24x15 Black-Eyed, Please

[3.5/10 on a post-classic Simpsons scale] Oof. This one is almost impressively rough. You basically hate every character here, and there’s about one good gag out of every ten. That is not a good ratio!

Weirdly, I’m not sure which is the A-story and which is the B-story here. They get roughly equal time. I’m tempted to say Ned punching Homer is the main narrative given the title, but it’s frankly a toss-up. That’s not a bad thing, necessarily, but it is a little odd for The Simpsons.

And hey, I hate that storyline! Homer is utterly obnoxious, passing even traditional Jerkass Homer to seem dumb and abrasive in a way that isn’t funny. But I get why they did that. You need to make Homer so awful that even gentle Ned would act out of character. That doesn’t work, because as frustrating as Homer is, it’s just not Ned-like to do something like sock Homer, no matter how annoyed he is, so you have to go over the top to even halfway justify it.

Worse yet, Ned’s logic is so bizarre and unrelateable that you can’t latch onto the conflict. Him deciding that the way to avoid going to his own personal hell (a terrible string of jokes, by the way) is for Homer to punch him back is insane. The efforts and escalation get so far removed from any human experience that you can’t take them seriously, only shake your head at the stupidity.

Lisa’s storyline isn’t much better. The idea of Lisa struggling with a teacher who, against all odds, doesn’t like her and even bullies her, is a good premise. But for some reason this episode decides to make this storyline a mystery where the teacher’s motives aren’t revealed until the last second. So for 98% of the episode, we just see an adult be terrible to Lisa for no reason, which isn’t fun or funny. To add insult to injury, guest star Tina Fey is not a voice actor, and it shows, with some shaky line reads that do nothing to elevate bad material.

The one major part of this I like is the way the two storylines converge. Homer deciding that the way Ned can make up the punching to him is by asking Edna to help Lisa is a nice way to have the two episodes dovetail. I even like the idea of Edna’s “nuclear option” being to sic Bart on another unsuspecting educator. But as with everything here, the way that idea is executed is cartoony and unfunny.

Speaking of which, the jokes in here elicit more eyerolls than laughs. There’s a few solid lines, like Marge claiming she’s never made her trademark annoyed murmur in her life, or some classic Simpsons swerve gags. But so much of the humor here falls flat, which all but sinks an episode that can’t survive on story or character.

Overall, this is a real low light for The Simpsons, even by more generous post-classic standards.