Episode 11 - Million Dollar Maybe
3 February 2010
Review
Synopsis: A fortune cookie tells Homer that this is his lucky day. He feels he must buy a lottery ticket but in doing so he lets Marge down. When he wins a million dollars he can’t tell her where he was and so he begins giving anonymous gifts to his family. Meanwhile Lisa endeavours to help the old folks at Grandpa’s retirement home by buying them a computer game.
The Good: The Lisa plot looks like good old fashioned Simpsons satire. The Homer plot looks like it could be funny.
The Bad: So the moral of Lisa’s story is that some healthcare workers actually don’t help old people because it makes their lives easier. It’s a sad but obvious truth about the conflicting desires of two groups of people. But that’s it. That is the story. There is no satire beyond that. No jokes, no moral of the story, no conclusion. Lisa just leaves, downtrodden and sad. That maybe a reality in life but when it comes to TV comedy we come to be uplifted or to laugh. I don’t understand what the writers were thinking. The point they make actually leaves viewers with an unsettling reality to live with. That’s not really the job of a show like The Simpsons. That point could have been made better in a number of different ways.
As for Homer’s story, it was a classic example of what is wrong with the show. The Simpsons was a success because it portrayed an average family, struggling but sticking together. For Homer to actually win a million dollars is a bad idea for a story. The real reaction to that event should have been ecstasy for him and the family. The way it was presented was as if he had won ten thousand dollars instead, his reaction was inappropriately underwhelming.
Then the writers tried to wrap up the story the way they always do, with Homer’s love for Marge forgiving all. But the story wasn’t about that. The story ended up being about Bart’s blackmail more than anything, another mess.
Plus the jokes were exaggerations which further undermined the storytelling. Yes Homer is dumb but he would not call Marge “the woman who gave birth to me.” Having him misunderstand things is fine but just having him say things which he knows aren’t true isn’t. And if he is that dumb how could he possibly learn Spanish while stuck in a line at the Kwike-Mart. Another foolish exaggeration, missing the key ingredient (plausibility) which make dumb jokes work. A similarly stupid bit of writing was Marge actually singing a duet with Homer not present. Why on earth would she have started singing at all? Homer throwing Bart around into bushes is a dangerous exaggeration and the way he gives the family gifts rapidly exaggerated to the ridiculous. Again if Homer is dumb why would he buy copies of “The Economist.” The writers are so eager to throw in jokes that they no longer care how those jokes reflect on reality.
Best Joke: Bart asks who exactly says “potato” as in like tomato. “Song writers who are stuck” responds Homer.
The Bottom Line: To the average viewer this was just another episode. To me it was a catalogue of foolish and ill thought out ideas, demonstrating a complete misunderstanding of what made this show funny and poignant in the past.
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