11x05 E-I-E-I-(Annoyed Grunt)

[7.8/10 on a semi-post-classic Simpsons scale] Is this the best episode of The Simpsons produced under Mike Scully’s tenure? It may very well be. It still has the hallmarks of Scully that had turned off longtime fans by the time the show got too Season 11 – Homer is dumber and more casually rude and boorish than ever, the show is more of a weightless cartoon with drug-addled, anthropomorphic animals and surprise helicopter crashes, and there’s some characterization slippage and breakneck plotting that had creeped into the show. But still, this is probably as funny, entertaining, and even coherent as the show got in Season 10-12.

(Yes, Scully showran Season 9, but I consider that a weird sort of weighstation for the show, given the holdovers from Oakley & Weinstein, an the episodes run by Mirkin, Jean, and Reiss that filtered in there.)

The stuff on the farm gets pretty cartoony, with the entire “let’s run away to the old Simpson farm to escape from a duel” bit already being a ridiculous solution to a ridiculous problem, that’s only exacerbated by the comic looniness of using plutonium to grow crops.

That said, this episode has two advantages that make it a cut above most of Scully’s output. First, it’s consistently funny. From sign gags to the silly but funny runny joke about tractors falling on Homer, to “it does taste like grandma” this was a half-hour full of chuckles and guffahs.

Second, it’s actually a relatively straightforward plot, however silly the plot may be. Homer watching a movie and going overboard imitating it until he ends up having to run away is solid. The attempts to be a farmer are again, a little out there, but it works. And the show even remembers the duel it set up in the first act and returns to it, even if it blows it off in a pretty casual fashion. It’s more story coherence than the average Season 11 episode can boast.

Overall, it’s not the best episode the show would ever produce, but come on, it’s the tomacco episode! This may be the high water mark for those strange transition years for The Simpsons.