"$pringfield (Or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Legalized Gambling)" is a pretty good episode that sees Marge develop a gambling addiction. While this is one of the funnier episodes this season, the story is thin in favour of jokes, and I felt the ending was pretty rushed. However, this one has enough solid gags to make it a quality episode.
Overall, another good episode.
[7.4/10] It’s funny, in hindsight I don’t think I clocked how much of a gag-fest this one is. There’s the skeleton of a plot -- gambling comes to Springfield, Marge gets addicted -- but this one is so packed full of jokes that there’s barely any time for story. That’s not such a bad thing when the jokes are this funny, but it means the episode plays as shaggier than I remembered.
It also has a lot of scenes that were cut in syndication! I don’t think I’d ever seen the Rain Man gag before, or Grampa taking too long to throw dice, or Krusty doing a stand-up comedy set about herpes and bombing terribly. I can’t say that any of these bits really brings up the batting average of the episode, but I think it speaks to how chock full of jokes this one is that they ended up cutting so much to meet local station runtimes.
There’s also a couple of jokes that have aged a little rough. Beyond the gags about the “flamboyant magic” of Gunter and Ernst, the tiger attack plays as kind of grim after what happened in real life. But beyond a couple of references that don’t really track anymore, most of it works.
That’s partly because more than a plot, this one has a series of side stories that mainly exist to string gags together. Mr. Burns becomes Howard Hughes. Homer gets a job as a blackjack dealer. Bart opens his own casino. There’s nothing really in the way of arcs to any of these things, but it lets the episode build on various bits rather than relegating them to one-offs.
As a result, Marge developing a gambling problem, breaking a promise to Lisa, and then accepting she has a problem all feels pretty rushed. Still, the loony gags here, like Homer freaking out over the bogeyman or the great visual humor of Lisa’s “Floreda” costume win the day here. There’s not a lot of substance to “$pringfield”, but the laughs provide more than enough reason to roll the dice on this one.
Shout by Mista LukaBlockedParent2022-01-29T16:16:15Z
"$pringfield (Or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Legalized Gambling)" is a pretty good episode that sees Marge develop a gambling addiction. While this is one of the funnier episodes this season, the story is thin in favour of jokes, and I felt the ending was pretty rushed. However, this one has enough solid gags to make it a quality episode.
Overall, another good episode.