“Gotcha! It’s April Fool’s for two more minutes.” – Homer Simpson
“Dad, it’s May 16th.” – Bart Simpson
“You were in that coma for seven weeks.” – Lisa Simpson
This week’s pile of horseshit starts with Bart’s chalkboard saying “You Can’t Play April Fool’s Jokes on April 27th”, which is their way of telling the audience that even they recognized this one as a wretched and unwatchable entry. Homer and Bart serenade a horse in a cheap, wannabe Les Miserables parody, but that’s after Bart gets a bunch of people pregnant with voodoo, which was itself after they fell back on referencing as many comic geek franchises as they could (again). The thing was such a mess that they had to tack on a fake beer commercial sketch at the end that had nothing to do with the rest of the episode. Also, in this April Fool’s reality, horses can operate stereos. Comedy genius, that.
- Great couch gag, and not only because it was a full minute long, shaving many precious seconds of stupidity off the rest of the episode. Can they farm these out every week? It’s really the only good part of the show.
- At least the bartender meeting didn’t take long. We had to get right to the naked begging for geek approval of putting the characters in superhero costumes.
- Funding from Canal+ was a nice quick sign gag.
- Kirk getting sucked into a vacuum hose was pretty pointless.
- So, Willy’s naked in front of ten-year-olds? They are asking us to just roll with a lot of shit this week.
- Oh, look, one of Bart’s many ex-girlfriends, and who is also apparently Chamlers’ daughter.
- And more creepy kissing. I was really hoping that was behind us.
- So, are we gonna come back to the missing ingredient in the voodoo curse? I have doubts.
- “So, your boy’s got magic knock-up powers, huh?” – Glad we cleared that up.
- Nice of Lenny to explain the joke before he complimented Homer on his virility. Jokes that need to be explained first to work always land.
- You can tell how slapdash these stories are from the little things: That couple driving onto a baseball diamond for no reason, Homer just happening to walk past Bart’s voodoo show, Homer choking Bart in front of a two strangers who just sit there, the complete absence of Lisa, etcetera.
- Bart is now sitting at Moe’s with Homer.
- Homer’s lack of wallet thing was pure filler.
- Remember when Fat Tony had good lines instead of crap like “How would you like a cast over your face?”.
- “How is this my fault?” “I wouldn’t be here if you were more of a role model.” - Aww, they’re trying to make this about Homer and Bart’s relationship. It’s like George Meyer left “how to write Simpsons episodes” instructions before he gave up on them and subpoint 2-3.b is “have an emotional connection between family members”.
- A horse just turned on a boombox to play “It’s Raining Men” so it could dance around for ten seconds. I’d say the show has reached a new low, but we all know that isn’t true.
- And, after following a horse that casually walked out of its stall, we’re in a flashback montage.
- Homer is singing to horses to get them to fuck. This is really bad, even by their standards.
- And then Homer gets kicked by a horse at the end. How else could you wrap up that masterpiece?
- Hey, look, they’re aping the opening of Modern Family, a show that’s much better than this one.
- And we’re ending with a horse testifying at a trial in a random, SNL-at-its-worst comedy sketch. Seems appropriate.
Woof, what a mess of an episode (and yet another total waste of Fat Tony). That song was just brutal, and what the hell did any of that have to do with Les Miserables? They long ago lost the ability to tell a story, but when they don’t have a b-plot and everything has to ride on one story it’s usually a bigger trainwreck, and this week was no exception. I knew we were in trouble when Fat Tony kidnapped them with 8 minutes to go, but I didn’t expect things to get that desperate. Yeesh.
Anyway, the ratings are in and they are worthy of that hacktacular crapterpiece. Last night just 3.38 million people wondered whether or not that really was an ill timed April Fool’s joke. That’s good for second place on the all time least watched list, replacing “Days of Future Future” which held the spot for only two weeks (and no other new episodes). Eight of the ten least watched episodes of all time, including spots 1-7, are from Season 25. Presumably the Lego episode next week won’t bomb quite this bad, but Season 25 is already locked into being the least watched season ever.
