Episode 20 - Four Great Women and a Manicure
30 July 2009
Synopsis: Marge takes Lisa to the manicurist and they tell stories of powerful women. Selma becomes Elizabeth I, Lisa is Snow White, Marge plays Lady Macbeth and Maggie is a baby version of Howard Roark from The Fountainhead. The Good: The odd joke is bound to make you smile; parodies offer many a chance for easy comedy. Willie plays the man too kind to actually kill Snow White and ends up being too kind to even hurt some construction paper. Who would you cast to play Macduff, why Duffman of course. The Bad: But as with most modern Simpsons parodies this doesn’t work well. There is clearly a reason that the show only has three stories in these episodes and not four. Each story gets less time than it needs and so none of them stand out. Maggie’s buildings being destroyed is one of those jokes which I’m sure was fun for the animators, but for the audience there is nothing particularly funny about it. Marge instructing Homer to kill the whole cast of a play was never going to be interesting. We have seen loads of Homer and Marge killing stories and so you pretty much knew exactly where this was going. Lisa as Snow White provided more parody opportunities but when the main jokes are about copyright, you know it isn’t going to be too memorable. Best Joke: The ultra-gay King of Spain starting war with Queen Elizabeth was a cheap joke. But at least the writers went all out to try and make you laugh with how silly an idea it was. As a British ship which has been set on fire, heads toward the Spanish Armada, the King comments: “Normally I love to see flaming dreamboats heading my way, but not like this baby!” The Bottom Line: Parody episodes have become the go-to lazy writing technique of this show. That’s fine, but I suggest finding a story the audience knows back to front and going all out to make it hilarious. Throwing out random historical or literature tales is a lot more hit and miss.
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