15x05 The Fat and the Furriest

[5.7/10 on a post-classic Simpsons scale]. You know, for the first two acts, this isn’t so bad. Sure, it has a little of that schizophrenia where the opening act problem quickly shifts into some other part of the story and is rapidly forgotten, and there’s plenty of dumb or cartoony things that rankle, but it’s decent. The adventures with the “kitchen carnival” machine lent themselves to some good visual gags, and by the same token, Homer’s fear of bears led to some creative nightmare sequences that the show is good at. And hey, it’s not groundbreaking, but Homer developing a phobia and trying to face his fear gives a solid character arc and motivation to help propel the episode.

But man, it gets dumb really quickly once he finds the bear again. While Homer facing the grizzly while Lenny, Carl, and Bart dance to “Afternoon Delight” is one of the funnier bits in the episode, things quickly go down hill when the bear basically becomes Homer’s human-like sidekick, participating in wacky schemes preceded by Homer doing electicity-prompted backflips. The entire plot obstacle of the maniac hunter (a pretty lame character to begin with) trying to kill the bear rather than let it get to a sanctuary felt unnecessary and caricatured, and the whole thing ending with the bear fighting and elephant exemplified the overly cartoony tone of the episode, particularly in its final frame.

It also has to be said that the humor is just bad in a lot of places. Comedy is subjective, but you can tell this is a point in the show’s lifespan where it was straining to keep up with the other, more outsized animated shows on television and so made its gags broader and occasionally edgier. By the same token, the timing and rhythm of the gags was frequently off, with weird “it’s time for a joke now” setups or interludes that completely broke the flow of the episode.

Overall, it’s a watchable episode, but it starts to fall off quickly late in the second act and never really recovers, and lord knows you’ll be rolling your eyes at a lot of what passes for humor in the ep. There’s some bright spots here and there, but it’s definitely not one of the gems of the early Al Jean’s return era of the series.