27x21 Simprovised

Fine-if-unspectacular episode. The main premise of Homer being spooked at public speaking after bombing in front of his coworkers and finding his confidence again after taking improv classes is a solid one. There's some of the usual latter-day Simpsons narrative shortcuts like pinning Homer's dilemma on giving into Moe's deviousness or living up to Lisa's expectations, but it's a good enough skeleton to hang a few jokes on, and while it wasn't the best night of comedy the show's ever produced, there were some cute gags like Homer's collection of improv ingredients being caught on kiss-cam or his near-sighted Frankenstein impression riffing on Marge's "bride of frankenstein" hair and declaring her affrontedness "anti-improv." Unfortunately, a lot of the gags were easy or fell flat, but you take what you can get in Season 27.

The B-story with Marge rebuilding Bart's treehouse and then feeling unappreciated was commendable but underdone. There's a solid emotional throughline of Marge going the distance for Bart and feeling taken for granted, but the whole storyline was rushed, and the way the show undercut the sweetness of the finish seemed a little hollow.

Then of course, there was #HomerLive, where the SImpson patriarch took live questions on the air. It was clearly a gimmick, and it was fine as a proof of concept for the technology involved, but little more. The assault of background (foreground?) gags made clear that the folks behind the show didn't have confidence in the success of the enterprise standing alone. Dan Castelleneta is a quality comedic performer who made lemons out of lemonade with the tame and tepid questions he was asked in his portly animated guise, but all it really proved is that improv is hard, even for seasoned vets like him when you don't have much to work with. Neat enough as a gimmick, but no real substance to it.