Movie Review: The Simpsons Movie

In the local paper’s review of the Simpsons Movie it stated it was just like the show, only longer. After reading it I said to my wife, “I hope it is like the show during the early seasons, and not so much like the last few years.”

It is pretty obvious I am a fan of the show. I talk about it all the time, I quote it regularly, I’ve pretty much based my life philosophy around Homer Simpson, and I practically reviewed the entire 18^th season right here.

When the Simpsons are good, there is nothing better on television, and even when they are bad they are good for a few laughs. Unfortunately, since about season 8 they have been steadily moving towards the latter end of that statement. The show has moved from a cutting edge satire with an underlying heart that made it not only incredibly hilarious, but a rock solid piece of story telling. These days it hangs on by throwing a million gags out at once.

Sometimes those gags are brilliant, but all too often they make me laugh and then immediately forget them. And the show really lacks the heart it used to have. There is still a lot of cheap sentiment thrown in, but the storylines are so off the wall and jagged, that the sentiment falls flat.

Televison Diary: February 18, 2007

Ok, I’m sorry. I forgot this was due yesterday. Can’t say that I was busy then, mainly just sat around the house too afraid to step outside into the cold misery. Really, I did forget and I said I’m sorry, what more can you want? Blood? My soul? Ok, ok, you can have those too, just let me write this dern thing.

The Simpsons – “Little Big Girl”

This episode went back to straight story telling, and on the surface, the episodes looks like it could be classic. Bart’s prank of using all the school’s fire extinguishers as a means to propel himself inadvertently puts out a massive fire. As a reward he gets his driver’s license.

 

However, Homer uses this as an excuse to make Bart his personal chauffer, and fleeing that hassle he drives to North Haverbrook where he meets the 16 year old Darcy (Natalie Portman.) They date, she proposes marriage due to being pregnant (from another boy) and Bart agrees (!) They rush to Utah where a lad so young can marry, but are saved by both sets of parents.

The Simpsons: Season 18, Episode 11 – “Revenge Is A Dish Best Served Three Times”

#1 Sign the Simpsons is losing steam (again) in the 18^th season: It’s a parody show in three parts.

Couch Gag: Simpsons are diaper wearing babies who crawl to the couch where they then age to their normal selves.

LOL Count: Too few too bother with

Plot:

The Simpsons: Season 18, Episode 10 – “The Wife Aquatic”

Couch Gag: The couch is a poster hanging on a wall and an unknown hand pins up the Simpsons onto it.

Number of times I laughed: 5

Plot: Springfield is having a free, outdoor silent movie gala, but the bullies find it to be a tad dull – “This movie isn’t silent, I can hear it sucking.” – So they throw beats at the film projector (run by Rod and Todd) until the film breaks. Having a canister of old vacation footage, Selma and Patty throw it into the projector. The film is of an old vacation to Barnacle Bay, a place they all went to as children. It is near and dear to Marge and she reminisces about it prompting Homer to burn the film onto DVD and then onto an iPod. However, Homer is unable to get it burned into the iPod and so he decides to take the family to Barnacle Bay.

After years of neglect the bay is no longer a vacationer’s paradise, but a run down slum (the worst place they’ve been to, except Brazil says Lisa.) The ever sweetie Homer refurbishes an old merry-go-round and creates a lovely fireworks display just for Marge. Unfortunately one of the fireworks lights the dock on fire and burns it to the ground, er sea. The townspeople string Homer up on a fish hook and then have their picture taken next to him as you would a giant fish.

Marge talks them into letting Homer go on the condition that he will pay for the dock by fishing. Out at sea Homer decides it is opposite day and fixes bait for supper and beer batters the hooks. The beer attracts the Yum-Yum fish (which was the town’s glory-days attraction before they suddenly disappeared) and the boat has a grand day. This lasts only moments as a “perfect storm” rises and capsizes the boat.

Thinking the men are all dead, the town holds a funeral for them until they all show up again unharmed (having been saved by some Japanese fishermen.) We then get a little moral lesson about over fishing to which the town learns not to fish, but to destroy all of their trees to sell to Larry Flynt’s pornography company.

Rating: *1/2

What a waste of a half hour. The writers not only forget to write a decent story, but forgot that this is supposed to be funny and left most of the jokes at home. The Perfect Storm is six years old, and mostly forgotten by now, so why they chose this to parody is beyond me. The Simpsons have often thrown awful little moral lessons at us before, so I should be used to it by now, but this one really stunk it up. The plot rambled. It resembled a plot, but it used their old device of having one dumb gag (the free movie) exist for the sole reason of moving them to another dumb gag. I kept waiting for one of them to say “the Simpsons are going to an island.” I laughed a few times, but just barely.

Trivia:

• The title is a reference to the film The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou.
• The main plot is a parody of The Perfect Storm.
• The song played when Homer starts clubbing yum-yum fish is “At Last” by Etta James.
• While going to the Barnacle Bay museum, Marge and Lisa pass an exhibit called “The Science of Spongebob”.

 

 

The Simpsons: Season 18, Episode 8 – “The Haw-Hawed Couple”

Couch Gag:  Scissors cut out a paper Homer, which, when expanded turns into the entire family.  It is all created similar to the folded Christmas cut-outs.

LOL Count:  7 (but I watched this week’s episode with a jovial friend and thus I laughed more than normal.)

Plot:  Lisa goes to tell on Bart for drinking coffee (though Bart says it is just hot Pepsi) but they find Homer and Marge yelling at each other behind closed doors.  The yelling is actually pre-recorded as the couple do not want to be disturbed during their love making.  Unfortunately, the tape is reversed by some tossed clothing and begins to play “Horse With No Name.”  Confused Lisa and Bart open the door to see their parents in the act.

Deeply disturbed by this image, Bart has the shakes at school while Milhouse tries to comfort him (catching both your parents is better than catching only one of them.)  Meanwhile Nelson menacingly invites everyone to his birthday party.  Bart gathers everyone around and gets them all to agree to not go to the party.  If no one goes then Nelson can’t possibly beat them all up.

Gleeful over this plan, Bart and Lisa laugh about it within earshot of Marge who forces Bart to go to the party.  It turns out that Nelson has planned a pretty cool party with pizza and visits from Spiderman and Doc Oc.  Being the only guest Nelson decides Bart is his best friend.  Bart at first does not like this idea but once he realizes Nelson means protection from other bullies he likes the idea.

In a hilarious scene Nelson shows Bart a back entrance to the cafeteria in a homage to Goodfellas.  While Bart is living it up as a bully protégé Milhouse is without a friend.  Saddened he begs Bart to fly kites together, and when Bart agrees, Nelson catches them and gets jealous over the incident.

Bart decides Nelson is too imbalanced to remain friends with and he breaks it off.  Nelson swears revenge which he nearly gets during an ocean side field trip.  While telling Bart off for being a bad friend, the tide rolls in, nearly drowning both of them.  Nelson narrowly saves the day, but declares the friendship officially over.

In a Lisa side story, Homer reads a Harry Potter-esque book to Lisa at night and gets wrapped up in the story.  Lisa falls asleep before the climactic ending, and Homer promises to not read ahead.  Of course he does read ahead and realizes that the Dumbledore like character dies tragically.  The next night when Homer reads the book he makes up  a happier ending.  Lisa sees through this and read the real ending to herself later, but declares Homer’s version better.

Review:  **

This was a very random episode.  The writers seemed to be trying to keep a coherent story going, but obviously didn’t have enough to carry a whole show.  The Goodfellas homage was brilliant, but the rest of the Nelson – Bart story fell flat.  The Lisa side story was completely random and felt tacked on to add a few minutes of storyline.  The Harry Potter satire was completely useless and boring.

There seemed to be an undercurrent of a side story with Homer and Marge fighting to have a quiet moment for “snuggling,” but it never really went anywhere.  The tape recorded fight was funny, although a bit blasphemous with praying before they get it on (though the Simpsons have always walked that line.)  They then left a joke hanging by having Marge lure Homer in for another snuggle only to have Lisa force him to read.

What started as a very solid beginning to the season, is quickly creeping back to the old half hearted ways.

Trivia

•    This episode’s title is a pun on The Odd Couple.
•    The song played on the tape recorder is “A Horse With No Name” by America.
•    Actors dressed as Spider-Man and Dr. Octopus make an appearance at Nelson’s party.
•    The scene where Bart and Nelson walk through the school is a parody of the club scene in Goodfellas.
•    Lisa’s fantasy book contains elements of Harry Potter, The Lord of the Rings and The Chronicles of Narnia.
•    Scene with Nelson’s vest & picture in the closet is a reference to the end of Brokeback Mountain with the guitar music of Gustavo Santaolalla.

The Simpsons: Season 18, episode 7 – “Ice Cream of Margie (With the Light Blue Hair)”

The Couch Gag: The entire Simpsons family turns into a bunch of giant cockroaches and scurry away.

Number of out loud laughs: 2

The Plot: Bart is seen opening cereal boxes in order to get the toy prize and then feeding the rest of the cereal to the dog. When questioned on why he is so wasteful Bart’s only response is that he doesn’t know, but that he also only eats the eyes of the lobsters. Marge chastises the boy by saying “Your father works very hard to put lobsters on the table.” We then cut to Homer playing a game of chair hockey with the rest of the gang at the nuclear plant.

Mr. Burns after walking in on the game chastises Homer for goofing off, but Homer is unable to pay attention as an ice cream truck is driving by. When Mr. Burns yells some more, Homer looks back at him only to find Mr. Burns looks just like a giant ice cream cone and is commanding that Homer lick him. He does and this gets him fired.

Running after the ice cream truck, the owner gladly stops, knowing Homer by name. Homer buys a popsicle but only has a hundred dollar bill to pay for it. The man dies of exhaustion making change out of actual coin change.

Out of a job Homer takes up driving the truck and finds his new dream job. Meanwhile Marge has watched an episode of Opal (an obvious spoof of Oprah) where her guest demeans women who stay at home making Marge feel terrible.

Trying to better herself Marge begins making sculptures out of the leftover popsicle sticks and becomes quite good at it. Kent Brockman takes notice after reporting on Snake being chased by the cops. Marge sets up a big presentation of her sculptures and makes Homer promise he will be there for it.

Home makes the promise, but says he must make his route first or his kids will think he neglected them. Finding a divorced dad picnic he takes advantage of the fathers by saying that ice cream will make up for their neglect. He makes big money, but forgets about the time. With only moments to spare he races back home through the back woods. Unfortunately he hits an owl, a boy scout and a bear which causes him to skid out of control and wipe out all of the sculptures.

Marge is furious, but Homer wins back her heart by pleading with her and taking multiple Polaroid’s of himself with a sad face. To show her forgiveness she creates a giant Homer sculpture which, in a jump to the future 200 years is shown as the last piece of art that survived after the iPods banded together and took over the world.

Review: **

Worst episode this season. The writers are still following their season trend of trying to maintain an actual plot versus throwing a bunch of nonsensical gags around, but this one just fell flat.

The thing about previous seasons was not only were they basically throwing plot out the window, but it always felt like they were overproducing themselves and acting like they were the hippest kids in school while failing to produce a show similar to what made them great in the first place. It’s like Seinfeld in the last couple of seasons where they kept coming up with all these crazy scenarios and forgot it was the conversations that made it great.

I’m ecstatic that they’ve finally gone back to the basics, but an actual plot isn’t always actually funny. The jokes were mostly lame and the story never really took off.

Here’s looking at next week.

Trivia

• A possible revelation about the location of Springfield, Snake Jailbird reports a traffic jam at the 101-405 interchange, both of which run up the Pacific Coast of the United States. Their interchange is in the San Fernando Valley in Los Angeles, CA
• Greta Wolfcastle can be seen (for the first time since “The Bart Wants What it Wants”) with her father Rainier Wolfcastle buying ice cream.
• Ned Flanders’ late wife, Maude Flanders, is seen as one of Marge’s popsicle sculptures.
• Comic Book Guy comments on the absence of a good Star Wars movie since the first one, bemoaning as well, the extensive use of CGI in the later re-releases.

Cultural References

• The title of this episode cites Stephen Foster’s song “I Dream of Jeannie With the Light Brown Hair”.
• The scene when Homer dresses spoofs the opening of Da Ali G Show.
• The revelation of the customized iced-cream truck is a parody of Pimp My Ride, set to the Missy Elliott song “Get Ur Freak On”.
• The Dire Straits song “Money for Nothing” plays as Homer comes down the street to sell ice cream.
• The music played during the montage of Marge creating popsicle-stick sculptures is “Feels So Good” by Chuck Mangione.

And yes, I stold the references and trivia from Wikipedia.

The Simpsons: Season 18, Episode 6 – “Moe ‘N’ a Lisa”

off of the lackluster Treehouse of Horror, the Simpsons create what may be the best episode of the season thus far. It was filled with good gags, good guest appearances, and a good story. I’m also feeling a bit better from a week of the flue and nothing but lousy. Which means the blog should get some more regular updating, and hopefully reviews of all the stuff I missed last week.

Best Line: “That’s it Franzen, I think your nose needs some ‘Corrections.’”

Guest Stars: Tom Wolfe, Gore Vidal, Michael Chabon, Jonathan Franzen, and JK Simmons.

Plot: Homer wakes up to find the words “Don’t Forget” inscribed all over the house (including his belly, the dog and cat, and from alphabet cereal coughed up by Maggie,) yet he cannot remember what he is not supposed to forget. Marge reminds him that they are supposed to go to the senior Olympics to watch Grandpa participate. As they leave, Moe calls dressed in a fishing outfit and leaves a message for Homer to pick him up for their birthday outing.

Grandpa wants desperately to win the gold as he fears this will be his last Olympics (his first being at Berlin in 1936 where he nearly javelined Hitler to death, but missed killing a planned assassin instead.) But Grandpa can’t catch a break , losing every event, until he drops his dentures. Groundskeeper Willie picks them up, but a wardrobe malfunction makes him look like the Grim Reaper and a scared Grandpa picks up steam to win the race.

Later as the Simpsons return home, Homer sees Moe on their doorstep and remembers what he forgot. Ducking down in the car to hide they drive to the back of the house where they then eat their dinner hiding under the table. Though Marge says “We can’t scuttle around like craps for the rest of our lives,” Homer continues to crawl around the floor reaching upwards for food, and eventually gets into a crab like fight with Bart.

Moe throws a brick through the window and Lisa is intrigued by his desperate, sadly poetic words. Looking for a hero to write an essay about she follows Moe home and finds that he scribbles his poetry onto sticky notes. With Moe’s permission she combines the notes into a larger poem and submits it to a poetry magazine where it is turned into a book. Moe quickly becomes a poetry sensation.

At the WordLoaf conference he is met by such luminaries as Gore Vidal and Tom Wolfe. Fearing he’ll be kicked out for getting help from Lisa, Moe acts as if he came up with the title for his book (when in fact Lisa did) and needed no help whatsoever with his writing.

When asked to write a new poem for his acceptance as “Best New Poet” Moe asks Lisa to help him, but she refuses. So, Moe steals an elevator warning sign and the motel television guide and reads those. He is booed and jeered until Lisa walks in at which point Moe makes up a heartfelt poem asking for forgiveness.

Rating: ****

Had this been season five this episode would have probably received a lesser rating, but this was one of the best episodes I’ve seen in many a year. The gags were very clever and the story flowed quite well. The wife and I both laughed heartily throughout. So much so that I didn’t even think to actually count the number of times. A very good sign indeed.

Best Moments:

• Grandpa after he nearly killed Hitler with a javelin: “The next time I saw Hitler we had dinner and laughed about it.”
• Grandpa to what he thinks is the Grim Reaper, while holding Bart hostage: “Take the boy, his soul is fresher.”
• The poetry magazine editor acts exactly like the newspaper boss on Spiderman.
• Homer to man whose house he has just driven through (because he thought it was a covered bridge): “We should exchange insurance information. I have none.”
• Moe to the geese who are eating his poetic sticky notes: “Stupid geese, you’re eating my brilliance.”
• The whole Franzen, Chabon exchange was just brilliant.

The Simpsons: Season 18, Episode 4 – “Treehouse of Horror XVII

Opener: Point of View Camera wanders, and stumbles, through a haunted house, ending upon a opened coffin that lets loose a pile of animals finally revealing Mr. Burns as the “Master of Scare-a-Monies” which Smithers finds hilarious, but Moe rejects before he is killed by an iron maiden. His blood then spells out “Treehouse of Horror XVII.” For which Moe asks us to look at “my genius blood with the fancy Roman numerals and everything.”

Story I: “Married to the Blob”

Plot: A comet lands in the Simpson’s back yard and Homer immediately eats the oozing good coming out of it. This gives him an insatiable appetite (even bigger than his normal one) and he begins eating anything and everything including the Simpson’s cat, local teenagers, and Dr. Phil. When Marge scolds him, they decide he needs to do something for the greater good, which turns out to be eating all of the homeless people.

Parody Song: “Baby Likes Fat” to the tune of the Sir Mix-A lot’s “Baby Got Back”

Best Lines:

• Homer when the comet goo begins oozing out of his orafices, “If I can keep down Arby’s, I can keep this down.”
• Marge scolding Homer for trying to eat Bart, “You won’t eat my stuffed peppers, but you’ll eat our son.”

Review: The Dr. Phil gag as well as the parody song were cute, but barely got more than a grin out of me. Homer growing fat has been done, so him growing grotesquely fat just isn’t that funny.

Story II: “You Got to Know When to Golem”

Plot: Bart discovers the Golem in Krusty’s prop room and promptly steals him to do his petty bidding (beating up the bullies, kicking Homer in the balls, and killing Principal Skinner.) Lisa orders the Golem to speak, believing that it despises doing such horrible things and as it turns out, he does (and also makes lots of bad Jewish jokes.) Marge makes a Play-Doh girl golem and the two marry.

Best Lines:

• Groundskeeper Willie to a cut-in-half Skinner, “You’ll make better mulch than you made a man.”

Review: Weak, weak, weak. The Golem story is a great one, and had comedy potential, but making it do Bart’s bidding was just blah.

Story III: “The Day the Earth Looked Stupid”

Plot: A parody of the hysteria following Orson Welles reading of “War of the Worlds” with Springfield getting the hysteria and then being attacked for real by Kang and Kodos. The ending mocked the war in Iraq. Unhilarity ensued.

Best lines:

• Big Band Stu, instead of Disco Stu (since the scene takes place in the 1940s)
• Homer after the rioting “I’m proud of what I achieved during my rioting. It was either kill him or kill no one.”
• Radio announcer during “War of the Worlds,” “Astronomers say the ominous capsule originated from Earth’s closest neighbors.” Homer: “Flanders?”

Review: Parodies of this have been done. And that much better. Big Band Stu was the best line of the night, which isn’t saying much.

Episode Review: I’m a big fan of the Halloween episodes, but like the series they have suffered over the last few years. With three segments per episode all of the gags have to be dead on, and that’s got to be tough to do with a horror theme for 17 years straight. This one was especially disappointing since this season has turned out to be a refreshingly funny one. On top of that, the long break between new episodes had me salivating for tonight. Oh well, there is always next week.

The Simpsons: Season 18, Episode 3 – Please Homer, Don’t Hammer ‘Em

LOL total: 6 (but three of them were at butt jokes)

Episode three of season 18 is continuing the latter-day saints period of the Simpsons. It is still not up to classic ranking, but it is definitely funny, and definitely not a disappointment to watch.

Tonight’s episode centered around two stories: Marge finds out she is quite the handy man, but apparently the entire town of Springfield is so sexist no one will allow her to work. Also Bart finds out that Principal Skinner is deathly allergic to peanuts and in Bart-like fashion begins tormenting Skinner with a peanut-on-a-stick.

The episode started with the Simpson clan shopping in a ramshackle mall that no one goes to anymore (since somebody shot the Mayor’s dad). This allows for some nice bits with Bart inside a terribly outdated arcade (with an Asteroids clone, and a Remington Steele game, all of which look suspiciously like the games Bart used to play in the early episodes of the show) and Homer eating decades old gummy bears, which have all congealed together.

Homer buys a Time-Life set of carpentry books which he promptly forgets and never uses. Marge picks them up after a piece of floor board comes up and breaks the bedroom nightstand. Turns out she is quite skilled with a hammer and nail and quickly begins building all sorts of stuff.

Unfortunately everyone who answers her ad for a carpenter quickly laughs at her for being female. Now maybe this was typical Simpson satire knocking society for screwed up gender roles, but it felt like plain old sexism to me.

Marge gets the idea to put Homer’s name on the company and when he lands jobs she’ll secretly do the work. The funniest bits of the show come from Marge brainstorming how she could put the typical construction worker (lazy, fat and showing plenty of butt-crack) and realizes Homer is the perfect model from seeing his fat crack in bed.

Yeah, butt jokes are want got me through tonight.

I’m not offended by much. The Simpsons have certainly skewered plenty of sacred cows, and I’ve laughed through most of them. They’ve jabbed most major religions, politicians, celebrity and all sort of social norms and I’ve seen the humor behind the satire. But here it just seemed over done, or maybe that’s because it was un-funny. Had the jokes been right on, then this paragraph wouldn’t be written.

Both stories, now that you mention it were rather weak. Bart learns of Skinner’s peanut weakness after the students are ordered to leave all nut related items at home. A wee chat with Groundskeeper Willie turns up the offended allergic is Skinner. Bart applies peanut to stick and begins making Skinner do everything he says (eating garbage, stuffing firecrackers down his pants, etc).

Funny, Homer’s butt makes me laugh, but Bart’s juvenile jokes left me flat.

Marge eventually gets miffed at Homer taking all the glory that she makes him redo an old roller coaster by himself. Of course he screws up and when his ego takes him on a ride over his death-trap of a roller coaster, he finally admits it is Marge who is the construction genius.

Skinner finds out Bart has an allergic reaction to shrimp and they engage in a shrimp-on-a-stick/peanut-on-a-stick battle royale ending in both being soaked in a giant tub of Chinese peanut-shrimp gumbo.

The stories really were lame. The sexism failed to be the least bit funny (ok, Kent Brockman telling Home that he would tear down the gazeebo and build a coffin to his manhood if Marge actually built it and then challenging Homer to a topless wrestling was actually pretty funny, but still) and Skinner being allergic to peanuts so suddenly felt like lazy writing. However, they still nailed some good, if admittedly juvenile, jokes. It didn’t feel like penance watching the show, which is more than I can say for most of last season. And at least there were comprehendible stories to follow instead of a series of non sequiturs.

I laughed heartily, out loud even. And that’s enough for me….anymore.

Unfortunately due to football, the next original episode won’t air until November 05. In an unfortunate, and annoying tradition that episode will be the Halloween special, a week after the holiday.

Can Season 18 Save the Simpsons?

Let’s get this straight, I am a die hard Simpsons fan. I’ve been watching since Tracey Ullman and I will continue to watch until it is cancelled. I mean I own all of the Simpsons Forever books that detail each episode for crying out loud.

But even I have to admit that last several seasons have gone steadily downhill.

Around season six a bad episode or two slipped in. Then it became that a bad show would appear after about 3 or 4 good ones. Then it was about every other episode and finally by last season I only found myself laughing heartily on only a hand full of episodes all season long.

To me, a lot of the problem lies in what the critics call plot drift, and the all too depended upon deus ex machina. When the Simpsons first began they relied upon simple morality tales to tell each episodes story. Bart was picked on by a bully, or there was a financial crisis that had to be overcome. The plots were simple but the satire was heavy and the humor hilarious.

Eventually it seems the writers ran out of simple plot lines and began allowing plot drift to take over. This device allowed the first act plot to completely uproot and change within the second or final act of the show. A hurricane plot in act one would suddenly change to Ned being institutionalized in the next. The storylines became useless cardboard setups for the jokes, and the heart of the show went down a peg.

Still, it was quite funny. For awhile at least.

The changing plots also led to deus ex machina or out-of-nowhere devices to resolve the plot in a timely and clean manner. When Principal Skinner is found out to be a fraud, the episode quickly ends with the real Principal Skinner being literally railed out of town, and a judge proclaiming the “fake” Skinner to be renamed Seymore Skinner.

It must be said that the writers often used such devices with a knowing wink to the audience. In that episode the judge also mandates that no one will ever mention the name change under penalty of law. Both using the device and satirizing its use on other shows.

Over the last few years I must admit my love for the show has waned slightly. So many seasons I have sat through blah episodes hoping each week that the new show would rekindle the old magic. So many seasons I have again been disappointed.

So it was this anticipation of disappointment that I have turned into the first two episodes of season 18. To my complete surprise, both episodes were pretty stinking good. The Simpsons, damn them, have once again made me believe.

In the season opener, List befriends the son of Fat Tony. When Fat Tony becomes ill he allows Homer to take over the business.

And you know what? It didn’t suck.

I’ve always enjoyed the Fat Tony character. He gives the writers multiple ways to satirize real gangsters, and gangster movies. They did a nice job with this one skewering the Sopranos with Fat Tony’s son wanting to be a chef instead of a gangster, and Home screwing everything up as usual.

It wasn’t season five quality, but still pretty danged good.

Episode two also was much better than my expectations. For the first time in I don’t know how long they have managed to put two back to back good episodes on.

A child psychiatrist recommends that Bart plays the drums to get rid of his hyper active energy. Turns out he is a bit of a prodigy and gets asked to join the band along with some jazz greats. This sets Lisa on fire for she’s wanted to play in a jazz band for nearly as long as the show has been on.

There is some nice rivalry between Bart and Lisa, some decent jazz stereotypes (including the obligatory marijuana gag) and one sure-to-be-a-classic bit with the White Stripes.

In homage to the video for “The Hardest Button to Button” Bart moves around town banging away at his drum kit eventually bumping into and being chased by the White Stripes. It was a beautiful, perfect piece of comedy and brought the show out of mere decent status.

Both episodes this season have carried on traditional linear plot lines, hit its satiric targets and contained several laugh out loud moments.

They still aren’t on par with the glory years, but they have managed to spark new hope in a fan who had begun praying for cancellation.

Let’s hope it lasts.