Season 22 Review

Well, last week ended the misery that was season 22. It's hard to believe that 8 months ago we started this season with an episode that was more or less an ominous sign of what was ahead. I thought Elementary School Musical would EASILY be a bottom 5 episode of the season,it barely made it into the bottom 5 the rest of the season was that bad. If you take a look at my mid-season review, I listed my bottom 5 episodes at that point, I could only consider 2 of them as legitimate candidates for bottom 5 for the entire season. Honestly though, I'm not surprised, this show in recent years has always started off weak, maybe a watchable episode or two in the mid-season and always ended weak. So, all that out of the way, let's take a look back at the good, the bad, and the downright horrible of this season.

Bottom 10 Episodes:
Now I know I did a bottom 5 in the mid-season, but after looking back at this season, it would be too complicated to leave off some of these episodes from their 15 minutes of shame that is this list
10. Homer the Father

• This episode was just stupid. Nevermind the idea that there have been good episodes with Homer trying to be a good father in the past. But in recent history, the writers have butchered Homer's character so badly into "Jerkass comic relief" that it's impossible for this premise to work anymore. It also doesn't help that the narrative structure is similar to a 5th Grader's fanfiction where scenes do not flow whatsoever and it's rather difficult to understand how one event leads to another.

There, there, nothing's looking up for us

9. Donnie Fatso

• Like I said before, to kill off a character is one thing, but to insult your audience's intelligence by fixing status quo the way they did is just mind boggling. The episode itself was boring, stupid and not funny, nothing in this episode seemed entertaining and is a great way to teach future writers how NOT to kill of a character.

Speak of this again and I will cut you

8. Flaming Moe

• So Smithers needs to win over Mr. Burns' respect so he decides to help Moe get more business by turning his bar into a gay bar. Okay fair enough, unfortunately the writers manage to screw up such a simple premise. The gay jokes are all just terrible and seem like something you'd find on a Google search rather than an original idea (The one that pissed me off the most was "Comic Book Gay", ugh). The subplot is completely inept and pointless as it serves as nothing but filler. Granted sometimes subplots are meant for that, but with competent writing, subplots can be entertaining and hold our attention just as well as the main plot.

Wow, what a horrible attempt at humor

7.  The Scorpion's Tale

• Let's see, every main character gives a one note performance, plus a framing device that takes up a quarter of the episode plus a bull-shit, shoehorned in "Lesson" usually equals crap, and this is no exception. Lisa, Homer and Grampa all give a boring one-note performance in this and the jokes are terrible. It also doesn't help when an adult sitcom resorts to "Cartoon eyes" as their ending for the plot. Whenever the writers feel like growing up, give us a call.

Yeah I still don't get it

6. A Midsummer's Nice Dream/Love is Many a Strangled Thing

• I put this as a two-fer because more or less, these qualify as the "Boring as all hell" episodes for the season. These could literally cure insomnia I kid you not, heck I re-read my reviews for these episodes recently to get an idea for what happened, and I forgot what they were about when I started writing this. It's one thing for a bad episode to get an angry response, it's another thing to not even garner a response at all, and that's what these two are.

To killing humor!

5. Elementary School Musical

• I really debated whether or not this was a bottom 5 or not, but after thinking about it, yeah it is. This episode is painful to watch, the main plot sucks with WAY too many musical numbers in it (Seriously, just because it's a musical doesn't mean you need 5 songs) and little to no jokes. You have to love how FOX basically promoted this for the cameos from Glee, and they show up for all of TWO scenes, that is extremely lazy and purely a ratings gimmick (Which makes no sense, Glee sucks). While the subplot is annoying bad and forgettable, I think it involved Krusty in some way, I don't know and honestly, I don't care.

This'll be fun! It'll be just like that South Park satire, right? Right?

4. Homer Scissorhands

• You knew this one was going to make it somewhere, only question was where. I'm all for "Family member does XXX very well" but I'm not for "Family member instantly picks up XXX and is the best ever at it". Let's take a look at Deep Space Homer for a minute, do you think it would have been nearly as good if Homer not only succeeded at the training program, but single-handedly completed the mission and guided the ship back down to Earth? I didn't think so, and the less I talk about the subplot, the better it'll be for my blood-pressure.

I am SO sorry, I am so deeply sorry for this.

3. Mom's I'd Like to Forget

• Oh Brian Kelley, your ineptitude knows no bounds. Not only is this another forgettable episode you'll manage to forget after 30 minutes, but it's painfully unfunny. The whole "Bart is connected to these boys" storyline is a classic example of laziness and bad writing, I've seen a better sense of storytelling from Fanfictions written by 10 year-olds than I saw in this. Nothing in this is funny or enjoyable, we don't give a rat's ass about any of the characters (Seriously, I'll pay anyone $1000 if they can name TWO of the family members and attach the names to faces) and the lesbian scene at the end was purely retarded and seems to try to appeal to the man-child audience.

Months later and we still don't give a rat's ass

2. Real Housewives of Fat Tony

• When you think of Jersey Shore satires, the one done by South Park comes to mind, a few others will come to mind, but not this one. A satire as defined by Websters is : The use of irony, sarcasm, ridicule, or the like, in exposing, denouncing, or deriding vice, folly, etc. If you can find ANY of that in this, you're clearly stretching for something. The "humor" in this really rivals that of Seltzer and Friedberg as it was just painful when they actually got to the "Satire". Beforehand though sucked as well as it made no sense and was equally as unfunny and the subplot was annoyingly stupid and mind-numbingly asinine.

We are conducting a new program, we like to call it "Deep Hurting"

1. The Blue and the Gray

• Whenever you can't think of a good topic to write about, why not write about something that makes no sense in context of the show and is completely stupid? Not only has it been established way earlier in the show that Marge has gray hair, but the way the writers try to use it here is just painful, there were no jokes and everything seemed to be taken too seriously. Don't even get me started on the subplot, when you not only fail to satirize a very easy subject like TV-airport-seminars but actually seem to suck their dicks acting like they're God's gift to man, you really need to seek a new job.

There is no ONE image I can use to describe my hatred for this. But this comes close

Top 5 Episodes:
Okay, let me make ONE thing clear about this: Just because an episode is on here does NOT mean it is good, it just means I could tolerate it better than I could others.
1. Loan-A-Lisa

•  I'm debating on whether or not this would have been a decent episode if the subplot was cut entirely. But I have to go with what was given and what was given was a somewhat flawed main plot with an awful subplot involving modern Homer being annoying. The cameos are rather shameful and quite a few of the jokes are stupid, but if I was forced to re-watch an episode from this season, without hesitation it'd be this one.

When all else fails, conjure up memories of when this show was good

2. MoneyBART

•  Think of a  poor man's Lisa on Ice, now combine that with Lisa being irrationally out of character with her math-nazism and you have this. While that makes it sound like it should be a bottom 10 for that, it sadly may have some of the better writing of the season and I'm a rather big sucker for the Bart-Lisa episodes, so maybe it's a false sense of nostalgia for this being on here. But these lists are based off my feelings for these episodes and this one really didn't anger me much. I didn't like this one, but I didn't dislike it either.

We'll always have our hockey games to remember

3. The Great Simpsina

•  Maybe I put this on here because of potential rather than what is was. I could sense moments where character was trying to break out, but inept writing kept those ideas on the shelf. The story itself isn't all that bad, I could see this working with good writing. Now to the negatives; the jokes really aren't there and Lisa falls into that same "Instant expert" that Homer seemed to fall victim to a lot this season. In short, forgettable episode, but it's harmless at the same time, which is more than I can say for a lot of the garbage this year.

I'm sorry so much was left on the table for this episode

4. Ned-Liest Catch

•  This episode is better than it had any right to be. It's still rather bad, but the painful jokes are really at a minimum here so it makes it on the list. There are some good moments, a lot of bad moments, and very few laughable jokes. The main reason I included it however is because unlike so much other crap, there seems to be semblance of character, storytelling and actual effort. The ending was terrible, but still I'd rather watch this one over the Tweenlight shit (I can't believe I just reminded myself of that).

That's right folks, we're taking this VERY seriously

5. How Munched is That Birdie in the Window?

• I feel dirty for having this on here, however, I needed a fifth, and this episode seemed to piss me off the least out of all the episodes I had left to choose from. The storyboard was made by a child and scenes do not flow at all. The jokes are mediocre at best and the cameos are very shameless as the Danica Patrick one pissed me off. It was really between this and the Christmas one, and as much as I somewhat liked the first half of the Christmas one, I could not in all honesty include an episode that included a Katy Perry oral sex joke (Yet another good reason to hate her).

NO! Not the bird I knew for all of 5 days!

And now for the little moments, moments that seem small when you look at one or two episodes, but in the grand scale are mind-boggling.

Montages: 36
Song count: 62
Celebrity count: 46
Celebrities who voiced themselves: 22

So 36 montages to 22 episodes is a rather staggering number. On average, an episode would contain at least a montage, maybe two (And I was being generous for what I considered to be a montage). Considering that montages are viewed as one of the laziest forms of padding, it really speaks volumes to just how lazy these guys can be despite having a shorter airing time and the occasional 2 minute opening. The song count did NOT include the songs used in the majority of the montages so it's rather baffling just how many times they would force a song into a scene just because. I think the celebrity counter speaks for itself and just how insignificant it is to guest star on this show anymore.

Okay all that out of the way, we'll do the normal verdict and score.

Final Verdict: This season was terrible, it's not the worst season of all time (Although viewer ratings averaged an all-time low this season) but it was a close second. There were really two episodes that I felt were "Watchable", two more were "Borderline watchable" and a bunch of garbage that seemed to fill out this mess of a season. The writing was beyond lazy and I'll probably go more into detail this summer about the little points. The jokes were terrible and it's obvious the writers have no concept of basic storytelling, making fun of something, or reality in general. This is yet another step in the wrong direction for an otherwise great show and with at least one more season of predicted mediocrity, I don't see a silver lining in this at all.

Final Grade: 1.9/10 A failure from the very start