Guess Who's Coming to Criticize Dinner? (S11, E03-229)

All that antidote can't be good for you.

Plot Summary
The elementary school goes to a local newspaper for a field trip, with Homer volunteering to help take some kids there.  As the kids tour the building, Homer breaks from the group when he smells cake nearby.  His nose takes him to a farewell party for the paper's food critic who is less than enthused about the party's food.  When Homer arrives and starts getting into the cake, the news editor there realizes that Homer actually likes the stuff, and decides to hire him on as the new food critic, provided Homer can write a sample review.  Homer's attempt, of course, fails, but he gets another chance.  Lisa helps him with his second attempt, and the new review is good enough for Homer to get the job.

Homer begins visiting restaurant after restaurant to eat food and review the places, with Lisa writing the reviews.  As a lover of food, Homer finds that he enjoys every restaurant he goes to, and gives positive reviews everywhere, earning the praise of a fattening Springfield.  However, soon thereafter Homer is greeting by the other critics of the newspaper, who chide Homer for only dishing out good reviews, and suggest he throws in some negative reviews every now and then.  Being the extreme character that he is, Homer of course does a complete 180; instead of giving every restaurant he visits a good review, he starts giving every restauarant a bad review, having Lisa type up scathing remarks about each place.  It too much for Lisa to be involved with, so she quits helping Homer with the reviews.  Still, Homer feels that he'll never get his comeuppance.

Springfield is hosting a food festival, and Homer is tasked with reviewing the food there, as every restaurant will be represented.  Shortly before the festival, members of every restaurant in Springfield meet up.  Having lost business from Homer's continued negative reviews, they decides to kill him, as simply banishing him from the restaurants is too 'dishonorable'.  They bring in some kind of assassin chef, who reveals an éclair so filled with butter it'd probably clog even Homer's heart beyond repair, and it'll be filled with poison too.

At the festival, Bart overhears a couple of the restaurant owners discussing the plan, and goes to tell Marge and Lisa.  They split up to find Homer.  Homer, having become stuffed eating and then negatively reviewing way too much food, sees the éclair created by the assassin, and makes his way over to eat it.  Lisa is able to find Homer just as he grabs it, and in desperation declares it to ironically be nonfat.  The supposition is enough for Homer to toss it away in horror, exploding some other stall nearby.  As the chef is arrested (though he immediately escapes), Homer and Lisa reconcile, though Homer still gets his comeuppance in the form of a simple beating.

Quick Review
I rather enjoyed this episode.  It has a few highlights, like Homer imagining the dog saying "chewy?" during his second attempt at a review, and even as off-the-wall as the idea of bringing in an assassin chef to kill Homer with a fatty poisoned éclair may be, it was done pretty well and brought an entertaining conclusion to the episode.

Final Score: 8.4