Oh, fine. Bees, Burns, it's an episode. It fell apart again in act 3, if only because of the goofy crap necessitated by the choice of plot resolution. No comments otherwise.
DYN: ...the title is a rare example of a reference to both main plots? (7F18 and 5F20 are the only others that jump to mind at the moment.) ...sax solo 33? (See below)
Previous episode references JABF01: Reanimated Christmas opening JABF20: Burns' private jet seen 4F04, others?: Kearney's kid mentioned 2F08: Homer and Marge's fears mentioned (though not the same ones) 1F11, 3G03: One-man band AABF17: Burns goes to extravagant measures to be liked 2F02, movie: Wrecking ball stuff HABF16: Burns mentions a kiss-cam in his new stadium GABF12: "Sea of Love"
Other Futurama episode 1ACV06: The billionaires shooting arrows at famous paintings reminds me of art skeet-shooting in that show Wall-E: The robot in Homer's future fantasy looks like him, works in a desolate human-free setting, and does Wall-E's job of compacting stuff into cubes inside it
Christmas opening, again As far as I can tell, the animation is the same as JABF01's. I can't go check right now, but it's the same length, suggesting any changes would be subtle. There are some non-visual differences someone with a good memory would pick up, though: -JABF01 had a snippet of "Jingle Bells" at the start, but this has "O Christmas Tree" -This features a new sax solo, the only one apart from the main theme variations to be a jazzy rendition of an existing song ("Deck the Halls"); at least it'll be easy to name! Note that JABF01 was shortly before the recent solo reboot. -The couch gag looks the same, and I assume it is, but the music is different (Don, take note!) Note also that unlike 7G08 and JABF01 with their Christmasy openings, and 5F07 with its chalkboard/couch gag, this episode really has nothing to do with Christmas or even winter! However, it is the last new episode to air before Christmas this year; one wonders if repeats will use this opening or what.
And finally... OK, OK, I know it's all because of the strike and junk, but with this episode we now have another record number of holdover episodes (8), and assuming a KABF22 exists, that will increase the number to 9. Will that decrease thanks to a shorter LABF production season, or a lengthened air season 20? I guess we'll see!