The first hint that this episode isn't going to turn out well is that the guest couch gag isn't good. Don't get me wrong, it's not bad, it's not just as good as the first Robot Chicken couch gag. It's missing a lot of the energy and excitement the first one had, and all the talking just slowed everything down.
Thing don't improve when we get to the actual episode For some reason it opens up with Bart and Lisa in weird outfits talking about the events of the episode as a past experience that their going to tell the audience. I'm pretty sure this is supposed to be a reference to something, but I don't know what it is, and I don't care enough to look it up. If somebody knows, please tell me. Anyway, Quimby opens up the beach, even though it's really toxic, and we get a joke about Lenny getting injected with a bunch of used needles...didn't we already use this joke last season in Fland Canyon? Naturally, Homer wants to take the family there, and there's some weird joke about Bart being busy playing what appears to be a PSP....in 2017. Uh, Ok. In the next scene, suddenly the whole family is at the beach, even though Lisa seemed pretty annoyed at the pollution earlier and would have probably complained about it at the beach. But whatever, we do get one of the bright spots of the episode, where Bart and Lisa make a giant sand sculpture to prank Homer and then giggle about it later. It's always really refreshing and cute to see the two of them actually act like kids (especially Lisa) and having fun together. Too bad the joke is kind of killed with Homer constantly explaining that they made him look like a booger. Lisa ends finding some random hat that she loves so much, it makes her go into some kind of hallucinogenic fantasy. Bart's temporary tattoo dissolves in the water and he starts whining and crying about it because, you see, if he's not a remorseless sociopath or a completely brain-dead moron on par with Ralph, then the joke is that Bart's entire character is that now he's a pathetic, loser, completely useless crybaby. But at least get a cute moment of Lisa having fun. Homer ends up in a chess game with Jasper, and when he wins Jaspers beard goes upward...I don't get, is I a reference to something? Also, Homer's dialogue seems to imply that he was intentionally acting dumb. So Homer just scammed an old man out of his money...wow, what a great guy! Homer gives a flashback about how he used to play chess as a child with Abe...oh god, not another flashback story about Homer's childhood, we just had one last week! What is with all these constant flashbacks to Homer's childhood we keep getting every few seasons? It feels like their trying to make Homer's backstory deeper, but they never mention any of the previous flashbacks when they start a new one, so it just comes off as confusing and convoluted now.
Anyway, none of the family is really interested in the chess stuff. You would think Lisa would be happy about this, perhaps bond with Homer over chess, giving us a nice father/daughter story...nope! The bullies compliment Lisa's hat for some reason and Bart gets attacked by a bird because again, the joke is that he's a pathetic loser. Also Nelson explains what's happening after he laughs...is it just me, or does everytime Nelson goes "ha ha" now, he has to explain why he's laughing? I don't remember him doing it that often before, but now it seems like he does it pretty much every single time, and it's starting to sound really forced and unnatural. Homer buys a crapload of food because Marge is basically just wallpaper at this point, and Bart throws away Lisa's hat because...he wants to be bad? Bart's waken up in the middle of then night by Hugo, who has returned as a ghost, and is now voiced by Patton Oswalt. Actually, he's just Bart's guilt. I did get a laugh when Bart's guilt straight-up murders Bart's denial, that was pretty unexpected. If only Bart's guilt would kill Marge's denial as well, that would make this show so much better.
Lisa wakes up (after having a dream where she's reliving her fantasy?) and freaks out over her missing hat. Wait, why is she only noticing this now? Wouldn't she have noticed earlier when she woke up? Or did Homer and Marge carry her to bed and changed her into her PJ's? Who knows, it's never explained. Lisa goes insane over looking for his hat, and ends up leaving her house in the middle of the night to go to the police. Shauna also shows up during this scene for some ungodly reason. See, this is the major problem of the episode. I've criticized before how one of the key issues in modern episodes is that nothing is ever taken seriously, with everything being a punchline to something, so there is no weight behind the emotions and it feels empty instead. This episode instead goes to the extreme opposite and puts far too much serious tension in something that's ultimately worthless. All this drama...for a hat. It's not even like a family heirloom or anything, it's just some stupid hat she bought and had for a few hours. This would have made much more sense if Bart had thrown out something important to Lisa, like her saxophone. Instead the episode tries to be so dramatic with the missing hat storyline, that it just comes off as absurd instead. Also Bart is apparently somehow able to see what Lisa is doing while he's sleeping. Bart's guilt explains he'll keep growing, then he eats Bart and shits him out, and Bart really enjoyed it and wants to do it again...what? Homer and Marge are up and...wait, they were up this whole time and didn't notice or give a shit that Lisa left the house?! What awful parents! I totally expect this from Homer, but from Marge? Man, she really is just a background fixture by now, huh? The two try to get aroused by Homer's chess skills, which is thankfully interrupted by Lisa. Marge barely seems to care about the hat problem in the morning (wouldn't she try to comfort Lisa?) and Lisa keeps whining about it, and nobody notices Bart acting weird.
Homer starts playing chess in Moe's bar for no reason and there's a stupid joke about Lenny that's not really worth going into detail about. Homer explains that he learned how to play chess because he played it with Abe everyday as a kid, which is an even more bullshit idea then Homer being a master chess player in the first place. It's mentioned that he did it after Mona left, so did Abe start playing it as a coping mechanism? Didn't we see that he hated her last episode? Homer learned how to play chess from some professor and then Abe got mad and stopped playing it with him, and that's why Homer has a drinking problem. I thought it was because Abe got him drunk as a kid to make him forget about his stepmom. I also thought that the reason why Homer hated Abe was because he gave away his stupid dog. I also thought that last episode gave us a story about an old chili dog truck owner bonding with Homer. Whatever, the writers don't care or remember that crap, so I guess I shouldn't either. Bart's guilt, which has grown so huge it's now starting to look like the Blob from the X-Men, and then informs Bart about Korean children being forced to animate Itchy and Scratchy. So after these three or four scenes, Bart is now feeling so guilty he tells Lisa the truth, but now she totally hates him. Also there's a weird cutaway gag showing Homer and Marge leaving a chess club and getting chased by the bullies...what was the point of that scene?
Bart tries to make up with Lisa at school later, but she refuses and bitterly says it's because losing her hat is "a wound nothing can heal"...What?! It was a fucking hat! She didn't even have it for half a day! Why the hell is she making such a big deal about this stupid hat, like it was an important part of her life? This is why the episode would have made more sense if Bart had thrown out her saxophone instead. Moe informs Homer that his chess playing skills is actually because he secretly wants to murder Abe, which Homer denies as being possible, even though not only would I find it totally plausible that Homer in his current characterization would try to kill Abe, but the episode where Lurleen came back showed Homer fantasying about murdering Abe. Also Bart discovers that Lisa's hat is inside the crushed remains of a car. So Homer decides to give up being a chess player, but Marge (who I guess was told about Moe's theory) has somehow gotten chess master Magnus Carlsen on Skype to help out, which is probably one of the laziest explanations for a guest star showing up ever. Why would Magnus give a crap about some random guy he's never met before? Also he's probably one of the worst guest stars we've seen on the show so far, sounding extremely robotic and unemotional. The animators were apparently too lazy to animate him as well, so he just shows up on Skype instead of in Springfield. Anyway Homer is convinced to play chess with Abe again.
Meanwhile Bart tries to figure out how to get Lisa's hat out of the car cube, and then Rod and Todd show up out of fucking nowhere and use their holy powers to levitate the cube. Sure, why not? We did an episode where Bart discovered he could make women pregnant using voodoo, let's just made Rod and Todd actual gods too! Bart then uses soda to dissolve the cube and ends up accidently dissolving his own stomach too but doesn't die somehow. Rod and Todd use their holy powers to carry the cube into a pool of soda, Bart retrieves the hat from the dissolving cube, and Ned shows up. Why were the Flanders randomly at a dumpster anyway? Homer goes into a chess game against Abe, and for some reason a bunch of are at Moe's watching the game. Why? Are they betting on the match? Why are they watching this? And who are all these random people? Also Magnus is there and is Carl's cousin or something. But Homer decides to throw the match because he doesn't want to hurt his dad's feelings by beating him...I...I thought they were playing to prove Homer doesn't want to kill him. Since when did Abe care so much about chess? And then Homer says he did it because he loved his dad. When did this become a father/son story? Whatever, the plots' over now, thank god. Bart returns Lisa's hat to her, but then tells him to piss off because she's still too hurt to ever forgive him, Is this seriously happening? It was just a stupid hat! But Lisa's guilt (which I didn't think she had, because of how smug and egotistical she's usually written as now) convinces her to make up with Bart five seconds later and they have a cute hug, and it's over. Also Homer has a bunch of personal flaws that want to talk to him because the joke is that Homer is a total sociopath with no real redeemable traits anymore. Though oddly enough, I didn't see a flaw that represented Homer's love of violently assaulting people or murderous rage (unless that's what the grim reaper is meant for).
In pure Season 28 fashion, the episode ends on a totally pointless 4th act. Bart and Lisa show up again in their weird prologue outfits. So was the whole episode just a story they were telling? Why did they tell an unrelated story about Homer's chess skills? It's like when they told a story about Homer searching for gold in the middle of Bart's vision of his future in Bart to the Future, only without a lame joke acknowledging it. Then Nelson shows up to make a joke about how the cameraman is going out with Nelson's mom. And there's a joke about how Magnus doesn't want talk to Homer anymore. And then it's over. Why do they keep making 4th acts when the writers obviously can only write material for three acts?
Another disappointment of an episode in an extremely disappointing season. The main plot was pretty stupid. I'll give them credit, it was nice for them to remember that Bart actually has a conscience and isn't just a remorseless sociopath that they keep pushing him as, but it was still pretty awful. There's no reason given for why Bart would throw away Lisa's hat other then to fulfil a promise on some dumb tattoo he had for five seconds. Also, why he would think throwing away the hat would make Lisa upset, when the only thing the hat had to do with her fun was when Lisa got randomly complimented on it twice? Him also being a whining crybaby at the beach was extremely annoying as well. Lisa was also pretty unlikeable too, as her obsession with the hat made no sense, and her deciding to cut off ties with Bart over it was absurd and idiotic. It's like they were trying to the Michael Jackson episode where Lisa did the same thing to Bart, except there it actually made sense. Lisa comes off more as a spoiled brat then anything else here. As a result, both characters are totally unsympathetic. Patton Oswalt was enjoyable as Bart's guilt, but the character was wasted, they could have done some great animation with the guilt by having Bart imagine it turning to a giant demonic looking monsters, but it was barely in the episode. The chess sub-plot was complete shit. Nobody really reacts to Homer being able to play chess, the idea that he wants to kill Abe comes out of nowhere, the guest star was awful and shoe-horned in, and the ending becoming a father/son story also came out of nowhere. It was just awful. There was also a lot of filler in this episode, such as the long cough gag, Bart and Lisa's prologue and epilogue, Lisa's hallucination of her hat, Lenny inside of a bag.
A very low 2/5, with the only saving graces being a few funny jokes, a couple of cute sibling moments between Bart and Lisa, and Patton Oswalt. I can't wait for this season to end already.
