I don't have too much to say here (results may vary), in a way that I think signals this was actually alright. As much as it seeeems like THE COVID EPISODE it hems and haws regarding how much it really wants to examine and poke at the pandemic culture, The Simpsons is never above making the same jokes everyone else has way too late but especially with COVID, laying it on thick is unavoidably gonna feel rather irrelevant in 2023, toothless and dated. So I'm glad for once that the show's tendency to not commit benefited the episode, its got a little COVID DNA but its just as rooted in its thriller movie musical stings and cards, and narratively its a pretty standard sitcom motif to find a way to shove everyone inside the house for an entire day and this feels mostly casual on that end. It might be a sign of poor worldbuilding on the episode's part that we don't get a real sense of why the caterpillars are even dangerous to humans, only their environmental calamity, but fuck it I don't want anyone's COVID take ever again. I'll take it. And at the very least, I have been stung by caterpillars, so yknow what yeah I'd also staying inside cuz that shit hurts.
The individual stories are all especially given the casual vibe with how little they clash, there isn't much of a bottle episode aim with tensions crescendoing between the family as they go stir crazy, instead opting for vignettes suited to each Simpson and the goings-on as a result of lockdown. Lisa's is the closest the episode gets to talking COVID via using her as avatar of the anxieties of watching a pandemic unfold and getting into the consequences of endless doomscrolling (me fr) and it could be preachy but minus a well meaning but weak (and late?) speech at the end it plays more to a surreal angle as Lisa is the only one who truly loses her mind, we get a bit of the Lisa who knows too much for her own good mixed with her still being a child consuming and interpreting information with the imagination a child would, its cute and creatively done for her. Bart's story is the worst inversely, barely a pandemic/lockdown story aside from the manner of spying on Skinner's woes being through remote learning, we've seen all this before and it drags on, but I just sorta blotted it out and waited for the next scene so whatever.
The Flanders stuff is weird, theres a quaint silliness to Homer and Marge's entire plight being Maggie's picky eating and invading the Flanderses and causing a ruckus makes sense, I like the idea of that being the relationship that gathers tension in this situation, I'm just not exactly sure what the angle was with hyper intense Flanders here, I thiiiiink its going for "oh its the end times I've realized all at once I have put up with this oaf neighbor for too long and I'm done", but it might be an attempt at a dark side of the coin of his zealotry, the doomsday prepper energy met with the acceptance of retribution? But like wouldn't a Flanders eager to get to Heaven wanna sin as little as possible at the home stretch! Bad strats my dude you goin' to Heck.
In some ways I think I'd have liked a lockdown episode to go 22 Short Films with it, really examine every different archetype's response to the chaos, COVID is a societal malady after all, literally and sentimentally, though I also imagine that would lead to more on-the-nose COVID parallels that could wind up preachy and redundant. I understand keeping it to the family but the episode essentially evades intimacy and leaves each story to exist in its own room, the Simpsons don't suffer each other much at all in this episode, which may contribute to why its generally pleasant, but it does make me wonder why they didn't take a bigger swing? I guess its a bit damned if ya do damned if ya don't, ultimately this doesn't deliver anything that new and has very little to say about the subject, feels like theres a reluctance to really go there because at this point what joke will we find that the entire world didn't splatter all over twitter?
COVID is sort of the epitome of how social media damns comedy writers in the TV world, jokes are mined and exhausted ages before a production can make it to air but beyond that I think we all just gather a greater collective fatigue over these issues because everyone on Earth is observing and giving their take at once. Its why late night TV feels as hacky as it always was now, its why its much easier to sniff out the easy jokes and the easy targets and you gotta work harder to fight against the risk or possibly temptation to bite those low hanging fruit til theres no flesh left. I was there too after all, social media can make you hate things you like and as for the things you already hate, maybe thats a sign to log off. Point is I knew as soon as COVID "ended" I didn't wanna hear about it again, and I better not see a movie on an episode of anything giving me their take on the goddamn pandemic! So while nothing special and pretty sitcommy, I'll give 'em this, thank God the Simpsons barely did.
. Actually, this plot, indifferently to other 2, has the least related to quarantine premise. Just distance education. However, I somewhat like the fact, that no outside home you can change the fate of other person.
