Throughout last season I spent most of my time shaking my head at mediocre content. There were some bright spots but most episodes last season were just average and forgettable. It’s not to say that within those episodes there weren’t any good ideas; there were plenty. The problem was the show was not committed to any of those ideas and decided it was best to just throw as many as they could into single episodes.
This season by comparison has been significantly better with more focused stories and as a result better content. So it came as a surprise when watching I Want You that the show reverted back to old habits.
PHOTO SOURCE: The Simpsons, TCFFC
To illustrate here’s a summary of everything that happened. Homer and Marge have to go to a drug conference. Homer and Marge have a bad babysitter problem. Marge and Homer crash a wedding expo. Then Homer and Marge come home for some snuggling, only for Homer to drop Marge down the stairs, leaving him with a hernia and Marge with a sprained ankle. Homer’s pain pills make him hallucinate a little hernia gremlin pal (voiced by Wallace Shawn) who encourages Homer’s habitual sloth, while Marge takes up kite-surfing alongside her hunky physical trainer. Lisa seeks advice on saving her parents’ marriage from Shauna (said bad babysitter) and her boyfriend Jimbo, because she claims they’re the only couple she knows who like each other. Homer independently decides to win Marge back, by kite-surfing. Then in a twist ending it turns out Marge’s trainer is actually a Russian spy.
PHOTO SOURCE: The Simpsons, TCFFC
Phew! Do you see what I mean. The episode jumped from joke to joke desperately hoping that something would stick but very few of it does. Personally, the only bits that were any good were the wedding expo scenes and the hernia gremlin (named Harvey). Either of those two ideas would have made for great stand alone episodes. The wedding expo was great because Marge and Homer sneaked their way in and passed themselves off as wedding planners and then doctor’s who had to give the key note address at the show. For starters, the sight gags were naturally clever: “Thermo-Foot Early Cold Feet Detection System”, “vow cancelling headphones”. But what I liked was that you could see the two of them actually having fun together which was refreshing to see. Marge was naturally in her element among as a ‘wedding planner’ and Homer being a prankster was along for the ride and the freebies.
Harvey the hernia was also great because he was very much the devil on Homer’s shoulder egging him on to eat more and be lazy. Of course, Homer doesn’t need much motivation to do these things but he initially does want to rehab and Harvey being there (or not) does pose a challenge. This could also have been a great opportunity for a stand alone episode perhaps with Harvey getting Homer to do things on a more outrageous scale. But alas.
PHOTO SOURCE: The Simpsons, TCFFC
Otherwise, the episode was forgettable. I didn’t care too much for the Jimbo and Shauna scenes and the fact that Lisa went to them for relationship advice just baffles me. She could have gone to almost anyone else and come to the same conclusion on how to help her parents. The Russian spy thing too threw me for a loop as it was wholly unnecessary.
Hopefully this was just a hiccup in the programming because season 30 has been decent and I at least thought they learned their lesson from last year. There was just too much going on here and it made for a sloppy episode.
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