[7.1/10 on a post-classic Simpsons scale] Well, I have to give this episode credit for going high concept. Bart falling into a coma had me worried we were going to be subjected to another clip show, but this was really closer to a Treehouse of Horror special, with Bart going on a macabre journey of the mind where he runs into ghosts who’ve perished in the series’s past and tries to settle their business so that they can move on.

It’s a bit of a weird episode that doesn't hang together well. There’s some initial VCR jokes, the Bart-Lisa emotional contingent, the supernatural bent of the main story, and a montage of deaths as a bit of a post-script. Each is fairly solid on its own, with the coma segments being the strongest, but the different pieces don’t really connect and often feel velcro’d together.

There’s also something mildly gimmicky about the coma ghost routine. Sure, there’s some good gags about bringing the likes of Maude back, or Lisa making good on her former “first prize”-spouting efforts to mess with Bart’s subconscious, but the emotional effect is strained and the story itself feelings, poetically, a bit weightless.

Overall, it’s a perfectly solid, if somewhat out there episode, with a few good jokes to grease the wheels.