8x08 Hurricane Neddy

[8.5/10] This may feature the best second act in all of Simpsons history. The pathos of Ned having lost everything despite his piousness, the comedy of the town’s inept attempt at making things right, and his takedown of all the show’s major figures is just brilliant. It taps into something real, the randomness of life that can be so dispiriting. How can a man like Ned, who’s done everything in his power to be good and kind to everyone, be punished by the universe like this?

The show does a great job of bringing him to his breaking point. Obviously the loss of his home is the big hit, but I love how the last straw is little things like a paper cut on the bible and the lens of his glasses breaking. It’s those things that really drive us to lose ourselves, the thorns in our sides that seem so needless that really push us over the edge. It’s all in service of the idea that Ned is grappling with emotions he doesn’t know how to process or express.

He does manage to express something though! While the poorly built house is an exercise in hilarity, his mental breakdown is funny and cutting in a very different way. There’s a strange thrill to seeing the normally so polite and chipper Ned just let loose on everyone. His takedown of the Simpson family and their various hangers on is an all-time classic moment, one that strikes at the heart of the characters’ worst qualities while also showing how far Ned has sunk. It’s really the climax of this one, and it’s a doozy.

The first act is really just observational humor about how people act in a public disaster/crisis. Other than the shock of seeing Ned’s house shattered to pieces afterward, it doesn't have much to do with the plot writ large. It’s just so damn funny though! Lines about the hall of records mysteriously blowing away or Marge telling God that they’ll “recommend him to all our friends” are hilarious. The observations about people panic-buying whatever they can get their hands on seems all too apt from where we sit in 2020. There’s not much to it beyond setup for the Ned story, but there’s a lot of well-observed gags over how people react when bad things seem to be on the horizon.

(That said, I could do without the cartooniness of Homer and the rest of the family nearly getting sucked up into the hurricane. Though I did enjoy the remixed version of the intro where the letters get blown away.)

The third act is more of a mixed bag. I like the idea of Ned processing his feelings of anger that he normally suppresses and having this be an impetus for that. But I don’t know that we ever really needed an explanation for why Ned engages in “mindless jabbering”, and the idea of a “spankalogical protocol” is a little silly.

Still, there’s a lot of good laughs here, especially from Dr. Foster using Homer to try to annoy Ned into expressing his anger. Plus, it’s fun to see Ned’s parents and his childhood aggression, especially with the classic line, “We’ve tried nothing, and we’re all out of ideas.” Eventually, Ned does have his breakthrough, and while it doesn’t really stick, it’s a nice moment of catharsis for the character.
Overall, this one is driven by the second act, where a Job-like story connects with an examination of Ned’s character and delivers something special. The first and third acts can’t quite live up to the standard, but each delivers laughs and good character moments in turn. This one’s definitely a stand-out of the Oakley-Weinstein era.