Another season, another premiere. Gonna write down a lot of things as go through the episode (Not gonna mention all of the songs, though might do a more complete rundown of the "playlist" later, by the way)
I ended up finding it pretty entertaining overall. The plot was a pretty good one overall and got my interest (Marge, while visiting the funeral of a theater manager, getting her hands on her old high school musical prompt book and is inspired to gather back the cast of the old Y2K stage musical in which she was the stage manager for a modern re-do (again as manager), but ending up feeling left out and overshadowed when the big star of the show, Sasha, shows up) and it very felt like an inspired idea with the musical approach, also having a grounded conflict, being very focused and surprisingly well paced. It started well and improved as it went on and ended up being a pretty good musical story with nice humor & solid animation. An interesting start to the new season.
Good start with Simpsons at the funeral and it set up the story nicely, with Marge telling the rest of the family about the Y2K ("millennium bug") musical play she was a part of back in the late 1990's (nice gag of her pointing out where she was standing & the retcon of her (and the other adults) having been high schoolers in the 1990s I didn't mind) and decides to reunite the gang (Smithers, Helen, Hibbert, Kirk, Lenny & Barney) for a new version, I liked the fantasy aspect of Marge having this fantasy singing voice performed by Kristen Bell (of 'Frozen' fame) as she fantasized about having the voice of a Disney princess. It continued nicely with the first musical number, which was nice, had some nicely animated choreogeaphy and singing by Bell (and great that it furthered the story like many of the following songs).
It was followed by a nice scene with the family (a couple of good jokes with Lenny having injured himself while singing about his youth & Homer naming Bart and Lisa his enemies after they manipulate and laugh at himt). Then Sasha (voiced by Sara Chase) makes her entrance & her musical number tells us of whom she is (I found her an pretty obnoxious showoff; she got the looks and voice, but a bad personality). It also introduced the strong conflict between her and Marge (whom is left on the sidelines, as Sasha only cares about her fellow castmembers and treat Marge like nothing as she is "only" the manager who's not really on the team in her mind. It wasn't difficult to feel bad for Marge once Sasha "steals" the cast away (sad to see Marge being doormat & not trying).
I liked the moment of Marge trying to show that she matters too by presenting her brownies & old items from their days as a "tight knit group". The following bit of the cast reminiscing of the "good old times"was a fun and vibrant song with lot of personality (nice visuals of them appearing as their young selves and fun storytelling, such as about the party they held at Marge's house while she was away, Lenny had an incident, the Bouvier family got sued and bankrupted so they couldn't send Marge to college & the gang still hasn't any sympathy for Marge, plus a friend died and they made it all about themselves. Nice dark jokes, but the lack of empathy; wow). Very nice following moment with Marge getting support by her mother Jaqueline (who's a good mom for once).
So it is agreed that Sasha is rotten and Marge decides to take revenge (which wasn't wrong after how she was trated) and uses her mom's old computer (funny gag with the loud dial-up noises) to dig up the secret on Sasha and then revealing them to the cast (in a new playbill). The song that this reveal is told through was a good one, but oddly it was framed as a villain song when Marge felt justified) and Sasha is revealed as a liar (actually being a mere saleswoman, not a big-name musical celebrity). Then Sasha runs off sobbing and the cast are angry at Marge (this was a little interesting as a subversion, but the cast not caring about Sasha being a big phony liar and only being upset at Marge felt really dumb. Felt like the message was "it is okay to lie to your friends" or something).
So Marge is angered over this (she acted like a petty teenager so in that sense she should have known better, I guess) and Homer helps her come to her senses to patch things up and help herself feel better through an amusing song (nice idea of how Homer was the one who talked sense into her) and Marge goes find Sasha to make amends (I sort of got shades of the abused now forced to crawl back to her bully to apologize for the sake of the friends, but I'm overthinking it). Sasha had a nice scene at Moe's (her lament of never having been mean to Marge & saying "I never even talked to her" was really telling of how blind she is, but I liked her reminiscing with Barney whom she had a brief fling back then & Moe's silent reactions to it were quite amusing, I felt).
Marge confronts Sasha and we get the expected with the latter admitting that she's a floor manager who only wanted to recapture her former glory and reconnect (good with a bit of humility and earnestness from her), though the whole cast gang showing up and end up hearing Marge's apology was kinda forced, but it was handled better here than in many other instances in more modern episodes (looking at you, 'Manger Things'!). Barney has a funny little half-song (about his lost potential) and the show is on and is a success (nce gag with Homer distracted by his smartphone and Marge cuing him via texting, but the highlight was Bart & Lisa's criticism of how it "just ended" and call it lazy, which was hilarous. Felt like a comment on how the Y2K musical play was so marginalized in the episode).
I wasn't a fan of Sasha still being the same to Marge (relatively thoughtless and self-important & even laughs off Marge reminding her of the lawsuit and ingnores her again; I almost felt as if Marge should have struck her at this point, but it probably wouldn't be worth it to make a scene again). Still, Marge gets a good and nicely suitable ending with couple of theater kids some and want Marge's signature on their prompt book and ends up on a diner date with them (which she deserved after all the things that happened to her in the episode, not just regarding the relatively thankless and still ignorant Sasha), but it still ended well for both parties and I think that was a good thing for the story as a whole (despite there being room for some improvement in here).
So yeah, I liked this one fine. The musical plot was simple and straightforward, with a good story for Marge, a solid musical approach (with actual effort put into the songs), good jokes and gags & all good animation directing. It had some problems, such as sketchy sound mixing at times (the singing parts felt a little loud when compared to the dialogue), KMR sounded off as Hibbert, the songs varied a bit in quality (but none was bad) & the way Sasha never learnt anything in the end felt lazy (she should have learned a lesson & changed a little or gotten some sort of comeuppance, but the writing felt indifferent regarding her somehow). Also, the way Marge was sorta framed as the big bad when Sasha was worse probably wasn't a great of ideas (#margedidnothingwrong).
I'll give this a 4/5 (rounded up from a 3.5/5). A good and written story (including songs that did further the plot), nice jokes here and there and a good plot & conflict (and a nice spoof on a high school stage cast reunion tale). Most of the issues were relatively minor (though I can see how they turn some viewers away), but the Marge-Sasha conflict had some questionable aspects as said (Sasha was excused a little too much), the cast gang appeared as blind idiot followers wasn't flattering & the episode felt a little too short (would have been good with a double-length episode, to the chagrin of those of you who cannot stand musicals), but yet again, I enjoyed it for what it was.