"Hate Month" Stop or My Dog Will Shoot

I'm back for this review. You all thought "Bart Mangled Banner" broke me didn't you? You thought I would cancel this entire theme month completely. You thought wrong, while it's true I did go to my corner and cry a little after the episode, it was nothing booze couldn't fix. Now I'm going to tear apart another horrible episode from John Frink and take out lingering frustrations from the previous episode now. Okay rant over (I'm sorry but that episode was SO HORRIBLE, I'm still shocked it was eve made) let's review this mediocre episode.

So we begin the episode with an unfunny Oktoberfest joke involving Homer losing his beer (Can I have it? I'll be needing it). So after some padding (Ah yes, thank you writers, these episodes are way too compelling for us to enjoy already) we see Marge go over to a Cornucopia contest where she sees the winner dragged off behind the barn after finding out he cheated (While I do find the whole "Killing the cheater" bit funny, it's undercut by the music selection at the beginning of the scene. The same score used in "Bart Vs. Thanksgiving" when Lisa brings her tablepiece to the table. Good job writers, good job). After more padding (I'm not beginning a count here) Homer accidentally takes the family into a corn maze where they get lost immediately. After some more padding (This episode would make a very comfy pillow for your loved ones) Marge suggests that they split up to get out.

With a-maize-ing writing like this, who needs jokes?

Homer being rock stupid has his bipolar moment as he runs off further into the maze. We then see Homer angry about being stuck in the maze as he tries to get out but is shocked when he tries to run through the corn (This is a genuinely funny visual gag, but it's undercut by a gag within the joke and an utterly stupid line. Thanks for giving false hope episode). We then see the family's gotten out by Lisa using an algorithm (Um, how? Ah screw it Bart setting the corn on fire made me chuckle a bit. Let's see how long that lasts). We cut to nightfall as we see that Homer's still stuck in the maze and he's essentially screwed. Help is on the way as the police come with their rescue dog, but that backfires as the dog gave birth earlier that day and this causes Wiggum to forget all about Homer (Why did the police not know about the pregnancy until now? Oh yeah, this police force is about as effective as the French war flag *Heyo!*) Bart's not concerned as he calls for Santa's Little Helper and we see him escape from the car through the worn out floor (I'm not going to go into why a dog was left alone in a car on what I can assume was a hot day). Bart tells SLH to find Homer but he can't until Lisa finds a sports bra in Homer's backpack for SLH to smell... I'm just going to let that sit with you for a moment, moment over. We then get to watch SLH go through the maze in a scene which I'm reluctant to call DOOM: The Maze. SLH finds Homer and brings him out of it. Lou then praises SLH's tracking abilities and Wiggum asks Bart if he wants his dog to join the force, Bart asks Homer and Homer says he can.

Watch out for the Mars demons to your right

Our next scene starts off with a statue of a dog dressed as a police officer riding a horse outside of the "Spirngfield Animal Police Academy" (I'm not sure what to say about the statue, but I will admit I've never seen any of the Police Academy movies, so references to them will go over my head). After Bart has a pointless dream sequence (Which involves SLH being Robocop, I'm starting to believe the writers just thought they could add any police movie reference and we'd accept it) we get a pointless scene of Wiggum being incompetent (Wow, something we've never seen before. Truly this is the work of creative writing). After a semi-montage of SLH and others training, we see them all graduate and SLH is assigned to Lou (Oh yeah apparently dolphins can become police animals, I'll get into this a bit later when it comes back up). Lou and SLH get called in for a domestic disturbance as we find out that Brandine is shooting at Cletus for giving a pig more attention than her. When they get there, a bullet ricochets off the tub Cletus is hiding under and it hits SLH. Lou calls for backup and we see that the dolphin comes along in a tank (Okay, now is the time. What is the point of the dolphin?! Did they honestly think it was funny?! I mean it's just so retarded and pointless. If they were going for a funny animal to dress up, here's an idea; How about a fucking bear?! Makes just about as much sense).

Oh it's so funny because it's a dolphin. And dolphins can't walk, right? Right?!

After that, Bart decides to pay more attention to Snowball II, this goes over about as well as you'd think. After Bart tells Lisa what we've all figured out by now (And for those of you who haven't; Bart misses SLH) we see SLH and Lou in a cop bar where SLH is experiencing some Post Traumatic Stress Disorder from the shot he took and he just shakes it off with some beer (How classy, make fun of a real condition that plagues thousands of people and causes them to loose sleep at night. I know people who've served in wars and PTSD is nothing to mock or even try to bring up in a non-serious manner. I'm sorry if I sound like I'm nitpicking here, but this is personal and I can't believe they even wrote SLH getting shot in the first place). Moving on, we see Snake selling steroids to the bullies as Lou and SLH bust them for illegal drug trafficking (I think *Goes to check my lawbook*). SLH chases after Snake as he catches him in probably the most ludicrous way possible (Oh yeah, SLH getting shot never comes back into the story so I guess my rant about their insensitivity did have merit as it was pointless). Later we see Snake in court as he's let go because the police report was filed by SLH and it's all messed up (Wait, why did the police department let a DOG fill out a police report? Are the writers high?) After Snakes mocks SLH (And admits out loud he's going to go sell more drugs... Why isn't he charged on the spot?) Lou drives SLH back home where SLH lets out his frustrations from Snake on Bart by biting him.

We ran out of jokes, so we just decided to throw a copy of the script in.

Later Wiggum tells the family not to worry about SLH because the life of a cop is tough (Yeah this coming from the most incompetent cop in the world. Can we get a second opinion here?) After Marge suggests that they let SLH live somewhere else Bart says no and tries to prove that SLH is still normal, but it fails. SLH goes to Lou's to try to live better, we then get a "hilarious" bit with a woman who tries to set SLH up with a poodle (...I've got nothing, the scene speaks for itself). Later, Marge and Homer take Bart to a pet store to get him a new pet as Bart doesn't want to at first but changes his mind when he sees a python and "Wise-Guy" decides to sell him a python that is wrapped up like a firehose and is cut using a paper cutter guillotine (I'm just going to put my face in this pillow, trying not to smother myself as tempting as it sounds *Puts face in pillow*) Do I even need to say anything about that or does it sound stupid enough without a visual? Moving on, we see the family eating dinner as Bart has his snake with him at the table and he decides to name it "Strangles". Bart tricks Lisa into touching slime on Strangles as Homer strangles Bart for that and Strangles chokes Homer to defend Bart (Any humor gets undercut by Homer's pathetic lines, why is it so hard for the writers to understand this?) The next day we see that Bart brings Strangles to Show-and-Tell as Strangles ate Martin's rabbit causing Mrs. Krabappel to be as unfunny as possible with a bad play-on-words. Martin announces that Strangles escaped as we find out that the school has an alarm for escaped pets (This seems funny on paper, but visually, it gets nothing).

It seems like even the snake enjoys chewing out the scenery

Of course this gets the attention of the police force as Wiggum, Eddie, Lou and SLH all show up at the school to help get the snake (Christ, not even the fire department gets to a school this fast when the fire alarm is pulled and we're expected to believe that THIS police force got there that quickly. I'm just going to classify this scene under "Inept writing") After an emotional scene where we see that SLH misses Bart (And yet again undercut by unfunny dialogue to follow. You know, this episode wouldn't half as bad if about 4 minutes of it was cut out completely) we get a scene of Strangles mistaking a computer mouse for a real one (...What?) as he knocks over two chemicals that create a noxious gas. The police continue bickering until the gas approaches them and they just stand there screaming (This is the inept police force we all know). After Skinner finds out Bart's missing, SLH goes into the school to rescue him. After Bart runs into the gas cloud (How did he not see that? No seriously, how? He runs right into it) Bart then wakes up and finds out that Strangles and SLH saved him. Bart has to decide which one will save him and he decides on SLH, after getting out Bart throws the Frisbee with SLH and Willie takes the snake as his own.

Final Verdict: This episode is underwhelming and boring. There's more padding than a mattress, the jokes are either non-existent or just not funny and the plot is rather uninteresting. This episode seemed nothing more than an unfocused attempt to parody several cop movies while having a phoned in B plot involving Bart with a new pet. It's not something that will cause you to jab your eyes out, but it's a below average episode that's very forgettable.

Final Grade: 3.8/10 Just so uninteresting