We flushed your sin sticks to Hell

Brawl in the Family

Couch gag: The Simpsons are a hedge, made into topiary by a gardener

Director: Matthew Nastuk

Guest voices:
Jane Kaczmarek as Judge Constance Harm
Delroy Lindo as Gabriel

Synopsis: The Simpsons receive private consults from a social worker when they go one bicker too far. Ginger and Amber, the cocktail waitresses Homer and Ned married in Vegas, return to resume their lives with their “husbands”.

Discussion: In this episode, we have two distinct storylines with very little to do with each other. In the first, Maggie calls the police when Homer and Bart fight and Marge and Lisa try to pry them apart. Gabriel, a social worker, follows the family and tries to connect them as a family unit, teaching them to work together. This is finally achieved when the family conspire to drive out Amber, who has returned as Homer’s “Vegas wife”.

Firstly, WTF? The ep takes a full 12 minutes to get to the point where Ginger & Amber return. Secondly, the first half of the ep doesn’t have anything to do with the second half. Thirdly, their return can stretch out to a full episode on its own and the viewer is denied this for… this: a patched-together episode which doesn’t really make any sense and holds no heart either.

Homer and Ned’s escapades in Vegas has the potential to be a great plot as the wives return, but this is overshadowed by the audience’s still-numb brain attempting to work out what the hell just happened in the first half of the ep. Gabriel is lovely but the plot can’t hold out a full ep and the attempts at making the Simpson family a functional family unit go awry. This also has the potential to be a good plot, but falls far short of delivering.

Having said all that, there are some very good bits. Homer’s insistence that Gabriel is an angel, the Vegas wives showing their uh, less-than-classy habits and Homer and Marge having another of their infamous fights where Homer is left to sleep outside. However, the ep as a whole just doesn’t work.

**

I want to take the opportunity to mention the death of series regular, Marcia Wallace. She voiced Edna Krabappel (“Ha!”) and the producers have said they will retire the character. It’s only fair to retire Edna, in the same way Lionel Hutz and Troy McClure were retired after Phil Hartman’s death. We’ll miss Edna and our thoughts are with family & friends of Marcia.