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| The spirit of Christmas is... somewhere in here I think. |
It's Christmas Eve, and Homer needs to go home to spend the night with his family. However, on the way back Homer is tricked and subsequently guilt-tripped by Moe to spend the evening at the bar instead. Homer unwittingly stays there until nearly midnight, when he realizes his grave error and rushes home. Too late, as Marge goes off on Homer, telling him that he isn't welcomed home for Christmas.
Homer tries to go back to Moe's, but the bar is now closed. Moe is inside singing karaoke by himself, when he notices Homer left his wallet on a stool. Meanwhile, forced to wander around, Homer attempts to buy a quick literally-last-second gift for Marge but can't as most shops have closed up. Homer tries to spend some time at a movie theatre, but isn't pathetic enough to spend Christmas Eve alone at the movies, and leaves but not before giving up his food to one of the other lonely patrons. He finds Flanders out selling left-handed wares and, given Ned's most recent loss, Homer decides to buy something from Ned out of support. Homer is happy to help others, but is still pretty miserable himself.
Moe goes to the Simpson house presumably to return the wallet, but also confesses to Marge that he intentionally kept Homer at the bar all night. Marge is very relieved that Homer isn't 100% at fault, and tries to call him, but gets no response, and thus she and the kids go out to find him, which is an adventure in itself.
Someone dressed as a nutcracker tries to shoo Homer away from sleeping on a public bench, but takes pity on Homer by taking him to a post-Christmas party at the mall full of mall Santas and other reject mascots. Marge is tipped off on this, and finds Homer to present herself as a makeup present (I guess?). Homer is happy and comes to learn a lesson after the night's events: the best place to get drunk is at home.
Quick Review
This was a weird episode. Was it trying to be humorous? I can't actually say yes to this question. Was it trying to provide some kind of social commentary? If it was, it did so very poorly. It was an odd mishmash of smaller storylines that try to keep together a very thin premise, with not that many jokes to keep things entertaining.
Also some continuity notes: this marks the first episode to note Ned's post-Edna life as well as feature the comic book guy's new wife, Kumiko, from that episode I don't like. Between this, a few references to older episodes, and making it a point to note a Frozen reference was coming up for the couch gag, the episode tried to make up for what I guess would be a surreal storyline by throwing in references everywhere, which we all know by now does not make for comedy.
Final Score: 6.1
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