[8.0/10] It’s funny, despite being in the middle of Oakey & Weinstein’s run as showrunners on The Simpsons, this episode feels very much like the product of its writers, former and future showrunners Al Jean and Mike Reiss. The movie parodies, random gags, and pop culture mash-ups are very much on brand for the pair.
The results are delightful. What stands out on rewatch, after having recently seen Mary Poppins, is how pinpointed this spoof of the Disney classic really is. Beyond the obvious homage to “Spoonful of Sugar” or flying a kite, there’s lots of nice smaller touches. Sherry Bobbins telling Lisa not to sit like “a fly in a toffee,” or Homer commenting that he’s no longer the “money-driven workaholic” he once was take on extra comedy after realizing how direct and specific so much of the parody is here. Even just the way everyone cartoonishly fawns over sherry is nicely drawn from the original film and the period/British touches are just as fun.
At the same time, I appreciate how efficient it is too. With one rendition of “Maniac” and a single Willie gag about how after regaining her sight, Sherry no longer wanted to marry “the ugliest man in Glasgow”, the show nicely skewers the Bert character from the film. Burns getting zapped by lightning while flying a kite make for an entertaining subversion of the crusty old miser regaining his childlike spirit. And even cartoonier gags like Sherry’s feet sparking on the roof of the Simpsons’ sedan or getting sucked into an airplane’s turbines have a dark but potent comic bent to them.
But the major humor in the episode comes from the combination of the source material’s spritely and whimsical optimism combined with The Simpsons’s natural cynical edge. Transforming Mary Poppins’s magical clean-up song into a bit about “cutting every corner” as “the American way” is amusingly subversive. Turning the “tuppence” song into an ode to Barney’s gutter-ridden drinking problem is another satirical spoof on the lovable treacle of the original movie. And the closing tribute to rut-stuck complacency, “We Like Things the Way They Are”, nicely flips the “changed for the better” narrative of Mary Poppins on its head.
That’s the funniest swerve of this whole thing. Rather than Sherry transforming the Simpson family for the better with her magical but upright talents, the Simpson family breaks her spirits. It’s an entertaining reversal, and the way that things go back to crap the second after Sherry declares her work finished and wistfully walks out the door is an amusing extension of the narrative from the 1964 classic. Sherry’s whimsical ways falling flat in the face of modern slothery like Bart whipping cupcakes or Lisa watching T.V. is a nice way of transposing that film onto the modern day and mining humor from the comic contrasts.
Overall, this is a great comic parody that’s right in Jean & Reiss’s wheelhouse, with fun twists on those iconic songs, a nice subversion of the original poppins story, and plenty of laugh-worthy interstitial material to help keep it all together.
Review by Andrew BloomVIP 9BlockedParentSpoilers2020-06-14T18:08:13Z
[8.0/10] It’s funny, despite being in the middle of Oakey & Weinstein’s run as showrunners on The Simpsons, this episode feels very much like the product of its writers, former and future showrunners Al Jean and Mike Reiss. The movie parodies, random gags, and pop culture mash-ups are very much on brand for the pair.
The results are delightful. What stands out on rewatch, after having recently seen Mary Poppins, is how pinpointed this spoof of the Disney classic really is. Beyond the obvious homage to “Spoonful of Sugar” or flying a kite, there’s lots of nice smaller touches. Sherry Bobbins telling Lisa not to sit like “a fly in a toffee,” or Homer commenting that he’s no longer the “money-driven workaholic” he once was take on extra comedy after realizing how direct and specific so much of the parody is here. Even just the way everyone cartoonishly fawns over sherry is nicely drawn from the original film and the period/British touches are just as fun.
At the same time, I appreciate how efficient it is too. With one rendition of “Maniac” and a single Willie gag about how after regaining her sight, Sherry no longer wanted to marry “the ugliest man in Glasgow”, the show nicely skewers the Bert character from the film. Burns getting zapped by lightning while flying a kite make for an entertaining subversion of the crusty old miser regaining his childlike spirit. And even cartoonier gags like Sherry’s feet sparking on the roof of the Simpsons’ sedan or getting sucked into an airplane’s turbines have a dark but potent comic bent to them.
But the major humor in the episode comes from the combination of the source material’s spritely and whimsical optimism combined with The Simpsons’s natural cynical edge. Transforming Mary Poppins’s magical clean-up song into a bit about “cutting every corner” as “the American way” is amusingly subversive. Turning the “tuppence” song into an ode to Barney’s gutter-ridden drinking problem is another satirical spoof on the lovable treacle of the original movie. And the closing tribute to rut-stuck complacency, “We Like Things the Way They Are”, nicely flips the “changed for the better” narrative of Mary Poppins on its head.
That’s the funniest swerve of this whole thing. Rather than Sherry transforming the Simpson family for the better with her magical but upright talents, the Simpson family breaks her spirits. It’s an entertaining reversal, and the way that things go back to crap the second after Sherry declares her work finished and wistfully walks out the door is an amusing extension of the narrative from the 1964 classic. Sherry’s whimsical ways falling flat in the face of modern slothery like Bart whipping cupcakes or Lisa watching T.V. is a nice way of transposing that film onto the modern day and mining humor from the comic contrasts.
Overall, this is a great comic parody that’s right in Jean & Reiss’s wheelhouse, with fun twists on those iconic songs, a nice subversion of the original poppins story, and plenty of laugh-worthy interstitial material to help keep it all together.