Well, last week's episode (which also takes the same place in production order) was a Bart/Marge story; it seems fitting, then, that this week's would focus on Homer and Lisa's relationship. Homer slighting Lisa is not new territory, even the half-insensitive, half-accidental kind; but after seeing Lisa snap like that, I was certainly interested to see how Homer would try to win her back this time. Both at the start of that part of the story (his unfortunate safety demo at SES) and at the end (his losing bid for mayor), it was clear that the results didn't matter to Lisa nearly as much as the attention and effort did, and that was nice. Nominally, the focus of the episode was on the recall election (though that took even longer than usual to get around to), and that was funny enough. On the whole the humor level was decently high - I wasn't thrilled that this episode seemed to have a higher proportion of silly gags than the last few, but it wasn't too bad. As a character-based story, I liked this episode; as a political one, it wasn't great, but again, that really wasn't the main point, despite the title.
DYN: ...the crafts store is called "Do It Yourself, You Lazy Ass" - even though making a gift requires one to be rather non-lazy? ...Homer also seems to have a thing for fantasies on the high seas (cf. 1F17)? ...another no-name character's name is revealed (Eleanor Abernathy, the cat lady)? ...Homer seems to suffer from phantom tail? (A decent tag on a sort of silly joke) ...J. Loren Pryor seems to have a different voice now, at least from what I remember?
Previous episode references 8F15: Some of Lisa's destructive acts remind me of this episode 7F19: Noting the importance of Homer's place as a role model CABF11: Homer goes on a safety crusade 9F07: Homer receives a key(card) to the city 1F19: Freddy Quimby reappears 5F09: Homer runs for office 2F02: Quimby tries to stay in office DABF06: Milhouse uses the "Whazzup?" catchphrase
Other notes I'm sure it's a common sci-fi theme, but was anyone else reminded of "Slaughterhouse-Five" by the Rigellian zoo in the couch gag?
At the end of Act I, maybe I missed something... was there any point to the flickering light effect other than to make me think my TV was about to explode?