I�ve finally seen "She Of Little Faith" and I�m again pleasantly surprised. Not bad. Not bad at all.
The episode has of course the problem I had expected - there�s too much time wasted for the simple rocket story and too little time left for the serious faith conflict, which is IMO handled too superficial - but there were many positive and almost classic things, like a real story, active characters actually doing stuff and not just following a simple line of slapstickish jokes, a trace of satire about religion (thin, but better than "Praiseland") and even elements of logic and continutiy (Homer and Kissinger�s glasses, the nerds, the pony for Lisa).
No gross stuff, no sex jokes, no blood, not overly weird or mean - with one word: no Scully stuff - and even a working ending that shows the integrity of the family - good stuff. Lisa is of course too annyoing and too much of a mini adult and the change from mini adult to 8-year old child at the end seems a little abrupt, but the ending itself is nice. A clear and promising improvement, especially if you consider that the previous Christmas episodes where about bizarre nonsense, killer toys, ball sacks, camels and whatever.
The episode still has modern problems (superficiality, thin satire, need for celebrities) but it looks like the writers are going at least a little bit back to the roots. Maybe the Al Jean era will bring a change and maybe it�ll be a good change. I saw some good names in the credits - Al Jean, Mike Reiss, David Mirkin, Jon Vitti - so I still have hope.
Together with "Burns in Love" and "Blunder Years" it�s the third almost good episode in season 13. And who�d have thought that at the bad beginning of the season? Not me.
Chris