[5.4/10 on a post-classic Simpsons scale] Ahhh for the days when Simpsons episodes had endings, and didn’t just end. This is the definition of an aimless late-era episode of the show, one that jumps from story to story, without ever finding a sense of cohesion, and then just kind of closing the proceedings off when the episode has run out of minutes to fill.
You have the initial story, about Burns fearing the apocalypse, building a space ark, and wanting to know who the best and brightest of Springfield are to fill it. It’s a little out there, and leads to some silly gags, but the show’s done wilder stuff, so I’m apt to forgive it. The problem is that the story is just a launching point the show doesn’t return to until a last pre-credits gasp that makes the whole thing feel like a waste of time, despite a couple of chuckles at Burns’s fears.
The only throughline for the episode is a test created by Professor Frink to determine who gets on the ark, called the PVQ. His song and dance to explain isn’t going to make any top ten lists for the show, but it’s amusing and creative enough to pass muster. It just doesn’t go anywhere from there, with Frink merely popping in as needed afterward.
The sort of main stories of the episode involve the various members of the Simpson family responding to the (publicly announced) results. The most consistent is Lisa discovering that Ralph scored higher than her and being both curious and threatened by it, with a cartoony sequence of following it culminating in Frink explaining that the test is unreliable. It’s an unsatisfying end that feels tossed off to the most fleshed out story in the episode.
The same goes for the two subsidiary stories, one where Bart thinks he got the worst score on the whole test and loses his self-esteem, which comes to a close when they find out there was a mixup and he got Homer’s score. The show wrings some decent material out of Homer feeling exposed as the dumbest guy in town, but all the show does with it is have him improve his handwriting and declare “the end” in a rushed final frame.
Overall, this one is a jumble, with a reasonable enough idea that just needed some focus and better structure to make it at least passable. As it is, “Frink Gets Testy” is just a collection of undercooked storylines and an insufficient number of laughs squeezed out of them.
Review by Andrew BloomVIP 9BlockedParent2018-02-01T22:00:35Z
[5.4/10 on a post-classic Simpsons scale] Ahhh for the days when Simpsons episodes had endings, and didn’t just end. This is the definition of an aimless late-era episode of the show, one that jumps from story to story, without ever finding a sense of cohesion, and then just kind of closing the proceedings off when the episode has run out of minutes to fill.
You have the initial story, about Burns fearing the apocalypse, building a space ark, and wanting to know who the best and brightest of Springfield are to fill it. It’s a little out there, and leads to some silly gags, but the show’s done wilder stuff, so I’m apt to forgive it. The problem is that the story is just a launching point the show doesn’t return to until a last pre-credits gasp that makes the whole thing feel like a waste of time, despite a couple of chuckles at Burns’s fears.
The only throughline for the episode is a test created by Professor Frink to determine who gets on the ark, called the PVQ. His song and dance to explain isn’t going to make any top ten lists for the show, but it’s amusing and creative enough to pass muster. It just doesn’t go anywhere from there, with Frink merely popping in as needed afterward.
The sort of main stories of the episode involve the various members of the Simpson family responding to the (publicly announced) results. The most consistent is Lisa discovering that Ralph scored higher than her and being both curious and threatened by it, with a cartoony sequence of following it culminating in Frink explaining that the test is unreliable. It’s an unsatisfying end that feels tossed off to the most fleshed out story in the episode.
The same goes for the two subsidiary stories, one where Bart thinks he got the worst score on the whole test and loses his self-esteem, which comes to a close when they find out there was a mixup and he got Homer’s score. The show wrings some decent material out of Homer feeling exposed as the dumbest guy in town, but all the show does with it is have him improve his handwriting and declare “the end” in a rushed final frame.
Overall, this one is a jumble, with a reasonable enough idea that just needed some focus and better structure to make it at least passable. As it is, “Frink Gets Testy” is just a collection of undercooked storylines and an insufficient number of laughs squeezed out of them.