Episode 12 - Love, Springfieldian Style
4 January 2009
Review
Synopsis: Marge and Homer get stuck on a carnival ride on Valentines Day. So they begin telling some of the great love stories: parodies of Bonnie and Clyde, Lady and the Tramp and Sid and Nancy. The Good: The sight of regular characters as dogs and cats is a unique sight. A few jokes are passable as well. The Japanese Ambassador is an obvious one while Moe as a dog offers the best silly jokes. Otto’s sudden English accent may make you smile as may the Texan wanting to know what else was bollocks. The Bad: The Simpsons is so bereft of ideas at this point that they just turn this into a surrogate Halloween episode. Surely the aim of these parodies is to be funny but they are far from it. They don’t really attempt to parody the stories which they copy; the stories are just recreated with Simpsons characters playing the roles. Bonnie and Clyde is very brief and the relentless gunfire at the end does nothing at all. Shady and the Vamp dominates the show because it is so unique to see the characters as dogs. But we sit endlessly waiting for Homer to come back to his family which is pretty dull. Finally Sid and Nancy’s use of chocolate as a substitute for drugs is all wrong for a show which gets a large children’s audience. The shots of them using chocolate like cocaine and heroin is not funny or particularly clever. The only result of those scenes will be some children asking their parents awkward questions. We get lots of musical interludes which aren’t entertaining. Neither are the inclusion of Goofy and Woody Woodpecker, vomiting and gassing people just aren’t good comedy. Best Joke: Moe the dog says to Homer “Now uh, how about you and me sniff each others butts? Ha ha, I’m just kidding. Unless you want to?” The Bottom Line: It feels like a waste of time to sit through this. The jokes are largely poor, the songs are dull, the parodies are one-dimensional and the whole episode implies a show which borrows other peoples ideas because it has none of its own.
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