10x10 Viva Ned Flanders

[7.4/10 on a post-classic Simpsons scale] Sometimes I just have to pretend I’m watching a different show. “Viva Ned Flanders” is a strange episode to judge, because taken as a standalone thing, it’s a loony, exaggerated, chuckle-worthy outing that offers plenty of entertainment. It’s just terrible as a Simpsons episode.

There’s such strange character assassination here. The show makes Homer even dumber and more feckless and reckless than usual. It makes Ned more absurdly timid and repressed than ever. And it has them both act terribly vis-a-vis their families, each other, and pretty much everyone they meet. The show retains the basic characterization here -- Homer as dumb risk-taker and Ned as meek square -- and uses it to fuel the central conflict of the episode. But it just turns everything up to eleven, as was the style at the time.

Don’t get me started on the dumb nonsense at the core of this one. Flanders is sixty? Why?! How does that make any sense? Don Rickles gets blasted out of the Monty Burns casino? Homer and Ned go on a loopy chase through a Las Vegas where zoo animals ride roller coasters? Whatever tender tether to reality The Simpsons once held has been thoroughly sliced here.

And yet, if you pretend you’re watching two random characters named Hector and Ed rather than Homer and Ned, this one isn’t bad! The riffs on Vegas are generally quite amusing! (Though I could do without the crappy gay jokes.) Homer and Ned always make a good goofus and gallant pairing, which works for the show’s comic aims. The premise of a wild idiot trying to teach a reluctant play-it-safer to have impulsive fun is a solid setup. About one in every ten gags makes you shake your head, but there’s more laughs here than in most post-classic episodes.

That’s what’s so frustrating about episodes like “Viva Ned Flanders”. The last thing to die in The SImpsons was the gags. The basic plot here is a solid one, but the dramatization of it goes into crazy direction that speak to the increased cartooniness of the show under showrunner Mike Scully. The characters become so far removed from their classic characterization that they may as well be different people. But by gum, it’s still funny, and so I’d still probably recommend a die hard fan watch this one than a lot of what came after, even if the gags are cheap and easy.

Overall, “Viva Ned Flanders” is one of the best exemplars of this era of the show, something that shows Scully’s crew could still make decent television, but the kind that didn’t fit with what The Simpsons was or should be.