Jump to content

FJ Reviews & Recaps

  • entries
    488
  • comments
    466
  • views
    84,121

Contributors to this blog

  • crazyforkate 304
  • Maggie Mae 97
  • jinjy2 35
  • MarblesMom 33
  • Curious 9
  • GolightlyGrrl 8
  • kunoichi66 2

Worldly Distractions: The Simpsons 26.7 - Blazed and Confused


crazyforkate

494 views

blog-willem-dafoe.jpgsimpsonsdafoe

Oh, boy. Is Homer going to get into weed - again? Is Bart going to commit arson - again? Come on, show, try and thrill me.

Show opens with Kang and Kodos in a flying saucer, wearing costumes, because they took too long to get dressed and Treehouse of Horror aired already. Cut straight to the couch gag, where the Simpsons' couch turns into a ski lift. The family is brought back dishevelled and injured.

The principals of the school district are gathered at SES for the "dance of the lemons", where they each get to swap their worst teachers. They Hunger Games the lottery, going through a variety of awful educators (fortunately, they are not so tasteless as to have Mrs Krabappel among them). Naturally, Skinner gets stuck with the worst of them all - Mr. Lassen, a complete hardass played by Willem Dafoe. I want to marry this episode already. Okay, okay, I said I was down on guest stars lately, but come on -

willem dafoe

 

We hear the history of Lassen's frightening career, and oh my god, Dafoe is deliciously psychotic. They really are hitting it out of the park with guest star + role lately. Bart has a series of pranks planned, of course, though they're a little meh when you think of what he's about to encounter. Lassen, who sounds suspiciously like Sideshow Bob to be honest, immediately terrifies the class into their seats. Only Nelson is brave enough to make a smart remark. This brings down a fantastic monologue about all of Nelson's shortcomings. While the bully weeps in the corner, Bart (perhaps unwisely) decides to go ahead with the prank. Naturally, Lassen is as creative with his punishments as he is with his insults. He finds a trumped-up dress code violation involving Bart's hair and shaves his head.

At dinner that night, Bart refuses to remove his hat. Homer, Maggie and Lisa eventually coax it off and find the new 'do hilarious, but Marge is outraged, especially when she hears who was responsible. She decides to confront the teacher, though Homer advises her not to, as it will result in "stink-eye at the school fair". Oh, and the Simpsons are going camping this weekend, which I guess will be the B-plot. When Marge is told that Homer didn't reserve a spot at their favourite campground, she breaks down weeping. Homer vows to make it up to her, somehow.

An angry Bart graffitis the blackboard, though he's dumb enough to sign it "El Barto". Mr. Lassen is beautifully sarcastic when he finds it. Seriously, if I'd had this teacher, we would have gotten along great. Probably would've smoked bowls in the parking lot at lunch and made fun of that one math teacher down the hall. Lassen's reaction to the graffiti is to punch through the blackboard, ruining Lisa's book report in the next room. His vendetta against Bart continues to science class, where he involves the kid in electricity experiments, most unethically so. Bart is of course electrocuted, Dr. Marvin-Monroe style, and vows his revenge. A reluctant Milhouse is enlisted to help him, though for some reason he keeps advertising the New Zealand film industry.

They have planted a webcam in the teacher's lounge, which chronicles Lassen's enormously successful attempts at flirting with Miss Hoover (oh, it makes such perfect sense, I ship them now). Bart decides to impersonate Miss Hoover online and set a trap. Presumably to murder him and dump his body in the radioactive lake. Meanwhile, Homer tries to book a campsite, to no avail. He does get to chat with a Jason Voorhees ripoff, though, and gives away all his personal information.

A traumatized Nelson begs Bart to destroy Lassen once and for all, just before Lassen takes his lunch money. While searching, Bart discovers old pictures of Lassen at "Blazing Guy". No prizes for guessing that one. They decide to go there and catch him doing something terrible, and end his teaching career once and for all. This just happens to solve Homer's problem, too, so the A and B combine and we're off to the desert.

Wait, wait, wait. When I got invited to go to Burning Man, tickets cost like $1000 and were gone in minutes. How did they get there on a low budget with such short notice? I smell a rat.

Marge is bewildered by the scene before, while Lisa is enchanted. To top it all off, the tent gets blown away. Naive Marge takes a cup of tea from a stranger. I assume she will spend the rest of the episode high off her tits. Lisa gets out her saxophone and soon finds a community. Bart and Milhouse find Lassen, but can't catch him in any sort of compromising position. Milhouse suggests framing him for not tipping at a restaurant. Ha, that kind of controversy was so 2012. Whatever was in the special tea seems to have the same effect as combining al-key-hol and "Battling Seizure Robots", so Marge runs around completely out of her mind. The Coyote from Homer's hallucinogenic chili episode even appears in her hallucinations. When a sandstorm comes up, Homer uncharacteristically takes responsibility, carrying his strung-out wife back to their new tent.

Lassen is set to start off the festival's big fire ritual, so when Bart discovers a whole bunch of unattended flame retardant, he immediately gets an idea. They douse the giant "Blazing Guy" statue to be burned. That night, Mr. Lassen approaches the statue and is predictably humiliated. As punishment, the festivalgoers stuff him back into respectable clothing. He catches the kids laughing about, and humiliated, goes after Bart with a flamethrower. Homer catapults himself onto the structure to save his son and winds up collapsing the whole thing. For his attack on Bart, Lassen is sentenced to "human prison" (being trapped between a whole bunch of people) for five whole days. After some more intense  hallucinations, Marge comes to in an empty desert.

After being fired from the school, Lassen gets a job as a prison guard - where he immediately strikes up a friendship with Sideshow Bob. Dark days are ahead. Or at least, they would be if the two killers could agree on which one gets to deliver the killing blow.

Okay, for starters - Willem Dafoe was inspired. If anything, the episode should have had more of them. Though I enjoyed Marge getting high, the Burning Man sequence really was just another lazy entry in the Simpsons'  neverending travelogue, full of stereotypes and cliches, so it didn't really have a huge effect. Overall, the episode could have used a few rewrites. Was it still fun, though? Of course. Without Dafoe, though, I'm not sure if it would have been anything more than a slog. Will the Simpsons continue to rely on guest stars this season? Find out next week, when Will Forte joins the roster!

FJ Discussion Thread

 

 

 

0 Comments


Recommended Comments

There are no comments to display.

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
  • Posts

    • Bobology

      Posted

      On 3/26/2024 at 9:21 PM, Howl said:

      One thing I wasn't aware of is the Air BnB unit on one side of the house  had guests staying at the time of the search, although I don't know if they were actually there at the  time. 

      When I heard Jodi state that to the officers I thought, huh-uh, that's not an Air BnB, I bet it is housing for "intensive therapy" for couples for which she could charge the church. But maybe not.

      If that other side had its own kitchen, that still leaves two kitchens in the rest of the house plus the safe/prison room with its tiny "kitchen." Jodi may have built it with her brand of therapy control in mind. I wonder how that house would serve another family who will end up living there.

      Something that puzzles me is how both garages were so pristinely clean, but with signs that cars had been in there at some point. The entire driveway is small rocks or pebbles, I could hear the police vehicles crunching over them. Yet there was no sign of pebbles being drug into the garage or falling from tire treads. Sweeping it out regularly may have been forced on one or more of the kids. 
       

    • SoSoNosy

      Posted

      And this reminds me to dispose of a couple of things in the drawer in my guest room.  I had a beloved Jewish friend; he was a Holocaust surviver and lived to be 104.  I had gotten a little lacy head covering for myself and a yarmulka for another friend in case we attended his funeral.  I never thought of him being buried in Israel, but he (and more recently his wife) was, so I'll keep my daughter from wondering what in the world I meant by those, when my time comes.

      • Upvote 1
    • Bassett Lady

      Posted

      1 hour ago, Mama Mia said:

      I keep getting almost identical conspiracy theories from both my extremely leftist family and the ones who’ve gone very right wing

      We have looney relatives on both sides of the political spectrum but the place they overlap is a desire to buy raw milk and organic foods. 
       

      I refuse to serve raw cow’s milk in my home but I grow a lot of veggies and fruits organically, so they usually don’t complain too much when at my house. 

       

      • Upvote 1
    • Pancakes@Tiffany's

      Posted

      Just now, JermajestyDuggar said:

      You mean you wouldn’t go with Epponnee-Raelene Kathleen Darlene Charlene? I’m shocked! 
       

      I’m an American who loves Kath and Kim

      I don’t know what any of that is. 😅 I’m in Canada. But you just gave me something to Google for fun.

      • Haha 1
    • JermajestyDuggar

      Posted

      1 minute ago, Pancakes@Tiffany's said:

      I would go with Eponine, like in Les Misérables, and use Eppie as a nickname. I know FJ isn’t fond of nicknames, but in my family, it is a tradition.

      You mean you wouldn’t go with Epponnee-Raelene Kathleen Darlene Charlene? I’m shocked! 
       

      I’m an American who loves Kath and Kim



×
×
  • Create New...

Important Information

By using this site, you agree to our Terms of Use.