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| Can you just feel the love? |
Its Christmas Eve, and Homer does his shopping last minute albeit in a clever manner. That night, Marge insists the family wake up at 7:00 am to celebrate Christmas, and no sooner, having confiscated all the alarm clocks to prevent early risers. Bart comes up with a plan, though, by drinking 12 glasses of water before going to sleep, so that he'll wake up early to use the bathroom. The plan works like a charm, and after a quick stop to the bathroom, Bart is at the tree nearly two hours early. He opens up one present: a remote controlled firetruck loaded with features, however he accidentally rams it into an outlet, catching it on fire. Losing control, Bart accidentally drives the flaming toy into the plastic tree, setting it and the presents underneath aflame, melting it into a pile of goop with the presents caught inside.
Fearing trouble, Bart takes the hardened mass outside, and buries it with snow. By the time he's finished, though, its a minute after 7:00, and the family has just woken up to witness their missing tree and presents. Lisa wonders what Bart was doing outside, and a panicked Bart is able to come up with a lie: that some burglars took the tree and the presents. The family is devastated, and trying to cheer up already cheerful seniors don't help either as everyone else seems to be enjoying their Christmas.
Homer goes to Moe's, where he sees a news report on TV about what happened. That night, Marge brings him home to a miracle not unlike Its a Wonderful Life: the town has pitched in to help the family recoup their losses, with the donations totalling around $15,000. Bart is starting to worry about what's happened, especially as a couple of orphans try to give him a dollar. Though the family plans on just replacing what was lost, the townsfolk are able to convince them to spend the money irresponsibly. The family goes ahead and buys a new car, but a short time later Homer crashes the car into a nearby frozen lake after slipping on an icy road.
Bart's guilt eventually overwhelms him, and he reveals the truth of what happened to the family. Before Homer and Lisa can tear him apart too badly, Kent Brockman appears for a follow up story on the 'robbery'. Just then, the dog pulls up a piece of the tree ruins, the snow above it having melted some. The lie is exposed, and though Bart tries to take full responsibility, and though the family tries to claim they didn't know Bart had lied until after receiving and blowing the town's money, the town now hates them anyway.
Having become social pariahs, the family realizes that the only way people will stop hating them is if they get their money back. Not having $15,000, the family tries to win some on Jeopardy, but Marge not only loses but is $5200 in the hole, money she was supposed to pay back to Alex Trebeck. As the family flees back to Springfield, they find the town back at their house rather joyous. As it turns out, everyone didn't feel like being mad at the Simpsons for much longer, so they decided to 'even' the debt by pretty much cleaning out the Simpsons house of everything. The Simpsons are left with absolutely nothing except the house, each other... and a washcloth that they find a way to have fun with.
Quick Review
I did not like this episode too much. It starts off promising enough, and even after Bart wrecks the tree the episode still has potential, but once the town got involved with giving money to the family and most of the stuff afterwards I just was not enjoying the episode much aside from the Jeopardy bit. I just didn't like the direction the episode took, nor how it ended, so the score suffers heavily as a result.
Final Score: 6.7
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