[5.8/10] This episode just isn’t funny. It isn’t bad exactly. There’s a few cute jokes here and there. I liked Cletus’s surprisingly in-depth knowledge of movies, and the “We resolved the problem in the first act” fake out, and the reference to the previous time Homer managed a country music singer. Heck, there was even some amusing enough wordplay with Homer’s hashtags.
But a lot of the jokes here were just unbearably mild or outright dumb. What was that closing gag about Snake tricking Wiggum into giving him a hacksaw in the guise of a musical instrument. I get that the people of Springfield are dopes, WIggum very much included, but it’s such an extended gag that requires ridiculous levels of idiocy to work. There’s also a lot of the expected redneck gags involving Cletus, and they’re about as stale and unimaginative as you’d expect.
The biggest sin in this episode is that it wastes the first appearance of Albert Brooks since (I think) The Simpsons Movie. He’s entertaining just riffing on things, but it feels so divorced from the rest of the episode that it may as well be an independent clip on YouTube. Plus, Brooks works best with a back-and-forth, so him mostly just talking at people isn’t as good.
The story is alright, I guess. Playing off A Star Is Born isn’t the worst premise for an episode, but the show doesn’t really go anywhere with it. If you squint, you can see a story about Cletus’s music bringing HOmer back down to Earth and reminding him of the importance of family, with Homer trying to do the same when Cletus himself gets so big and famous that he forgets. But the episode doesn’t add the connective tissue or real character notes to make that sort of story work.
On the whole, this is one of the season’s lesser lights, but it’s still watchable, albeit tiresome, which is something.
Review by Andrew BloomVIP 9BlockedParentSpoilers2021-03-13T01:23:28Z
[5.8/10] This episode just isn’t funny. It isn’t bad exactly. There’s a few cute jokes here and there. I liked Cletus’s surprisingly in-depth knowledge of movies, and the “We resolved the problem in the first act” fake out, and the reference to the previous time Homer managed a country music singer. Heck, there was even some amusing enough wordplay with Homer’s hashtags.
But a lot of the jokes here were just unbearably mild or outright dumb. What was that closing gag about Snake tricking Wiggum into giving him a hacksaw in the guise of a musical instrument. I get that the people of Springfield are dopes, WIggum very much included, but it’s such an extended gag that requires ridiculous levels of idiocy to work. There’s also a lot of the expected redneck gags involving Cletus, and they’re about as stale and unimaginative as you’d expect.
The biggest sin in this episode is that it wastes the first appearance of Albert Brooks since (I think) The Simpsons Movie. He’s entertaining just riffing on things, but it feels so divorced from the rest of the episode that it may as well be an independent clip on YouTube. Plus, Brooks works best with a back-and-forth, so him mostly just talking at people isn’t as good.
The story is alright, I guess. Playing off A Star Is Born isn’t the worst premise for an episode, but the show doesn’t really go anywhere with it. If you squint, you can see a story about Cletus’s music bringing HOmer back down to Earth and reminding him of the importance of family, with Homer trying to do the same when Cletus himself gets so big and famous that he forgets. But the episode doesn’t add the connective tissue or real character notes to make that sort of story work.
On the whole, this is one of the season’s lesser lights, but it’s still watchable, albeit tiresome, which is something.