[8.4/10] This is one of the most bonkers episodes The Simpsons ever did. If you’re a continuity scold, you must cringe at the Simpsons’ backyard abutting the nuclear plant’s parking lot, or every male character in Springfield being affiliated with a secret powerful society despite their low stations in life, or the fact that nothing involving the Stonecutters/No Homers was ever mentioned before or will be mentioned again.
Homer falls five stories! (Albeit gradually.) Moe rubs elbows with Orville Redenbacher, Jack Nicholson, Mr. T, and President George H.W. Bush! The real emergency hotline number is 912! Homer has to march naked to the top of Mt. Springfield towing a giant rock! It’s utterly absurd, and by any and all standards of the Simpsons purists, should be excommunicated for these reasons alone.
But it works for two reasons. The first is that for all its off the wall lunacy, it’s rooted in Homer’s pain of feeling excluded and his joys in feeling accepted. For as nuts as the events of “Homer the Great” are, it takes its title character’s emotional journey oddly seriously.
We feel sympathy for Homer when he laments that no one likes him and recalls his childhood ostracization. We feel his excitement when, for all his boorishness, he’s welcomed into the communal brotherhood of the Stonecutters. We feel his devastation when, naturally, he screws up his membership and gets booted. We feel his exaltation when he’s lifted up as the chosen one. (Metaphorically of course.) We understand his spiritual emptiness when Lisa’s right and getting what he wants all the time leaves him bereft of happiness. We see his spiritual fulfillment when he uses his power and position for good. We get a hint of his sadness when it all crumbles back into the status quo when the rest of the Stonecutters would rather quit than be charitable (an amusingly cynical out). And we get some residual warmth when despite all that, Homer still enjoys the welcome of his family.
Are all of these the deepest emotions ever committed to on-screen storytelling? By no means. But there’s a recognizable emotional journey through all of this, with sentiments we the audience can relate to even as the situation is totally ridiculous, which helps the whole thing to feel real enough to work amid the insanity.
Oh and the second is that it’s really, really funny. Look, you can get away with a lot if you just make people laugh. Plenty of the gags here go beyond even the bounds of the show’s “waistband reality” that stretches to fit the jokes. But the audience is guffawing too much to care.
Homer yells at an strangely chittering “egg council creep.” Marge accepts with amusing resignation that her husband still “believes” he’s a chicken. The Stonecutters paint a building “sky blue” before a helicopter crashes directly into it.
These are all out there gags, but they’re just so damn funny. Under showrunner David Mirkin, legendary scribe John Swartzwelder had free reign to go wild with his trademark outrageous humor. The result is that the gags-per-minute ratio for an episode like “Homer the Great” is off the charts, and the yuks-per-joke ratio is even better. The lesson is clear. You can be as crazy and reality-breaking as you want, so long as you make the character’s emotions real enough, and the resulting looniness funny enough to pass muster. It’s a standard The Simpsons met time and time again, and an approach which may very well have reached its apotheosis here.
Review by Andrew BloomVIP 9BlockedParentSpoilers2021-08-18T01:39:27Z
[8.4/10] This is one of the most bonkers episodes The Simpsons ever did. If you’re a continuity scold, you must cringe at the Simpsons’ backyard abutting the nuclear plant’s parking lot, or every male character in Springfield being affiliated with a secret powerful society despite their low stations in life, or the fact that nothing involving the Stonecutters/No Homers was ever mentioned before or will be mentioned again.
Homer falls five stories! (Albeit gradually.) Moe rubs elbows with Orville Redenbacher, Jack Nicholson, Mr. T, and President George H.W. Bush! The real emergency hotline number is 912! Homer has to march naked to the top of Mt. Springfield towing a giant rock! It’s utterly absurd, and by any and all standards of the Simpsons purists, should be excommunicated for these reasons alone.
But it works for two reasons. The first is that for all its off the wall lunacy, it’s rooted in Homer’s pain of feeling excluded and his joys in feeling accepted. For as nuts as the events of “Homer the Great” are, it takes its title character’s emotional journey oddly seriously.
We feel sympathy for Homer when he laments that no one likes him and recalls his childhood ostracization. We feel his excitement when, for all his boorishness, he’s welcomed into the communal brotherhood of the Stonecutters. We feel his devastation when, naturally, he screws up his membership and gets booted. We feel his exaltation when he’s lifted up as the chosen one. (Metaphorically of course.) We understand his spiritual emptiness when Lisa’s right and getting what he wants all the time leaves him bereft of happiness. We see his spiritual fulfillment when he uses his power and position for good. We get a hint of his sadness when it all crumbles back into the status quo when the rest of the Stonecutters would rather quit than be charitable (an amusingly cynical out). And we get some residual warmth when despite all that, Homer still enjoys the welcome of his family.
Are all of these the deepest emotions ever committed to on-screen storytelling? By no means. But there’s a recognizable emotional journey through all of this, with sentiments we the audience can relate to even as the situation is totally ridiculous, which helps the whole thing to feel real enough to work amid the insanity.
Oh and the second is that it’s really, really funny. Look, you can get away with a lot if you just make people laugh. Plenty of the gags here go beyond even the bounds of the show’s “waistband reality” that stretches to fit the jokes. But the audience is guffawing too much to care.
Homer yells at an strangely chittering “egg council creep.” Marge accepts with amusing resignation that her husband still “believes” he’s a chicken. The Stonecutters paint a building “sky blue” before a helicopter crashes directly into it.
These are all out there gags, but they’re just so damn funny. Under showrunner David Mirkin, legendary scribe John Swartzwelder had free reign to go wild with his trademark outrageous humor. The result is that the gags-per-minute ratio for an episode like “Homer the Great” is off the charts, and the yuks-per-joke ratio is even better.
The lesson is clear. You can be as crazy and reality-breaking as you want, so long as you make the character’s emotions real enough, and the resulting looniness funny enough to pass muster. It’s a standard The Simpsons met time and time again, and an approach which may very well have reached its apotheosis here.