Rate/Review Kill Gil (Volumes 1 & 2)

What would you rate JABF01?


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A lot better than I expected. The only real blunders I can think of is the recurring attacks with the Grumple, and the overall corniness displayed whenever Gil played the damn piano.

...and I LOVED the opening :D

4/5
 
Seeing this for the first time tonight, I don't understand all the detestation it seems to receive. It was nothing special and failed to deliver as a Christmas-centric episode, but it wasn't especially terrible either. Although it did get rather tiresome by the third act, the plot was different and interesting enough for the most part.

The Marge exploration was even fairly interesting, and even Gil shaped up to be a three-dimensional character. Granted, some of the jokes fell flat (especially the unnecessary and unfunny Burns part and the irksome Grumple appearances), the story did drag on without warrant, and the ending was anticlimactic, but I didn't find anything too unbearable about the episode in its entirety. 3/5
 
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I just saw this episode as a christmas special I guess? Any ways not much to say bout it was a pretty stupid episode. 2/5
 
Ivan said:
A lot better than I expected. The only real blunders I can think of is the recurring attacks with the Grumple, and the overall corniness displayed whenever Gil played the damn piano.

...and I LOVED the opening :D

4/5

Holy crap, was I drunk or something?

Terrible episode, worst of Season 18. Gil is more unfunny and annoying than ever, and the recurring gags are stupid and the calender thing dragged on for way too long...

1/5
 
I watched this episode when I was still dumb enough to believe that the new episodes are better (I've reformed, don't worry) and I still hated it. The grumple was the only thing remotely funny and that got really annoying fast.
1/5 (it actually deserves something much lower than that)
 
Gils Characterization was way off, there were maybe two good gags, one of them being a newspaper headline reading today is mlk day tomorrow nobody remembers. This character is just a one liner character, might of this character had a good episode here.........maybe if the planets were aligned. Gil still remains to be one of my favorite non-main characters, when he's doing one liners. Looks like the wolf finally did get at Gil.
 
This one was just terrible skipping a whole year with Gil didn't work and it didn't show Gil that well.For a Christmas episode it failed even more with hardly anything to do with Christmas.Bad jokes and a dodgy someone moves in with the simpsons plot make this one of the worst episodes ever.1/5
 
Holy Crap, I initially rated it 4/5 over a year ago!

And as of today, I've still only seen the episode once, when it first aired. But after thinking about it, my rating is more like a 2.5/5 for me.

Maybe I'll see it again when season 18 comes to DVD, but this was a pathetic attempt at a Christmas episode.
 
The Good

- Christmas Opening
- Callback to Previous Episodes (Rib-it and Poochie)
- The Reveal of Krusty and Mel watching TV not skating
- "Give back that holiday cheer, you bastard!"
- Mr Burns and Smithers Buying presents
- Mr Costington
- "Do you think that's the same grumple from the ice show? Because i do."
- "That's it, We're changing doctors!"
- "Marge, i have no idea what you were just thinking about. Why would you think i did?"
- "What the Hell is this thing!?"
- The Mice Dancing Between the two storeys of the simpsons house on St. Patricks Day
- The Return of the Leprechaun!
- The Calendar
- "I Make 6 of those a year!"
- "There's Water Under the Seat!"
- Homer Scratching his nose.

The Bad

- The Markers that don't work bit was short but still un-needed.
- Gil Coughing the phlegm into his glass. Ugh.
- The Ending with the Grumples.

So, all in all a pretty great episode IMO, a perfect first two acts with a not so great ending, still manages to maintain a 5/5, Homer was hilarious in this episode (As you can see from all of his quotes in the 'good' section) so yeah, 5/5, A.
 
For me, this episode is simply the worst of The Simpsons ! No scenario, very few gags...
Krusty and Mel replaced by professionals and Quimby in the shop : is what made me smile (not laugh) in Kill Gil. While the generic is successful, but It doesn't Kill Gil a good episode.

However, before this episode, I liked Gil. But, he didn't look like the caracted I liked. Of looser unlucky, it became a vulgar "picnic plate".

1/20. If you want to keep a good memory of Gil, don't look this episode !
 
To my mind, Kill Gil is very bad, but there are some things which make me laugh in this episode. So 7/20 no more.
 
I have a little advice for the writers – writing an episode about one of the least interesting characters in the show won’t boost the ratings. It wasn’t all bad, but it certainly wasn’t one of the better episodes of the season so far.

I enjoyed Krusty’s Christmas show, especially the audience being fooled by the two skaters playing Krusty and Mel. Some of the shopping scenes were strange, such as Kearney being too childish and Burns’ new friend that came out of nowhere. I found Gil tolerable in the first act, actually, mostly because of him doing Lisa a favour.

Things got worse from the second act. I didn’t like how an entire year passed during a single episode, and the episode still went nowhere. However, some of the calendar dates were hilarious, with James L. Brooks’ birthday and Reptile awareness day being the highlights.

The ending was terrible. Marge’s actions disturbed me, because I’m not used to seeing her so frantic. She has psychological problems? Give me a break.

C-
 
I have seen it but I really think I need to re-view before I can review it ( ;) ). I'm on the fence of giving it a 2/5 or a 1/5. Some of the Christmas aura I didn't actually mind, and I don't think the humour was any worse than a lot of others from the same period.
 
Unlike a lot of modern-day episodes, this episode actually could've worked (it took me a little bit to think about this). There's just three problems:


1. Gil is the newest "pathetic character" that joins a legion of other pathetic characters like Kirk van Houten. In this episode, one could've written him with some depth (and in the end, he did show competence by being a great salesman after he finally moved to Arizona), but most of the episode made him look lousy.

2. The recurring jokes, such as the "Grumple Wanting Revenge", really watered down the episode, and destroyed any attention to it. I wasn't fond of the Calender jokes, but they did put some effort to skip some official holidays and show some really off-beat ones, like "Reptile Awareness Day". Then, Mr. Costington's blubbering cheeks (which have, thankfully, been used only once since) being used on three different characters.

3. The ending. Marge becomes a bitch in an instant just because she couldn't tell Gil off, and the end of the episode means that the whole plot would repeat itself (including the encounter with the Grumples).

Ugh.

1/5
 
Kill Gil is OK and it's one of the better episodes on the season but it's not all out fantastic, B-.
 
Not only is it the worst episode ever, it is even the least imaginative and the most inane. This became the first episode that I wish I never saw even once, let alone twice which is the number of times I did see it. The overhyped Christmas-y opening intro was probably made to try to steer us from finding out how bad it really is. Season 17 is where I think the second big decline in quality hit and this 18th season clunker makes any season 17 episode look like a classic era episode.

1/5 is overrating it. Grade Z trash is a more accurate description.
 
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Major plot problems here. Gil being in the house dragged went on for ages, and the ending was really rushed, and some of the Christmas stuff was pretty corny. And Marge feeling the need to let out her "no" felt really stupid, and the leprechaun was stupid too. There were a few moments I liked though, mainly at the Krusty Ice Show thing, and "what the hell is this thing?". generally very low on humour though. It just got really boring.

C-/D+
 
Had Potential, but Lost it Quickly

I went into 'Kill Gil' knowing that it generally received negative reviews. At first, I didn't understand what the problem was. The scenes at the Krusty Ice Show were quite funny for Season 18, and the episode was looking up to be one of the better episodes of the season, and not one of the worst ones. The callback to Poochie was nice, and some of the Christmas characters shown were entertaining. Even the scenes in Costingtons afterwards were decent. I didn't think much of Mr. Costington yelling 'You're fired', but the moment with Burns and Smithers had some entertainment value. It was not long after this, that the episode began to go down in quality. It wasn't the quality of the jokes (most of the jokes in the episode were tolerable - except for the need of reusing the Grumple again and again, it was only funny the first time). The main problem was the pacing. Gil staying at the Simpsons house went on, and on, and on, and on. Did the writers really think it was necessary to show him staying there all 11 months? Even once he left, it didn't get much better. Marge's desire to say no, even after he had left, was a rather stupid conflict. Also, the ending was rather abrupt. Gil gets fired, the Simpsons and the Grumples go over to his house. Okay...

'Okay' however, is not the correct word to desribe this episode. 'Mediocre' or more likely 'poor' is.

2/5
 
I didn't think it was that bad. Not great, but not bad.

3/5.
 
This is probably the most boring episode for me. It was just not funny at all. Even the plotline was boring because everything just seemed to be dragging along at a snail's pace. I almost couldn't sit through the calendar thing, it was so dull. 1/5, the only redeeming factor being that it's not offensively bad, but rather boring bad.
 
Kill Gil, Volumes I & II

For this episode, we have a Christmas one combined with one focused on a secondary character; in this case it's Gil who's existence can never be explained yet he's forced upon our faces every chance the writers get. Well this episode attempts to justify his existence and give him a lot of personality and defining traits since this may be the last time the writers ever have the idea to focus the episode on him; unfortunately the efforts of the writers go for naught as the stuff added doesn't make an already inconsequential character more consequential.

Part of the reason is that while they stuff the episode with soo much Gil, (to the point where there's no sideplot.) the stuff introduced about Gil is generic and bland; almost like the stuff introduced about Chalmers in "Bart Stops to Smell the Roosevelt" an episode that premiered along time after this episode. How these people manage to exploit so little in Gil, a character that though inconsequential has so much purpose, is unknown... I mean really, none of this stuff is making us care more about him and barely any of it is making us think of him in a different light. If I was writing Gil, I would probably have him be more ambitious, be more guilty about his living conditions and have his friendly side come out a little more.

It's a shame that they had to make him into a mooch who gets lucky somehow because the mooch thing doesn't exactly work for the episode; it provides some good moments but those are really far since we can't luster up any care in the world for Old Gil here. The Simpsons themselves are also brought down by this since the plot calling for Gil the Mooch just screams obvious and obviously there are going to be a ton of moments where one person hates him but the other can't luster up the sense to tell him "get the fuck out of my house"; and while Bart and Lisa and others help to make those scenes more unique, they can't help to pull them out of the gutter of predictability that they're in. Not even the charm of the Simpsons family and the charm of Gil with them can salvage these scenes, it's like we're just watching almost 18 minutes of a plot that barely goes anywhere while we see Gil in points where he's obviously worse.

Additionally, the show doesn't know whether to treat Gil as manipulative or as pathetic; it tries to do both but it gets confused in who Gil wants to be... A lot of the scenes function like a see saw, there are scenes which lean Gil towards pathetic and there are scenes that lean Gil towards manipulative; there is no center balance, one of them goes up and down, up and down, not stopping unless someone applies some force to make it stop. That's what Gil's character feels like in a nutshell; that see saw causes stuff introduced in Gil's character to be rendered inconsequential, a personality has to have a lot of things, not just one thing that the writers can't even decide upon. If they can't decide which parts of a character they should include in a character then maybe they shouldn't be creating characters.

This even leads to the end scene where there is an awkward plot where Marge heads to the place Gil ever so mentioned to tell him off... While it's understandable why she did it, the stuff that leads up to this is undeserved and it just serves to place Gil where he belongs; on Springfield serving up the majority of pathetic jokes whenever Moe is on vacation or something. The ending with Gil and the Simpsons moving into a new house is just awkward as fuck... Simple as that. The various things that happen throughout the episode will confound and confuse you; for one, didn't Lisa skate in "Lisa on Ice", that leprechaun from "This Little Wiggy" appears and that attempt to make the Grinch character a running gag just doesn't work out. There are more but I don't feel like pointing them out...

I don't get why they feel like going the extra mile with characters that aren't worth it. Gil is a character who's appeal I don't get; it feels like the character was designed with the writers in mind but I can't understand what the writers see in the character, same goes for the cat lady. "Kill Gil, Volumes I & II" tries to inject some character and personality into Gil and while some of it sticks, a lot of it is inconsequential. The Simpsons are forced to play along a plot that is the most predictable the show has ever done and there is barely anything that they do to make it different and stand out, well except throw in a couple of nods and some good jokes here and there. "Kill Gil, Volumes I & II" is an episode with good intentions, unfortunately those good intentions go to waste. Still; it's nice that they tried.

3.5/10
 
Season 18 continues with Gil! It's Chistmas time once more and Gil, working as a Department Store Santa, is fired indirectly due to Lisa. Feeling guilty Marge invites him to the Simpson house, but he refuses to leave. Homer urges her numerous times to kick out the mooch but Marge just can't seem to say no. That is, until the most inopportune time.

I always considered the hate for this episode to be way overblown, and while I actually found it worse than memory on my re-watch, I still don't think it's absolute trash as its reputation would have you believe. I never really hated Gil as a character and he's used seldom enough where I actually didn't mind him getting a starring role here. I actually really like the set-up at Costington's and much of the first act. It feels sitcommy, but I don't mind it here. The Grumple thing felt like their answer to Family Guy's giant chicken and its numerous scenes are tedious for the most part. Marge's inability to say no is a pretty good idea to me, but everything from Scottsdale forward is pretty dumb and unsatisfying except perhaps for Homer rubbing his nose so hard it starts smoking. I knew I felt this way about the episode before the re-watch, but I forgot how few truly funny moments are here. Homer explaining how he couldn't have seen Marge's flashback is easily the funniest moment in the episode, and the mice in the floor pan shot was a nice nod to the classic era. I'm gonna give this a 2/5 as it is very forgettable and lacks enough laughs, but I do still think the hate is exaggerated. This is not an episode bad enough to make me upset or angry. Definitely not bottom 10 and possibly not even bottom 50. I probably enjoyed it more than the other two 2/5's I've given this season already....probably.
 
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