Season 23 Review

Another year, another 20 some episodes of mediocrity and laziness. It included the best of times (Holidays of Future Passed) the worst of times (Lisa Goes Gaga) and a bunch of other 21 minuted animated wastelands not worthy of our memory. This season to me at least was worse than last year's because despite it having better highs than last season, it had WAY lower lows. Really there's nothing I could say here that I didn't say about 22 times these past few months, but I'll try my best. So without further ado, let's begin

Bottom 10 episodes:

10. Beware my Cheating Bart

• I just imagine in my head the writers telling each other that Bart's not 10, but actually 16. It's the only way this hacktacular episode could be considered the least bit funny. Between a stupid as all hell "Bart gets a girlfriend" plot (Which has happened 6 times in the past 6 seasons as opposed to twice in the first 6) and a failed attempt at topical humor with Lost, this episode deserves its spot here at the bottom.

Bart: I am totally 10

9.  A Totally Fun Thing That Bart Will Never do Again

• What's this? A story where Bart's on a cruise and everything goes to hell so the cruise turns into a dystopia? How could this go wrong? Well it did, and I still don't know how you could make a concept like that boring. To top that all off, the episode's last act puts the family in Antarctica of all places and apparently Bart learns some sort of lesson about living in the moment rather than seeking it, but the lesson is so forced that, like The Scorpion's Tale, it feels more awkward than it does meaningful.

And they all died of hypothermia. The End

8. Exit Through the Kwik-E-Mart

• Yes exit through the Kwik-E-Mart... but first we'd have to enter it. It's one thing to have a parody title about a guy who you have a hard on for (Seriously staff, just because he gave you attention with that fake controversy doesn't mean you have to suck his dick every three episodes). But it's another to have a title about something, and then have only THREE scenes of that plot in the entire episode. But even if one could forgive that type of laziness, the main plot is a fake parody of street art where Bart (The little Gary Stu he is) spray paints his message of Homer being an idiot all over town and this calls the attention of 4 artists who appear just to say their names (Okay one does appear later, but the reasoning is such bullshit, it doesn't make a difference).

That's some pretty good craftsmanship from an amateur 

7. The Spy Who Learned Me

• I almost considered just listing this purely for how pathetically animated it was. But then I realized that it could have been animated by geniuses and it still would end up here. I already pointed out the logic errors in my full review, so I'll just skim over why it sucks. The James Bond jokes had no originality and even when they tried to do a parody movie, they screwed up by putting in awkward humor. Instead of just exaggerating certain elements, they put in slapstick type comedy and played the rest straight. But that was just the movie, for the Bond parody, "James Bont" in You Only Move Twice was funnier in his one scene than the entirety of this episode.

The name's Bont, James Bont

6. Replaceable You

• Because apparently getting cast members of Glee is so popular (I don't know) the show decided to tip it's hat and do it again. And like the first time, the result SUCKED. So Jane Lynch was Homer's assistant Roz, and good God she was dull. Her only personality trait was that she didn't like being touched... and that's it. The episode was just a bunch of piss-poor topical jokes and dragged on for what felt like an hour. The subplot was horrendous as well with robots that had no rules that some how lead to an evil corporation that turned them evil, until they were good, and then turned evil again... for some reason.

Please stay out of this! PLEASE!

5. The D'oh-Cial Network

• Title is very lazy? Check. Movie they are parodying is over two years old yet it's supposed to be a topical parody? Check. The parody itself is just inserting the family in the roles of the main characters of said story thus eliminating the idea of it being a parody? Oh Modern Simpsons, you never fail to disappoint me in just how pathetic you can be. Let's just somehow forgive the fact that the main plot didn't begin until the 9 and a half minute mark and instead talk about its back-ass logic here. So Lisa feels that she has no friends and to solve that she makes her own social network despite the fact that Facebook existed in episodes before and after this episode. In fact, the very next episode referenced Facebook. This is what happens when the writers create a parody and then forget the rules of how said parody works (I'm looking at you Ranier Schwarzenegger, er I mean Arnold Wolfcastle). 

And now I will log onto Facebook to- oh wait I meant... screw it Facebook is better

4. Treehouse of Horror XXII

• This is what happens when you make a Halloween special with nothing remotely Halloween about it. None of the stories they "Parodied" had anything to do with Halloween or horror in general. The closest thing was the Dexter parody, and it was about as bloody as a church service. I've seen more gory stories involving a guy getting a paper cut. But for the moment, we'll forgive the fact that there were far bloodier episodes later in the season. The only time this actually resembled a THOH was the obligatory Kang and Kodos cameo. Remove them and this would be nothing more than a mediocre anthology episode with horrible dated parodies.

The bloodiest scene in this episode... where's the blood?

3. Politically Inept with Homer Simpson

• Let's see a Glenn Beck parody in 2012 when his show ran from 2009 to 2011? Sounds like the perfect time for a satire of that. I had a conversation recently with a few friends and I pointed this out and followed it up with the idea that they should drop the idea that they are topical since their parodies are about 2 years date when they air. They try so hard to be South Park in their topical jokes, but they don't have the production schedule to poke fun of something a week after it happens. And besides, this episode was just unfunny and uninteresting and failed to even make fun of politics at all.

I AM AWESOME RIGHT?!

2. Moe goes from Rags to Riches

• Mix one half boring with one half lack of focus with one half unfunny and 3 halves padding and this would be the result. Nobody cared about Moe's bar rag (Next season I hear how Maggie got her pacifier... oh wait they get them at the Safeway for $1.95... Thank God for retconning) but even the story couldn't follow its own continuity. For example, one scene has the tapestry record history, but that gets dropped about 3 scenes later (Excuse me for not being precise). The jokes in this are terrible like Comic Book Guy randomly passing by Mount Everest in a hot air balloon just so he could say his line, Moe's parent being a yeti, Wiggum's entire scene, etc. The point still remains that this was a terrible episode and it's not even interesting enough to be in the "So bad it's good" territory.

Least interesting character ever

1. Lisa Goes Gaga

• Okay let's face it, who DIDN'T see this one coming? The promotions for this one were reminiscent of trailers for The Three Stooges movie and promotions for last season's finale (Edna and Ned get togehter), except while those two examples surpassed the low expectations, Lisa Goes Gaga was worse than we could have imagined. A 30 minute promotion for a mega celebrity with generic songs and even more generic jokes (P.S. Moshi Monsters made the common "Lady Googoo" joke back in October 2011)(Edit: Actually their name was "Baby Googoo", still it was a terrible scene for the sake of a joke). This was just a terrible episode about an emo Lisa learning nothing, a celebrity appearing just for the sake of "Hey we got 'X' take that internet!"

Did we mention we have Lady Gaga? We have Lady Gaga!

Top 5 Highlights:

5. Brian Kelley didn't show up this season

• Okay I'm cheating with 5 here, but when I stopped and looked at the candidates, I couldn't justify putting them on this list. You could argue they were the "Least terrible" but even that's questionable at best for me. Also, one could argue that "Al Jean stepped down" could make this as well, it's not like Matt Selman is any better, so it's like trading a rotten tomato for a dead skunk. So instead, I'm going to celebrate the fact that this talentless hack had no episodes this year and judging by the change in showrunners, he's gone for good

4. Them Robots

• Not really good, but not terrible either. The best way I could describe this episode would be to say that it's like having your foot stepped on. Initially it's painful, but you'll get over it sooner rather than later and it'll be like nothing happened. The episode had a somewhat interesting premise, but stumbled upon its own rules and logic. There were a few 'decent' jokes and some potential, hell I thought it'd be far worse than what it really was. But in the end, it's just another 'meh' episode.

Homer: Hmm... a character with more personality than me

3. Bart Stops to Smell the Roosevelts

• While not spectacular, this episode was possibly the least painful one left. So Bart learning outside of class has already been done (Much better) but I could see where they were going with this. Unfortunately this episode, like a lot of others was just held back by bad writing and backwards logic (Nelson has no problem with getting rid of Chalmers, but in the next scene he works with Bart to get him back, what?). A few decent jokes plus not terrible equals #3 on my list.

Chalmers: I still hate you all

2. The Book Job

• I think I was MUCH harsher on this episode than it deserved to be when I first watched it. Keep in mind, I just had to suffer through Replacable You and The Food wife in addition to having standards raised by my video review of Bart vs Thanksgiving. This was a no-win situation for the episode. But after watching it again, it was better than I gave it credit for and Neil Gaiman seemed to try his hardest to make it good. I still think they took the whole "This is how books are made" premise too serious and it could have been done better. While I'm a bit ashamed they only had one Twilight joke, I guess less is more because I could see that joke ending up being beaten like a dead horse. I personally don't mind it, but in terms of the rest of the season, it's pretty damn good.

Come on Lisa, just sell what little soul you have left to make this decent

1. Holidays of Future Passed

• I am willing to go out on a limb here and say this is arguably the 3rd best Christmas episode of this show's entirety and the 2nd best future episode. Seriously, I was about ready to hate this episode because I just saw the premise and thought it'd be just like every other episode they fucked up. I finished it pleasantly surprised. The jokes made me laugh more than any other episode this season, the pacing was much better than any other episode as the padding felt minimal compared to the others. This is the only episode I recommend to anyone who quit watching this show years ago because while it's not on Classic Simpsons quality, it's one notch under it in my opinion. If it wasn't for this episode, I would say this was the worst season the show has ever had.

Lisa: I'll let you in on a secret. This episode will actually be decent

Reasons why episodes did not make the cut (For either list)

• The Falcon and The D'ohman
• Lackluster cameo from Sutherland playing Jack Bauer, horrible flashbacks (Especially the training one), boring villain who doesn't show up until the 16 minute mark. However, it's not bad enough to reach the bottom 10
• The Food Wife
• No discernible connection with reality plus it being more of a commercial for foodies rather than a satire prevents this from being top 5.
• The Man in the Blue Flannel Pants
• Bullshit setup and taking itself way too serious on the parts that should be satirized combined with the main plot being boring and the subplot being utterly forgettable (Seriously, I forgot this even had a subplot until I looked this back up) makes this a middle of the pack episode
• The Ten-Per-Cent Solution
• Bullshit setup (Yeah the family just happens to run into an old agent of Krusty's) combined with a bipolar guest star and in the end nothing happened won't get many points from me
• The Daughter Also Rises
• I really wanted to put this in the bottom 10. Unfortunately, I ran out of spots by the time I got to this one and couldn't justify swapping one of the others out with this. Consider this one to be #11 on the bottom 10.
• At Long Last Leave
• You mad writers? 500 episodes and only 200 of them are good. Most shows on TV nowadays has a good relationship with their audience, The Simpsons on the other hand has nothing but contempt for theirs. The episode itself was very lackluster and contrived (Writer 1: Hey how do we achieve status quo? Writer 2: We should move the entire town to the new town and then never mention it again. Writer 1: Brilliant!) and to top it all off, the staff told everyone they can go fuck themselves. Oh how your ratings would plummet
• How I Wet Your Mother
• I keep hearing people say this was one of the best of the season. To me, I don't see it. Maybe it's because the episodes around it were so lackluster this looked like gold. But to me it's just Inception as played by The Simpsons and nothing more.
• Ned 'N Edna's Secret Blend
• Not as bad as I thought it would be, but boring as a snail race and a bunch of non-jokes made this outside looking in on the top 5

So at this point last year I mentioned how many montages, guest stars and guest stars voiced themselves here. Not the case this year, I will flat out admit, I got lazy and did not bother with a montage count because honestly, there's no point. You know how repetitive it is, I know how repetitive it is, why hammer the point in any further? Point is they had a lot of guest stars (Which Price insisted were essential) and a lot of them voiced themselves. The only one that comes to mind right now that I enjoyed was Neil Gaiman's guest spot. Partially due to the fact that they did not treat him like a God, Moe held him at knife point multiple times and one of his last lines makes it sound like he's a thief for all of his books. 

Ratings hit an all time low:

While ratings don't tell the ENTIRE story of whether a show is good or not (Internet streaming, Youtube, outsider sites, etc) seeing this show almost get cancelled for being unprofitable, only to get renewed for another two years to then bring in the worst ratings for a season and secure the 5 least watched episodes were all from this season just brings a smile to my face. The Season Finale ratings more or less told FOX that they made a HUGE mistake in renewing this show. So much promotional material was made, such a huge guest star with an equally huge fanbase, and all it counted for was 4.8 million viewers and 5th least watched of all time. I'm more than willing to bet that an executive at FOX kicked a dog when he saw the ratings. Not only did The Simpsons fail to win their own timeslot that night, but Family Guy had over 5 million viewers later that night which follows the trend that The Simpsons beats out Family Guy between September to February and from March onwards, it's reversed. The final average for this show ended up being 6.14 Million, which is down by just under 1 million of the 7.10 million average of season 22.

Final Verdict: This season was terrible. While the Christmas episode was perhaps the best episode in several years, it had really low lows. The theme for season 23 seemed to be "The Simpsons live in Hollywood" because there were so many episode where the family seemed to have luxuries they shouldn't be able to afford and just so much detachment from reality. The writing followed the same ol' "We don't give a shit" the writers have been giving since season 17. The jokes were mostly terrible with a lot of them either being explained or just awkward dialogue. I'd say this was worse than last year's but not the worst all time. Still looking at you season 20.

Final Score: 1.4/10 Just avoid this, even the riffability isn't worth it

Season 20 Review

In all my years of watching The Simpsons I have never seen anything so poorly written and woefully executed, with jokes that are so painful that I want a lobotomy. Seriously, some say season 11 is the worst; I say it's where the series jumped the shark and this is where the series was eaten by that same shark. With the low quality season 19 was emitting I thought "This show has nowhere to go but up". I was wrong, very wrong. I just hoped that the writers never make a season this shitty ever again (Season 22 dashed those hopes).

The season of course carries the momentum of "All about Lisa" and starts off with a rather mediocre episode that seems to try to say to the viewing audience: "Hey we can be as mature as Family Guy or South Park", but the effort doesn't seem to be there. 

The next two are polar opposites as one continues to try to appeal to the audience with the entire plot being about cell phones which to me just feels very out of place and too forced.I mean there's nothing wrong with trying to keep up with technology, but when The Simpsons try to incorporate modern technology into their episodes it just feels wrong and unnatural. The third episode had a MUCH better form in print form and was just a waste.

After The Treehouse of Horror to rope us back in, we go through 4 rather mediocre and unimpressive episodes that aren't funny nor interesting to the audience. But they are all better than "Lisa the Drama Queen". I still refuse to review that because the last time I saw it, I vomited and had nightmares because it was such a disgrace to the show that Brian Kelly should have been fired on the spot for writing such a flaming pile of shit.

Unfortunately that is the last episode of the series that is shown in SD (Great way to end an era wouldn't you say? ... ugh) as Take my Life Please is the first episode to go to the HD format and change the way we watch these episodes. And by way we watch them I mean the writing is patronizing to the audience and is just uninteresting from this point out. Nice way to usher in a new era.

The next few episodes are like a rollercoaster with it going down then up then way down then back up again. It's not too bad because it's better than consistently sucking.

The highlight is In the Name of the Grandfather, while it is rather boring, I'd still take this over a majority of the episodes this season (Which is really sad), while the lowlight has to be Gone Maggie Gone where it pisses on the source material (No it wasn't a satire, it was a piss-poor attempt at one) and is just batshit stupid.

The next three are the same as Wedding For Disaster is a waste of talent, Eeny Teeny Maya Moe has mixed messages and fails at their point while The Good, the Sad, the Drugly was more or less a re-hash of two previous storylines with little new material.

What this series excels at though is having an awful stretch of episodes that diminishes hope for next season being an improvement and redeeming this season (but it tried to my surprise). They are all shit, all poorly written and just plain stupid.

This was the lone season that really made me not take this show seriously anymore. The topical jokes and references seem forced and I really hate it. In the past, this show rarely needed to force topical reference in order to get viewers; I could watch an episode that's over 10 years old and understand the jokes without having to Google them. Now there were a couple of jokes that I didn't even remember what the event was that they were making fun of. The cell phone jokes though got under my skin the most. This is the family whose car has an EIGHT-TRACK TAPE PLAYER and all of a sudden they need to use their cell phones everywhere they go? I've said this in real life, people are idiots. We used to live in a world without cell phones and we survived perfectly fine, but take it away now and people will panic (Oops, shouldn't put my own view about cell phones in there, forget what you just read).

Next to the jokes, the fact that this season seems to have a musical motif pisses me off. In the 20 episodes of this season (excluding "Lisa the Drama Queen")  there were 41 times where there was a scene involving the characters singing or dancing. I'm not kidding, that is basically musical show numbers there.

I'm still in shock that Maggie got six lines in one episode and another five in the next. Let me say: MAGGIE DOES NOT TALK EVER!! IT'D BE LIKE KENNY TALKING WITHOUT HIS HOODIE FOR THREE STRAIGHT EPISODES! YOU DON'T DO IT! (Still pisses me off)

Really, the plots are either recycled or poorly executed as the new ones just seem uninteresting. In the 20 episodes there were 20 montages. I don't know what to say; it just feels like lazy writing as the occasional montage is good but not one per episode because it defeats the purpose. There is very little good and way too much shit for this to even be considered a season of The Simpsons. I just wish that it'd be gone and I could have the memory of this season erased.

Final Verdict: 1.2/10 It's just a horrible season that no real Simpson fan should ever have to see.

(This is RBY, calling out. If you'll excuse me, I'm now gonna put my nostalgia filter back on and go watch something GOOD)

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

Season 22 Midseason Report Card

Well I could take a break this week, what with there not being another episode til February 13, but because we're at episode 12, I figured now would be just as good as any to make a report card as sort of a preview of what's to come at season's end. Let's see, there will be a bottom 5 episodes list, top 5 episodes list, montage count, celebrity count, special moments, and finally a preview of February's theme.

Bottom 5:
Now this is a tough one considering what we have to choose from, I thought about it long and hard and decided that these five (In order from bad to worst) deserve it:
5. Donnie Fatso

• It's one thing to kill off a character; it's another thing to kill off a character just to bring them back and act like nothing happened. There is not a bigger insult to the intelligence of the audience than "Don't be concerned about that dead man, he'll be back". When Disney thinks higher of children's intelligence than a TV show, you should really just quit now.

4. Flaming Moe

• This show has had success in the past concerning episodes with gay humor. The PAST being the key word. This episode contains horrible, unfunny, gay non-stereotypes that are somehow worse than bad stereotypes while at the same time offering nothing funny at all. Combined with the crappy B plot, this episode is extremely forgettable and just a pain to watch.

3. Homer the Father

• Let's see, no coherence plus ludicrous plot elements plus not funny equals... well the past few seasons. But this one really takes the cake when it comes to incoherence. While there were times that made me chuckle, the episode had no idea what the plot wanted to be and the padding, don't even get me started. This episode felt long already, but it was just clear that the writers had no idea how to transition, fill out the episode or even end it properly.

2. Elementary School Musical

• This was originally going to be #1, but you'll see why it's not in just a minute. This episode pissed me off so much, from the beginning you could tell the writers didn't give a damn and by episode's end, I wanted slow painful torture to the jackass who thought a musical episode was a good idea. One of the worst thing had to be all the build up for the cast of Glee and they only appear ONCE! I kid you not, outside of maybe one or two lines they were in that bat shit annoying musical number and then disappeared. I'm not saying I was looking forward to the cameo, but don't build something up if you can't deliver, that's all I'm saying.

1. Mother's I'd Like to Forget

• Props to whoever saw this coming, I hated this episode, this was probably one of the most painful episodes I've reviewed in a few years. The plot makes no sense, the characters make no sense, the secondary characters had no personality or anything that would make us care about them, the jokes are nonexistent, the writing sucks, it has more padding than my pillow, and, worst of all, IT'S FUCKING STUPID!! I mean it wasn't enough that this episode pissed me off, but they had to top themselves by adding that stupid, ridiculous, pointless, asinine lesbian make-out scene at the end. This episode makes my blood boil and I'd prefer not to hear anyone defend this one.

Top 5:
Yeah this list isn't going to be as popular. This is like picking prettiest dog at an ugly dog show, you're not going to like the results, but you have to pick one. I probably should have renamed it "Outside the bottom 7" because really this season has little to no redeeming value, but in the spirit of fairness, I did find some that didn't totally piss me off, mostly on the merit that they're just "Post-season 10" bad and not "God-awful". Let's begin
1. Loan-A-Lisa

• You know, I think I could have liked (tolerated) this episode if it weren't for the stupid subplot. Yeah the main plot has holes in it and at times drags, but overall, the main plot doesn't suck. I mean it is original (mostly) and there is some good in watching Lisa enjoy Nelson's success. But yet again, poor writing prevented this idea from reaching full potential and we're left with this.

2. MoneyBART

• I'm just going to say that this one really didn't get under my skin that much. It's not something I'd recommend but honestly it seems more original than most of the episodes today and there are some positives. I did somewhat like the Bart-Lisa thing, but I only liked it because I loved Lisa on Ice and for me a poor man's Lisa on Ice is still better than a rich man's Mother's I'd Like to Forget. But like I said, it's still not something I'd recommend. 

3. .........
4. Watching paint dry for 30 minutes
5. Driving 30 minutes to Best Buy to go buy Season 4 on DVD

After looking back, I have counted 22 montages in the first 12 episodes (And that includes no montages in the first 2 episodes.) Yeah for those of you convinced that the writing is still good, just consider that last season's montage count was 19, and that was for a season of 23 episodes. I mean 3 more montages for 11 less episodes? And considering 2 don't have any montages, WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH THIS PICTURE?! To be fair though there might be a couple that I counted that you wouldn't count, but still, that reduces it down to about 15-19 which is still an awful ratio for Episodes:Montages.

Now, onto the celebrities, this show has always been known as a goal for celebrities... in the 90's. Now a days, celebrity cameos are about as common as a loaf of bread, nothing special and usually they get screwed in terms of involvement of the story. Now with this, I'm just going to list off the celebrities and at the end, take a percentage of those who voiced "Themselves"

1. Elementary School Musical: Jermaine Clement, Bret McKenzie, Ira Glass, Stephen Hawking, Lea Michele, Cory Monteith, Amber Riley
2. Loan-A-Lisa: Mark Zuckerberg, Muhammad Yunas, Chris Hansen
3. MoneyBART: Mike Scioscia, Bill James
4. Treehouse of Horror XXI: Hugh Laurie, Daniel Radcliffe
5. Lisa Simpson, This Isn't Your Life: None
6. The Fool Monty: None
7. How Munched is That Birdie in the Window?: Danica Patrick, Rachel Weisz
8. The Fight Before Christmas: Katy Perry, Martha Stewart
9. Donnie Fatso: Joe Montegna, Jon Hamm
10. Mom's I'd Like to Forget: None
11. Flaming Moe: Alyson Hannigan, Kristen Wiig, Scott Thompson
12. Homer the Father: James Lipton, David Mamet

Of all the cameos listed 14 voice themselves and 14 either have less than 5 lines or appear in just one scene. So considering there has been 25 celebrity voices in the 12 episodes and we get these numbers, I think it's safe to say that doing a celebrity cameo on the show doesn't carry much weight anymore.

Now when I say 'Special moments" I mean high/lowlights as in "Moments where the show seems to be taking a turn for the better" or "END THIS FUCKING SHOW ALREADY!!" Now there might be somethings I miss here, don't be afraid to mention anything you think I may have missed in the comment section. I'll try to be chronological with this list, so let's begin (P.S. because I'm going to list quite a few, I'll just list the moment and you decide whether it's a highlight or lowlight)

• Krusty "winning" the Noble Peace Prize
• Cast of Glee breaks out in song
• Lisa helping Nelson with his bike business
• Homer getting caught by Chris Hansen
• Bart and Lisa bond over the sport of baseball
• The writers sexual innuendos in the Treehouse of Horror
• Maggie turning into Alex DeLarge 
• The Twilight parody
• Marge and Lisa try to act more childish in Lisa Simpson, This isn't Your Life
• Mr. Burns tries to put a glass dome over the city of Springfield
• Bart cares more about a bird than his own dog
• Katy Perry guest stars on a live-action puppet segment
• Katy Perry is the subject of an oral sex joke
• Fat Tony dies
• Fat Tony is replaced by his identical cousin Fit Tony
• Marge's friends make out when she leaves
• Moe kisses Smithers
• Homer blows up a nuclear power plant in China

Yeah I'll admit there are a couple of good jokes overall (a couple being the key words), but I realized that the list was dragging on so I apologize to those who were expecting specific lines/jokes to be mentioned.

Okay with all that out of the way, time to give a final verdict, final grade and a sneak peak at next month

Final Verdict: This season is so far terrible, all but two episodes are awful while the other two are just "Post-season 10" bad. They aren't really that bad, they're just 'meh'. If the staff was trying to establish this show as "A show not for kids (7-13) and only for "mature" audiences" well congratulations, kids would find this stupid and be horrified by this crap, only problem is that the 'mature' audience is too smart for this BS (Oh and by the way to all those people who think this show is not for kids and only for adults. The normal rating is PG, with even the Christmas episode having a PG rating and I have seen recent episodes with a G rating, so blow it out your ass). In short, this is very forgettable, very stupid season and nobody will be talking about this season as one they enjoyed when the show finally does end.

Final Grade: 2.7/10 Just crap, can't wait for the second half

Okay, in terms of February, let's just say that I might not get in trouble for these episodes, but the staff certainly did when these episodes aired. Looking forward to seeing you all for next month's posts.