[7.8/10] This one was good! It was focused on the Homer-Bart relationship! It broke them off into separate storylines that made sense based on where things started! It brought them back together in a way that made sense and had heart! Hell, it even had some trenchant insights about coolness and how fickle manufactured authenticity can be! This wasn’t perfect, but it was darn good, and I’m impressed.
I like that this episode is primarily founded on Homer trying to earn the love of his son. He’s Homer, so he does dumb things and takes shortcuts along the way. But at the end of the day, he’s concerned about earning his son’s esteem and blanches less at being called uncool than being chastised for not being a good enough dad. It founds a silly story like trying to find the latest sneakers on the relationship between the main characters, which gives it more weight than the relatable desire of Bart to be cool at school.
From there, the episode diverges. Bart finds out that the kid he admired from online influencer culture is, in fact, not nearly as authentically himself as Bart is. Their friendship, where Bart shows Orion real skater culture to help bolster his skater culture brand, is sweet and amusing in how the two bond and find common ground, while Orion shows that his whole deal is basically a pose.
I also love love love Homer’s story, about middle-aged dads accidentally wearing cool clothes and thereby ruining the brand by their association. The jokes about dads being uncool and having interests in paying with airline miles or listening to Steely Dan or visiting an aviation museum aren’t groundbreaking, but damnit, they’re funny. And the cautionary tale about Ed Hardy is an amusing one-minute takedown of how coolness fades.
I especially like the way the episode comes together, with Bart accidentally achieving coolness through his association with Orion, only for it to be threatened when Homer and his gang of print-adorned dads threatens to attend the release party for a Bart-inspired shoe. Bart enlisting Marge to get Homer to call off his old dogs is a nice choice, and Homer forgoing his night on the town in order to boost his son’s cool factor is a heartening way to bring everything full circle.
Overall, this was a funny, incisive, and heartfelt episode of the show that takes aim at both the evolving definition of cool and how it’s stretched and strained between generations. One of the season’s highlights.
Review by Andrew BloomVIP 9BlockedParentSpoilers2022-04-07T22:19:51Z
[7.8/10] This one was good! It was focused on the Homer-Bart relationship! It broke them off into separate storylines that made sense based on where things started! It brought them back together in a way that made sense and had heart! Hell, it even had some trenchant insights about coolness and how fickle manufactured authenticity can be! This wasn’t perfect, but it was darn good, and I’m impressed.
I like that this episode is primarily founded on Homer trying to earn the love of his son. He’s Homer, so he does dumb things and takes shortcuts along the way. But at the end of the day, he’s concerned about earning his son’s esteem and blanches less at being called uncool than being chastised for not being a good enough dad. It founds a silly story like trying to find the latest sneakers on the relationship between the main characters, which gives it more weight than the relatable desire of Bart to be cool at school.
From there, the episode diverges. Bart finds out that the kid he admired from online influencer culture is, in fact, not nearly as authentically himself as Bart is. Their friendship, where Bart shows Orion real skater culture to help bolster his skater culture brand, is sweet and amusing in how the two bond and find common ground, while Orion shows that his whole deal is basically a pose.
I also love love love Homer’s story, about middle-aged dads accidentally wearing cool clothes and thereby ruining the brand by their association. The jokes about dads being uncool and having interests in paying with airline miles or listening to Steely Dan or visiting an aviation museum aren’t groundbreaking, but damnit, they’re funny. And the cautionary tale about Ed Hardy is an amusing one-minute takedown of how coolness fades.
I especially like the way the episode comes together, with Bart accidentally achieving coolness through his association with Orion, only for it to be threatened when Homer and his gang of print-adorned dads threatens to attend the release party for a Bart-inspired shoe. Bart enlisting Marge to get Homer to call off his old dogs is a nice choice, and Homer forgoing his night on the town in order to boost his son’s cool factor is a heartening way to bring everything full circle.
Overall, this was a funny, incisive, and heartfelt episode of the show that takes aim at both the evolving definition of cool and how it’s stretched and strained between generations. One of the season’s highlights.