 |
| Another new gimmick for Season 26: in-episode hashtags. Surely, #thesimpsons enriches this "emotional" moment. |
Krusty is the target of a comedy roast, but he is completely unprepared to be the one that's roasted. After the likes of Sarah Silverman and especially Jeff Ross tear into Krusty for being "unfunny", Krusty takes the words, for some reason, to heart. After a quick attempt to prove he's funny fails, Bart finds him and advises him to seek counsel from his father, Rabbi Hyman Krustofski. Krusty goes to his father to learn how funny he is. The Rabbi starts by noting his favorite comedian, Rabbi Rudenstein, then telling Krusty that he's always felt his son's comedy has been kinda "eh", immediately becoming motionless. Krusty quickly realizes that his father died while calling him an "eh" comedian.
A grieving Krusty finds himself unable to cope with his father's death, nor with his last remarks. Soon, Krusty decides to retire as he no longer finds himself funny. Bart, desperate to save his hero (again), goes to Krusty's mansion and shows him multiple Krusty episodes at once to show the clown how funny he is. Krusty, though, quickly notices how often he reuses his simple jokes and gags, and becomes even more depressed, going into a drinking binge as a result. In the aftermath, a sleeping Krusty dreams about being in Jewish Heaven, with Rodney Dangerfield touting its strengths, but Krusty's father appears to remind him Jewish Heaven isn't actually a thing, and that if he wants to make a difference, Krusty should devote his life to helping people.
Meanwhile, the Rabbi's death has Lisa gravely concerned for his own father's health, and begins constantly watching and keeping an eye on Homer to ensure his safety. Soon, Lisa wraps a sleeping Homer completely with bubble wrap, and ironically it does help as it saves Homer from a bus crashing into him - validating Lisa's fears.
Krusty helps with the construction of an animal shelter, but he feels no accomplishment for the feat. Bart finds him again and takes him to a nearby temple, where Rabbi Rudenstein is giving service. Rudenstein includes comedy in his routine, and Krusty realizes that Rudenstein's jokes are no better than his. More notably, though, if his father found Rudenstein funny, then by extension he had to of found Krusty funny as well. Relieved, Krusty has another dream where he and his father enjoy their time in the Jewish Heaven that shouldn't be.
Quick Review
Where to start?
First of all, the couch gag. It went on for way too long. Its become a thing in recent years where the producers of the show will allow other creators to make their own couch gag, but they gotta start enforcing some kind of time limit on these, or put them on social media by themselves, or something. This one, created by Don Hertzfeldt, which features what the Simpsons would be like tens of thousands of years from now (under the correct premise that the show is still airing then), went on for almost two minutes, whereas the "joke" was understood in well under half the time. It really seems like filler for the episode as it just dragged on and on, it seemed. That said, its just as well the episode got filler at the beginning, because the episode wasn't that good.
Now, the death. News of a character's death had been circulating for awhile, and hype was building up. Clues as to who would be the one to perish popped up, and the news that the character would die in a Krusty-focused episode, rumors were rampant on who it would be. The episode itself even references the buildup in the chalkboard gag. I figured, in a previous writing that is no longer, that the character that dies would be unrelated to the plot and they would die in a stupid way. Well, I was half-right, the character was related to the episode's plot, but he died in a stupid way, which I guess is par for the course for the show at this point. Rabbi Krustofski, who originally was Krusty's estranged father before they made up, helped Krusty finally go through his bar mitzvah, and has appeared in a couple of cameos since, is not the "big, important" character producers made it out to be. Oh, sure, he's an important piece of Krusty's character and he's voiced by Jackie Mason, but as a standalone character he's not much. To compare, there was little to no buildup for Mona Simpson's death, and she's both voiced by a well-known celebrity and important to Homer's history. So why now? It troubles me that, in what seems to be a very gimmicky season, they would build that death up.
How about all of those guest voices? Silverman, Ross, Mason, David Hyde Pierce, Kelsey Grammer for a Sideshow Bob cameo, lot going on there. While not as many celebrity guests as in Season 25's premiere, they were overall better used than in that episode, with each providing a good line or two (well, except Pierce, I guess).
That all aside, the episode was okay. There were a few good jokes throughout, and the sideplot with Homer and Lisa had its moments, but the episode's multiple missteps really hurt it and at the end of the day, another "Krusty quits, oh wait-" episode just doesn't work out.
Final Score: 6.6
No comments:
Post a Comment