Tuesday, April 9, 2013

Gump Roast (S13, E17-286)

Its okay, its a clip show, nobody thinks its canon anyway.
Plot Summary
In an obvious nod to Forrest Gump, Homer (dressed as Forrest, mostly) tells Chief Wiggum (there to arrest him for movie impersonation) some of his life's story shown via clips.  Before he can get far, his family arrives to take him to a secret location.  As it turns out, Homer is taken to a roast in his honor.

At the roast, more clips are shown chronicling Homer's life while a few jokes are made at Homer's expense.  After awhile, though, the aliens Kang and Kodos burst in through the ceiling.  They've been observing humanity and will decide whether to let the planet live or die based on Homer's memory.  Viewing a rather biased set of clips of Homer being an angry brute, they decide to destroy humanity.  However, Lisa convinces the two to see Homer through the memories of an innocent child: Maggie.  They agree, but are only more outraged by the few compassionate clips they see, actually vomiting through their eyes.  However, Maggie continues to 'remember', this time recalling several guest stars from the past few seasons.  The aliens remember they like celebrities and spare the planet under the necessity to keep those stars alive, with the sole condition that they get tickets to the People's Choice Awards.  Afterwards, a rather cryptic montage concludes the episode, promising viewers they've got "stories for years" (including one, which I'm sure was a joke at the time, where Grampa marries Patty and Selma which partly becomes an actual episode).

Quick Review
Gump Roast is the 5th and, up through Season 24, final clip show of the series, a clip show that mostly references episodes from Mike Scully's run (Seasons 9-12).  This clip show doesn't try to hide the fact that its a clip show, showing the first clip just a couple of minutes in, nor does it try to spruce up the clips in some kind of special (like the 138th Spectacular), or within the confines of a normal episode's plot (like the other three).

Comparing this to the other clip shows, its better than the love-themed one from Season 6, but that's more of a 'better by default' thing.  Otherwise, this clip show is mostly unspectacular.  The clips barely had any context (and in some instances no context at all), and the scenes with Kang and Kodos in the latter half of the episode seemed like a throwaway "yeah, whatever" bit that served only to find some excuse to shove in more clips.  It just makes for an episode not really worth watching.

Final Score: 6.4

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