“Hey, I thought Krusty was Jewish.” – Lisa Simpson
“Christmas is a time when people of all religions come together to worship Jesus Christ.” – Bart Simpson
According to IMDb, this is the first whole episode Al Jean’s written in a long time. Sadly, it didn’t seem to matter. Homer goes on one zany little escapade after another, there’s plenty of expository nonsense, several musical montages that seem designed to do nothing more than eat clock (efforts at which fell so short that they added a preview of the next episode to help fill all twenty of their contractually obligated minutes), and the usual Zombie Simpsons problems.
- It’s probably longer than it needs to be, but this Christmas themed opening is actually a nice change of pace. There’s even some freeze frame fun (all the Jewish characters are eating at the Chinese restaurant).
- The Peanuts reference to open the episode at least didn’t take long. It didn’t have anything to do with anything else, but it was short.
- The Comic Book Guy thing with the Star Wars Holiday Special, however, did take too long and didn’t have anything to do with anything else.
- Bizarre kookiness starts early here, with Marge telling Bart to hold the ladder she’s using to trim the tree only to look down and see Maggie! She falls, then laments out loud that Homer isn’t there. Why did she think Bart was there? C’mon, that was like four seconds ago, who can possibly remember that far into the past?
- Burns shows up for no reason to talk to Homer. Then Smithers appears out of nowhere.
- The clip from Miracle on 34th Street is weirdly out of place.
- Homer’s at Moe’s because Moe made him crash his car (don’t ask), then is going to leave before Moe begs and screams at him to take pity on him and stay. The obvious repetition is what’s supposed to make this funny, I guess, but that’s all it is: hey, Moe screaming and crying is funny, let’s keep at it! That this is just the usual “Moe the Sad Sack” stuff makes it lamer still.
- Now Moe is telling us that he’s wrapped around Homer’s leg, and now he’s up on Homer’s shoulders. Oof, this just keeps going.
- Moe was briefly happy, so he stabbed himself in the head with a corkscrew.
- Now Marge is telling us what’s happening, “One night, the one night of the year I want Homer home with his family, and he can’t even do that.”
- Then Marge tells us what she’s about to say. Did anyone edit this?
- Homer’s driving around now, finds Moe’s closed, then goes to the Kwik-E-Mart where he spends the better part of a minute buying lottery tickets.
- This is what passes for a setup these days, “Aw, thanks for your honesty, Apu. Is there any other product in the store you’d like to warn me about?”. Such natural dialogue!
- Bart can’t get to sleep, so Lisa conveniently walks in to help put him to sleep by telling him the story of jazz. But Lisa wants to talk to Bart, so her doing that for him directly contradicts what she came in there for and then does. But it did eat ten seconds or so.
- Huh?:
Lisa: Bart this is the year I’ve got to nail Christmas. I don’t want to be a jaded ten-year-old like you.
That leads to a flashback involving Homer getting electrocuted. More importantly, what the hell is Lisa talking about? That doesn’t sound like her or him.
- Bart then recaps the flashback, in case anyone missed it.
- More filler: this time, they play “Carol of the Bells” for ten seconds while Marge strings popcorn. Then they cut to Maggie eating it.
- Bart has a pipe, everyone’s awake late at night, and Moe just came down through the chimney for no reason whatsoever.
- After some desultory exposition about why Moe wouldn’t have knocked, Moe tells us that he’s the reason Homer was late.
- Marge then continues on the expository filler theme, “This is what I was hoping for, for it not to have been completely his fault.”
- Moe then kisses Marge because there’s mistletoe. She calls Homer, who is now getting his car towed for some reason.
- Homer’s now wandering around the outdoor mall as more music plays.
- Homer then gets to a movie theater. Sign gags being one of the few things they can still sometimes do, it’s “The Screens at the Shops At Towne Centre At Springfielde Glenne”. That’s pretty good.
- Then we get into Homer setting up the sarcastic guy to tell him about all the depressing Christmas movies.
- Homer goes into the movie, where Gil, Kirk and some other people are there being alone on Christmas. Homer then leaves. So . . . that was pointless.
- Homer and Flanders then talk and bond, or something.
- Homer bought something from Flanders left handed kiosk, which lead to this:
Flanders: But why?
Homer: Because Jerkass Homer has become Assjerk Homer.
I don’t even know what that’s supposed to mean.
- Now they’re hugging. Then Homer runs away. Even by Zombie Simpsons standards this is disjointed.
- Marge and the kids then went to the retirement home. All the old people pop out to talk to them and it’s supposed to be after midnight by now, but we did get the Old Jewish Man saying “Make them turn the TV to CBS”, which is decent.
- Homer is woken up by a Nutcracker guy who turns out to be a mall employee who invites Homer to some bizarre mall party.
- Yet more piano music as Marge and the kids walk through a neon sign store that was supposed to be a montage. It’s like two kinds of clock eating filler at once!
- Apparently they’re at the mall now, too. I guess they ditched the old people?
- A giant gingerbread house just partially collapsed on Homer. Carry on.
- Marge then appears, with a bow on her head, and says she’s Homer’s present tonight. I, uh, whatever.
- And we (sort of) end on Homer making that beep-beep noise cars make when you lock them.
- We then get yet another musical moment of Maggie making a paper cutout and putting it on the tree.
- And then, because those twenty minutes won’t fill themselves, God and Jesus have a short argument.
- And then (x2), because this thing still isn’t long enough, there’s some kind of preview for next week’s episode that’s mostly a bunch of alien babies being born.
Anyway, the numbers are in and while they’re up from a non-football Sunday, they’re down from previous football Sundays. Last night just 6.41 million viewers wondered when the last time the show had a decent Christmas episode was. That’s down slightly from the last two episodes that had NFL lead ins, and may be the last football lead in of the year depending on how the playoffs get scheduled for TV.
