Episode 15 - Wedding for Disaster
27 March 2012
Synopsis: Reverend Lovejoy discovers that for a three month period he wasn’t certified as a priest. Unfortunately for Homer and Marge that means they weren’t legally remarried (806) and hasten to correct that. Homer tries to give Marge her dream wedding but she becomes controlling and unreasonable. Patty and Selma then kidnap Homer and install him in a Saw-like torture chamber. They eventually relent and Lisa blackmails them into giving Homer and Marge the reception they always wanted.
The Good: The ending of the story is typically sweet and pleasant. Homer’s endearing love of Marge is hard not to like and his vows include the line “With each marriage I get a little better, maybe after a thousand, I’ll be worthy of you.”
Meanwhile another Simpsons staple is alive and well. That is taking everyday expressions or clichés and turning them on their head (see Best Joke). So Marge is told by the wedding dress saleswoman that “A woman only gets one chance at a second remarriage.” And Homer tries to argue that City Hall can be the most romantic place to get married just as a man walks past pushing a gurney announcing “Half a corpse coming through!”
The Bad: Marge turns into “Bridezilla” really quickly and for apparently no good reason. Her desire for the perfect wedding is not the focus of the story because out of nowhere Homer is abducted and shunted into a parody of the Saw movies by Patty and Selma.
It’s a bad plot twist for three reasons. First because it derails any interesting emotional story for Homer and Marge. Which is particularly annoying because the wedding cliché jokes were working well at that point. Second because the Saw movies are absolutely ripe for a parody. But here we get basically one joke, rendering the reference to the movie pretty irrelevant. And third because Patty and Selma shouldn’t be kidnapping and torturing Homer. It stretches plausibility beyond reach when law abiding characters do something so extreme. It’s sadly all too typical of modern Simpsons episodes. Not only couldn’t the writers come up with something original but what they parodied they did awfully.
Best Joke: Bart complains to a tailor about his wedding outfit looking a bit gay. The tailor defends his choice of puffy shirt by saying “The last time I checked, Pirates weren’t gay!” To which Homer asks the not so obvious question “Dude. How’d you check?”
The Bottom Line: More of the same from The Simpsons. A plot that makes little sense and is borrowed from a movie.
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