Friday, February 22, 2013

The Old Man and the C Student (S10, E20-223)

Grampa looks like an old Homer, that is the joke occurring here.
Plot Summary
A letter Lisa wrote for school asking the Olympic Committee to have the torch runner pass through Springfield turns into the Olympic Committee heavily considering Springfield to host the whole damn thing.  Homer enters a spring with googly eyes for a mascot competition, which eventually wins.  The Olympic Committee is impressed with the town, as well as a song the Springfield Elementary children sing during the proceedings.  Just before Springfield officially wins the bid, Principal Skinner introduces the final act: the comedy stylings of Bart Simpson.  Bart uses his time to make fun of every country represented in the committee.  Outraged, the committee retract their bid for Springfield and leave hastily.  Bart is blamed for costing Springfield the Olympics (and the other kids are also to blame for finding his act funny), so they all are forced to do 20 hours of community service.

Bart's community service takes place at the retirement home, where Lisa had actually been volunteering for the past year.  Bart is taken aback by how the seniors are treated like babies: they get vacuumed for crumbs during nap time, they win soft bananas in bingo (where the phrase "you sunk my battleship" is popular), and the movies are heavily edited to have happy endings.  Bart feels pity for the old folks as they can't ever really have "fun" anymore.  Finding an opportunity, Bart sneaks them all out of the home and, after some frolicking in the field, takes them on a boat ride where there's limboing and such.

Meanwhile, Homer gets in a shipment for a thousand springs, no longer relevant now that the Olympics aren't coming to Springfield.  After several failed attempts to sell or otherwise implement the springs, Marge forces Homer to get rid of them.  He does so - by flushing them one by one down the toilet.

Lisa catches up to Bart on the boat, and though she is ready to get mad at him for what he did, realizes that the seniors are having fun, and eases up.  However, as the captain of the boat is blind, they get run into by another boat, causing it to sink.  Jack LaLanne tries to save the boat, but it breaks apart even further.  The boat sinks, but rises back up, which keeps happening.  As it turns out, the springs Homer is flushing are coming out from a pipe that just so happens to be directly below the boat.  It gives a rescue copter enough time to save everyone, and though Bart's community service is done, he's more than happy enough to come back and help Grampa and the others limbo and such.

Quick Review
This ended up being a fairly good episode.  The Olympic opening had its moments, and Homer's subsequent spring subplot was fine, but the main plot was strong as well aside from a couple of missteps, keeping this episode's score somewhat strong.

Final Score: 8.1

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