32x15 Do Pizza Bots Dream of Electric Guitars

[6.1/10 on a post-classic Simpsons scale] The frustrating thing about this episode is that the bones of it are good. There’s a good foundation to build on with Homer having a childhood connection to a particular property, grousing about it being rebooted when he’s an adult, but confronting his real issues in the process -- namely his rough childhood being raised by Grampa, rather than blaming it on the stories and characters he used to escape from that. There’s something well-observed at the core of the episode, about how people’s feelings on the TV shows and movies of their youth being remade tends to reflect more our experience of them than the works themselves.

But the show’s execution of these ideas is so-so at best. I don’t have a big problem with the show making Homer a teenager in the nineties As Homer himself once put it, the polite thing to do would be not to draw attention to it, but the fact of the matter is that if the Simpsons is always set in “the present day”, then the floating timeline is going to create some janky situations like this. I’m not opposed to the show utilizing the floating timeline if it can use it to tell good stories.

The catch is that references to Vanilla Ice and crystal pepsi are bottom of the barrel nostalgia gags. (Though I do appreciate that, along with his song parodies sent to Weird Al, Homer continues to have a history of pizza-based spoofs). The show at least does a good job of representing why the titular PizzaBots represent Homer’s dream denied, but the flashback first act just isn’t very entertaining.

The best stretch of the episode for e was the middle, when Marge and Moe recognize that Homer’s bothered by his memories of the PizzaBot incident and strive to find the original animatronics to make him feel better. It’s a sweet, character-focused quest, and there’s some solid laughs at what the various denizens of the town are using the bots for. (Moe as Columbo is a weird choice, though).

But from there, the episode pivots into a showbiz parody and commentary on modern internet trolling, brigading, and bandwagoning. I like the attempt -- these are timely things to try to poke fun at, and The Simpsons was on the forefront of web-based nerd rage. But the episode only hits the most surface-level gags and observations about online fandom culture, and mostly defaults to the usual Comic Book Guy shtick with a few minor updates. You can feel the show rushing through some of the material, which doesn’t help things either.

I’m also surprised at how much J.J. Abrams is a part of the episode (I guess they’re all under the Disney umbrella now). When I heard he was guest starring, I figured it would be a one scene cameo and the episode would move on. But he’s a full on character here, interacting with Homer in a contrived but consistent way. The show pokes a little legit fun at him, mostly in the form of lens flairs, reboot gags, and a particularly pointed joke about SFX studios. For the most part though, it’s a pretty fawning and toothless treatment of the celebrity guest star, which rarely bodes well for The Simpsons.

I do like what the show is trying to do in the end, bringing Grampa out to take the blame for Homer’s lousy childhood rather than letting his son have his identity consumed by hating a remake. The execution is just a bit lacking and rushed for how much story the show wants to pack into twenty minutes and change.

Overall, this is a well-intentioned failure that gains based on its central premise, but loses thanks to a rushed and glancing approach coupled with an old-fashioned, deleterious celebrity glow-fest.