Sky Police (S26, E16-568)

In the next episode, Chief Wiggum learns about helicopters.

Plot Summary
By mistake, Chief Wiggum is sent a jetpack intended for one Clancy Wiggins.  Regardless, Wiggum happily claims the jetpack and hoards it to himself, becoming an airborne sentry, "Sky Police" as it were.  After some time, though, Wiggins - a military chief - comes in to claim his jetpack and bust Clancy Wiggum for basically stealing it.  Wiggum attempts to fly away but overuse of the jetpack, combined with military gunfire, causes the jetpack to malfunction.  As Wiggum detaches itself, the jetpack goes haywire, eventually crashing into the church, causing great damages.

With the church's act-of-god system preventing them from getting any insurance benefits, the church is left with no money to fix itself.  The six-person committee of Reverend Lovejoy, his wife Helen, Sideshow Mel, Agnes Skinner, Ned Flanders and Marge Simpson gets help, however, from an unlikely source: Apu - who needs the church up to teach people not to steal or kill (him).  He tells the group to go to the casino to get the funds using the ages-old trick of card counting - specifically keeping track of the cards in a deck and if a deck has a high enough set of cards remaining, send in someone with a big pot of money to reap the benefits.  The six do so wonderfully on the first night - in part because the group advises Marge to not tell Homer as he's prone to screw these things up.

The casino is on to the group after the first night, so Apu advises the group to don disguises for night two.  Bart and Lisa catch Marge in disguise before she leaves; she tells the two what's going on and has them promise not to tell Homer.  The second night goes wonderfully as well, and the church now has enough money for repairs.  However, Marge is stunned later to find that Homer has been taken in by the casino, who demands their money back less Homer wind up in a more battered shape.

Marge learns that the kids, worried that Marge was still out late, told Homer out of concern, and Homer rushes blindly into the casino asking about Marge - whom the casino was suspicious of - and nabs him as a hostage.  Marge tries to get Reverend Lovejoy to get the money back, but he's already used it to fix up the casino.  Realizing how dirty the church has become through the group's acts, Marge decides to go back to the basics with her faith to save Homer - by praying at the casino.  Stunned by the sight, casino-goers gawk at Marge's praying, causing casino profits to plummet.  The casino subsequently agrees to give Homer up as long as Marge agrees that her and her group never step foot in a casino again.  The incident causes Marge to think about her faith for a moment, but Homer reassures her its fine.

Quick Review
Despite the title, the sky police portion only makes up the opening gag and a credits gag.  Part of me wishes the sky police gag lasted longer, but it's probably for the best that it didn't.

The majority of the episode is focused on the card-counting story.  I must say, though, its a pretty decent episode.  Apu seemed like his old self at long last, despite the odd change to his past, and the episode didn't go off the deep end with religion until the very end when it couldn't do much to hurt the episode.

Final Score: 7.5

Pray Anything (S14, E10-301)

Beer is always better when its sacrilegious.

Plot Summary
Homer takes the family to a WNBA game for some reason.  There, Homer witnesses a terrifying sight: seeing Ned Flanders win a chance for a half-court shot, making the shot to win $50,000, then winning an additional $100,000 for his generous donation of the previous $50,000.  Ned even gets to drive home in a wiener-mobile!  An extremely jealous Homer decides to ask Ned how he gets so lucky, and discerns that Ned's supposed secret is prayer.  Homer tries it out himself a few times, and each time coincidence helps Homer believe that prayer is working.

At the same time, tree roots have found its way into the house, clogging up the sink and ruining drywall.  Homer prays for a solution to his dilemma while walking to church, but takes a bad fall in a hole just outside of it.  Some lawyer quickly persuades Homer to sue the church and, despite Marge's heavy protests, Homer ends up winning the suit, getting the deed to the church.  Homer's prayer is answered as now the Simpsons can live in the church, and Reverend Lovejoy is left to live at the Flanders house.

Lovejoy attempts to continue his service elsewhere, but it doesn't work out, forcing Lovejoy to just leave town.  Meanwhile, Homer hosts a 'housewarming' party at the church, which never seems to end.  With bonfires, indecency and people starting to worship other, multiple, gods, it starts raining.  The rain doesn't stop, and soon the entire town is flooded, Homer's prayers doing nothing to stop it.  Everyone is forced to the church roof to avoid the flood, and they turn on Homer, but Lovejoy reappears to refocus the group and leads an actual prayer which stop the rain.  Lisa surmises that the bonfire swelled up moisture, which the lack of trees allowed the town to flood more quickly.  She can't explain why the rain stopped, crediting Buddha half-assedly.  Up in heaven, God and Buddha decide the town has had enough.

Quick Review
This episode wasn't that funny.  Making sacrilegious jokes isn't a new thing for the show, but the attempts to make those jokes funny this time just did not work out, and that WNBA bit to start the episode didn't get it going right either.

Final Score: 6.7

She of Little Faith (S13, E06-275)

Yep, Lenny and Carl are Buddhists too, because why not.

Plot Summary
Homer and Bart attempt to shoot off a model rocket, but the attempts literally blow up in their faces.  When Ned Flanders joins in on the fun, doing so successfully at that, Homer has enough and hires his college nerd pals to build him a rocket.  This rocket actually gets off the ground, but he loses control of it and the rocket shoots into the church, taking out windows and starting a fire within, essentially ruining it.

With the church already strapped for funds, Reverend Lovejoy is forced with no other option than to accept aid from Mr. Burns of all people.  Burns enlists Lindsay Naegle to remodel the church into a place full of advertisements and other such sacrilege so that the church can earn the needed money.  Lisa is extremely outraged over all of this, and disgusted that most other patrons are okay with these changes, and decides to never return to this church again.

Though Lisa still believes in God, she is still adamant in finding a new way of following Him.  Despite this, Marge is scared that Lisa's soul is in danger for her no longer going to church.  Lisa's search for a new religion takes her a Buddhist temple, where Lenny, Carl and Richard Gere all are.  They convince her to take up Buddhism and its belief of finding inner peace.  Lisa announces this rather publicly, which further worries Marge.

After the church gets their profits from Burns' meddling, Lovejoy turns his attention to Lisa, and convinces Marge to use Christmas to bring Lisa back to Christianity.  The allure of Christmas cookies and what is apparently a wrapped up pony present (though its just Ralph and Milhouse) nearly brings Lisa back over, but she sees Lovejoy spying in from the outside, and runs off.  Lisa goes back to the Buddhist temple to tell Gere about what happened.  Gere tells Lisa that Buddhists can actually celebrate any holiday, as Buddhism is about inner peace, and respects the diversity and love of other religions.  Lisa goes home, and lets the family know that although she'll remain Buddhist, she'll still 'pay lip service' to Christianity by going back to church and celebrate Christmas and the family is okay with this, I guess.

Quick Review
This episode was good when it wasn't focused on Lisa.  It was terrible when it did.

There were a few things that worked well, like the opening plot with the rocket and a few interactions among the non-Lisa members of the family.  However, Lisa's religion quest provided very little humor, and Richard Gere's appearance did little to add humor to that plot line either.  It dragged down an otherwise okay episode.

Final Score: 6.2