Simpsons: Ned Helps Homer Save His Job

by Amy K. Bredemeyer

Very little Lisa this episode, little to no Maggie, and half of the Marge shots were of her in the bathroom for some reason. Still, we saw the Simpson house, the school, the power plant, Moe's, and the Springfield Retirement Castle, so there's no lack of settings. There were two stories, neither of which was very compelling. In one, we have Homer dealing with a new assistant who quickly becomes his boss. In the other, Bart enlists Martin's help in coming up with a science fair project, which they end up becoming attached to (for no apparent reason...). It's a miss in my opinion, but please feel free to chime in with what you thought.

The Simpsons "Replaceable You" (S23E04): The chalkboard message was about the fact that it's November 6th and a Halloween episode isn't airing. [made me laugh pretty hard. I then had to explain to my husband why this was funny.] The couch gag was the repeat one where they go into the museum and sneak toward the couch.

CR: FOX

[Homer first...] Home gets an assistant and he shows her around, introduces her to Mr. Burns, etc. Soon afterward, he takes off from work during the day to see a movie with Barney. [the "I saw Paul Blart, Water Park Cop" t-shirt he was wearing was weird, haha.] Burns demotes Homer (even being at his house when he got home to do so), since someone snitched on him. Homer assumes that it was Roz, who is now his boss rather than his assistant. Roz also infiltrates Homer's life at Moe's, and he's mighty angry. [Jane Lynch being the voice of the new employee was different.] Ned knows Roz from Bible camp, where she admitted that she can't stand to be touched. [hahaha on "SF" being the standard for "Stupid Flanders."] At an awards ceremony, Homer suggests that Burns hug Roz, and he does... She freaks out, squishes Burns into a ball, and promptly gets fired. [plain, simple, and predictable, no?]

[On to Bart...] Lisa has a science project about an asteroid, and teases Bart for not working on his own. Well, he's trying to develop a cootie shot... a "morning after" sequel to his project last year - the preventative "cootie patch." [hahahahaha!] This, of course, is after having "a fistoid hitting a nerd" doesn't work. [horrible, really.] Milhouse has an issue with his tongue touching his dog's... repeatedly. [freaky, gross, disgusting...] So, Bart decides to team up with Martin in exchange for picking him in basketball. [well, that's an agreement I'd make!] Bart thinks of building a robopet, and they do one with a stuffed baby seal, which has a cute mode and an evil mode. [LoL on all good ideas becoming property of the school system.] The projects in the gym are pretty bad. The seal goes over well, taking first place. Lisa gets second place, and the school doesn't have money for a third place ribbon. [LoL! ...and wtf? I rather enjoyed Lisa's "I'm my own nerd!"] The folks at the Springfield Retirement Castle want more robopets, so Martin and Bart get to it. [but why? what's the gain for them? You know Bart doesn't do nice things for no pay-off... and why does Milhouse have a shirt of Bart sleeping??] However, people are continuing to live because of the robopets, so one group decides to re-wire them to attack, so that there are more funerals. Well, after one death, the police take all of the baby seals into custody. Again, Bart cares for some reason, so he and Martin go to Professor Frink to ask him to re-program the robots to break out of jail. [I had to look up Frink's name... I kept thinking "Fritz," LoL. And the scene with "Miss Wyoming" was strange. But, then again, so was NAMBLA standing for the North American Man Bot Love Association!] The seals look cute and Chief Wiggam not only lets them go, but also Snake, the perpetual bad guy of the show. [strange and possibly ill-placed Jetsons spoof.] The seals are controlled remotely and brought back to the retirement home. [the classical music played in this episode was beautiful!]