[The long of it]
He's a cynical bartender perpetually on the brink of suicide. She's a dead-eye shot with a rifle, who once tried to off the local plutocrat. He has a face even he considers repellant. She's as cute as a button. He's old enough to have been in the original "Our Gang" films. She's just celebrated her first birthday. Moe Szyslak and Maggie Simpson, on the surface, have next to nothing in common. Yet, the friendship they strike is so affecting, you can't help but root for them.
Over the years, the writers have gradually made Moe a desperate and bitter man. "Moe Better Blues" finds him at a particularly low ebb. His bar patrons, and the closest thing he has to friends, have abandoned him to watch the once-in-a-century blooming of the Sumatran Century Flower. "They abandoned me for a cooler," Moe laments, "and who can blame them?" After being turned away from the flower exhibition himself, Moe perches on the edge of a tall bridge. After years of threatening suicide, it looks like he's finally going to go through with it ...
Maggie seemingly doesn't have a care in the world, and why should she? She's just a baby. Yet, without a strong father figure (Homer is around, but he's essentially an absent father), her life isn't quite complete. What she really needs is a man to pay attention to her.
A series of unusual circumstances literally launches Maggie from the family car, and into the arms of Moe, standing on the edge of the bridge. It's friendship, if not love, at first sight. Marge quickly notices that her daughter gets along with the family bartender, and asks Moe to become her babysitter. It's not a job that comes naturally to Moe. For one thing, he's deeply suspicious of other people's motives. When Marge offers him a hand-knit sweater, Moe immediately suspects its been laced with chiggers. Yet, he's quick to go great lengths to keep Maggie happy, even to the point of dislocating his own arm. (It took him a while before he could do that without fainting, he explains, smiling, through the pain.) The two have some warm and funny scenes together. Moe reverts back to a more familiar way of relating to people by arranging the couch cushions to resemble his bar. Later, there's cute scene where Moe tries to read a story to Maggie. He doesn't know any children's stories, so he falls back on a classic tale he loves -- "The Godfather." (Maggie has pretty good story comprehension for a baby, incidentally.) It's not so much that Moe is the perfect babysitter, but it's the obvious heart that he puts into the job that's endearing.
Moe gets a little too close to Maggie for the family's comfort, so they dismiss him from Maggie's life. Moe's departure is shot through the lens of a security camera; it's a very effective presentation. I never thought I could feel so sympathetic towards him, but his obvious affection for the youngest Simpson, and his pain at the prospect of never seeing her again, did the trick for me.
Maggie gets more screen time here than in any other episode, save perhaps "Homer Alone (8F14)" which aired more than a decade ago, and it's used well. The animators give her more than her usual allocation of facial expressions, bring her out from behind her pacifier often enough so that we can see them. I also liked the way she squirmed out of her father's arms at her party, her flight from the car, and the way she interacted with Moe generally.
It was a wise decision on the producers' part (assuming it's them, and not Fox scheduling, that makes this decision) to make this the season finale. "Moe Better Blues," although never a downer, has some dark threads running through it -- suicide, obsession, parental rejection, to name a few -- and Maggie's life is seriously imperiled twice. "Bart of War," a just-for-laughs episode, sets the audience up in a good mood before they see this more serious episode. Meanwhile, this episode has the substance needed to be a good finale.
"Moe Better Blues" shines a spotlight on two characters who are often on the periphery of the action, but rarely take center stage. Even though I thought I knew them both well, this show finds interesting new details of their personalities. It's a nice way to close out the year.
[The short of it]
This episode shines a spotlight on two characters who are often on the periphery of the action, but rarely take center stage, and finds interesting new features of their personalities. Moe is surprisingly sympathetic as Maggie's rescuer-turned-babysitter. Meanwhile, the writers and animators team to flesh out Maggie's character, and make her more expressive than usual. Despite its poignant theme and dark plot elements, "Moe Better Blues" is a warm and pleasant lead-in to the summer. (A-)
[DYNs]
... you can just barely see it, but there's a topiary version of the town's Jebediah Springfield statue? ... Moe doesn't think of just watching the flower from the "doorway," where it was clearly visible? ... although Moe longs for "human contact," Wiggum pushes him with his nightstick, rather than his hand? ... Maggie seems happy during the ascent phase of her flight ... ... and worried when she falls back to Earth? ... this is the first time we've seen Maggie kiss anyone? ... as Marge chases Grandpa, Maggie briefly offers Moe her pacifier? ... when Abe loses his robe, a mother on the street shields her daughter's eyes? ... Moe feeds himself spinach pur�e? ... the sweater Marge knits for Moe gets progressively dirtier? ... the ham appears to be beating Homer at checkers?
[References]
"Life in Hell" (comic strip) - one of the topiaries is of Binky the Rabbit
Ringling Brothers Circus - their slogan, "The greatest show on Earth," spoofed by the gardens as, "The greatest show on dirt"
Speedy Alka-Seltzer (corporate mascot) - Abe claims to be him while running down the street - bedpan on Abe's head resembles Speedy's Alka-Seltzer tablet hat
"Courtship of Eddie's Father" (TV series) - theme song plays twice: When Moe bonds with Maggie, and when Homer and Moe's ham spend quality time together
Amtrak (US national railway) - Homer calls Bart "Amtrak" when he wants to refer to him as a "train wreck"
"Alice in Wonderland" (children's novel) - Moe has seen a dirty version called, "Alice in Underpants"
"Itsy-Bitsy Spider" (traditional children's song) - Homer sings his "squirming out Daddy's hands" song to this melody
[Previous Episode References]
[2F13] Someone quickly learns how to play the didgeridoo [1F21] Maggie's first first birthday
[FFF]
Topiary signs at the entrance to the gardens:
+-----------+ +-----------+
|SPRINGFIELD| | OUR |
| BOTANICAL | | STAMENS |
| GARDENS | | ARE A |
| | | PISTIL! |
+-----------+ +-----------+Sign at the century flower exhibit:
SUMATRAN
CENTURY
FLOWER THE
GREATEST SHOW
ON DIRT"Maximum occupancy" sign:
MAXIMUM
OCCUPANCY
2 5 0 0
PERSONSMovie title card:
The
Beverly <-- elegant script
HILLBILLIES <-- rustic typeface
DOWN UNDER <-- normal typeface(The entire title was enclosed by a map of Australia.)
Maggie's car seat latch:
KRAP
-E-
LATCHNewspaper headline:
BABY SAVED
BY LOCAL HERO,
NOT FATHERNewspaper ad:
MEN'S
[ pants ] DRESS
[standing] SLACKS
AT
LOW
PRICES!
Costington'sMoe's datebook:
+----------------------+----------------------+
|17 Monday |20 Thursday |
| | MORE |
|----------------------+----------------------|
|18 Tuesday |21 Friday |
| NOTHIN' | NOTHIN' |
|----------------------+----------------------|
|19 Wednesday |22 Saturday 23 Sunday|
| | |
+----------------------+----------------------+Maggie's storybook:
Alice in
Wonderland[Oops!]
The muddy hill wasn't there until Wiggum needed to send Moe rolling down it.
[Personal Comments & Observations]
Fat Tony orders a hit on the Castellaneta family. Homer should be worried -- Dan Castellaneta provides his voice.
You weren't in the Simpsonmobile, so you didn't get a vote on whether Lisa could explain the joke sign at the garden entrance. In case you were wondering, stamens and pistils are the reproductive parts of flowers. The stamens carry the pollen, while the pistils carry the seeds. "Pistil" is also a word play on "pistol," the slang word for something that is superior or remarkable (according to Robert Chapman's "American Slang"). So, are you laughing as hard as Lisa now?
The Sumatran century flower, or something close to it, exists in real life. I remember the local news sending a team out to cover some sort of orchid that only blooms once every 100 years. I don't recall what the flower looked like, or how it was reported to have smelled.
Malodorous flowers also exist. Southeast Asia is the habitat of something called the, "stinking corpse lily," which coincidentally also produces the largest bloom of any flower. The lily smells like rotting carrion, and for good reason: It is pollinated by flies.
For those of you who missed American TV during the 60s, "The Beverly Hillbillies" was a popular (with audiences if not critics) show about Arkansas hillbillies who strike oil on their land. Newly rich, they move to an affluent Beverly Hills, California, neighborhood but their back-country ways clash with the customs of their upper-crust neighbors. Anyway, what's relevant to this episode is that you saw two of the show's main characters: Irascible, feisty Granny, and her dimwit nephew Jethro. The hillbillies never went to Australia (that I remember) but they did shoot a lengthy series of episodes in England, which became the prototype for the "let's send our characters to have wacky hijinks in a foreign country" kind of show.
- There's a red new Mini Cooper in the Botanical Gardens parking lot.
* The red car Homer smacks into looks like a Cadillac Sedan or Coupe de Ville (we never see how many doors it has), circa 1977 to 1989. I know that's a wide model year spread, but Cadillac didn't restyle this car very frequently.
- Before Maggie crosses the street to Luigi's restaurant, she waits for what I think may be an orange Willys Jeep pickup.
* The white SUV travelling in the other direction might be a Ford Expedition. It has the "Dutch door" tailgate: The lower section is two doors that swing away from each other, like the doors on a panel van, while the upper part is a conventional swing-up tailgate.
- Dave Hall (tm) slo-mo fun worth seeing: Lisa laughing at the "stamens and pistils" joke.