[7.5/10] There’s something so charming about the earliest seasons of The Simpsons. It feels like a different show, to be frank. The animation is cruder, but also more expressive. (See: Bart’s facial contortions when he’s being punched by Nelson). The story feels more like something from a kids’ show (the 10 year old fighting his bully) but it’s still tinged with that trademark Simpsons cynicism. It features liberal doses of characters like Herman and Nelson’s goons who are rarely seen after.
And yet it also feels like it very much has that Simpsons perspective. The conceit of doing a war film through the eyes a fourth-grade attack on a bully is hilarious and creative. (See also: visual references to Full Metal Jacket and a cornucopia of other war flicks.) The animation, while again, a little wooly, is also superb, with imaginative sequence where Bart images confronting his burly foe, and engrossing war imagery filtered by elementary school students as the water balloon attack goes full bore.
There’s also the amusement and cynicism of how the adults behave that fits the ethos of the show. Skinner is too focused on learning and order to notice that one of his students was just threatened. Marge naively tells Bart to just talk to Nelson while he’s being beat up, claiming he’s lashing out at the world. Homer ignores his wife’s “Maharishi Ghandi”-like advice and tries to teach Bart to fight dirty instead. And Grampa waxes poetic about seeing the look of terror in a man’s eyes, punctuating it with “thank god for children” in a delightfully cynical twist. The adults are as misguided as the kids here, even when well-intentioned, and that’s a Simpsons trademark in play from the beginning.
Plus, there’s plenty of good laughs here. Lisa declaring that Grampa is the toughest Simpson there is after “the fight he put up when we put him in a home,” or Grampa’s letter to Hollywood that old people are not all “vibrant, fun-loving, sex maniacs,” or Herman’s deranged ramblings about the Franco-Prussian war and water balloons that say “death from above” are all laugh-worthy moments that pepper the episode.
Heck, there’s even some nice symmetry at play, since the events of the episode begin and end with a batch of Simpson-made cupcakes. Overall, it’s one of the best episode’s of the show’s early going, showing the fun, wry edge the show brought to network television.
Review by Andrew BloomVIP 9BlockedParent2017-09-10T15:50:50Z
[7.5/10] There’s something so charming about the earliest seasons of The Simpsons. It feels like a different show, to be frank. The animation is cruder, but also more expressive. (See: Bart’s facial contortions when he’s being punched by Nelson). The story feels more like something from a kids’ show (the 10 year old fighting his bully) but it’s still tinged with that trademark Simpsons cynicism. It features liberal doses of characters like Herman and Nelson’s goons who are rarely seen after.
And yet it also feels like it very much has that Simpsons perspective. The conceit of doing a war film through the eyes a fourth-grade attack on a bully is hilarious and creative. (See also: visual references to Full Metal Jacket and a cornucopia of other war flicks.) The animation, while again, a little wooly, is also superb, with imaginative sequence where Bart images confronting his burly foe, and engrossing war imagery filtered by elementary school students as the water balloon attack goes full bore.
There’s also the amusement and cynicism of how the adults behave that fits the ethos of the show. Skinner is too focused on learning and order to notice that one of his students was just threatened. Marge naively tells Bart to just talk to Nelson while he’s being beat up, claiming he’s lashing out at the world. Homer ignores his wife’s “Maharishi Ghandi”-like advice and tries to teach Bart to fight dirty instead. And Grampa waxes poetic about seeing the look of terror in a man’s eyes, punctuating it with “thank god for children” in a delightfully cynical twist. The adults are as misguided as the kids here, even when well-intentioned, and that’s a Simpsons trademark in play from the beginning.
Plus, there’s plenty of good laughs here. Lisa declaring that Grampa is the toughest Simpson there is after “the fight he put up when we put him in a home,” or Grampa’s letter to Hollywood that old people are not all “vibrant, fun-loving, sex maniacs,” or Herman’s deranged ramblings about the Franco-Prussian war and water balloons that say “death from above” are all laugh-worthy moments that pepper the episode.
Heck, there’s even some nice symmetry at play, since the events of the episode begin and end with a batch of Simpson-made cupcakes. Overall, it’s one of the best episode’s of the show’s early going, showing the fun, wry edge the show brought to network television.