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| Marge does a good job taking care of large sacks of lard, no offense to manatees. |
Homer gets conned into betting poorly on a football game. Worse, he doesn't use his own money, he uses the mafia's. After losing out, Fat Tony and gang make Homer agree to have a porno filmed at his house. Worried over how Marge will react, Homer gets help from Moe and Homer has Marge, Bart and Lisa go to Santa's Village (despite it being August). As expected, the village doesn't have much going on, and Marge returns early to find the film in the middle of production. She quickly learns what Homer did and why, and promptly drives away angry as hell.
Marge goes south of Springfield, near a beach. After some time to think, Marge finally decides to call Homer and say she's coming back for his half-assed apology. However, at the phone booth she's "attacked" by a large manatee, but she's saved by a man named Caleb Thorn, a scientist focused on saving manatees from the jet-skiers who run over them in the nearby body of water. His passion for his work ignites something within Marge, and she decides to stay with Caleb to help the manatees.
Homer takes the kids out to find Marge, and stays with 'cousins' he knows and refers to as rubes (related only because their dogs are brothers). One evening, Lisa sees Marge helping a manatee by the beach and Homer quickly goes to her. He offers his half-assed apology, and Marge accepts but decides she's going to stay with the manatees for awhile longer. Homer thinks Caleb is trying to steal Marge, but Caleb quickly counters that his relationship with Marge is purely professional and the only passion Marge is stirred up with is a passion for life. Homer understands, but the next day tries to think of some way to help the manatees to impress Marge. He sees a group of jet-skiers advancing on a group of manatees, and quickly duck-boats his way out to confront them. After calling the jet-skiers rube, Homer is attacked by them, but is saved by his rube cousin, who has a court order forcing the jet-skiers off the body of water. Marge goes to her tenderized husband's side, sees a rather striking similarity between him and your common manatee, and decides to go back to care for Homer, though Homer instead decides to stay at the beach for some R 'n R, using a manatee to cover him at work.
Quick Review
The opener for Season 17 starts off strong with Homer's mafia troubles, and does decently during his road trip with the kids. However, when the focus is on Marge, Caleb and/or the manatees, the comedy seems to just drift away. The episode recovers a little bit near the end when Homer confronts the jet-skiers, but its not enough to get the episode a decent score.
Final Score: 6.9
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