Season 32, Episode 16, “Manger Things”

“Punish, punish, punish and, if it is too late, love.”

There are stories that only touch you, and stories that tell you how moved you should be, relying on signals and tradition to do the job. “Manger Things”, The Simpsons‘Impossible 700th Episode, does everything it can to mark its place in history, but gives us a reason to celebrate. As a piece of TV history, it is a novelty. As an episode of The Simpsons, it is hardly there.

Look, I don’t enjoy this. After all, I am the AV Club reviewer who spent his years with regard to late series Simpsons advocate the Periodic good getaway as proof that there is already a kick in the old girl. And I was genuinely sad when the inevitable ax fell last year, signaling the AV Club’s decision to fall back into regular Simpsons coverage as of 2011 Season 23 had allowed us Simpsons steadfast pan for TV gold long enough. As much warmth as I’ve gotten from time to time Simpsons professionals online for being dismissive (I never get over it pissed off Yeardley Smith– I just won’t), I can point to a dozen or more episodes from the past six seasons that I would easily slip into Simpsons‘binge of the the good old days

But we’re not here to reminisce about a beautiful round-song episode, we’re here to talk about “Manger Things”. And “Manger Things” barely registers.

Rob LaZebnik is the credited writer, and his name is one I usually look at with hope at the beginning of an episode. The Simpsons is a crusty ship at this point, with everything looking sharp, and our voice overcoming the remotely recorded COVID process with a little hiccup. I had a real laugh once, at the disposable gag where Mr. Burns’s cozy assurance that his employee’s Christmas party is buzzing with goodwill is belied by a random bullet that hits the power plant railing in front of him. It’s an old joke, but it worked out fine and I laughed.

Flanders – whose role in this terminally unfocused episode is otherwise unlikely to be disposable – brings up Jesus’ whole “Love Your Neighbor” idea to convince the highly flashback pregnant Maude to let the discarded Homer share their vacation, while he muses “Never seems to live next door to anyone.” And Homer, who spends the night in the ‘Son of Man Cave’ in Flanders, is equally seduced by a Bosch-like painted devil, who responds to the little monster’s talk about the lake of fire by immediately sparking: ‘A house at the Lake? I could do some writing! “I’m always on board for a joke about the unexplored and unexpected corners of Homer J. Simpson’s mind.

However, that’s not much entertainment to hang an episode on. And “Manger Things” throws a bunch of logs on the fire to try and generate a spectacular “700th Episode” heat. It’s a Christmas episode. It’s a flashback episode. Marge throws Homer out. It is an episode in Flanders. Homer plays an emergency doula for Rod’s birth, for screaming out loud, a monumental retcon that brings Homer and Maude into such an unexpectedly deep intimacy that it makes Homer’s infamous callous reaction to his accidental murder of Maude far more valuable in retrospect.

It’s a bit shocking, even for a professionally jaded Simpsons viewer, how little nurturing is done for any of these storylines. The Christmas angle exists to amplify Homer’s grief over Marge’s decision to give him the boot (and to have Neddy deliver Christmas turkeys to the needy during Maude’s time of need), but it could have been fixed at any time. (If there is a symmetry for episodes 1 and 700 both of which are set over the holidays, that’s all.) Homer, after being forced into a secret room above the Simpson garage by Moe (for some reason), camps there and spies on his family through a handy sound-conducting vent. But while Dan Castellaneta dutifully provides the heart-sick Homer with many mournful moans and sighs about his predicament, the central conflict between the pair is not so much dramatized as fabricated. Homer makes one Clark Griswold style solo Christmas nest in the cramped and forgotten attic space feints toward pathos without ever committing, and it’s all so terribly flat and untouched. Plus, as season 32 fanatics know, Marge threw out Homer just a few episodes ago, so not only is her decision portrayed here as misleading (Lenny and Carl secretly drunk the reluctantly shameless Homer at the party), which narrative bullet should not be knowingly fired.

Likewise, no truly comical hay has been made from the flashback premise six years ago. Homer has a little more hair. This also applies to Abe, who in this version of history had the illusion that he could live with his son’s family indefinitely. We get that long-debated backstory of why Marge had to replace those kitchen curtains, for those who like that sort of thing. Bart (4 years old) and Lisa (2 years old) are small figures, Nancy Cartwright and Yeardley Smith let their characters’ voices be heard a bit, but the siblings otherwise behave identically in response to Homer’s sudden absence. There’s the wheezing of an attempt to suggest that Bart’s little bastard tendencies (this time) stem from his brief fatherlessness, but, like the rest of the character beats in ‘Manger Things’, it barely exists. And when the climax erupts with Maude’s Homer-assisted delivery, Ned and Marge’s arrivals are as straightforward and perfunctory as such things get. (There is literally no reason why Marge is suddenly in the house of Flanders to witness Homer’s handy helpfulness.)

In the promotional material leading to the big 700, “Manger Things” was sold with the idea that Homer would find an unknown room in the Simpsons’ house. That’s the gist of a suggestive idea, metaphorically promising that there is still something hidden and wonderful, even in something where you think there are no more ways to surprise you. “Manger Things” barely explores the, it turns out, utterly inconspicuous attic space in the family’s garage, squandering the hope I allowed myself to educate when I got to dive back. The Simpsons (professionally speaking). 700 episodes and 32 years is an eternity on television. Hell, it is one a long time for whatever, or whoever. Congratulations, even if another big lap number is as artificial a milestone as ever, so congratulations on one of my favorite shows ever. And, as always, things will get better next week.

Stray observations

• Except that Marge is cast here as the (unintended) villain of the play, Maude is also very snippy and unchristian / un-Flanders everywhere. She’s not wrong – Homer eats Flanders’s uncooked, still-wrapped Christmas ham like a midnight snack – but her characterization is just one major, sour bummer here.
• It’s also unusual for Marge to tell the kids that what she needs for Homer to get back into her good graces is, “one big thing – a great thing to prove that all the nonsense I put up with has a point. ” As a rule, yes, such grandiose plans ending the episode are what brings the Simpsons’ wedding back from that week’s abyss, but Marge isn’t one to put it that explicitly. In the couple’s dynamic, Homer is the one who thinks grand gestures can remedy a life of harrowing neglect and disappointment, while Marge succumbs to acknowledging that her loving but flawed husband can muster all such shenanigans. Marge doesn’t want to gesture, and the writing here betrays the character in a really daunting way.
• Bill Plympton returns with the show opener “Homer’s Family,” his seventh guest animator couch gag. I agree with Sam Barsanti that the hand-drawn flight of cartoon imagination is a bit sweet in its way. The play re-centers on Homer as the heart of the show, his smiling face never changes even when bits of him erupt (there’s always a element of body horror with Plympton) and then floating around his head, Marge and the kids are eternally bound to their Homer-centric jobs through love and sitcom tradition. That Homer has been irrevocably transformed by this Cronenbergian subtraction and yet chooses without complaint to immerse himself in this new reality of wife, children and 32 years of stasis is more of a thoughtful and insightful ruminant on The Simpsons than anything else in “Manger ”. Things ”, a lovingly poetic and inventive riff on a subject whose weekly reality has too often become mean and commonplace.
• Thanks for overanalyzing The Simpsons again, you bastards. It’s nice to be back, if only for a visit.