[7.2/10 on a post-classic Simpsons scale] I admire the ambition and ingenuity of this one. Doing a three stories episode like this, but just anchoring the episode around a theme and interweaving the stories is a nice and different approach from what we’re used to. It’s a good opportunity to balance different dreams and atlas against one another.
The catch is that none of the three stories is particularly well-built. The closest is Lisa’s who dreams of...maintaining her place as first chair saxophone? (I guess Allison Taylor isn’t there anymore.) The notion of the new boy, Blake, who runs the elementary school equivalent of a honeypot scheme to get Lisa off her game is pretty hacky in its execution, but it has its moments. Lisa’s realization -- that she’d rather play for fun than for glory, emerges reasonably well from that, even if the hand-off from sabotage to epiphany is a little rocky to say the least.
Comic Book Guy’s is probably the worst. His story of wanting to go to Comicpalooza is really just a thin excuse to make a bunch of nerd tv/show/comic book jokes. Most of them are chuckles instead of laughs, and the notion that CBG would get a job at Marvel from asking an insightful question feels far-fetched at best. His epiphany is....I guess...that he gets more satisfaction being mean to people in his store? There’s something there, about appreciating your regular life even when your dream falls through, but the impetus for it being an opportunity to insult Ralph rather than something more substantial ends it on a sour note.
Somewhere in the middle is Bart’s story. His intro to voice acting is very rushed in comparison to the other two stories, and also feels a little jumbled in where it lands. But there’s a really sweet scene between Bart and Lisa, where Lisa expresses pride in Bart for playing a female character, calling it brave and a little dangerous, and it’s the kind of nice moment between them we get all too rarely. If you squint, you can see the sense that even the bullies appreciate Bart’s accomplishment when they see how his Queen character is actually a badass, but it’s thin.
Overall, I wish this episode had had a few more passes in the editing room, but I like the creativity shown in the attempt.
Shout by RothSothyBlockedParent2020-11-23T02:16:14Z
Whatever show that Bart took part in voicing the princess character in, I want a crossover of that and Disenchantment :fireworks: :unicorn: