Rate & Review: What Animated Women Want (RABF08)

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Septimus Singus

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Air date: April 14, 2013

After Marge becomes fed-up with his bad behaviour, Homer seeks advice from a local sushi chef in order to become a better person. Meanwhile, Milhouse adopts a Marlon Brando-esque bad boy persona to impress Lisa.

Guest stars: Wanda Skyes and George Takei
 
Rather forgettable episode. Can't think of anything I particularly hated, but it was a little bland. My prediction of 3/5 was spot on!
 
Very inoffensive, 3/5 seems right, not close to Burns' best but better than his worst, there were several cute moments and the Lisa Milhouse plot was enjoyable enough. Much "self aware" style dialogue and gags, more than usual. Takei voiced Akira afterall.
 
Rather bland, but the heart was in the right place, but the biggest WTF laugh came from "Let's see what Maggie's doing?" followed by Maggie nearly landing on her face.

Although I was kind of hoping they'd cut to her slapping Gerald, the unibrow baby.
 
Meh.

The basic theme of this episode was fine, though it started off bad with MOAR stupid gender puns. :ashamed: The millionth "Homer and Marge's troubled marriage" story had a good enough subplot related by the theme, but the whole episode was littered with too many simple jokes ruined by overkill.

Very average, even by modern-day standards.

2.0/5
 
ACT ONE:

Ho hum... another marriage crisis story. Looks problematic from the start - Homer didn't even do anything, he was just eating lunch with his life when she thought she would talk to him while he was trying to eat. What right does Marge have to be bitchy like that?

The Milhouse subplot is off to a decent start so far.

Is Hank Azaria still voicing Akira when they got George Takei back? Kinda weird...

ACT TWO:

So far, both plots just seem to be lingering there on their own without any kind of flow.

They replaced J. Loren Pryor with a random female character, I see. I understand they needed a woman for this situation, but this just paved the way for a useless guest star appearance. Tress MacNeille would have been just fine in that role.

ACT THREE:

I've got literally nothing to say about this boring third act, but I did laugh at Homer using Ned's credit card.

ACT FOUR:

Ending on a poop joke... really?

OVERALL:

Another boring, sub-par episode. A modern Simpsons episode by any other name. 3/5 (C)
 
So not worth watching it right now huh?
I'll watch it...like after 2-3 days maybe...not in a hurry for shit episodes
 
Initial Thoughts: Glad to have a new episode after all the fun of reruns during "March Madness...." Seriously, screw sports.

Couch Gag:
Ah yes... the Breaking Bad opening that doesn't make sense. Long couch gags are always a bad sign.
Act 1:
Three-eyed crow flying over the power plant... gotta love that! No crow call though?
"Swanky Fish" sushi resturant. Guess "The Happy Sumo" went belly up. Nice to see Akira again, though.
Oh Hell. There's the announcer again. Why... why do we need that?
...and there's the bitchy Marge we've all come to know and love this season.
Nelson calls Karl Malden "potato nose." Ha!
Seems Milhouse has finally figured out... again... that Lisa likes bad boys.
Pointless narrator: "Let's see what Maggie's up to..." That was kind of funny, I must admit.

Act 2:
Wait... Milhouse is using that stupid fake accent to talk to Lisa, and she says nothing? I'll buy that, just because Lisa is attracted to bad boys, and she's not thinking right. Yeah. That's it.
By this point, I have almost forgotten that Homer is trying to fix his relationship with Marge. Again.

Act 3:
Marge: "How many times do I have to tell you to quit comparing our relationship to the Special Olympics?" Now, that got a laugh from me.
The animated sushi was weird, but funny!

Act 4:
"Nancy Drew and The Mystery of The Declining Book Sales" Nice.
Oh God! Moe writes homoerotic Andy Griffith Show fanfiction? I found that extremely funny!
Marge is patiently waiting for five o'clock so she can drink... excellent!
Homer: "Quick! Call the Procter & Gamble help line!"
Marge: "Really!? Geese, they make everything!"
Well... I knew the stupid Marge realization that Homer loves her was coming, but I certainly didn't expect more of the animated sushi! Good way to end.
Woah... a promo bumper built into the credits? That's new!


I am so tired of the "Homer and Marge's marriage is in trouble" dynamic. If it wasn't for that one thing... this would have been fairly entertaining. A lot of funny jokes (funny to me, anyway) in the fourth act. Huh. Not a bad episode, so... 4/5.
 
A completely uninspired, forgettable and lacklustre episode of The Simpsons. 'A Streetcar Named Marge' is Beethoven to the 'What Animated Women Want' equivalent of Bieber. I would rather finger fuck Thatcher's corpse than view this any time in the near future.

1/5, 2/10, F
 
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What was that with the bed bugs at the end?

Anyway the only thing good from this episode was Lisa paying attention to Milhouse and Milhouse screaming his bunny name like Brando.
The Homer-Marge thing..ugh although I liked the idea of Homer going to a sexshop.

3/5
 
I'm typically pretty positive about modern Simpsons episodes, but tonights was pretty bad. I mean, I guess it was "inoffensive" as some are saying, but I found it awfully uneven and pretty boring.

The Breaking Bad intro had nothing to do with the episode itself (well... aside from the cupcake that Milhouse had in his lunch, which I believe we see him buying from Marge in the Breaking Bad intro). Even so, it wasn't that great a parody of the show itself, as I'm hearing from some Breaking Bad fans.

The narrator: who was she? At least with "Moe Letter Blues", Moe as narrator made sense. Here it was some unseen woman, and at least in "Moe Goes From Rags to Riches" we knew who was telling the story... as stupid as a talking bar rag was.

Homer's story was, after 24 seasons, played out and very little was done to keep things fresh. I had thought the sushi chef would play a big role in affecting Homer's plot, but not really. Seeing the sushi chef and the guidance counselor as a couple only lead me to think that Homer and Milhouse's stories would somehow cross, but they really didn't. In fact, did they even need to be a couple? Was that the writer's attempt at connecting Homer and Milhouse's stories?

Milhouse's plot had a bit more focus, but again it felt like something we've seen before. In fact, the whole episode played out like "Little Orphan Millie" a bit. Milhouse tries to redefine himself as more of a man, while Homer and Marge have an argument which leads to Homer trying to do the right thing.

Overall, a boring entry in an otherwise enjoyable season. Thankfully not as bad as "Love is a Many Splintered Thing", and nowhere near as bad as the worst of season 23 (the aforementioned "Moe Goes From Rags to Riches" comes to mind).

I only had a few moments that I liked:
• Akira's appearance (guess he has moved on from The Happy Sumo)
• The Skin-Colored Cab gag
• The animation of flying towards Earth, then flying away from Homer into space, only to zoom back in to the other side of town

2/5 from me

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Oh yeah, and what was with the bed bugs??? Was this the first time in the history of the show that they had a "Next Week on The Simpsons!" at the end that wasn't a gag? I know we saw promo images of the family dealing with bed bugs. Maybe the airings have been so uneven (every two weeks) that Al Jean wanted to remind viewers of when a new episode will be on again? Very odd indeed. Wait, was it another Breaking Bad homage? Like how AMC shows always have a teaser of next weeks episode?
 
The subplot following Milhouse and Lisa is worrisomely reminiscent of Love is a Many-Splintered Thing. First Bart takes on the personality of Woody Allen, now Milhouse pretends to be and hallucinates about Marlon Brando? What's next, Lisa dresses up as Marilyn Monroe in order to rekindle her relationship with Nelson Muntz? These famous celebrity sketches using Simpsons children aren't funny, and neither do they make for realistic use of emotion. To be fair, the narrative here is an improvement over the ghastly exchange between Bart and Mary, but it still fails for the most part. Milhouse at least has a reason to act like Marlon Brando in this episode, unlike the phoned-in makeover Bart got in Splintered Thing, but the premise still feels like a product of desperation rather than a serious attempt at development. Although I got a few laughs during the cafeteria scene, the story never elevates beyond a few marginal Brando references and feels direly unfinished.

The story featuring Homer is more focused, but still pretty emotionally lackluster. As with the relationship between Milhouse and Lisa, the series already seems dried out of ways to satirize Homer and Marge's marriage, and this just takes that story to a more radical level. Aside from the Nicktoon-ish living pieces of sushi at the end, nothing about it actually bothered me, but the execution is still a little odd. I don't think they really needed a drawer overflowing with "I'm sorry" cards to paint Homer's irresponsibility, and having him actually keep a checklist of chores to please Marge is a little farfetched. I can somewhat sympathize with Homer's desperate endeavors to save his marriage, but the emotion isn't really there for me, aside from the conclusion. The story keeps me relatively engaged throughout and even offers a few decent lines, but episodes like Secrets of a Successful Marriage and A Milhouse Divided handled similar situations with more content and greater depth.

5.5/10
 
boring, unfunny and derivative of about a thousand other simpsons episodes, most of which were better than this one,

the breaking bad thing was alright though

1/5 D-
 
Milhouse's plot had a bit more focus, but again it felt like something we've seen before. In fact, the whole episode played out like "Little Orphan Millie" a bit.
When he started in with the leather jacket, the accent and the bad attitude, I had the same feeling.
Both plots we saw tonight have been done to death on this show, and I don't know why the writer's keep going back to them.

Why is Marge being such a bitch?

Marge used to get angry with Homer slowly, so it didn't seem so bad when she got mad. Now, she just goes from zero to bitch in a heartbeat, and I think it's because they're trying to cram too much story into the four-act structure... and it just doesn't work. It's like the writers really don't want to explore why Marge gets mad anymore, they just need her to be mad for the story to work. In the process of them doing that, she's lost a little of the patience that used to make the character endearing. They've done it so much lately that we now have "Bitch Marge."
 
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Marge used to get angry with Homer slowly, so it didn't seem so bad when she got mad. Now, she just goes from zero to bitch in a heartbeat, and I think it's because they're trying to cram too much story into the four-act structure... and it just doesn't work. It's like the writer's really don't want to explore why Marge gets mad anymore, they just need her to be mad for the story to work. In the process of them doing that, she's lost a little of the patience that used to make the character endearing. They've done it so much lately that we now have "Bitch Marge."

We also have Bitch Ned. It was most noticeable in Black-Eyed Please, where they tried to make Ned's anger rise and rise until he punched Homer, but he punched him right away. If that was someone's first exposure to the Ned character, they'd see him as a grumpy old dick.
 
Why is Marge being such a bitch?

Just finding this out. This is the bad/lazy characterizations that have been happening for years. The writers don't give a shit all they care about is getting a story/script out by the deadline nowadays. Remember Marge who was a cop, a church receptionist, and doubtful but loving wife, who even had a little kinky love life? Nowadays it's only nag and bitch that is her ONLY trait.

Also Marlon Brando, Woody Allen? Jesus Simpsons! You know it's bad when you rely on old actors/actresses for comedy/stories. When you try and be hip and edgy it comes off as pandering and desperate. But when you do things that are just old, that kids wouldn't understand nowadays it comes off as well...OLD! It FAILS on both accounts! Proving that this show needs the plug pulled.
 
We also have Bitch Ned. It was most noticeable in Black-Eyed Please, where they tried to make Ned's anger rise and rise until he punched Homer, but he punched him right away. If that was someone's first exposure to the Ned character, they'd see him as a grumpy old dick.
Just finding this out. This is the bad/lazy characterizations that have been happening for years. The writers don't give a shit all they care about is getting a story/script out by the deadline nowadays. Remember Marge who was a cop, a church receptionist, and doubtful but loving wife, who even had a little kinky love life? Nowadays it's only nag and bitch that is her ONLY trait.



You're both right. It's just something I've come to expect in Modern Simpsons, unfortunately. Honestly, I just kind of gloss over it sometimes when it happens in new episodes.

I guess I was too generous giving this a 4/5... but I did laugh at a lot of jokes this week. If it wasn't for some stuff in the last act that made me laugh hard, this would have been a 3/5.
 
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What was Homer doing so badly that made Marge as mad as she was? I mean, watching the restaurant scene, Homer is being his typical stupid self, but it's not like he's being an asshole towards Marge. I actually thought the walrus face was kind of endearing. Again, these marriage crisis plots are getting old, and it is very rare that they can be pulled off, so why event attempt them at all anymore?

Milhouse's story wasn't as bad, but as others mentioned it reeked of Love is a Many Splintered Thing, but at least we knew why a kid like Milhouse would know about Brando.

Man, I wish we got a fun episode tonight instead of a boring retread. As is, tonights episode was about on the same level as "The Changing of the Guardian". Inoffensive, yet boring and forgettable. I would have loved for another "Hardly Kirk-ing" where it was just plain fun and funny. Maybe the streak of episodes I've enjoyed (Hardly Kirk-ing through to Dark Knight Court) spoiled me. At least "Pulpit Friction" looks good, but like the teaser at the end of this week's episode said, gotta wait two weeks. :P

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Season 24 thus far:

Loved: "Treehouse of Horror XXIII", "Adventures in Baby-Getting", "The Day the Earth Stood Cool", "Hardly Kirk-ing"

Liked: "To Cur with Love", "Homer Goes to Prep School", "A Test Before Trying", "Gorgeous Grampa", "Black Eyed, Please", "Dark Knight Court"

Middle of the Road: "Gone Abie Gone", "Penny-Wiseguys", "A Tree Grows in Springfield"

Disappointed in/forgettable: "Moonshine River", "The Changing of the Guardian", "What Animated Women Want"

Hated: "Love is a Many-Splintered Thing"
 
It was decent enough to hold my attention, but in the end, its just another mediocre modern Simpsons episode. 3/5

P.S. Was anyone else surprised that the sushi chef that Homer gets advice from was not Akira?
 
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