[7.0/10 on a post-classic Simpsons scale] The story of this episode is solid. Lisa becomes frustrated with Miss Hoover, lashes out, and refuses to apologize for it, only to learn more about the difficult life that her teacher has and relents. There’s some genuine maturity and depth to that concept, and watching Lisa grow in her understanding of other people’s challenges and when an apology is worth making is good territory to explore.
The problem is that this episode is remarkably unfunny and, franky, doesn’t really feel like The Simpsons in terms of its comedy. There’s long cutaway gags about Yale and GPSs that don’t seem like the brand of humor the show usually deploys. There’s terrible cartoony shtick like SLH and Maggie being covered in grease and sliding all over the place. Beyond that, there’s just a lot of lame gagwork. Homer in particular is absurdly dumb, and the running gag about Bart saying “soggy” instead of “sorry” is only fit for a Disney Channel sitcom.
It’s hard to know how to balance those two things out. As a counterpoint, the episode is pretty surface-level in its exploration of apologizing and empathy, and the bad humor settles down a bit as the episode goes on. The result is an episode that levels out at “perfectly cromulent” -- not one to watch for big laughs, but one with a promising tale of Lisa coming to understand her teacher better.
Review by Andrew BloomVIP 9BlockedParentSpoilers2020-12-08T20:43:44Z
[7.0/10 on a post-classic Simpsons scale] The story of this episode is solid. Lisa becomes frustrated with Miss Hoover, lashes out, and refuses to apologize for it, only to learn more about the difficult life that her teacher has and relents. There’s some genuine maturity and depth to that concept, and watching Lisa grow in her understanding of other people’s challenges and when an apology is worth making is good territory to explore.
The problem is that this episode is remarkably unfunny and, franky, doesn’t really feel like The Simpsons in terms of its comedy. There’s long cutaway gags about Yale and GPSs that don’t seem like the brand of humor the show usually deploys. There’s terrible cartoony shtick like SLH and Maggie being covered in grease and sliding all over the place. Beyond that, there’s just a lot of lame gagwork. Homer in particular is absurdly dumb, and the running gag about Bart saying “soggy” instead of “sorry” is only fit for a Disney Channel sitcom.
It’s hard to know how to balance those two things out. As a counterpoint, the episode is pretty surface-level in its exploration of apologizing and empathy, and the bad humor settles down a bit as the episode goes on. The result is an episode that levels out at “perfectly cromulent” -- not one to watch for big laughs, but one with a promising tale of Lisa coming to understand her teacher better.