Love Is a Many Strangled Thing

I this episode, Love Is a Many Strangled Thing, Homer and Bart have a chance to work on their relationship. In the beginning of the episode, the family takes a trip to the football super dome. Lisa made a comment about even though she protested against it, she thought it was pretty nice. While inside the stadium, Homer makes a comment that his kids better enjoy this place because they will be paying it off for as long as they live. I think that is an interesting comment talking about how some investments a city makes really aren't worth it. While the game is going on the stadium camera shows all the people in the stands dancing and zooms in on Bart calling him a party pooper for not. Homer then decides to tickle Bart to get him to have fun and in doing so, Bart pee's himself on camera. Marge is upset with Homer claiming he took away all of Bart's self esteem and enrolls Homer in a class for better fathering tips. During Homer's first class he admits he strangles Bart and in an obnoxious attempt to stop Homer's act they strangle him back. This however back fires on the family making Homer actually scared of Bart thus reversing the roles in the household and allowing Bart to be an even worse child. Marge now realizing the therapy was bad, brings Bart in to be fixed now. I find it a funny play on how people will move onto the next problem if when tried to fix the first one, it failed. Bart and Homer eventually bond on the fact the Therapy is dumb and they sue the therapist for strangling Bart.

A Midsummer's Nice Dream

In this episode of The Simpsons it starts with an old comedy act on TV that is being brought back to do a tour of skits. The duo is called Cheech and Chong, much like Beevis and Butthead. Homer is extremely excited about this and bring the whole family to the concert. At the concert Chong while doing his skit was disinterested in doing what they rehearsed because everyone in the crowd knew all the lines he was going to say. Chong stormed off stage saying he wanted to experiment with his act, and Marge convinced homer to go down on stage a do Chong's part since he was so fimiliar with their comedy. Homer ened up going on the rest of the tour as Cheech and Chunk, only to find that Cheech was a lot more serious than his on stage act which is something he didn't like. Meanwhile back home Marge and Lisa happened upon the crazy cat lady's house and find out that she is a hoarder. while she is out they clean up her house and before sending the stuff to the junk yard, marge notices she wants to keep some of it. Eventually marge turns the house into a hoarders house, and before they get the chance to fix it the crazy cat lady moves in with all of her cats.    

The Scorpion's Tale

In this weeks episode of The Simpson's Lisa make a makes a major medical discovery. Lisa and Bart's school went on a class trip to the dessert and there Lisa happened upon two scorpions that almost stung her till she fell into a patch of flowers that calmed the angry creatures. collecting the scorpions and the flower, she brought them home to make a science experiment. At home Homer decides that if the secret chemical can calm down a scorpion it may also calm down a very grumpy grandpa. Homer puts the chemical in Grandpa's coffee and Grandpa turns into a new man. He is much happier and much better off. In Moe's Homer meets a man who is willing to buy the chemical from Homer and turn it into a legal drug. To test out the drug he gives a bottle of the pills to Grandpa advising he not loose them for fear they may be sold on the black market. Bart hears this idea and sells the drug to a lot of the older citizens of Springfield claiming it will make them less annoying. After Bart gets back home, the family realizes that the drug has a very severe side effect. It makes your eyes pop out of your head. I think my favorite scene in the episode is when Bart finds out this after confessing to selling all of the drugs for money, he shows that he spent his money on a pair of slinky eye glasses which the eyes pop out much like the drug. At the end of the episode one part I found humorous was when Homer ran over tire spikes and instead of getting it fixed, he decided he would buy a new one, blaming it on our generation. The older generation figured if the stopped being grumpy the younger generation would get nothing done, and therefore repaired Homer's car good as new.     

Donnie Fatso

I have seen this episode before when it first aired on TV. It is actually one of my favorite, so I was glad I got the chance to watch it again. In the episode, Homer is charged with fines for ridiculous reasons which I think is a funny mock of the governments excuse to make money. After meeting with Moe and trying to bribe his way out of paying the fines, Homer is caught and sent to prison where he then gets the opportunity to work with the FBI. One of my favorite scenes is when Homer is in the FBI agent's office and after just explaining to Homer the extensive research that was done on the case, Homer knocks all of the charts and photos into the paper shredder. It is often hard to decide if Homer understands the importance of the case, or if he understands exactly what he is doing. I found from both episodes thus far, that is the way the writers portray Homer a lot of the time. At the end of the episode, Homer finds he indeed like the mafia head and is upset that he died even though Homer brought the case to a close. Donnie Fatso's brother refrains from killing Homer because he realizes that Homer was indeed a friend of Donnie. It is a nice satire on the way that normal undercover operations work, to suggest that innocence and being truthful will often times work better.   

Angry Dad: the Movie

I have just finished watching the first assigned episode of The Simpson's for class. I have always like The Simpson's better than any other animated "adult targeted" show. This episode was called, Angry Dad: the Movie. In the episode, Bart, after being left alone by his family gets asked to turn his animation into a feature film. I think it is quite interesting that in the beginning of the episode Bart is left alone by the whole family (everyone else went out for ice cream), and the short film he created was called angry dad.  I feel like this must have some sort of significance especially with the way the Homer treated Bart all episode. The family traveled to different award ceremonies where "Angry Dad" won most of the awards. When the awards were announced, Homer would get up and take credit for almost everything, not letting Bart say anything. At this point in the film I really felt bad for Bart. You can look at it two ways, Homer was ignorantly taking the spot light away from his son not realizing the affects, or you can think of it as Homer, not knowingly teaching Bart a valuable lesson that he realizes in the end. Unfortunately the way Homer's character is portrayed, I feel like it is the first one, however Homer does something at the end which may suggest other wise. At the final award show, The Oscars, Bart lies to Homer so that Homer doesn't go with him. Once Bart gets up on stage, he realizes that he doesn't want to take all the credit for the movie, he realizes its not all about him.at the end, Homer got up on stage with Bart and said he was proud of Bart for doing the responsible thing. He did exactly the opposite of that all episode, but maybe it was to teach Bart a lesson. I think that this episode is symbolic of the way that parents and children interact with each other. parents want the best for their children, so they make their children do the right thing even if that's not what they do them selves.