So It's Come to This: A Simpsons Clip Show (S04, E18-077)

Insert some kind of "Bartbeat" in place of "heartbeat" joke here.

Plot Summary
In what is generously called an episode, Homer keeps messing around with Bart on April Fools Day.  Determined to get back at Homer, Bart investigates to determine Homer's weakness.  Learning quite easily that beer is that weakness, and that a shaken can of beer can make one look quite the fool, an April Fool as it were, Bart takes a can of beer and shakes it up hardcore at a paint store.  Homer eventually goes to open the can up, but before Bart can declare the joke, the can blows up, and Homer is knocked out.

At the hospital, while the clips start coming in, its learned that Homer may never walk again.  Attempts to help him do so seemingly fail, however Homer sees a candy machine and, after reminiscing about that land of chocolate, is able to walk to it.  However, the machine gives him difficulty and after Homer shakes it around, it falls on him, ironically choking him with bars of chocolate.

Now in a coma, the family has a moment with Homer.  Bart, in grief, admits to his unconscious father that he set up the can, that it was all an April Fools joke.  Having heard it in his coma, Homer is able to wake up, and choke the boy in rage.  With his miraculous recovery, Homer tries to pull one last joke on the family, except its May 16th and Homer had to lose 5% of his brain.  Good times.

Quick Review
As the title implies, this is the first of a few clip shows featured in the series, finally happening after 76 episodes.  As such, I find it a bit difficult to score such an episode as most of its content is comprised of clips from older episodes.  Should I grade solely the new material, knowing full well the episode will be scored low from there not being much new material?  Instead, I still give credit to the types of clips that are used and, hey, they're still funny even if the context for them are much more flimsy than previously.  As a result, we end up with what is perhaps the best clip show of all time. ...okay, not really.

I also find it funny that the show aired on April Fools Day, which is also the episode's theme.  It's like: "hey this was a pretty cool start to the show huh?  I wonder what's gonna happen to Homer and- APRIL FOOLS IT'S A CLIP SHOW, TAKE THAT SUCKERS".  As I've said, though, what little new content there is turns out to be most excellent and connects the many clips very well for the most part.

The original content by itself (the April Fools Day plot, the appearances by Barney, Grampa, Mr. Burns and Dr. Nick), is very strong and if it had been laid out as a full episode I'm sure it would've been one of the classics.  Even though it actually just serves as a reason to insert old material into a new context, its still funny stuff.  Some of the clips work well in this episode, others are brought up somewhat weakly, not that it derives from the clips any.  This score may seem high, but for a clip show episode, this ends up being superb.  I don't expect any of the other clip show episodes from the series to get this high a score.  Well, maybe the 138th episode spectacular, but that'll be for later.

Final Score: 8.7