What *were* they thinking when they wrote this episode?
They episode seemed totally disjointed, like they had several random ideas floating round and asked 'what's the least worst way we can combine them?'
The 2nd half in particular was bad, 'stone age' reality TV show cast- offs? The ending in particular was an anti-climax - suddenly back at home with no explanation?
We do see that Homer is still "working" at SNPP though.
my sentiments exactly, although I was far more entertained throughout than I usually am with newish Simpsons. Like so many post season 9 episodes, Helter Shelter was indicative of good writers being either creatively exhausted or just plain lazy. They can come up with good ideas, but when it comes to developing these ideas into a full episode, everything tends to go wrong. Sweets & Sour Marge, Brother's Little Helper, Screaming Yellow Honkers, Little Big Mom, Hello Gutter Hello Fadder, HOMR, Homer vs Dignity - all of these had solid ideas at their core that could easily have been developed into great episodes, but as it turned out they only ended up as average to bad. Helter Shelter has a good "center" - put the Simpsons in a reality show in order to mock reality shows in general - and like the "centers" in the other episodes I mentioned, it is mostly clever and entertaining. But, they still managed to handle it badly. It jumped from idea to idea at a extraordinary speed, first it was the Simpsons struggling to adapt, then BOOM, straight onto them turning into realistic 1890s folk, then WHAM, Squiggy, then ZUNK, they put the house in a river, then NEWT, they meet ex-Survivor fake-neanderthals (??), then SMACK, they are back at their old house again. As a result of this approach, it is ridiculously incohesive and a very odd thing to watch. It seems like the writing team was separated from each other, each writer locked in a room alone and told to write one minute of Helter Shelter each without being able to confer with the other writers at all about what they or anyone else was doing. Then, after a while, all the writers were brought out with their minute-long script written, and the team as a whole quickly stuck each minute together to make a 20-minute episode. Strange, to say the least. But anyway - this episode was undoubtedly funny, while not being the funniest of the season (Strummer Vacation is the best of the season in all areas IMO), for laughs-per-minute, it was still above average for the DABF series. Some gags really bombed (Elderly Animal Channel? guh?) but most of this ep was hilarious, there were too many notable gags to list here. I loved the way Squiggy was handled, from Marge's totally unimpressed, just confused "Squiggy??" when he turned up at the door, to Lisa's "what's the guy from Laverne & Shirley doing here?" - he was treated in a very off-hand, goofy way that worked out great. The ending, from the extremely stupid and nonsensical river sequence to the attack on the TV producers, was just stupid however, and like Bart, I am tired of these wacky adventures. This episode would have been excellent had they constructed it better - if they had made the story more fluid and coherent, then the satire on reality TV would have seemed a lot more focused and a lot less contrived. As it stands, it's a incohesive, but hilarious, mess. C+
Also, what was with the hose? Am I missing something? Or is it just the writers missing the ability to write a good ending?