Portrait of a Lackey on Fire
1. Plot ("
Smithers is truly in love with the famous fashion designer Michael, but his new relationship could destroy Springfield…") - Expecting for "a special big Smithers' episode, which explores who he's as a character, with a fun Mr. Burns plot" (not mentioned bat all), we hoped for anything, but not another
X has a girl/boyfriend story
Also, that intend to move Smithers far away from long-time love to Burns doesn't sound well at all. Not disappointed, but not happy of the story. The middle
3/5
2. The Biggest Possible Problem is, of course, "tolerance" topic as it a "very gay episode"
. Personally, I have nothing against it (gay stories were done before, and were done well, sometimes), but anyway, there WILL BE people, who hates the episode just because of "not-traditional" love, and will probably ruin all possible ratings/Imdb ranks. That's an essential problem, actually
3. The story is too familiar for
Lazebniks, and, as was said, it's like "
let the character be like me". Also,
Matt Selman and his obligatory "secondary characters explore far away from their origin" (here it's MINUS, imho). Add the faсt, Rob Lazebnik is not the best writer and
Steven Dean Moore is not the best director (to put it mildly) and their duo just recently gave us the sad-known
«Manger Things»
4. Promo stuff Look at the lines, it's new prod. cycle, with puppies… Blah!
SO, I think, it's going to be bad start of new production season (not because of the topic, bit because of possible execution)
2/5