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| It'd be awkward if he knelt during the anthem, wouldn't it? |
At Moe's, Homer and his bar mates cheer on the Springfield Isotopes in a football game against the "Boston Americans", whose handsome quarterback and grumpy coach find a way to win the game via methods that Springfield fans would easily consider "cheating", but Boston fans who coincidentally are also at the bar write off as ingenious strategy. Homer in particular is upset over the game, and Boston fans in particular over their smugness, so imagine his shock when he comes home to find Bart wearing a Boston hat, also displaying the cockiness of a typical Boston fan.
Small efforts to make Bart see the error of his bandwagoning ways fail, so Homer decides to take the family on a "hate-cation", a trip to Boston with every intention to make the family, well, Bart, hate the city in the process.
However, Marge is in love with Massachusetts' supposed high standards of living, while Lisa loves Boston's higher educational standards. Even Homer's opinion changes once he is introduced to candlepin bowling - an easier variant of the sport. Overnight, Homer and Marge make the decision to stay in Boston permanently, a decision Bart and Lisa wholeheartedly agree with.
However, Bart's intrigue with Boston - one based on the supposed rough 'n' tough hooliganism nature of the town coupled with the boorish manner of its sports fans - isn't coming to fruition. This is made evident in school as while Lisa thrives, detention for Bart is actually, well, detention. Further, everyone he finds in Boston seems nicer than what he was led to believe. Despite Lisa's verbal threats to keep things as they are now, Bart decides he wants no more of this and opts to reset the status quo.
Bart takes the family to a parade for the Boston Americans for having won, uh, something in an attempt to get Homer to crack. Torn between rooting for his new hometown team and his pre-existing hatred for the team, Homer literally tears up a Boston cap and calls the team - in their and the fans' faces - a bunch of cheaters.
The scene cuts back to Springfield, the Simpsons having moved back after probably becoming enemy #1 in Boston. Bart finds newfound respect for his new town, while Lisa - her dreams shattered once more - deludes herself into thinking she's still there.
Quick Review
While the other two episodes in this season have taken the, well, boring approach, this episode does a much better job at throwing out jokes and, sadly, pointless references. The parts of the episode that focus on Lisa are particularly awful about this. Despite the episode focusing around a topical issue again, the comedy surrounding it fared much better than it usually does. While there are a lot of good jokes throughout the episode, there are quite a few bad ones as well. The episode also spends a lot of time being quite kind of Boston, in fact I don't think there was anything made fun of regarding the town other than "some of the sports fans are jerks".
Overall, while the episode has a lot of good going for it, it did misstep quite often, preventing it from reaching its potential. A shame, too, Season 28's gotten off to a poor start, it could've really used a better version of this episode.
Final Score: 7.0
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