Episode 10 - Take My Life, Please
27 March 2012
Synopsis: Homer’s old class president Vance Connor is honoured by Springfield for becoming a successful business man and put on their Wall of Fame. Homer is jealous because he lost the election to become class president. Lenny and Carl tell Homer that they buried the ballot box on the orders of Principal Dondelinger. Homer digs it up and discovers he would have won the election. He confronts Dondelinger who says he did it because voting for Homer was a big joke which would have haunted Homer his whole life. But Luigi suggests they can see what might have been if they stir his special sauce. They do and see that Homer would have been a huge success with no children. Marge and the kids get Homer put up on the Wall of Fame as Class President-Elect and it cheers him up.
The Good: It’s the first HD episode of The Simpsons and it definitely looks brighter and shinier than ever. I like the new HD credit sequence too. I can understand those who feel changing the opening sequence is sacrilege but after twenty seasons I think it will make watching them interesting again.
To go with the shiny new look we get a recycled old story. In this case though that isn’t necessarily a bad thing. We get a flashback-to-Homer’s-school-day story combined with a Homer-is-dissatisfied-before-being-cheered-up story. They make for a pleasing story and a pleasant conclusion.
The flashbacks are a good mechanism for unravelling the mystery of whether Homer could have been class president. And that mystery is a good hook to keep viewers, as we know what he is searching for and understand the importance to him of what happens. That all feeds the desire to stay tuned to find out what really happened.
This episode definitely captures something of the spirit of those old episodes. The sense of time passing and Homer’s search affecting the lives of others (Lenny, Carl, Dondelinger, Luigi) make his search flow more logically and more amusingly as the episode unfolds. Lenny and Carl provide some nice humour including both claiming that Vance gave them one of his kidneys. Then we have Homer running into Prom Queen Debbie Pinsent (mentioned in Homer to the Max, 1013) which is a nice bit of continuity. Once they begin to see what could have been Lisa amusingly butts in to try and show Homer that his search is futile. Its fun because it fits her know-it-all character and of course each time she is wrong because there is more to see.
Later despondent Homer manages to come out with a wonderfully stupid line about Batman not being Bruce Wayne: “Oh come on! That millionaire playboy! He’s too busy socialising at cocktail parties and managing the affairs of the Wayne Foundation.” Finally Homer is cheered up by the plaque created for him by his family. He notices the next plaque and is excited to see Vice President Butthead (the school mascot, a goat) has also been honoured. Not only does it immediately bring down his achievement (not that he sees that) but it’s also labelled “Mascot. Friend. Emergency Lawnmower” which tickled me.
The Bad: What’s lacking here is a sense of importance, originality and reality.
As I said, we have seen episodes like this many times before. But I think what undercuts it is that it doesn’t seem like a big deal. As Marge and Lisa point out during the episode, even if Homer had become class president, he would probably have still ended up where he is in life. It’s difficult to take seriously the idea that it all would have been different if he had won the election. Added to that is the ridiculous idea that you can see the future in the Italian restaurant’s soup. It’s that lack of reality which also makes this story seem less touching or interesting as previous flashbacks. And for those of us thinking hard about it, that type of magic just shouldn’t be in The Simpsons. Most episodes end with a moral, but those morals only mean anything if the stories seem somewhat real.
Best Joke: Homer builds up his anger at what Dondelinger did to him by rigging the election. “I’m gonna find Dondelinger and tell him I know what he did last summer. Twenty two years ago. In the winter!”
The Bottom Line: This is pretty enjoyable stuff if you forget about the magic sauce. The writers successfully follow the formula which they established years ago and this is fun and funny as a result.
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