[6.8/10 on a post-classic Simpsons scale] I don’t know what to do with this episode. It has some of the things I really like and think are important to have in a Simpsons episode, like an overall idea it’s tangling with (basically kids and cell phones), some social commentary (about parents using those phones to track their kids), and even the heart and character relationships at the center that make the show more than a bunch of weightless gag (Marge and Bart’s fraught but loving relationship).
But on the other hand, it has some of the things I hate from latter-day Simpsons episodes. It shoe horns in Dennis Leary playing himself, basically only existing to move the plot from one phase to another. This all happens with other characters (including the kids, who would have no reason to know about Leary) commenting on his career and persona in really awkward, expository ways. It also takes a pretty down-to-earth (at least conceptually) story about trust between parents and kids and implausibly turns the climax of the episode into a family trip to Machu Pichu with little warning or sense.
It’s also a really shaggy episode. There’s a plot here, but it moves herky jerky rather than in a fluid manner, and it’s filled to the brim with all sorts of comic bric-a-brac that I might cut more slack if it were more funny. The episode goes for the extended comic montage twice, has extended sequences about Skinner crossing a highway and Bart making phone calls, and goes for a dream sequence with Marge as the moment of emotional epiphany. I don’t mind any of these things individually, but delivered one-after-another like this, it makes it feel like the show was filling time and couldn’t bother to tie the jokes into the story it was actually telling.
Still, while there’s a decent number of pretty lame jokes (especially in the early going and Dennis Leary-focused parts of the episode), there’s some good material there too. However much I grew tired of those filler-y extended gags, I’ll never not laugh at Bart’s prank phone calls, and taking them international was a fun treat. Plus, his line to Marge about how he got a cell phone (“It was by accident on a golf course, like you had me”) is incredible. The humor in this one isn’t necessarily great throughout (Homer is at his unbelievably dumbest and Lisa is a bit out of character, which weakens a lot of their jokes), but there’s some stuff worth keeping too.
And at the end of the day, Bart’s brief “Home Alone” scenario is an enjoyable one, and the parallel epiphanies for him and Marge -- Bart appreciating his mother’s care and Marge learning to let her son be a little more free -- are a little slight but overall nicely done.
Overall, this is the definition of a mixed bag episodes, with some bits that are clever and work really well, and some that are symptomatic with the larger flaws of the show at this point in its run.
Review by Andrew BloomVIP 9BlockedParent2018-08-06T18:13:23Z
[6.8/10 on a post-classic Simpsons scale] I don’t know what to do with this episode. It has some of the things I really like and think are important to have in a Simpsons episode, like an overall idea it’s tangling with (basically kids and cell phones), some social commentary (about parents using those phones to track their kids), and even the heart and character relationships at the center that make the show more than a bunch of weightless gag (Marge and Bart’s fraught but loving relationship).
But on the other hand, it has some of the things I hate from latter-day Simpsons episodes. It shoe horns in Dennis Leary playing himself, basically only existing to move the plot from one phase to another. This all happens with other characters (including the kids, who would have no reason to know about Leary) commenting on his career and persona in really awkward, expository ways. It also takes a pretty down-to-earth (at least conceptually) story about trust between parents and kids and implausibly turns the climax of the episode into a family trip to Machu Pichu with little warning or sense.
It’s also a really shaggy episode. There’s a plot here, but it moves herky jerky rather than in a fluid manner, and it’s filled to the brim with all sorts of comic bric-a-brac that I might cut more slack if it were more funny. The episode goes for the extended comic montage twice, has extended sequences about Skinner crossing a highway and Bart making phone calls, and goes for a dream sequence with Marge as the moment of emotional epiphany. I don’t mind any of these things individually, but delivered one-after-another like this, it makes it feel like the show was filling time and couldn’t bother to tie the jokes into the story it was actually telling.
Still, while there’s a decent number of pretty lame jokes (especially in the early going and Dennis Leary-focused parts of the episode), there’s some good material there too. However much I grew tired of those filler-y extended gags, I’ll never not laugh at Bart’s prank phone calls, and taking them international was a fun treat. Plus, his line to Marge about how he got a cell phone (“It was by accident on a golf course, like you had me”) is incredible. The humor in this one isn’t necessarily great throughout (Homer is at his unbelievably dumbest and Lisa is a bit out of character, which weakens a lot of their jokes), but there’s some stuff worth keeping too.
And at the end of the day, Bart’s brief “Home Alone” scenario is an enjoyable one, and the parallel epiphanies for him and Marge -- Bart appreciating his mother’s care and Marge learning to let her son be a little more free -- are a little slight but overall nicely done.
Overall, this is the definition of a mixed bag episodes, with some bits that are clever and work really well, and some that are symptomatic with the larger flaws of the show at this point in its run.