TV Recap / Review: Bart and Lisa Drift Away from "Itchy & Scratchy" (and Each Other) in "The Simpsons" Season 36 Finale
Yesterday evening saw the debut of the 36th season finale of The Simpsons on the FOX Network– entitled “Estranger Things" (a play on the title of the smash-hit Netflix series Stranger Things)– and below are my brief recap and thoughts on this installment of the long-running animated sitcom.
“Estranger Things" begins with a flashback to “Four Years Earlier" (when Bart was six years old and Lisa was four) when the two oldest Simpson children (voiced by Nancy Cartwright and Yeardley Smith, as always) discover The Itchy & Scratchy Show together while flipping through the channels during their father Homer’s (Dan Castellaneta) lazy babysitting duty. Cut to the present, when their mother Marge (Julie Kavner) gleefully informs them that their baby sister Maggie has become an Itchy & Scratchy fan as well– donning all manner of baby clothes adorned with the violent cat & mouse team. The next morning Bart and Lisa report that “Itchy and Scratchy are for babies now!" to their respective classmates and this causes a moral panic among the children of Springfield Elementary School, to the point where they all burn their Itchy & Scratchy merchandise in a big bonfire, like hyper-religious American Beatles fans did after John Lennon declared the band to be “bigger than Jesus."
Back at the Simpson home, Bart and Lisa move on to individually watching in-universe parodies of New Girl (featuring honest-to-goodness guest voice star Zooey Deschanel) and Smiling Friends on their mobile devices in their bedrooms, and Marge worries that the two siblings are drifting apart without their favorite cartoon show to bond over. Bart asks his mom to dump the remainder of his Itchy & Scratchy merch on the curb, and this leads to a hilarious parody of the “When She Loved Me" sequence from Disney/Pixar’s Toy Story 2 (featuring the voice of another special guest star– Sarah MacLachlan, who sang Randy Newman’s moving song in the beloved 2000 animated feature).
After that pitch-perfect tribute, we move on to decades in the future (I’ve lost track of how many times The Simpsons has utilized this device at this point, but it works fairly well on this occasion) when Lisa has become the CEO of the NBA– formerly the WNBA– and Bart has remained, well… Bart. Returning home to Springfield to give a speech at the elementary school, Lisa is shocked to find that Bart has set up an unlicensed retirement home in the old Simpson house, caring for Homer, Comic Book Guy (Hank Azaria), Lenny (Harry Shearer), and Carl (Alex Desert) in the now-dilapidated house with money that she had been providing for Homer to live in the Retirement Castle. She’s so infuriated by her brother’s irresponsible shenanigans that she gives an irate speech at the school, prompting Superintendent Chalmers (also Azaria) to disinvite her back.
But after returning back to the Simpson house and paying a little closer attention, Lisa discovers that Bart does actually care for these old men, even though he did spend some of the extra cash on a sports car (not to mention a golden jetski, which Lisa doesn’t actually see). But before she can change her mind about the situation, the government responds to her earlier call about senior endangerment and picks up Homer in a bus bound for Florida, which has now become a maximum security prison for the elderly. Using a trick they learned from one of their favorite episodes of Itchy & Scratchy, Bart and Lisa (in the sports car, naturally) manage to get the bus to pull over at a rest station, and Bart uses his butt-prying prowess to get Homer off the toilet seat, returning him back to Springfield. The two siblings vow to reconcile and combine their efforts into improving Bart’s retirement home, and we see Marge smiling down on them from heaven– oh yeah, I forgot to mention she dies before Homer in this version of the future– where she is now married to ex-Beatle Ringo Starr in the afterlife.
I thought this was a really solid outing for current-period Simpsons, and a very strong way to wrap up the 36th season. There are plenty of very funny gags, numerous touching moments, great guests, and I’m still coasting on that note-perfect Toy Story 2 homage. With the show having just been renewed for another four seasons (meaning it will be generating new episodes through at least 2029) I’m hoping, as always, that it can maintain this level of quality going forward through the remainder of the decade.
The Simpsons will return for its 37th season this fall on FOX.