Four Regrettings and a Funeral (S25, E03-533)

Somehow, I doubt it.

Plot Summary
At the funeral of a well-loved yet never-seen person, Reverend Lovejoy admits that even this beloved person had regrets.  This leaves several people in the congregation thinking about their regrets: Marge begins to worry if listening to Kiss albums during her first pregnancy led to Bart's current behavior (and Joe Namath regrets sitting behind Bart during his latest prank); Kent Brockman regrets sticking around to do local news rather than go national; Homer really regrets selling his Apple stock back in 2001 to buy a bowling ball; and Mr. Burns (rich in part of buying Homer's Apple stock) regrets letting a woman he loved get away.

As Marge continues to blame herself for Bart's demeanor, Burns tells Smithers about the story of him and Lyla, the previously mentioned woman who would've married Burns had he agreed to be nice to others for five minutes a day.  Burns refused, of course, so Lyla broke up with him promising to marry a man as nice as Burns is evil.  Nearby, Kent Brockman is met by Rachel Maddow, who was once Kent's co-anchor some decades ago.  Both had become sick of the inane nature of local news, Rachel especially so.  She decided to leave town to join a cable news network, but Kent stayed behind.  In the present day, Burns learns from a private eye that Lyla is still alive, but has since become a devout Buddhist and decides to pursue her.  Meanwhile, Kent goes to New York to join a big time news network, choosing Fox News because its the only one that's, sadly, doing well.  After seeing just a taste of Fox News' practices, though, Kent decides otherwise and goes back to Springfield.

Homer decides to return his bowling ball, but learns the bowling ball store is soon to become another Apple store.  Meanwhile, Bart rigs a laundry basket with dozens of balloons and begins to float into the air, unable to get down and starts drifting across town.  Burns, meanwhile, has reunited with Lyla who is more than willing to forgo her oaths for a one night stand.  Burns, though, takes a long time to "prepare himself" in the bathroom and upon return to Lyla, Burns finds out that Lyla passed away while waiting, causing the old man to have further regrets but Smithers recommends Burns honor Lyla by doing the one thing she had asked him to do: be nice to others for five+ minutes.

Kent Brockman returns just in time to see Bart floating around, and quickly sets up a news report about it.  Marge finally catches wind and finds Bart near town hall with the police readying incompetent, inaccurate snipers to try and take the balloons out.  Marge continues to lament what she did during pregnancy, but Chief Wiggum tells Marge that wouldn't of made a difference as his wife listened to Mozart and Churchill speeches during her pregnancy and they ended up with Ralph anyway.  Just then, Professor Frink arrives with a solution to the dilemma - fire a cannonball at just the correct angle and distance for it to land in the basket, giving it enough weight to descend.  However, the town no longer possesses any cannonballs, but Homer arrives with just the thing: his bowling ball.  The plan does end up working, as the ball lands safely in the basket and the basket lands on the ground.  Marge notes that regrets don't matter, as long as you're with your family every choice you've made is the right one.  Meanwhile, after Bart's story goes national, Kent relishes in the attention, but no longer regrets staying in local news.

Quick Review
This episode, which began with a tribute to Marcia Wallace and then a painfully long Hobbit reference of a couch gag, was not good.  While the bulk of the episode remained pointless reference-free for the most part, the episode made the mistake of prioritizing storytelling over comedy.  Fitting in what was four different subplots over a broad "regrets" theme left little room for any good jokes or memorable moments to really exist.  What's left is an episode that spends time really praising Apple (at least its not "Mapple"), takes a couple of quick shots at news media and spends a few minutes on a lost-love story that had very little going for it.  The episode was just too much of a mess to be any decent.  Kind of a crummy episode to dedicate to Wallace's memory, but what can you do?

Final Score: 5.7

You Kent Always Say What You Want (S18, E22-400)

Even news anchors have their bad days and enemies.

Plot Summary
The episode opens up with a reshowing of the Simpsons short Family Portrait to commemorate their 400th episode.

The Simpsons go to the dentist for their checkups, but then afterwards go to get ice cream.  Homer buys himself a cone, which ends up being the one millionth cone sold at that store.  As a reward, Homer gets to appear on Channel 6's Smartline (because the ice cream store and Channel 6 are owned by the same company).  Kent Brockman is clearly displeased with the arrangement, but he tries to do the 'interview' anyway, when Homer accidentally spills his hot coffee onto Kent's lap.  Kent reacts to it poorly, yelling out quite the offensive swear.

Kent apologizes for it a short time later, fearing the worst, but it turns out that nobody watched the broadcast because most people nowadays get their news from the internet.  However, there are people that watch TV for the sole reason of finding and complaining about offensive material, and Ned Flanders is one such person.  He finds Kent's swear, and goes to the internet to inform the masses.  The FCC learns about it, and fines the network $10,000,000 for the swear.  This, along with another misunderstanding, leaves Kent without a job.

Marge lets Kent stay with the Simpsons as it was Homer who led to all of this.  One day, Lisa points out the contradiction that is regular FOX and FOX News, which Kent points out is on purpose so that FOX will pay the FCC fine money for their smut, which then gets sent to the Republican party, which everyone in the media knows but refuses to say because of corporate interests.  Lisa, though, offers Kent an opportunity to make that known: through the internet!  On Kent's first broadcast, he outs the media and the Republicans for what they do.  The Republican Party holds a meeting on what to do about Brockman, and quickly decide on a course of action.  Later, as Lisa commends Kent as they walk down the street, Channel 6 offers Kent back his old job with a 50% pay raise.  Lisa hopes Kent will turn them down, but Kent instead quickly accepts the offer.  Lisa is saddened that nobody will stand up for the truth anymore, but Homer reveals that Kent told him one huge secret about FOX, but FOX itself refuses to let Homer share his secret.

Quick Review
We're at the 400th episode now, and each milestone becomes less and less impressive.  This episode was hard to watch through at times.  Krusty's voiceover of the Itchy & Scratchy cartoon was pretty great, but it was really the only good thing the episode had to offer.  As an episode that oddly focused on Kent Brockman, the episode quickly devolved into a message against corporate-owned media and the whole thing just wasn't funny (with a cringe worthy appearance by Ludacris early on making things that much worse), though FOX's attempts to silence Homer at the end was okay.  Its the last episode aired before the theatrical release of The Simpsons Movie, and it leads to the movie on a rather low note.

Final Score: 5.9

Mr. Spritz Goes to Washington (S14, E14-305)

I get it!  Fox News is biased towards Republicans!

Plot Summary
To avoid disturbing animals while mating, the government redirects air traffic, which unfortunately causes planes to fly rather low over the Simpsons home.  They go to their local congressman to complain about it, but he just ups and dies in front of them.  So now, they have to get a new congressman.  Bart suggests Krusty the Klown, and everyone - the family, Krusty, the Republican Party - goes with it.

Krusty's run for congressman hits a snag when his various misdeeds from the past come back to bite him, including several gags he did on his show that were less than PC.  He's able to recover thanks to the help of Lisa who reminds him to connect with the common person, as well as Republican-favoring Fox News, having gained its infamous bias as late as 2003.  With that combination, Krusty wins the bid and becomes a congressman.

Krusty attempts to introduce an air traffic bill to congress, but they won't give him the time of day.  The Simpsons fly into Washington to see this, and wonder what they can do to help.  A janitor that may or may not be Walter Mondale offers to help.  He helps the Simpsons get that bill passed the only way most things in Congress pass: stupidly.  Bart blackmails one opponent of the air traffic bill, preventing him from voting against it, and Homer is tasked to keep another opponent busy by having him take part in a lengthy drinking contest.  Afterward, Homer barges in during the vote drunk off his ass, giving Lisa a chance to attach the bill to a more popular bill - flags for orphans - allowing the bill to pass easily and the Simpsons no longer have to deal with their plane problem.

Quick Review
This episode wasn't that funny, and no, the of notion of having scathing political satire wasn't the reason why it did so poorly.  The reason why it scored poorly was because the scathing political satire itself just was not funny.

Final Score: 6.4