Episode 21: Coming to Homerica

Now tell me if you've heard this before, The Simpsons doing an episode based on illegal immigration and... *1000 replies later*. Yeah this is just a poor man's Much Apu About Nothing and it's not even clever in trying to distinguish itself from that episode, it's an unfunny clone of it. Illegal immigration was a problem during the airing and it's the same today (Except now this episode would have the police go around saying "Show me your papers" instead of building a wall, but I digress). I know I commented that I liked the episode with Lisa on drugs and Bart having a girlfriend but that was more interesting; this tries too hard to make light of something we've known for years and it come off as stupid. Let's put on our sombreros, avoid Arizona and take a look.

We start off with Krusty's accountant telling Krusty about how his products are bad and he needs to change (Change the bloody record already. We've seen this so many times already). Krusty then tells him add a veggie burger to his menu to offset the unhealthy items already there (Like that helped McDonald's). After the Simpsons watch a commercial for the "Mother Nature Burger" (I couldn't make that up if I tried) Homer decides to take his family to Krusty Burger. At Krusty Burger we see that the burger has made the restaurant popular (We even see Apu and Lisa eating burgers. Savor those images, you'll never see them again). Back at home, though, the burgers made the family sick and everyone starts throwing up (Homer doing it in Lisa's sax, charming. Oh yeah we see that they have three bathrooms, correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't there only two bathrooms in the house?) After a pointless scene at Springfield Elementary, we find out that the burgers had tainted barley in them and the barley traces back to Ogdenville (Fair enough, Ogdenville hasn't been truly established for what it does, there's potential here). As it turns out, the citizens of Ogdenville are descendants of Norwegian immigrants from 100 years ago and they specialize in barely production (... Whatever you say, oh yeah keep note of the line "Settled 100 years ago by Norwegian immigrants" in short, the settlers were immigrants, but the descendants are American... that fact will hurt a lot throughout the review).

All the subtlety of a baseball bat

After that we see that Ogdenville becomes a ghost town because all of its business was barley and nobody wants to buy barley from Ogdenville anymore (Oh yeah, this apparently happens OVERNIGHT, I've heard of exaggerated timelines but this is ridiculous. This ranks up there with the ending of Alone in the Dark). The residents then do their greatest impression of Grapes of Wrath and head out for new life in Springfield; we can tell there's prosperity there because the gray overcast isn't over Springfield (...Subtle symbolism ain't it?). We then cut to Homer buying rain gutters as some Ogdenvillians offer help to Homer install them because they need work (Great, they aren't even trying to hide that Ogdenville citizens are their stand-ins for Mexicans, scratch subtle writing off the list). Homer thanks the workers for what they did and he says that he's thankful for them being there to take the jobs Springfielders won't take and they can't have too much of a good thing (Gee I wonder if that contrived line in any way will come back to bite him in the ass? It was said oh-so-subtly by Homer and the theme we already have will make me ponder this for a long time). We then see the streets are crowded with some Ogdenvillians doing all sorts of jobs, we cut to Marge as she hires an Ogdenviller named Inga to be her new nanny (No, only British women with songs and flying umbrellas can be their nanny).

Not obvious enough, try putting sombreros on them

After that, we cut to Luigi's where we see that Selma is going out with an Ogdenville man who helped her kill moles in her garden (Well that was pointless, then again the majority of the scenes have been pointless). We cut to Bart and Milhouse as they see that Ogdenville kids have basically taken over their skating area (And they're Minnesota Vikings fans, which is stupid. That's like saying all Native American descendants are Florida State fans or all Irish descendants are fans of Notre Dame (As an Irish Catholic descent myself, and I hate Notre Dame)). After one Ogdenville kid goes "So many meters" (That's stupid beyond words, you said they were DESCENDANTS of Norwegian immigrants, NOT Norwegian immigrants themselves. God I hate this) Bart decides to outdo him and gets hurt in the process. Bart is then taken to the hospital where he has to wait because of all the "Norwads" (This is hurting my brain). Because of all the Ogdenvillians there (They are American-Norwegian at best, not pure Norwegian you DIPSHITS. No I'm not letting this go, they CLEARLY said the immigrants SETTLED it. It's all there black and white clear as crystal. It's the equivalent of saying anyone born in Chinatown is Chinese and not American) Homer and Marge are given a Norwegian form because they are out of English ones (How does that make sense? Shouldn't the Ogdenville people be given the Norwegian ones while Springfielders are given English? GOD MY BRAIN HURTS)(To make it worse they. Are. DESCENDANTS. At this point, it's unlikely they don't know English, making the Norwegian forms, you guessed it, entirely pointless).

I knew it, the people from the next town over will cause hospitals to become too crowded

Marge takes Bart home and pulls his arm out of the socket to fix it and Bart claims that the Ogdenville kids "dared" him. Lisa points out that they were all immigrants at one time and the Ogdenvillians shouldn't be hated (They are NOT immigrants, they are the same nationality as you, American. How is it that this episode seems to pisses me off with every new line?) We then cut to Moe's as we see that there are more Ogdenvillers and that causes Moe to stop serving beer but instead serve some Norwegian Aquavit and it causes him to start accepting Norwegian money (Trust me, there isn't enough alcohol to make that scene okay). I know I probably should be allowing my suspension of disbelief to say that these are Norwegian immigrants and they are acting like illegal immigrants. However, illegal immigrants do not use their old money; they would convert it into U.S. dollars like how an American immigrant in Europe would convert his money to euros instead of trying to get businesses to accept the dollar instead, God I hate this. Homer then tries to down a bottle of Aquavit instead of using a shot glass and he gets a tremendous hangover the next day which causes him to get fired. Later, we see a town meeting to discuss the "Immigrant Problem" (No I'm not letting this go THEY ARE NOT IMMIGRANTS! THEY ARE U.S. CITIZENS WHO HAPPEN TO HAVE KEPT THEIR ROOTS! THEY LIVED IN THE CITY NEXT TO YOU, YOU TWATS!!!).

Everyone who has no clue how the immigration system works, raise your hand

Blue-haired lawyer suggests that there be a law banning Ogdenvillians from being inside the Springfield limits (You know you could just "deport" them by checking all the citizens and seeing if they have the proper papers). So after an unfunny xylophone joke (By the way, Xylophobia is fear of wood, not xylophones. Good try you dumb-fucks) we see at the border it's made obvious that the Springfield police are really sucking at their job and Ogdenvillians just keep crossing the border (Booze, don't fail me now). Lou suggests that they hire citizens to help patrol the border and we see some main characters with guns in their hands. Later it's shown that Homer is the leader and he tries to get a name for their group (How about "The Bigot Klan") Carl suggests "The Star Spangled Goofballs" and it sticks (I like how Cletus pointed out how stupid their group is, of all the characters to point out the stupidity of this)(Cletus? The slack-jaw yokel LAMPSHADES? ....it's pretty bad, then). After Lenny and Carl fail at air patrol (With an Up reference in the background... why?), Mayor Quimby is not pleased and he suggests that they need a new solution. They get their new solution after seeing Homer run into a wall; Quimby decides to build a big fence (Wow and I thought the wall on the U.S.-Mexico border was absurd)(At least that's between two COUNTRIES and has some basis, not two CITIES in the same country). We cut back home where Marge thinks the fence is stupid until Maggie says "Ja" (5 times) and that upsets Marge because Maggie's first words are in "Ogdenvillese" (And I thought Bush calling Mexico's LANGUAGE 'Mexican' was bad....it's, at best, a dialect, folks)...

Because her talking in the last episode was so amazing, here it is again

Okay, fuck it, I'm heading out for a while and I will not be back to finish the review. If you can't tell why, then clearly you need to re-read it. *walks away only to be ordered back by RBY* Okay I've been told I'll be fired if I don't complete this review so let's get back to this (Which is strange when you consider the fact that Kriken hired ME....don't think about that too hard). Where do I begin with that? Let's see:
1. That is stupid! Just because your baby is acting like a parrot doesn't mean these "immigrants" are a bad influence on your town
2. Really? Ogdenvillese? That's like saying Cubans who from Miami (Little Havana to be more specific) are speaking "Miamese" when they speak Spanish
3. Yet again this goes back to pathetic satire of how the writers view Americans viewing the world and blowing it WAY out of proportion. It's stupid and not funny.
4. Building a fence to keep two U.S. cities apart, I believe, is unconstitutional (I don't think it's covered in the lawbooks - NOBODY IS THAT STUPID! ....ok, maybe it's covered by anti-discrimination laws). It would be like if NYC created a fence around Little Italy, or if San Fransisco boarded up Chinatown. It's just dumb. And doing this is in no way funny nor "Satirical", it's fucking stupid.

Why do I get the feeling this is why the writers are so out of touch with modern society

We then see Quimby begin design of the wall as they decide to hire the Ogdenvillians to help build the wall (Sure why not?). As they build the wall together, each Springfielder finds that they have something in common with an Ogdenviller (Aw, could that mean they won't build the wall? Most surely not, right? You wouldn't pull this cliche? Right?) As they are putting up the last bit of the wall (Symbolism!) the Springfielders regret putting up the wall because they missed them for all of five seconds (Wow, what drama. I have more feelings for my fork then I do this scene). The Ogdenvillians come through a door they created (Lazy writing at it's finest ladies and gentlemen) and they all come back to Springfield where everything is back to normal. They even have a dance number at the end because this episode hasn't pissed me off enough yet, and the ending credits are put over the flag of Norway for some more symbolism. Now if' you'll excuse me I'm off to finish this bottle I got for the midway point.


Final Judgment: This episode is terrible. The satire is stupid, the plot is recycled and horrible, the writing is atrocious, the message is beyond stupid, and the "Mexican stand-ins" are horribly done because they are U.S. citizens and the writers couldn't be bothered to change a simple little thing like that. This is a piss-poor attempt at satirizing the illegal immigrant issue and it's sad because their first attempt was so much better and funnier; this just seems lazy and stupid.


Final Grade: 1.2/10 I never want to see this again