Rate & Review: "You Won't Believe What This Episode Is About – Act Three Will Shock You!" (UABF07)

How would you rate this episode?

  • Total voters
    43
Brad Lascelle

Brad Lascelle

The Fallen
Joined
Mar 9, 2008
Messages
5,817
Location
Kitchener, ON
3V0q000.png


Season 33, Episode 14
Original Airdate: March 13, 2022

Writer: Christine Nangle
Director: Jennifer Moeller
Showrunner: Matt Selman
Co-runner: Rob LaZebnik

Synopsis: When Homer is erroneously blamed for leaving Santa's Little Helper locked in a hot car, footage of the incident goes viral, outraging all of Springfield and making Homer a pariah.

Previous R&R
Next R&R

R&R Poll Average Score: 2.97 / 5 (as of September 23, 2022 / 32 votes)
IMDb User Rating: 6.4 / 10
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Well, this episode was not really too bad, but Act Three did not really shock me, I will say. So I'm gonna go for 3/5
 
While watching it I got the feeling that the conclusion to the episode would make or break it, and ended up being right. Once the conclusion happened it all clicked and I have to say I liked it. Ended up being a bit more nuanced about the role of the internet as it relates to being able to call out horrible people, the innocent people that might get caught in the crossfire, how people can get swept up in a mob over minor things or potentially misinterpret situations, how people can see through empty PR gestures that only exist to fix your reputation vs the power of genuine heartfealt apologies, and ultimately comes down on the idea that the internet as a force of negative press that people in power cant control is a good thing (which hits extra well considering the internet's role in forcing Disney to not get away with their current PR disaster as easily as they would like.) I'd compare this to Bart's In Jail! from earlier this season. All while never once saying "cancel culture" which would have instantly knocked the grade down a point at least.

The one critisism is that it wasnt the funniest episode, which I can definitely see as a Selman thing now. But I still laughed a few times, there was one big laugh, though I dont remember it. Also Lisa says Tik Tok in one scene, but another scene shows a website called Tsk Tok.

7/10 but 3/5 for the poll.
 
Last edited:
A pretty good episode by my standard. This episode was written by the same person who wrote "Uncut Femmes". There were some obvious similarities. I liked the first 2 acts more than the last, which wasn't horrible but a little average. There were some fun visual gags. I liked the clinics/hospital next to the trampoline park. I chuckled when homer backed off from the car and closed the door to the fire truck, locking the dalmatian in the truck. Did anyone else think Lenny's voice sounded weird in this particular scene?

I liked the montage they had of the bad people, Helen Lovejoy felt like the right choice for such a "karen", the other non-simpsons characters were a little boring. When the shadow figures first appeared it made me think of the prisoner spoof "The computer were menace shoes", I was expecting the end to be a little more "out-there" but it was fairly grounded.

I really enjoyed the first act and even if the last 2 acts were a little heavy on the meta humor and didn't quite have the same impact as the 1st I still enjoyed this episode. I'm giving it a 3.5, round down to 3/5 for the poll
 
Nice, Homer accidentally closing the door of the fire truck is the big laugh I didnt remember. That was great.
 
What did I just watch? This episode sucked. The only thing that amused me was Marge saying cleaning the carpet was how Catholics feel after confession.

What the hell was wrong with Councilman Jed Hawk? Was it that he sang on the toilet or the song he sang? Both? Did the writer have a problem thinking of a fourth transgression caught on video.

This episode was just lazy.
 
Frankbags said:
A pretty good episode by my standard. This episode was written by the same person who wrote "Uncut Femmes". There were some obvious similarities.
Click to expand...
The obvious difference is there was no sexism towards characters. Overall, a decent "meh" episode though, but honestly don't know what rating I would give it. It is annoying how they constantly rubbed modern stuff and culture in your face with meme this, Karen that, etc. Can't stand when they try to be hip with the younger viewers, but after all, it is a Family show.
 
Scrooge McDuck said:
What the hell was wrong with Councilman Jed Hawk? Was it that he sang on the toilet or the song he sang? Both? Did the writer have a problem thinking of a fourth transgression caught on video.
Click to expand...

It implied his dick was in view.. they just didn't show it.
 
Duderocks5539 said:
It is annoying how they constantly rubbed modern stuff and culture in your face with meme this, Karen that, etc. Can't stand when they try to be hip with the younger viewers, but after all, it is a Family show.
Click to expand...
I think that its fine that the show talks about things that exist now. It's not hip to just aknowledge mundane things about reality.
 
"Sometimes you just need to accept responsibility so people will move on."
'I hate this horrible new world."
"Well, my reputation is everything to me and I'm tired about reputation being about past behaviour."
"It's the people that the Internet told us to hate."
"Those people did actually bad stuff."
"We're gonna do what we did to democracy: irreparable damage."
Now that was particularly subtle lol.
I understand what they tried to talk about but I feel like it got all confused during the last five minutes. However, the conclusion itself was not bad.
6/10
 
Well that was a Scully Episode. Though I guess average, which for this season is like top 3.

That said, the mention of Uncut Femmes was in itself a spoiler since it was just doing that again, mostly.

I guess a couple thoughts
- We got kind of a lot of past-guest cameos. Spotted Ruth, Becky, Allison & her dad, I think a few others too.
- I don't really get the point of Jed Hawk and Larry Doogan amongst the institute. I mean I guess they needed someone short for that bit but the other guy probably coulda just been Hibbert since he didn't add much.
- Kinda odd the "Lemonade Karen" moment didn't have Lewis and/or Janey there even though it's a parody of the women who got overly hostile and called the police on black people minding their business. Though I spose it also confirms Sherri and Terri aren't caucasian and only white in the literal sense.


... swear there was some other stuff on my mind but way too tired to recall. A little re-hashy but I guess it's okay, did use a lot of its cast decently which is really rare of eps these days. Probably a 3/5
 
That was... alright, I guess. Lame episode title, I would've just went with a more casual way and called it "Homer the Pariah". A little bit too similar to Homer Badman but it did somewhat feel intense in its third act. Not to the point it shocked me, though.

5/10 or 6/10.
 
All right, I finally saw this. I thought it was decent, but nothing more than that. The satire on people who get trolled, memed, GIFd, and pwned for their actions was pretty solid, although it felt like there was more filler in here than in the usual Selman episode. I didn’t really see the reason for Homer going viral for leaving the dog in the car if that was going to be overlooked by another meme later. I guess it was to show his increasing infamy from town pariah to world pariah, but I don’t know; I think it could’ve been done without. Some of the jokes felt a bit dragged out as well, including the introduction of the other guys at The Institute and Homer and the “helper’s” back and forth about the plan being too radical.

The third act felt a bit like The Computer Wore Menace Shoes, and I have to say, the ending didn’t really land for me. I thought it was about to be a lesson for Homer when he saw the more high-profile people who did bad things; I thought Homer would recognize that he also judged people for their misdeeds just like people were judging him. But it didn’t go that way at all, and it made it into a more definite hero/villain story.

I’ve said a lot of negative things about this episode, but it really wasn’t bad. The plot kept me entertained throughout, and it had some pretty good jokes too. And as I said earlier, the satire was solid. 3/5.
 
Good episode. Nothing's more annoying than cancel culture these days and while they've could have tackled it better, I'm the outcome was what it was. Also why are Homer and Santa's Little Helper so wholesome in this episode? 5/5


On another note, what happened to the other pariahs? Did they die?
 
Venomrabbit said:
- Kinda odd the "Lemonade Karen" moment didn't have Lewis and/or Janey there even though it's a parody of the women who got overly hostile and called the police on black people minding their business. Though I spose it also confirms Sherri and Terri aren't caucasian and only white in the literal sense.
Click to expand...
I don't think the show would've gotten that far with that moment. I think they just took the aspects of Karens being overly demanding or in your face like Helen usually is, and not the racial aspects. Helen also is a recurring character, so I don't think they would want to destroy her character that much just for a little joke.
 
Venomrabbit said:
Well that was a Scully Episode
Click to expand...
Except it was not only a Selman one, but one that proves how there really is no difference between an episode run by either of them most of the time and how something put out with the latter's name can actually be worse than if it was put out by the former.

GOD! And I thought Pixelated and Afraid moved at a snail's pace, but this episode made that one look as though it's act 1 felt like it really was the usual 7 minutes instead of the 14 it felt like in comparison to how by the time we got to the end of act 2 in this episode I honestly though 20 minutes had passed because that's how boring and nothing this was! Although I'm one of only 10 people who didn't like the aforementioned episode (or at least, have the balls to admit it in spite of it not being the popular opinion), I can at least see what that episode was wanting to do whereas I struggle with what exactly this episode was trying to accomplish other than retreading Homer Badman but sucking out anything that made that episode enjoyable (like real jokes).

Only real positive I can think of is that I can't remember the last time Becky and Lurleen Lumpkin were used in the background on top of Ruth and Alison also appearing for the same reasons.

Congratulations Lisa's Belly, you're no longer the worst thing that's been farted out from this season so far!
 
Why would Lisa's Belly be the worst episode of the Season? That's probably the best one disregarding A Serious Flanders.
 
There's no point in me trying to eleborate why that episode sucks as it'll be overpowered by the heavy Selman bias that hovers over it.
 
The Simpsons is always at its best when Homer is written as a sympathetic, hard-luck loser. That's the true spirit of what his character was always supposed to be. Over the years the writing has lost its way countless times by making him capable of superhuman things or making him an unlikeable jerk who suffers no consequences for his actions. Simply put the "Woo-hoo!" Homer has overtaken the "D'oh!" Homer. Thankfully, this episode was a return to form for those of us who love the hard done-by Homer of "Homer Badman". Not that it was on par with that classic episode but it was funny enough to keep me entertained and on board throughout, which has been a rarity in recent years.

On a similar note, the Simpsons is always at its best when Mr. Burns is written as evil first and foremost. Some gags about him being old and senile are funny but they've overemphasized this aspect of his character at the expense of the much more hilarious mean-and-nasty qualities of the character. Nice to see him hypocritically firing Homer yesterday for his inappropriate conduct as part of a public message from "Evil Corp.".

Lastly, I think some of you missed the point of the title and were actually expecting something shocking in the third act. Clearly the title was meant as a parody of all the idiotic clickbait that draws people in on the internet, which was expertly skewered in this episode (Kirk saying "we'll see about that" when told #6 would shock him on a list of 80 NFL players with bad houses). The clickbait spoofs actually represented the biggest laughs for me (i.e. "15 photos of people just before they choked to death" or whatever). I give this one 4/5 for writing the characters as they should be written and for having enough good laughs and social commentary to make it worthy of the Simpsons catalogue.
 
One more thing I wanna add is that the short guy gave me the impression that his role was originally written for Mike. But either his VA was too busy or they knew forcing us to endure two episodes with the worst character they've created in recent memory would've been too much.
 
John95 said:
There's no point in me trying to eleborate why that episode sucks as it'll be overpowered by the heavy Selman bias that hovers over it.
Click to expand...

I don't think people care as much as you do who runs the show. You don't want to elaborate on why you think this episode sucks because the show runner is Selman
 
@Frankbags, No! I don't want to because it was a well regarded Selman episode meaning any criticisms against it like it feeling even more like an ABC After school special than Bart's in Jail! will be immediately shut down!
 
Last edited:
SimpsonsWillGoOnForever said:
I don't think the show would've gotten that far with that moment. I think they just took the aspects of Karens being overly demanding or in your face like Helen usually is, and not the racial aspects. Helen also is a recurring character, so I don't think they would want to destroy her character that much just for a little joke.
Click to expand...

Well the same season had Terri rejoicing over her sister's death when their seeming closeness was one of the few humanizing traits they were given... so the show totally isn't above character assassination or dehumanization like that. And as fitting as Helen was, I'd kind have preferred if either all of the other characters were stand-ins like the guys I forget the name of or all regulars.

Using the twins for that big feels like an unusual but also very deliberate choice. Especially when one can be seen doing that thing where they glance at each otther and it was transparently a parody of racist Karens in particular. And there's a lot of yellow kids that could've been used too (like Milhouse&Martin) so it sticks out to me they used the two characters who are ambiguously Asian...

Actually it also sticks out because for all they've been victimized since season 16, this might be the only occasion where it's not treated as a "fuck you" to them regardless of if they actually did anything bad recently. At the very least I don't think we're meant to side with whoever's making them suffer.


Another thought on the rest of the episode but I feel the point would've been stronger if Homer was at least more at fault for the car incident. Like he left SLH in the car but only because the weather was already kind of cold but then it turned sunny. I think then it would make it stronger when Homer's the only one to redeem himself by actually apologising. Feels a bit weaker when it was a really contrived accident rather than an ignorant mistake.
 
John95 said:
There's no point in me trying to eleborate why that episode sucks as it'll be overpowered by the heavy Selman bias that hovers over it.
Click to expand...
Dude, come on. You repeat the same talking points and then either ignore or, in this case, openly refuse to engage with opposing viewpoints. This is something I've seen you do quite a bit and it's frustrating because it paints conversations into corners from which you can conveniently side-step having to back up your arguments (and simultaneously dismiss if not denigrate other viewpoints which, understandably, grates on people).
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top