[7.3/10 on a post-classic Simpsons scale]. This is what I would call a well-built episode. Both the A-story and B-story have good premises; they come up organically from the situation, and they have enough twists and progression to make it all work.
There’s just not that much magic in it. Bart and Homer using The Art of War to take aim at one another is a good bit, and the show has fun with it, but it gets a bit elaborate and the Flanders-filled ending is a little forced. That said, the Minecraft riffs are amusing, and the show gets some good laughs out of both the related convention (and return appearance by Daniel Radcliffe) and the Simpson-on-Simpson tactical scheming.
The B-story sees Marge discovering that her favorite book from when she was a child is super-problematic. It’s actually a pretty neat idea for a storyline, and I wish it had gotten its own episode. Unfortunately, the show isn’t really built to handle these sorts of topics anymore, so its take on the issue is broad and bland. There’s enough laughs from the depths of the horrible racism at the core of Marge’s old favorite, and from the English PhDs convincing themselves it’s actually self-aware parody of oppression, but in the end the show’s take on it all is pretty shallow.
Then there’s how the episode ties the storyline into the “Problem with Apu” issue. It’s a little tone deaf, but mostly just weird. I don’t think we ever need a Simpsons character to stop in the middle of a story, look directly at the camera, and break the fourth wall to address a real world issue in the show like that. There’s certainly more deft ways the show could have handled the topic in general, but it’s really the approach here that’s the most awkward and miscalibrated beyond even the content of the response.
Overall, a perfectly fine episode with two stories that probably could each have sustained their own episode alone and might have had more space to breathe and do more with each premise if they had.
Review by Andrew BloomVIP 9BlockedParent2018-04-16T00:38:32Z
[7.3/10 on a post-classic Simpsons scale]. This is what I would call a well-built episode. Both the A-story and B-story have good premises; they come up organically from the situation, and they have enough twists and progression to make it all work.
There’s just not that much magic in it. Bart and Homer using The Art of War to take aim at one another is a good bit, and the show has fun with it, but it gets a bit elaborate and the Flanders-filled ending is a little forced. That said, the Minecraft riffs are amusing, and the show gets some good laughs out of both the related convention (and return appearance by Daniel Radcliffe) and the Simpson-on-Simpson tactical scheming.
The B-story sees Marge discovering that her favorite book from when she was a child is super-problematic. It’s actually a pretty neat idea for a storyline, and I wish it had gotten its own episode. Unfortunately, the show isn’t really built to handle these sorts of topics anymore, so its take on the issue is broad and bland. There’s enough laughs from the depths of the horrible racism at the core of Marge’s old favorite, and from the English PhDs convincing themselves it’s actually self-aware parody of oppression, but in the end the show’s take on it all is pretty shallow.
Then there’s how the episode ties the storyline into the “Problem with Apu” issue. It’s a little tone deaf, but mostly just weird. I don’t think we ever need a Simpsons character to stop in the middle of a story, look directly at the camera, and break the fourth wall to address a real world issue in the show like that. There’s certainly more deft ways the show could have handled the topic in general, but it’s really the approach here that’s the most awkward and miscalibrated beyond even the content of the response.
Overall, a perfectly fine episode with two stories that probably could each have sustained their own episode alone and might have had more space to breathe and do more with each premise if they had.