Thank God, It's Doomsday (S16, E19-354)

What Homer really didn't calculate was that God isn't a fan of balloons.

Plot Summary
Homer and the kids go to the mall as the latter need to get haircuts.  After the kids have their haircuts botched, they pull Homer along and sneak into a theatre to avoid picture takers.  The movie is called "Left Below", and its about the rapture.  Homer takes the movie to heart and begins to fear that the rapture may soon be happening for real.  Marge relieves Homer somewhat by assuring him that there would be signs first.  However, a couple of crazy coincidences leave Homer to believe the rapture is coming anyway, and spends lots of money on related books to study it.

Eventually, Homer calculates a time and date when the rapture is to occur - a week from that day -  and is able to gain the attention of townspeople thanks to a side-prediction he was able to make on TV ('the stars would fall to the earth', later 'proven' when a group of celebrities fall out of a blimp on TV).  Homer now instructs a sizable group of Springfielders on the upcoming rapture, and takes them all to where he believes it'll take place: Springfield Mesa.  However, once the time comes, nothing happens.  Homer becomes a laughing stock, and not even Moe's can help him, as Moe sold the bar to Japanese investors and donated his money to charity in preparation of the rapture.

As Homer begins to throw away his rapture materials, he realizes he made a key mistake: though there were 12 apostles at the Last Supper, Jesus wasn't counted among them, so there were actually 13 people there.  Homer quickly adjusts his calculations, and determines that the rapture is actually going to happen in the middle of the night, 30 minutes from now.  He tries to get his family ready to go, but they have enough of Homer's shenanigans, so Homer goes out to the Mesa on his own.  This time, though, Homer's prediction comes true, and he goes to heaven all by himself.  At first Homer is happy with getting it right, but when he insists on seeing what's going on back on Earth, he's horrified to see his family getting tortured by the new hell on Earth.  Homer goes to God to do something about it, but God refuses.  Homer goes on a mini-tantrum in heaven, but is eventually stopped.  God relents, and agrees to 'turn back the clock' before the rapture and makes sure it doesn't happen this time around.  Homer thanks God, and has him do one more favor.  Homer wakes up at the Mesa, greeted by his worried family, and Homer is happy to be back, especially when he sees Moe's back to what it was.

Quick Review
Another subpar episode when it comes to comedy.  There wasn't all that much that I found funny.  For an episode that focuses on the rapture, I was pleasantly surprised to find very little cringeworthy religion-related material either from Buddhist Lisa or Ultra-Christian Ned Flanders.  It doesn't help the episode be more funny, but it helps the episode from being any worse.

Final Score: 6.5

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

Simpsons Bible Stories (S10, E18-221)

This decent gag could've been served much better in a good, funny episode.

Plot Summary
On a rather hot Easter Sunday, the family wastes away in church.  After Homer gives up a chocolate Easter bunny to the donation plate, a rather upset Revered Lovejoy responds by going through the entire bible slowly but surely.  Of course, the Simpson family can't stay awake, and they have bible-related dreams...

Marge's Dream: Adam and Eve
Adam (Homer) and Eve (Marge) awaken to another blissful day in Eden.  God (Ned Flanders) informs them not to eat the apples from a certain tree.  However, a snake (Snake, the criminal), easily persuades Adam into eating a bunch, and Adam convinces Eve to take a bite as well.  God witnesses Eve (but not Adam) eating the apple, and banishes her from Eden as Adam stays silent on the matter.

Depressed over losing Eve, Adam comes up with a way to bring her back.  He has a unicorn drill a tunnel from Eden to the outskirts where Eve is toiling, however the unicorn dies in the process.  God witnesses this and banishes both Adam and Eve from Eden, and human kind pays for their sins forever and ever and ever and such.
Individual Score: +0.4

Lisa's Dream: The Tale of Moses
The Israelites (made up of the Springfield Elementary school children) are slaves under the tyrannical rule of the Pharaoh (Seymour Skinner).  Lisa (who isn't being referenced as anyone in particular) pretty much forces Moses (Milhouse) to take action.  The two partake in a prank to get the Pharaoh to let the Hebrews go, but the act instead gets the two entombed within a pyramid.  They escape anyway and convince the other Israelites to make a run for it.  They enact a plan which drains the nearby sea of water by flushing all ye olde toilets nearby, and the water flows back in just as the Pharaoh and pals go in to give chase.  Now Moses and the rest go to wander in the desert for 40 years.
Individual Score: +0.5

Homer's Dream: King Solomon's Idea
Lenny and Carl dispute ownership over a pie.  King Solomon (Homer) has the pie cut in half, then sentences Lenny and Carl to death while he eats the pie itself.  Solomon then oversees a court case between Jesus and Checker Chariot.
This bit was too short to give a score to.

Bart's Dream: David vs Goliath 2 - Stone Cold
Enjoying a day as King, David (Bart) is stunned to find Methuselah (Grampa) fatally wounded.  It seems Goliath delivered the blow, but David already killed Goliath (Nelson).  Turns out, its Goliath's son, Goliath 2 (also Nelson).  David goes to challenge Goliath 2 to battle, banking on his "rock 'n sling" strategy to work again.  However, David finds no rock, and Goliath 2 promptly beats him and throws him out of the country, claiming himself as the new king.

Depressed over the loss, David watches a Shepard boy, Ralph, go to challenge Goliath 2, but die anyway.  This refocuses David, who trains for a rematch.  At the Tower of Babel, David climbs up to rechallenge Goliath 2.  Though the fight goes poorly for David at first, he's able to toss a fire lamp into Goliath 2's mouth, causing an explosion.  Both survive, but before Goliath 2 can do anything else, he gets stabbed in the back by Ralph's gravestone, as Ralph somehow survived.  As it turns out, Goliath 2 was a well loved king who did things to progress the country.  Even though it was clearly Ralph that dealt the deadly blow, its David that's arrested for 'megacide', and that's that.
Individual Score: +0.6

As Bart and the rest of the family wakes up, they find they've slept right through church.  Though embarrassed, they learn that the apocalypse has begun.  Lisa begins to ascend to heaven, but Homer won't let her.  A stairway to hell appears, and Homer gladly goes down as he smells barbecue, but is disappointed (to say the least) over the options at said barbecue.

Quick Review
This anthology episode is pretty much the type of anthology episode I'm not looking forward to.  I mean, the four stories featured here were more focused on retelling bible stories with Simpson characters shoehorned in than they were in actually making said stories funny, aside from a few jokes here and there.  The apocalypse ending didn't really do it for me, either.  Really, the few good things the episode had going for it was Homer's short dream (some of it, anyway), and the continued melting of the bunny Reverend Lovejoy confiscated.  Otherwise, this episode had very little going for it.

Final Score: 5.9

Homer the Heretic (S04, E03-062)

Homer's new animal friends are enjoying themselves.

Plot Summary
On one frigid Sunday, Homer refuses to go to church (mostly because he rips his church pants).  So as the family plods their way through ice and snow to attend the service, Homer sleeps in.  As the family freeze in a heat-less church, whose only doors freeze themselves stuck in the process, Homer begins what he ends up considering the best day of his life.  He takes a whiz with the door open, says "ass" with no restraint, jams to music in his undies, enjoys a "moon" waffle which is a sloppy mix of caramels, waffle mix and liquid smoke wrapped around a stick of butter, and enjoys a football game that at one point is 63-63 which also includes the return of Jim Brown.  The day reaches perfection when Homer finds a penny on the floor.  When the family returns from church, cold and restless, Homer proclaims that he's had the best day of his life, which can be owed to skipping church, and to Marge's shock Homer proclaims he won't be going to church again.

That night, Homer has a visit from God in his dream.  While initially angered that Homer had forsaken thy church, Homer explains that as a working man who loves his kids, why should he waste half his Sundays being told how he's going to hell for this or that?  God then agrees and sympathises with Homer, and allows Homer to worship Him in his own way.  Despite still worshipping and believing and God and all, Marge is still appalled that Homer is willing to skip church.  She attempts to have Reverend Lovejoy reason with him, but to no avail.  The Flanders family try to sing Homer back to church, but Homer escapes their attempts, literally.

Soon enough, its Sunday again.  Despite Marge's pleas, Homer stays home again.  As Lovejoy gives a heated sermon on 'the true nature of the devil', Homer is relaxing once more, though he turns down an offer from Krusty to aid the tornado-affected Jewish Clowns, and later mocks Apu's religion at the Kwik-E-Mart.  Shortly thereafter, Homer falls asleep while smoking a cigar (just after saying "Everybody is stupid except me."), and the cigar falls on the floor, quickly catching fire.  As the house goes up in flames, a volunteer firefighting crew seemingly led by Apu and featuring the likes of Barney, Chief Wiggum, Milhoue's mom and Krusty gather up to put that fire out.  Meanwhile, Flanders (who is not at church for some crazy reason), sees the house on fire and runs in to save Homer, which he eventually does despite some troubles.  The fire is put out, and Homer sees that even though he was mean to the Christian Ned, the Jewish Krusty or, as the Reverend says, the "miscellaneous" Apu, they all acted perhaps in God's will to save Homer's life.  With that in mind, Homer agrees to go to church again, and sure enough the next Sunday he's in church sleeping away, having a conversation with God about how his religion failed and what the meaning of life is, and so on.

Quick Review
Most people can identify with the bliss the weekends can provide as more often than not those are the days people do not have to go to work or school.  Sleeping in on either or both of those days is something that feels so right, too.  For a lot of people, though, they can't sleep in on Sundays because of church or another religious service, and church is hardly ever the fun activity with its traditions and hymn signing and guilt-tripping and such.  So, what's the harm in skipping it every now or then or every time?

Homer the Heretic, despite whatever religious leanings you may have or what the episode may portray, is one of the show's classics.  Seeing the contrast between Homer's day and the family's in the early portion of the episode was really funny, full of laughs, while the rest of the episode keeps it going strong throughout.  Its one of the best episodes of the series, and especially Season 4.

Final Score: 10