Whatever the showrunner, it's always hard not to be skeptical of a Krusty episode, unless it's backed by the supporting cast, or the writers bother to give it some depth or reason to empathize with it, especially since Krusty is rarely a character with whom we can feel anything (unlike other competitors, we rarely get to see the human side behind the makeup of the past) and sometimes they portray him in an unpleasant way (I don't know about you, but I never liked him the joke of him putting down Bart as his biggest fan). So when I first heard the premise of this episode I couldn't help but be skeptical, they rarely put Krusty in a positive light and the HD era certainly has a pretty bad track record with the episode, add the fact that the premise sounded / sounds overheated and I couldn't help but feel uneasy about this one. So after a lot of uncertainty, we've finally come to this episode - so the question is, were my fears for this one correct, or were they finally allayed and a pleasant surprise? Well, that's where we're going:
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The main problem with this episode, stems from its roots of tonal indecisiveness, as far as plot points are concerned, the biggest expository example of this is the Krusty arc: as the elders' opening gag into the audience. of Krusty, is introduced in the episode with the intention of portraying him as an archaic element of the present day show, as if the intention was to build a meta gag that underscores the obviousness of Krusty's role in the present day - the episode plays with the idea of Krusty as a clown who reflects on his loss of contact with his audience in the 90s, on how desperately he would turn his career with the sole objective of regaining its relevance, competing especially in an age where children no longer watch television and what have been replaced by TikTok or other forms of entertainment.
However, the episode at the same time tries to aim for an examination of the character, the parts of Krusty and his father being a case in point. Look, I appreciate the show's focus on developing a more human side to Krusty, unfortunately, it comes at the cost of stepping on his proverbial toes both tonally and thematically: the plot thread with Krusty trying to be an educator in order to "make" his father as an unorthodox element, but as a vestige of the past of great emotional importance to him, using him as the main nucleus of his motivations, appears more as something abrupt and disconcerting than as something cohesive within the narrative that is presented.
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Okay, let's talk a little bit about Fat Tony. Yeah, it shouldn't surprise you, but like others have already said, I don't like how confident the writers are about his character. This is something I've noticed since 'The Fat Blue Line' but, I don't like the trend that whenever Tony and his henchmen take center stage, they always have to be accompanied by the same stale jokes, the same stereotypical characterizations and the same parodies spent on the mafia. Listen, I'm not against Tony getting more screen time, but you can't always come to make it as one-dimensional as possible, especially if he's the source of the main conflict.
You know what the classic era got right, when it came to involving the mob? His presence as a threat. I know the comparisons are hateful, but let's take Bart the murderer' as an example of it. In that episode, we get the perfect portrayal of Tony: sinister and menacing, just like a gang leader should be, pointing a gun at a child, paying intimidating visits to anyone who gets in his way... But he's also got all the characteristics that make him a likeable person and easy to empathize with, he drinks alcoholic beverages and plays poker. He had an idiosyncrasy and quirkiness that made him a great character, even with the baggage of being nothing more than a liaison for mob references and satire. He was a man with manners who would laugh at an episode of Itchy & Scratchy, but he was also a man who could talk you down and get through to you easily (justifying his criminal acts with Bart by using orphaned children). One of my favorite scenes of him comes from the same episode and it's the part where he tries to play innocent with the police ("what's a truck?") when they come looking for him for his crimes.
Also, maybe it's just me, but I don't like how nowadays the mob always seems to be confirmed by only three or four guys. Something that I almost forgot to mention about it, but something that 'Bart the murderer' did well too, is the amount of background characters they used to represent the mob. This might sound like a minor thing, but this made them look more... Real? But not only that, but it also contributed to consolidate them as a real threat.
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Okay, time to talk about one of the cornerstones of this one, more specifically, Bart: who is ultimately the connecting glue of the episode, only unlike last week, he's what the episode ends up undermining. Okay, okay, I'm getting ahead of myself, so it's time for a couple of thoughts on that.
Throughout the series, there has been an underlying theme, which highlights the idea that Bart succeeds and prospers - when he focuses and engages with the theme, just to mention a few examples: 'Wacking Day', 'The Miseducation of Lisa Simpson' 'The Father, Son, and the Holy Guest Star' (shit, we even got him in a THOH segment with 'School in Hell) and now this episode. It shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone, but as far as Bart goes, the academic model at Springfield Elementary is partly the reason Bart isn't making progress. From a narrative point of view, it is interesting to note the evolution of this premise, at the beginning of the series, we are presented as Bart simply does not care, then it is the lack of funds in the school that causes this, then it is the work environment and the teachers who work (let's just take Hoover's apathy and disinterest as an example) the causes of this. So it's funny that in this episode, we go back to the lack of funds as the cause of this. This is a very interesting and broad topic to explore, because it is (in part) all of these causes that affect the child's learning and even more if it is one that has attention difficulties (the same element that has stuck since Bart the Genius and they would bring back in Bart Gets An 'F').
Look, I appreciate Bart's arc in isolation, the problem is that it's not juxtaposed in the current reality of the series. This episode has a very strange quality to it, in the way that he was reminded of old characterizations, Bart excited and competent in school, he feels undermined once you remember that this is Mrs. Peyton's purpose (seriously, where the hell was she? ?) or Homer and Marge realizing that Lisa plays the saxophone, when we are in the time of them being better parents. Listen, there are some elements put into Bart's arc here that I like, seeing the clown career as his only hope also reminds me of the way that was hinted at during the song in 'Poorhouse Rock' ("we're just bozos"), or the way in which that is what gives him hope of having a future where he is not a failure.
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... *sigh*
Do you know what I appreciated most about 'The Very Hungry Caterpillars' last week? His focus and commitment to his characters. Don't goad me with a Bart-Krusty story if you're not going to do anything with it. The episode is unable to keep the focus on either of those two, the first act is a Krusty story, the second act has Bart taking over and when it finally looks like we're going to get somewhere, the third act just gets there. take a weird and horrible turn in left field, completely writing off and undermining the episode. Why should I give a shit about the ending with Bart saving Krusty from the mob (how did he even know where they were)? Why should I care to see Bart find purpose in school, if he's ultimately going to be forgotten in the second act? Why should I feel for Krusty and his new status thanks to school? Why the hell did they insert Bart's speech at the end towards Krusty, shit we didn't even have them interacting in this story until the fucking end.
I don't like to compare, just to compare. But the classic-era iteration would have taken advantage of this episode to focus more on Bart and Krusty, in order to make their moments carry much more weight and the arcs complement each other, reclaiming their full effectiveness. There's none of that here, no reason to even get involved or care about the emotional moments of this episode, because Jean is incapable of maintaining focus without bombarding her with a joke every three seconds. In a more competent source, the episode would have used both stories (both Bart's and Krusty's) as parallel mirrors. Would we have seen more interactions between the two of them and the rest of them, which would have better validated the ending and the conclusion: why should I even give a damn about the other kids saving Krusty? What the hell am I supposed to feel like the part with all of them (and Bart) mentioning that Krusty is "the main one we really like"? Nothing the episode justifies the conclusion, much less moments like these. We don't even have enough of Krusty's teaching material, because we're supposed to invest in Marge thanking Krusty for his educational experiment. It all reads empty and manipulative, they really expect us to get emotionally invested, yet there's so little they offer us to even care about. Damn in all hell, even the conflict wasn't coming from the characters in question, but they had to artificially involve the mob - in order to try and create stakes, a crude and vile attempt to build unearned tension.
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No, okay, I already touched on Fat Tony and his role in the conflict, but you know what pisses me off the most? Well, apart from the stale, worn-out characterizations of the mob. It's in the way that they're used as an artificial way to create conflict, because of course, it had to be so hard for Jean and company to make the conflict come from Bart and Krusty, just a way to create tension and make it look like we have stakes. Why even bother? As if I don't... care, Bart succeeded in a new school and Krusty managed to build a reputation for himself, even bonding for the first time with the kids, so only the mob gets to screw him over? You can't get more fucking lazy than that, you really can't. I haven't even gone into the comparisons to 'Homie the Clown' when it comes to involving the mob in the main conflict, but I'll just say that I agree with @/ThrashtheTrash that the difference is that they're set up as a threat from the start - whereas here there is no omen, there is no arc, there is nothing at all in this pile of shit. It's not even going into the massive amount of details that were removed/forgotten, or things that don't make a damn sense: then Krusty opens the clown school, because the kids don't pay attention to him anymore... But at the same time, have no difficulties finding students, am I stupid or does this not make any sense? A whole damn first draft here.
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OK, I'm going too far (once again, I apologize and I don't blame you if you stop reading), so time for final thoughts. One of the biggest problems I have with the showrunning of Jean, is in the immense string of situations that never amount to anything, the episode has a tonal indecision in terms of its narrative, which tries to insert as many plot threads as it can in its time. of execution than this detail, which makes the main arc nebulously defined.
So the episode has an idea like "Krusty starts a clown school" or "Bart becomes successful in school." Just wander around it, and insert as many plot twists as possible, the inclusion of Fat Tony being a perfect example of that, but we've got other things too. Lisa's bitterness about the existence of the clown school (something that doesn't even make sense, since she already got to taste the honey of it in 'All About Lisa'), Skinner losing to the clown school and being humiliated in the trivia. The ideas feel incomplete and the point seems to keep changing all the time, I think the Krusty and Bart arcs make sense as far as it goes btw. He spends a lot of time carefully explaining the beats and plot points, the ramifications of the satire, which ends up missing the point by letting character arcs get pushed into the dust one after the other, until it feels like it doesn't nothing would have happened and it was nothing.
1/5.
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