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submitted 3 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

This one is actually interesting for a couple of reasons!

The episode has a controversy warning on the Simpsons fan wiki. Apparently, "Fans and critics generally agree that this episode goes a bit too far with its mistreatment towards Bart." This is an absolutely bizarre opinion, and some quick googling shows that the internet is full of people saying strange shit about this episode.

The first part of the episode is Bart bullying Lisa on a field trip, tripping her and humiliating her in front of their classmates. She finally snaps and gets a restraining order on Bart, and begins poking him with a 20-foot stick. They go to court to get the restraining order lifted, but Bart is sexist towards the judge, and she instead extends the distance to 200 feet. Bart has to go live outside, but he's kinda into it. In the end Lisa forgives him for almost no narrative reason.

People on the internet who spend their time discussing a Simpsons episode from 2005 use some interesting language when talking about it. Bart's bullying is repeatedly called "a prank", but Lisa's revenge is "abuse", "torture", and "ILLEGAL". People are even pretending to care about "continuity" between episodes! I can not help but to see this as a gendered thing, and those critics as weird incels.

CW: Gary Busey's sex crimesThe second interesting thing was a guest appearance by Gary Busey, the actor and recently alleged sex pest. He plays himself in an instruction video about restraining orders, and the joke is that he has a restraining order from 12 women who "couldn't deal with [him] because [he's] too real". My take here is that wow it sucks to be a woman in Hollywood when your abuser can go on the Simpsons and joke about the truly heinous stuff he did, continue to work in the industry, and only face some consequences 17 years later.

It's nice that there was a B-plot, those do a lot for the pacing.

Number of jokes that were pretty ok: 13 (!)

And this might be only in contrast to the season 30+ dogshit I watched recently but,

Overall rating: 6/10

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[-] [email protected] 6 points 3 months ago

I must say I love that you're doing this. I'm a snooty purist so I don't think I've watched any seasons past 12, or maybe 13. Do you think it's worth it to keep going? I started venturing out of my comfort zone and started watching past that, and it seemed like the episodes just started to get more edgy and racist, kinda veering towards Family Guy territory

[-] [email protected] 3 points 3 months ago

My hope is that some episodes are hidden gems when viewed outside the context of their seasons, but honestly, I might have given up if I rolled another season 30 snoozer. Luckily this one was borderline worth watching! I haven't come across anything too edgy yet.

[-] [email protected] 2 points 3 months ago

good to know. I started rewatching from the very beginning, I might start over and keep going at least through season 20 or something lol. Do you uh, have a good recommendation as to where to watch besides Disney? I wanna delete my account

[-] [email protected] 1 points 3 months ago

I've found stremio pretty convenient, but it turns out no one is seeding the Simpsons episodes that are old and bad fast enough, so I had to pirate this one the traditional way

[-] [email protected] 4 points 3 months ago

Any episode where people are mean to Bart gets the fans riled up

If you're feeling up to it, look at the discourse around S18-E18 "The Boys of Bummer" where the plot is the town harrases Bart over bungling a little league game

[-] [email protected] 3 points 3 months ago

I remember this episode, guess this is one that was on when I watched the show on TV. Always kinda annoyed me, even as a kid.

[-] [email protected] 3 points 3 months ago

I watched the episode because I'm bored and the B-plot has a bit that feels pretty relevant.

this post was submitted on 07 Apr 2025
18 points (100.0% liked)

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