Simprovised (S27, E21-595)

"End it."  He thinks.  No, not the bit.  Not the series.
Not even his life.  No, everything.  Everything must end.

Plot Summary
Chief Wiggum throws an extravagant birthday party for Ralph which includes a brand new, state-of-the-art treehouse, which makes Bart jealous.  He quickly coerces Marge into rebuilding his treehouse but, afterward, tells Milhouse not to bother thanking Marge as things such as major remodeling is only her "job" as a mom.  Marge overhears this and gets upset at Bart, but Bart gets help from Homer in making up to her and the two reconcile.

Meanwhile, Homer bombs on a speech at the plant thanks to his fear of public speaking.  To get his mind off the incident, Marge takes Homer to an improv show, where he's impressed with the group's ability to think and act on the fly.  He and a few others decide to take an improv class offered by the group and soon start up their own group, of which Homer is the star.  Lisa advises Homer to try his luck at a French festival coming up, but Homer psyches himself out leading up to the day.

Fearful of failure, Moe offers to become an improv plant for Homer, but Lisa overhears and pleads with Homer not to cheat.  Eventually, Homer agrees and does his improv show wonderfully.

The last few minutes are spent on a segment called "Homer Live", where Dan Castellaneta voice acts as Homer while the show digitally shows Homer on a desk (with a bunch of nonsense references flying around him to keep things interesting) moving his mouth as Dan talks.  The segment is just Dan answering (I'm sure) heavily screened questions which amount to a waste of time, honestly.

Quick Review
The episode itself was another bore, with barely anything of comedic note and with both stories wrapping up quickly and all too neatly for it be of any worth.

The "live" segment was interesting of course.  Perhaps with intention, an episode about improv then features a segment in which Dan has to improvise Homer's dialogue on the fly, and he threw out a few decent things that were limited by the rather punchless questions that made it through screening.  While the episode was beyond saving, this bit was still the best the show had to offer this night.

Final Score: 6.9