The greatest story ever d'ohed

After ruining Flanders' bible study group with a little innocent naked slip-and-slide, Reverend Lovejoy encouraged Ned to invite Homer and family to the holy land, Israel, to try and save our favorite buffoon's soul. Upon arriving, we met Jacob, and the rest of the crew on the trip, that included Dr. Hibbert and Krusty the Klown, provided plenty of laughs. Some of my favorite highlights from this episode which poked fun at all religions were:

- Bart's offensive, yet hilarious line after reading papers shoved in the Wailing Wall: "Reading prayers and ignoring them, just like God."

- Krusty, upon discovering there's no Hell in Judaism, heads to "The Gaza Strip Club."

- Bart telling the Israeli girl she doesn't find like a girl, or even a Milhouse. "I don't know what is Milhouse?"

- Homer calling a camel, "a sand horse, car of the desert"

- Homer ordering a falafel with pepperoni, sausage and extra cheese.

"Some of us don't eat pork, some of us don't eat shellfish, but we all of us love chicken."

Some more of my favorite quotes from this episode were:

Ned: Our bible study group is going to the holy land next month. I'd like to take you and your family along as my guests.

Homer: Hmm, let me think. Take my family to a war zone on a bus filled with religious lameos in a country with no pork in a desert with no casinos. Where do I sign up?

Marge: Homer, I can hear your sarcasm from inside the house and the dishwasher is on

And……

Marge: Homie, you're alive.

Homer: I am more than alive, woman. I am the chosen one, who shall unite all the faiths of the holy land. I am the messiah.

Marge: But you still have the passports right?

Homer: Oh yeah, gotta keep track of those. THE MESSIAH! has the passports.

Stealing First Base

In this past weeks episode of The Simpsons, Principal Skinner announces that Mrs. Krabappel was called out of town and budget cuts dictate that, until she returns, the school’s two fourth grade classes will merge. Bart reluctantly shares a desk with Nikki and develops a flirtatious rapport. Bart talks to Grampa about his new crush, and at Grampa’s suggestion, gives Nikki a kiss. But when Nikki starts sending Bart mixed signals, he swears off women forever. Meanwhile, Lisa’s classmates ostracize her for being an overachiever, and First Lady Michelle Obama, a self-professed nerd, comes to Lisa’s defense.

Bart was once again struck by love and the results were quite entertaining. Mrs. Krabappel's absence forced Principal Skinner to combine the two fourth grade classes at Springfield Elementary into one class. The setting gave us a number of great lines from some of our class favorites, including Milhouse, Martin, the twins and Nelson. Nelson had the best minor storyline in the episode after getting paired with a blind student in the other class. Throughout the episode, we returned to the duo and saw how Nelson was taking the kid under his bully wing. And this is precisely why I so enjoy these school-based episodes. There's plenty to work with to fill the episode with extra laughs.

Doubling up at the desk introduced Bart to Nikki. Essentially a female version of Bart, Nikki was the closest thing Bart has gotten to finding true love since Greta Wolfcastle. Voiced by guest Sarah Silverman, Nikki turned out to be a fun and memorable character. And since she's a regular student, the possibility remains that we may see her again someday. After Bart stole a kiss, urged on by a banana-eating Grampa Simpson, Nikki's parents threatened a lawsuit and were granted an "affection-free environment" on school premises. Unfortunately, this concept was not played up as much as I had hoped it would be. Out of it we did get a "skit, or sketch" defining what was inappropriate, but watching Groundskeeper Willie and Skinner kissing for longer than they should be was probably funnier on paper.

Regardless of the affection ban, Bart continued a relationship with Nikki, who showed Bart that women are entirely impossible to figure out. My favorite line of the episode came when Nikki told Bart he should know what she wants: "I want you to act the same way two days in a row!" I also loved the montage of famous "kisses" that played as Nikki was giving Bart CPR. The clips started as you might expect, with some of the most famous, passionate kisses in cinema, but then added the unexpected. The standouts for me were the alien smooching Ellen Ripley and Sammy Davis Jr. laying one on Archie Bunker.

Meanwhile, Lisa was going through her 100th crisis of "being smart ain't all it's cracked up to be." It started with her suddenly becoming popular after receiving a failing grade on a test. But once that situation was cleared up (Ralph: "I cheated wrong. I used the Lisa name, but the Ralph answers."), Lisa went right back to being an outcast. In a very roundabout way, First Lady Michele Obama came to the elementary school to give Lisa some support and herald overachievers. Angela Bassett was good as the voice of Obama, but the whole thing felt odd and very forced. Still it did give the opportunity for Superintendent Chalmers to state, "He's our Joe Biden," about Principal Skinner.

Postcards from the Wedge

In this episode of The Simpsons, Bart discovers his talent of easily pitting Marge and Homer against each other and uses it to help get him out of punishment for misbehaving at school, but naturally, he takes it too far.

I thought there were a lot of fresh jokes and humor in this episode. I loved their spoof on those old "Jetsons"-like films from the 60's that showed the "world of tomorrow"! The scoring on the orchestral music was just fantastic! I think they finally realized that Simpsons does a lot better with a storyline and not just random things like other shows such as Family Guy.

It wasn't that the overall plot of "Postcards from the Wedge" felt original or fresh, but the way in which it was presented was. I really liked that the episode used a Springfield of Tomorrow video to show us that Springfield has an antiquated subway system. Sure we've never heard of the city having a subway in the 21 seasons the show's been on the air, but if the citizens were dumb enough to go for a monorail, we're sure they had a crummy subway system too. Either way, great presentation guys. Despite its plain plot, the episode brought plenty of laughs, including two Internet jokes. Not sure why, but I always get a kick when The Simpsons attempts to make jokes on modern technology. Maybe it's because we associate the show with the early 90s still. In summary? Great jokes, mediocre plot, fantastic Springfield of Tomorrow video.

Will The Simpsons ever age?

For this week, I decided not to watch an episode but rather find something to read upon about The Simpsons. I came across an article in the NY Times by David Carr, called “Will The Simpsons Ever Age?” That title alone caught my attention because I was wondering that question myself. I learned in class that it has been 20 plus years of episodes, now that is A LOT of seasons for one show. I had no idea that it was this successful. Like he states it would take more than a week with back-to-back episodes to watch all of them, and this was written in 2005- it’s 2010 now!

I wonder how do these writers still come up with these jokes? There are repeated jokes, of course, but how do they come up with different underlying episode themes? Just a thought- maybe from other shows like Family Guy and South Park. Like I talked about in my previous blogs. From the beginning Mr. Groening (writer) said he knew it would be a hit, and that he still is feeling great about the show. "I get to work with writers who write funnier than I do, animators who draw better than I do and network executives who dress better than I do," Mr. Groening said. "I'm in a great mood." It doesn’t’ look like he is going to end this show anytime soon, he is having too much of a great time doing it! Which is great for him, and really great for the big time fans. Earlier in his interview he said “the show has almost reached its halfway point, which means another 17 years.” I think The Simpsons are going to be around for a while. Especially because they can take and find jokes just from current and everyday history. Things don’t stop happening, controversial topics don’t just stop, so The Simpsons along with other hit TV sitcoms, will have a never ending pool of jokes to choose from.

If you wanna check out what I read, here’s the link…..

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/24/arts/television/24carr.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1