The Nightmare After Krustmas (S28, E10-606)

Well, I was going to watch but not if I'm going to
hear treason!  Thanks for the warning, that was close!

Plot Summary
It's Christmas, which means Krusty gets his annual week to spend with Sophie, his daughter from that one episode.  Its also a distressing time for Reverend Lovejoy, who hasn't had much luck getting any converts and the pews are looking empty as well.  As evidence, Springfield is hosting a Pagan festival, one exhibit of which runs amok and injures Krusty.  Worried that his brief stay in the hospital will use up his time with his Christian daughter, Krusty accepts Marge's offer to spend Christmas Eve with the Simpson family.

Krusty, ever the opportunist, makes the visit a televised - and heavily sponsored - Christmas special.  Sophie has enough eventually and kicks Krusty and the TV crew - but especially Krusty - out of the house.

Meanwhile, Marge sets up for Maggie an Elf on th- er, Gnome in the Home, a mockup of a relatively recent (and subsequently odd) Christmas tradition where the, uh, Gnome, spies on kids to report back to Santa on their goodness.  Maggie gets freaked out by the Gnome, resulting in an odd nightmare where she hears Wayne Gretzky speak his one single line in the episode.  Waking up, Maggie is further frustrated when Marge reveals not just that the Gnome will stick around all year but that she got a female variant for Christmas as well.  Maggie just decides to decapitate the both of them to regain her sanity.

Lovejoy is out of luck converting anyone until he comes across a dejected Krusty, and uses the chance to convert him to Christianity, made easier by Krusty's desire to appease his Christian daughter.  For awhile all is good - even though Krusty turns his show into a full blown feel-good Christian hour - but Lovejoy is pressured by his deacon to baptize him as soon as possible with Krusty's condition that he'll do it at the lake.

Since it's still winter, the baptism is held at a frozen lake.  Krusty attempts to dunk his head into a hole but the ice underneath him collapses and he's forced under.  Drowning, Krusty has a vision where his father tells him religion doesn't matter when it comes to spending time with his daughter.  Lovejoy pulls off a minor miracle in rescuing Krusty.  In the end, Krusty reverts back to Judaism, but Sophie loves him all the same, while Lovejoy's heroics gets people back in church somehow.

Quick Review
This episode is a mess.  Bringing back a one time character from sixteen seasons ago was an odd and perhaps even desperate move (despite there already being precedence for such a move from NINE seasons ago, for crying out loud), and mixing of storylines with Lovejoy and Krusty was far, far from seamless.  The bit with Maggie was okay for awhile, but it ended early and the whole "lol Maggie is more ruthless than you think! XD" bit got tiring immediately for me.  The guest voices - of which there were several - were mostly wasted aside from Sophie's.  Gretzky had just one line in Maggie's dream, Jackie Mason voiced Rabbi Krustofski but only in a vision where Krusty imagined him as a knockoff Olaf, and I don't even know or care who the third guy was.

It just seemed like the "team" here wanted to make a Christmas episode, and had the budget to make a decent one (some of the animation in the episode looked pretty decent given what it is nowadays), but didn't really know what to do it about so they just slapped together some half-assed ideas and payed a bunch of celebrities money to voice singular lines to call it a holiday special.

Final Score: 5.8

Insane Clown Poppy (S12, E03-251)

Krusty, playing a tune for his (not-to-be-seen-until-16-seasons-later) daughter.

Plot Summary
At a book fair, Krusty learns that he has a daughter, Sophie.  She helps him remember an instance during the Gulf War where he had to hide in a random tent during a dust storm.  There, he met a woman soldier - Sophie's mother - and the two got intimate for no apparent reason.  However, he interferes with her mission to assassinate Suddam Hussein (mostly because it'll ruin his act), thereby instilling an intense hatred of clowns into her, though Sophie is more interesting in bonding with her father.

Krusty reluctantly decides to spends time with Sophie, and finds fatherhood to be more demanding than he anticipated.  He seeks aid from another father, and asks the first one he comes across at the beach: Homer.  Although I don't think Homer gives Krusty any actual advice, Krusty does a better job at spending time with Sophie, and she decides to entrust her violin with him for some reason.

Later, Krusty is at the bar gambling with Moe, Homer, Snake and Fat Tony.  Thinking he's got a hand won with four aces, Krusty needs extra money when Fat Tony raises the pot.  Looking desperately for something of value, he decides to throw in Sophie's violin under the premise that he won't actually lose it when he wins.  However, Fat Tony has a straight flush, and wins the hand and the violin, devastating Krusty.

Krusty tries to make amends with Sophie, but Sophie wants her violin back, losing respect for Krusty.  Krusty goes to Homer for help again, and Homer decides the two should just break into Fat Tony's house to get the violin back.  As it turns out, Tony is hosting some kind of mafia summit, leaving him busy with hosting duties.  The two sneak in and find several violin cases, but most of stuffed with guns.  With no time to search, the two try to sneak off with all of them, but accidentally sneak into the room where the summit is being held. causing a series of events which ultimately lead to Krusty recovering the violin.  He returns it to Sophie who regains some love for her father.

Quick Review
Despite some oddities with the premise (and dating it with the Gulf War reference), I still found this episode fairly enjoyable, as the jokes were funny for the most part.

Final Score: 8.0