Season 32, Episode 16, “Manger Things”

“Punishment, punishment, punishment, and if it’s much too late, love.”

There are stories that move you on their own, and stories that tell you how moving you must be, that rely on clues and tradition to do the job. “Manger Things,” The Simpsons‘Impossible 700th episode, does everything to mark its place in history, but gives us a reason to celebrate it. As a piece of TV history, this is a novelty. As an episode of The Simpsons, it’s barely there.

Look, I have no pleasure in this. After all, I am the AV Club reviewer what spent his years covering late series Simpsons the case for the alternating well trip as proof that there’s another kick in the old girl. And I was really sad when the inevitable ax fell last year, indicating that the AV club’s decision to return regularly Simpsons coverage begins in 2011s Season 23 we allowed Simpsons stalwart pan for TV gold long enough. As much heat as I get now and then Simpsons professionals online because they are dismissive (I will never get along angry with Yeardley Smith—I just do not want to), I can point to a dozen or more episodes of the past six seasons that I can comfortably sink into any Simpsons‘binge of the good old days.

But we are not here to remind you of the occasion of a nice delivery, we are here to talk ‘Manger Things’. And “Manger Things” barely registers.

Rob LaZebnik is the recognized author, and his name is one I usually look at with hope at the beginning of an episode. The Simpsons is a sharply steered ship at this point, with everything looking sharp, and our voices overcoming the COVID process recorded remotely with a hiccup. I laughed once for a moment, at the disposable stopper where Mr. Burns ‘sociable assurance that his workers’ Christmas party was overloaded with benevolence was repelled by a random bullet hanging from the power station in front of him. It’s an old joke, but it’s good and I’m laughing.

Flanders – whose role in this endlessly focused episode is otherwise unlikely to be discarded – brings out Jesus’ whole “Love your neighbor” idea to convince the much flashback pregnant Maude to allow the sprawling Homer to share their vacation, while thinking how the man ‘It never seems to live next to anyone.’ And Homer, who spends the night in Flanders ” Son of Man Cave ‘, is instantly tempted by a Bosch-painted devil and responds to the little monster’s talk of the lake of fire by immediately sparking:’ A house next to the more? I can do some writing! ‘I’m always on board for a joke about the unexplored and unexpected thoughts of Homer J. Simpson.

However, it is not much entertainment to hang on to any episode. And “Manger Things” throws a whole bunch of stumps on the fire to generate a “700th episode spectacular” heat. This is a Christmas episode. This is a flashback episode. Marge throws Homer out. This is a delivery in Flanders. Homer plays emergency doula for Rod’s birth because he cries out loud, a monumental retcon that brings Homer and Maude into such unexpectedly profound intimacy that it makes Homer’s infamous callous reaction to his unintentional murder of Maude so retrospective.

This is quite shocking, even for a professional knee dumbbell Simpsons viewer, how little nurturing is done for any of these plot lines. The Christmas corner exists to mourn Homer’s grief over Marge’s decision to give him the shoe (and to make sure Neddy delivers Christmas turkeys to the needy during Maude’s emergency), but this could have been instituted at any time. (If there is a symmetry to deliveries 1 and 700 set both during the holidays, that’s all there is to it.) Homer, after being trapped by Moe (for some reason) in a secret room over the Simpson garage, he ends up out there spying his family by a comfortable sound-conducting vent. But while Dan Castellaneta dutifully provides the sad Homer with very sad moans and sighs over his plight, the central conflict between the couple is not as dramatized as it was produced. Homer makes a Clark Griswold Style solo candlesticks in the cramped and forgotten attic space move to pathos without ever committing, and it’s all so terribly flat and uninvolved. As the season 32 fanatics know, Marge Homer threw out just a few episodes ago, and her decision here is not only portrayed as misleading (Lenny and Carl secretly drank the hesitant Homer at the party), but that the narrative bullet should not be. will-nilly be shot down.

Similarly, no real comic hay was made from the six-year-old flashback premise. Homer has a little more hair. So did Abe, who in this version of history had the illusion that he could live with his son’s family indefinitely. We get such a long discussion about why Marge had to replace the kitchen curtains for those who were into that sort of thing. Bart (4 years old) and Lisa (2 years old) are not a small code, and Nancy Cartwright and Yeardley Smith give up their voices a bit, but the siblings act differently in response to Homer’s sudden absence . There is a whistle of attempt to indicate that Bart’s bald tendencies (this time) stem from his brief fatherlessness, but as the rest of the character beats in ‘Manger Things’, it almost does not exist. And when the climax strikes with the birth of Maude’s Homeroom Assistants, Ned and Marge’s arrival is as artless and perfect as such things become. (There is literally no reason why Marge is suddenly in the Flanders house to witness Homer’s comfortable helpfulness.)

In the promotional material that led to the Big 700, ‘Manger Things’ was sold with the idea that Homer would find an unknown room in the Simpsons home. It’s the core of a provocative idea, which metaphorically promises that there’s still something hidden and wonderful, even in something you think, running out of ways to surprise you. “Manger Things” barely explores the seemingly completely inconspicuous attic space in the family’s garage, and it wastes hope that I allowed myself to educate myself while I was allowed to immerse myself in The Simpsons (professionally speaking). 700 episodes and 32 years is an eternity in television. Hell, this is a long time for anything, or anyone. Congratulations are due, even if another big round number is just as artificial a milestone as ever, so congratulations to one of my favorite shows ever. And as always, next week is better.

Lost observations

• Apart from the fact that Marge is cast as the (unintentional) villain of the piece here, Maude is also terribly clever and un-Christian / un-Flanders throughout. She’s not wrong – Homer eats the Flemish uncooked, still wrapped Kersham for a midnight snack – but her characterization here is just one big, sour bummer.
• Nor is it characteristic of Marge to tell the children that what she needs for Homer to be a good thing, ‘one wonderful thing – one good thing to prove that all the nonsense I endure is a point has.’ As a rule, yes, there are such delivering grandiose schemes that bring the marriage of the Simpsons back from the brink of the week, but Marge cannot articulate it so explicitly. In the couple’s dynamic couple, Homer is the one who thinks that big gestures can restore a lifetime of grinding neglect and disappointment, while Marge succumbs because she realizes that such belts are all her loving but flawed husband. Margin does not want gestures, and the writing here betrays the character in a disturbing way.
• Bill Plympton returns with the show opener, “Homer’s Family,” his seventh guest animator bank nebula. I agree with Sam Barsanti’s name that the hand-drawn flight of cartoon fancy is kind of sweet in its own way. The piece centers Homer again as the core of the show, his smiling face never changing, even if pieces of him break out (there is always a element of body horror with Plympton) and then floats around his noggin, Marge and the children are eternally bound to their Homerocentric orbits by power of love and sitcom tradition. That Homer is irrevocably transformed by this Cronenberg-ian subtraction and yet inexplicably chooses to immerse himself in this new reality of wife, children and 32 years of stagnation is more a thoughtful and informative rumor about The Simpsons than anything in ‘Manger ‘Things, a loving poetic and inventive riff on a subject whose weekly reality has too often become rocky and mundane.
• Thanks for excessive analysis The Simpsons one more time, you cook. It’s nice to be back, even if it’s just for a visit.