[6.4/10 on a post-classic Simpsons scale] This is a tough one to judge, because it has an interesting premise and a solid throughline in Ned still trying to cope with Maude's death. But it has that Scully cartoonishness and broadness to everything, where Homer has totally ceased to be anything approaching a real person, Ned's grief is taken out to extreme levels of obsession, and the whole episode rushes through each story beat. There's a few good laughs and creative sequences here (I especially enjoyed seeing Disco Stu and CBG's visions of Heaven), but tons of characters are drawn off-model which is noticeable and distracting. And as much as I appreciate the show taking some time to take Ned's grief seriously, it also uses it as fodder for wacky hijinks.
That all makes this one sound worse than it is. It's watchable and there's heart and there's some good gags, which is more than you can say for a lot of Scully eps, particularly toward the end of his run, but it's also just rife with the problems that were endemic to the show at this stage.
Shout by Andrew BloomVIP 9BlockedParent2017-11-27T21:25:29Z
[6.4/10 on a post-classic Simpsons scale] This is a tough one to judge, because it has an interesting premise and a solid throughline in Ned still trying to cope with Maude's death. But it has that Scully cartoonishness and broadness to everything, where Homer has totally ceased to be anything approaching a real person, Ned's grief is taken out to extreme levels of obsession, and the whole episode rushes through each story beat. There's a few good laughs and creative sequences here (I especially enjoyed seeing Disco Stu and CBG's visions of Heaven), but tons of characters are drawn off-model which is noticeable and distracting. And as much as I appreciate the show taking some time to take Ned's grief seriously, it also uses it as fodder for wacky hijinks.
That all makes this one sound worse than it is. It's watchable and there's heart and there's some good gags, which is more than you can say for a lot of Scully eps, particularly toward the end of his run, but it's also just rife with the problems that were endemic to the show at this stage.