"Certain aspects of his culture may seem absurd, perhaps a little offensive." I feel like that quote by Skinner sums up this episode perfectly. I get the sense that this episode is generally well liked by fans of The Simpsons. At the very least, it is pretty well known; out of all the episodes from seasons 1, I remembered the most details from this one. That being said, I really did not like the episode this time through.
As I was watching it, my main complaint was why Bart was being put through such torture. Granted, by the end of the episode, it makes a little more sense: Bart learns to be more appreciative of his family. But did he have to be sent to French hell in order to learn that lesson? In fact, I think it's lazy writing. Of course Bart is going to prefer the Simpsons family over the most despicable characters ever created in the show. If the Frenchmen had some redeeming qualities, but Bart still missed the quirks of his family, it would have added a little more depth to the story. Instead, Bart's takes a heinous punishment for his bad actions, and we hope that he won't be a troublemaker in the future.
The Adil storyline is a much stronger part of the episode. It benefits from the fact that it is extremely surprising - I don't think anyone saw the sweet exchange student being an Albanian operative. It is one of the first episodes of the show where you will pick up on more details after seeing the entire episode. It is suddenly very funny to see the military officer salute Adil as he boards the plane to America. That kind of joke is pretty ahead of its time for 1990. Shows like Arrested Development have since mastered this kind of humor, but they have the benefit of Netflix, DVDs, and internet forums to dissect the episode. A viewer in 1990 would have one shot to catch all these references. I give the writers a lot of credit for putting these jokes in the show. There aren't a lot of them, but it shows that The Simpsons was once again slowly changing the way television was created.
This episode is also the first time we see Springfieldians function in the real world. We now know that France, and the rest of the world, is out there. That opens up a huge number of doors for the writers. In fact, it almost becomes a yearly tradition to send the Simpson family to another country. These episodes are always fairly gimmicky, relying on stereotypes to provide the humor, but they are a nice change of pace. Just like any other group of episodes that rely on a cookie-cutter formula, some episodes hit and some miss (Australia is great; Brazil not so much). But overall, I'm glad that the writers add this formula to their repertoire.
Springfield characters:
Agnes Skinner: Agnes is half crazy old lady and half over protective mother. I think she's a fairly unpopular character, but I like her a lot. Skinner's authority is constantly challenged when she is around, and we begin to understand where his awkward, apprehensive personality comes from. I like Agnes a lot less when she becomes a horny old lady, but that doesn't happen for a while. For right now, she'll remain hilariously clueless ("No mother, it's just the Northern Lights")
Other interesting things (I really need to find a consistent name for this section):
Bart's crime to get deported seemed appropriately large without being way too over the top. It definitely needed to be bigger than graffiti, and you could imagine a student actually using a cherry bomb (although probably not in 2013). I liked it.
I really liked seeing Homer and Skinner work together to get rid of Bart. Normally Homer blindly defends Bart against Skinner, so it was great to see those two actually high-five.
Marge has officially coined the term "special little guy". It's a cute nickname for her son, and shows that she loves him no matter what trouble he gets into. It actually becomes somewhat of a plot point in Marge Be Not Proud, so it is cool to see her saying it this early on.
Bart's trip to the chateau through famous paintings was really clever. This is a good example of the writers relying heavily on stereotypes or famous images in these abroad episodes, but that part was nicely done. In fact, I feel like the animation style in France was noticeably different than that in Springfield. Maybe I was just looking for things to talk about though...
"Furious political thought" as Albania's main export was hilarious.
"We think Maggie may say a word any day now" - Let's give it about 2 seasons and then we might hear something.
As the debut "foreign location episode", it makes sense that the writers struggled in this episode. There just wasn't a lot of worthwhile screentime in France.
3/10
No comments:
Post a Comment