[5.5/10 on a Selman era Simpsons scale] Ehhhhhh, you can see the outline of what The Simpsons is trying to do here. Young men turning their fear of women into a hatred of them is an unfortunately salient topic right now, and the sense of betrayal among groups of them when someone dares to find a girlfriend is an interesting thing to mine. Packaging that concept (and sanding down its rougher edges) into an unlikely friendship between Bart and Willie is a sound idea.
The problem is that the execution of the idea is insane. The characters stop acting like human beings and start acting like wacky sitcom characters. Willie “invites” Bart to his wedding, but in an unclear form that makes it look like he’s been kidnapped. SUre. Bart gets mad at Willie, and rather than just having a bit of a fit, he dumps the wedding cake onto the string quartet. Alright. Rather than there being a legit conflict at the end, the whole thing involves some mercenary conspiracy from the bride’s family that leads to them locking him in a tower and him using a rope made of sleep masks to shimmy down. Whatever.
I’m long past the point where I expect The Simpsons to adhere to the rules of reality, but when you’re trying to tell a legitimate, psychological story bout Bart’s friendship with someone he thinks gets him, and young men’s feelings about women, throwing in a bunch of zany, exaggerated crud into the mix hobbles your ability to achieve any emotional resonance with that approach.
Don’t get me started on the Marge/Homer story. I am on team “No more Marge and Homer relationship drama episodes.” They’ve just done so many. It’s a dead horse. There’s nothing left to mine from it. And even if there ws, Mrge looking at a new couple and lamenting the lost romance is such cliche. You could do this with any two characters. THere’s nothing specific to HOmer and Marge here. So when they reconcile over a meme video, it doesn’t mean anything because, gin, they don’t feel like real people; they feel like any two sitcom characters.
The humor here is pretty tepid. There’s few nice moments. Believe it or not, I actually enjoyed HOmer’s extended rant about destination weddings, as silly as the sequence is. And some of the Fringe Festival shtick was enjoyable.
But the other side of the coin is that a lot of it comes down to bad/generic Scottish humor. By some coincidence, I actually visited Edinburgh for the first time this year! So when I realized the Simpsons were heading there, I was excited to get some of the thrill of recognition.
Unfortunately, other than one well-animated scene where Lisa walks down the Royal Mile and the Fringe Festival business, there’s very little that’s specific to the area in the episode. Most of the gags here are ones the writers could have come up with from reading Wikipedia or just going off of base stereotypes. It’s a real disappointment.
The main plot is no great shakes either. We don’t really get to see Bart and Willie bonding much outside of a 30 second prank montage, so their suddenly close friendship feels unearned. Bart trying to be supportive but hitting his limit when Willie expects him to dance with girls at the wedding is a decent beat, even if the execution of it is feeble. And I like the idea of Willie discovering his fiancee does love him for him, and Bart learning to be happy for someone else’s happiness, but it’s all very rushed and jumbled up in the other conspiratorial nonsense that’s going on.
I don’t know. I thought this one was fine, but not great when I got done watching it, but the more I think about it, the less I like it, which isn’t a great sign. Overall, it’s one that has a good central idea and a neat setting, but doesn’t truly capitalize on either.
Review by Andrew BloomVIP 9BlockedParentSpoilers2023-12-14T16:26:41Z
[5.5/10 on a Selman era Simpsons scale] Ehhhhhh, you can see the outline of what The Simpsons is trying to do here. Young men turning their fear of women into a hatred of them is an unfortunately salient topic right now, and the sense of betrayal among groups of them when someone dares to find a girlfriend is an interesting thing to mine. Packaging that concept (and sanding down its rougher edges) into an unlikely friendship between Bart and Willie is a sound idea.
The problem is that the execution of the idea is insane. The characters stop acting like human beings and start acting like wacky sitcom characters. Willie “invites” Bart to his wedding, but in an unclear form that makes it look like he’s been kidnapped. SUre. Bart gets mad at Willie, and rather than just having a bit of a fit, he dumps the wedding cake onto the string quartet. Alright. Rather than there being a legit conflict at the end, the whole thing involves some mercenary conspiracy from the bride’s family that leads to them locking him in a tower and him using a rope made of sleep masks to shimmy down. Whatever.
I’m long past the point where I expect The Simpsons to adhere to the rules of reality, but when you’re trying to tell a legitimate, psychological story bout Bart’s friendship with someone he thinks gets him, and young men’s feelings about women, throwing in a bunch of zany, exaggerated crud into the mix hobbles your ability to achieve any emotional resonance with that approach.
Don’t get me started on the Marge/Homer story. I am on team “No more Marge and Homer relationship drama episodes.” They’ve just done so many. It’s a dead horse. There’s nothing left to mine from it. And even if there ws, Mrge looking at a new couple and lamenting the lost romance is such cliche. You could do this with any two characters. THere’s nothing specific to HOmer and Marge here. So when they reconcile over a meme video, it doesn’t mean anything because, gin, they don’t feel like real people; they feel like any two sitcom characters.
The humor here is pretty tepid. There’s few nice moments. Believe it or not, I actually enjoyed HOmer’s extended rant about destination weddings, as silly as the sequence is. And some of the Fringe Festival shtick was enjoyable.
But the other side of the coin is that a lot of it comes down to bad/generic Scottish humor. By some coincidence, I actually visited Edinburgh for the first time this year! So when I realized the Simpsons were heading there, I was excited to get some of the thrill of recognition.
Unfortunately, other than one well-animated scene where Lisa walks down the Royal Mile and the Fringe Festival business, there’s very little that’s specific to the area in the episode. Most of the gags here are ones the writers could have come up with from reading Wikipedia or just going off of base stereotypes. It’s a real disappointment.
The main plot is no great shakes either. We don’t really get to see Bart and Willie bonding much outside of a 30 second prank montage, so their suddenly close friendship feels unearned. Bart trying to be supportive but hitting his limit when Willie expects him to dance with girls at the wedding is a decent beat, even if the execution of it is feeble. And I like the idea of Willie discovering his fiancee does love him for him, and Bart learning to be happy for someone else’s happiness, but it’s all very rushed and jumbled up in the other conspiratorial nonsense that’s going on.
I don’t know. I thought this one was fine, but not great when I got done watching it, but the more I think about it, the less I like it, which isn’t a great sign. Overall, it’s one that has a good central idea and a neat setting, but doesn’t truly capitalize on either.