This one was "meh" to me. I liked the little bit of retconning they did since Maggie is only "a year old" then going back "2 years" to before she was born means Maude Flanders was still alive for this story. I chuckled a couple of times (especially during the drug cleanup) but this was not one of their better recent episodes. Homer's visit to the rest stop was probably the funniest part. The visuals of the Grand Canyon were great though.
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Review by Andrew BloomVIP 9BlockedParent2016-04-27T04:55:28Z
7.2/10 on a post-classic Simpsons scale. Well, it was no "Homer Loves Flanders," but still, doing an episode that featured an unexpectedly sweet take on Homer and Ned finding common ground despite their very different lifestyles, personalities, and families was a nice way to go. A good chunk of the humor was a little meaner or cartoonier than I usually like from the show (Bart's under-glass mooning and Homer getting tazed in response comes to mind), but there were some good gags as well, like the conversations between Lisa and their tourguide or Homer and Ned's conflicting views of the evening sky. There was kind of an unresolved story thread with Marge and Maude judging each other for how their kids behaved, which was kind of strange, and the frame story was sweet but a little shoehorned in. But overall, this focused on the heart and the differences that make the relationship between a trying Homer and a saintly Ned, and that made it a pleasant episode despite some of its shortcomings.
Oh, and the couch gag featuring tributes to various notable Disney films was great well, and it was a nice entree into the visual and animation side of the episode, where the designers and animators did a great job depicting the grand canyon and the desert sky.