[7.5/10 on a quasi-post-classic Simpsons scale] I’ll cop to watching this one as a fun follow-up to Mark Hamill’s gangbusters performance in The Last Jedi, and he really is great here. Hamill is willing to send-up his most famous role (this side of white facepaint) in hilarious fashion. And he has the chops of a voice actor to both make his dual role as the bodyguard instructor nigh-unrecognizable, and to make the delivery of lines like “conceptual nightmare” land perfectly The guy is just great and he boosts the episode in every scene he’s in.
The rest of the episode is pretty solid as Scully era episodes go. It has a beginning, middle, and end, with some earned if outlandish conflict and some solid laughs. The whole shtick with the threat to the mayor and the building-dangling gets out of control at points, but the idea of Homer stumbling into being the mayor’s bodyguard and naively getting caught in a moral stand is a solid one. Sure, it’s another “Homer gets a job” episode, but it works well enough, particularly for something out of Season 10.
Though the signs of ill are there too. Homer using the sleeper hold on everyone is pure Jerkass. Some of the gags are too mean like that or too cartoony. Still, there’s plenty of good yuks and the episode has momentum even when it’s not exactly down to earth.
Overall, a nice outing in the midst of a rough patch.
Review by Andrew BloomVIP 9BlockedParent2017-12-21T03:17:50Z
[7.5/10 on a quasi-post-classic Simpsons scale] I’ll cop to watching this one as a fun follow-up to Mark Hamill’s gangbusters performance in The Last Jedi, and he really is great here. Hamill is willing to send-up his most famous role (this side of white facepaint) in hilarious fashion. And he has the chops of a voice actor to both make his dual role as the bodyguard instructor nigh-unrecognizable, and to make the delivery of lines like “conceptual nightmare” land perfectly The guy is just great and he boosts the episode in every scene he’s in.
The rest of the episode is pretty solid as Scully era episodes go. It has a beginning, middle, and end, with some earned if outlandish conflict and some solid laughs. The whole shtick with the threat to the mayor and the building-dangling gets out of control at points, but the idea of Homer stumbling into being the mayor’s bodyguard and naively getting caught in a moral stand is a solid one. Sure, it’s another “Homer gets a job” episode, but it works well enough, particularly for something out of Season 10.
Though the signs of ill are there too. Homer using the sleeper hold on everyone is pure Jerkass. Some of the gags are too mean like that or too cartoony. Still, there’s plenty of good yuks and the episode has momentum even when it’s not exactly down to earth.
Overall, a nice outing in the midst of a rough patch.