Episode 12 - Boy Meets Curl
17 February 2010
Review
Synopsis: Homer and Marge try to go ice skating on date night but find Curling practice going on instead. They decide to give it a try and Marge has a real talent for it. They join the local team and make their way all the way to the Winter Olympics in a demonstration event. Homer appears to be holding the team back but Marge tries to compensate. Meanwhile Lisa finds collecting Olympic pin badges very addictive.
The Good: Seeing Seymour and Agnes actually have a tender moment was a rare sight. And for once Homer was not being lazy or unhelpful during any of the Olympic shenanigans’ which made a nice change. “Love Formulaically” seemed an appropriately satirical movie title and the quick montage of Curly gags might have pleased any Three Stooges fans.
The Bad: Otherwise this was another exercise in how not to write a story. What was the purpose of this story? Was it about Homer and Marge? Was it about Marge’s curling skills? No it was just that the writers wanted to make an episode about the Winter Olympics and so just stuffed lots of plot elements in but forgot that stories with a purpose make for better TV.
Lisa’s story was pathetic and forgettable. Someone tells her that collecting Olympic pins is addictive and suddenly she’s an addict. Then she is suddenly mean and desperate and then Bart tells her to stop. That’s it. There’s no development to the story, nothing happens to explain the allure of the pins and there is no lesson learned for Lisa. The jokes are lame or absent as well. I don’t understand why the pin salesman would be infatuated with the imaginary Fatov. It seemed completely random and apparently just an animators concept when staring at Homer upside down for too long.
The Homer and Marge story was little better. The writers have become addicted themselves to the montages they put together, here showing Marge and Homer making love “jokes” out of curling. But these montages aren’t funny, they just present humorous but completely implausible situations in a row, they don’t aid the story of them learning to curl, they just waste time. Marge’s ability to sweep the ice is similarly implausible and having her continue sweeping a fast shove from Homer outside of the ice and back in is really foolish. Is anyone laughing uproariously at this clearly impossible and illegal sporting feat?
When Homer begins letting the team down Marge insists he keep playing because she loves him and doesn’t want him to not be there. Fair enough but then when she hurts her shoulder she is mad at him. Why? He didn’t do anything wrong other than be less talented than her. In a show with some thought put into it this might have been a demonstration of a selfish side of Marge or a revelation about her strong her ambitions had become. But it came across more like the writers just weren’t thinking much about it.
Last episode Homer won a million dollars, now he has a gold medal albeit in a “demonstration event.” But still it all adds up to The Simpsons losing any sense that they are a normal struggling family who can tell touching stories anymore. The way Maggie is thrown into these stories (literally and figuratively) adds to the lack of reality, she is wondering off here with no one worried about her well being at all.
Having Lisa point out that without her pearls she is “just a big Maggie” is the kind of self referential joke that can work if there is any truth behind it. But of course there is none in this case because if this were the real world there would be no resemblance between an eight year old and a baby. Other jokes were equally flawed such as beavers being released into the stadium just because it was Canada. Or the ludicrous idea that Agnes would have been doing the pole vault while pregnant with Seymour (ignoring the fact that he might not have ever been in her womb (902). Marge actually acknowledging Homer’s imaginings and how long they would take in reality is about as old and tired a joke as you are likely to see. Thanks to shows like Family Guy and Scrubs everything which would happen in reality were a TV show to exist like that has been pointed out and The Simpsons should steer clear of it. It makes them look behind the times and lazy. Finally we have Bob Costas pointing out that Olympic coverage is like a vampire feeding on people’s shattered dreams. There’s no humour in that satire when you just point out exactly what some networks end up doing.
Best Joke: In the only witty bit of satire we have Ivan Reitman, the director of Ghost Busters hosting the opening ceremony. This was tied nicely to the Beijing Olympics and their choice of host. Naturally we then had endless renditions of “Who you gonna call?” followed by each country’s name until his voice had gone completely hoarse.
The Bottom Line: Another big disappointment from The Simpsons. Do the writers think through these episodes? Do they remember what they once produced and see the differences?
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