her and taking multiple Polaroid’s of himself with a sad face. To show her forgiveness she creates a giant Homer sculpture which, in a jump to the future 200 years is shown as the last piece of art that survived after the iPods banded together and took over the world.
Review: **
Worst episode this season. The writers are still following their season trend of trying to maintain an actual plot versus throwing a bunch of nonsensical gags around, but this one just fell flat.
The thing about previous seasons was not only were they basically throwing plot out the window, but it always felt like they were overproducing themselves and acting like they were the hippest kids in school while failing to produce a show similar to what made them great in the first place. It’s like Seinfeld in the last couple of seasons where they kept coming up with all these crazy scenarios and forgot it was the conversations that made it great.
I’m ecstatic that they’ve finally gone back to the basics, but an actual plot isn’t always actually funny. The jokes were mostly lame and the story never really took off.
Here’s looking at next week.
Trivia
- A possible revelation about the location of Springfield, Snake Jailbird reports a traffic jam at the 101-405 interchange, both of which run up the Pacific Coast of the United States. Their interchange is in the San Fernando Valley in Los Angeles, CA
- Greta Wolfcastle can be seen (for the first time since “The Bart Wants What it Wants”) with her father Rainier Wolfcastle buying ice cream.
- Ned Flanders’ late wife, Maude Flanders, is seen as one of Marge’s popsicle sculptures.
- Comic Book Guy comments on the absence of a good Star Wars movie since the first one, bemoaning as well, the extensive use of CGI in the later re-releases.
Cultural References
- The title of this episode cites Stephen Foster’s song “I Dream of Jeannie With the Light Brown Hair”.
- The scene when Homer dresses spoofs the opening of Da Ali G Show.
- The revelation of the customized iced-cream truck is a parody of Pimp My Ride, set to the Missy Elliott song “Get Ur Freak On”.
- The Dire Straits song “Money for Nothing” plays as Homer comes down the street to sell ice cream.
- The music played during the montage of Marge creating popsicle-stick sculptures is “Feels So Good” by Chuck Mangione.
And yes, I stole the references and trivia from Wikipedia.
themidnightcafe.org 