No review here, though this episode should have been the season finale episode instead of the Frying Game.
S P O I L E R
S P A C E
DYN's
Jimbo has sent to Juvenile Hall at least once? Maggie dancing along to Homer's rendition of Radar Love?
Refs.
Poppa's Got a Brand New Bag -Title
Jughead, Fat Albert, The Fonz -Older students attending Springfield Elementary
Sugar Sugar -Music as Jughead walks by
High Noon -Third act similar to this film
The Sorpronos -Sequence as Fat Tony drives to Homer's house
Comments:
Celebrity Boxing is the latest attempt by Fox to get good ratings, and it looks like it's working. The concept: celebrity has-beens and people from scandelous news stories duke it out in three-round boxing matches. A main example of these fights include a bout between Barry Williams (The Brady Bunch) and Danny Bonadochi (sp?) (The Partridge Family). Obviously, the comments about this were dubbed into the episode at the last-minute to promote the special, which followed this episode the first night it aired.
Agreed...while not a phenomenal episode it was enjoyable and certainly an improvement from The Frying Lame. This episode certainly had its moments and a good balance of intelligence and humor, and had enough suspense to be the season finale. I loved when Homer listed all of his jobs too, and the Sopranos parodies. I'd give this episode a B, as opposed to The Frying Lame which I'd give a D+. This wasn't the best of anything, but a solid episode that shows that Al Jean is helping to bring the show back to form.
But this is and will always be remembered as the season finale to everyone except for advertisers and execs at Fox tv. When the DVD set of the 13th season appears in 2028, this will be the final episode. I'm glad they saved this one for last instead of the Frying Game.
I don't know. They must've known about the first Celebrity Boxing way back when they made the episode. So it was probably just going to be a joke about something that was on Fox a few weeks ago. But then they ended up having a second one which is probably why this episode aired at a weird time on a weird day.
Did anyone else think the Springfield Riot was using the riot in L.A. (after the Rodney King verdict) as a reference? I thought the news chopper flying around broadcasting the mayhem and Marge's comment(s) about the lack of police presence and/or delay in responding were similar to the real events where the newscaster in the helicopter kept wondering out loud why there were no police present to end the violence. Not to mention the town hall meeting afterwards where the blame was rested squarely on the shoulders of the Wiggum similar to how Darryl Gates ended up being blamed for the L.A. riots?
I have been quite critical of the Simpsons in recent years (OK, only for the last six or seven!). This episode rates a solid B- in my books -- and I like to think of myself as a harsh grader. It was far better than some of the drivel we had been seeing and actually had some moments of brilliance. I was worried when it started -- the words melting off the newspaper made me think this was going to be another one of those "out there" episodes. The riot scene was about as funny as one could hope for from random senseless violence and destruction. There's nothing funny about riots but The Simpsons gave it a good shot. From there the episode just took off.
Of course, Homer's list of jobs and the Soprano's parody were brilliantly done -- it was a great chance to see some places in town we haven't seen for a long time. The appearance of Jughead, Fat Albert and The Fonz at Springfield Elementary gave me reason to laugh out loud. Lenny and Carl talking on the cell phones was a great bit of social commentary: everyone complains about people who use cell phones when driving yet we all seem to do it. Even Homer doing "Radar Love" wasn't painful to watch and could even be considered amusing. The Dragnet references were well done.
I didn't think the ending did justice to the whole episode. Much like trying to find humor in a riot, there is something disturbing about a baby shooting a rifle and then storing it back under her crib. At least when she shot Mr. Burns it was more accidental and believeable. But, a baby taking a rifle and aiming it well enough to just "wing" the bad guys? I mean, we know Maggie is super intelligent for a baby (a Lisa in training?) and she normally looks out for Homer (remember her catching the bottle thrown at his head in "Lisa On Ice"?) but it just seemed to far-fetched so it brought down the overall grade.
In the end, this was one of the best episodes we have seen in awhile. It seemed respectful of it's heritage like the writer's actually decided to acknowledge that there has been a brilliant past to this show even if the character's don't age. It had some funny moments and some brilliant animation. It restored my faith that the show still has some life left in it and I may actually look forward to next season now. Well done!