Wednesday, June 12, 2013

The Mook, the Chef, the Wife and Her Homer (S18, E01-379)

These two truly are mobsters born in the bodies of oafs.
Plot Summary
Otto loses his tunes, and is forced to listen to much lamer things during his bus drive.  On the way, he spots Metallica, whose bus has broken down.  He leaves the bus to offer the group a lift, but in the meantime Bart drives the bus away.  He's able to quite competently drive it the rest of the way to school, but Otto catches up and in pure anger spanks Bart for what he did.  Principal Skinner sees this and is forced to suspend Otto (with pay) for his use of physical punishment.  In the meantime, Marge has to set up a car pool with various kids across town, including the shy Michael who, as it turns out, is the son of renowned mob boss Fat Tony.

Apparently this wasn't known until the day Marge picks him up, and word quickly spreads.  Soon the entire school is afraid of Michael because of his father.  Lisa decides enough is enough and talks with Michael.  Neither are particularly fond of the school's food so Michael takes Lisa outside to make her a fresh salad, where Lisa learns that Michael is a top-notch cook, who one day hopes to become a professional chef.  Fat Tony is tasked to carpool the kids home, but has a run in with a rival 'business', eventually riding himself of some competition.  Afterward, Michael invites Lisa and the Simpson family over for dinner.  Fat Tony hosts for awhile, but is forced aside as he has a meeting with another family, the higher ups of the guys Tony dealt with earlier.  Its learned that they were trying to kill Fat Tony because they thought he had become soft with the carpool.  Fat Tony ensures them that if he were to ever go down, his son Michael would wreak a terrible vengeance upon them.  Soon, with Lisa's urging, Michael comes in to give everyone some souffles, telling everyone that he made them and he wants to be a chef.  The other family laughs at this pretty hard, and still considers Fat Tony "whack-able" as they don't think his son will be able to wreak any vengeance.  Lisa tries to assure Fat Tony not to care what they think, but seconds later the other family pops up in a helicopter and guns down Fat Tony.

Fat Tony survives the attack, but won't be able to do anything for a few months.  Homer decides to take over the business in the meantime, but he and Bart get a little too into things, and Michael finally decides he's had enough.  He invites the other family over for dinner, and tells them he'll surrender his business and territory in exchange for the safety of both his family and the Simpson family.  To seal the deal, Michael serves the family some spaghetti, but they quickly keel over as it turns out the dishes were poisoned.  Lisa suspects foul play, but later when Michael is congratulated by a recovering Fat Tony for what he did, Lisa worries as Michael made no effort to explain it was an accident.  It seems, though, that Michael has become part of 'the famiily', and nothing Lisa can do now will change that.

Quick Review
This episode was hampered quite badly by how it started.  The entire bit with Otto just wasn't good at all.  From there, though, the episode really picks up.  I usually enjoy episodes featuring Fat Tony and the mafia, and their main presence in the episode was greatly appreciated.  Unfortunately, it wasn't able to fully recover from its dismal start, which explains why it has the low, albeit decent, score it ended up with.

Final Score: 7.0

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