We Need More Fat Tony

The Simpsons, S2405

Homer's new bowling pal, Dan, was made a temporary don for Fat Tony's gang and wanted Homer to help Dan stop himself from murdering the excess members.  Lisa tried to solve her iron deficiency by eating bugs, despite her strict vegetarian beliefs, and found that adding any kind of meat into her diet opened the door for others.

This episode was really lacking.  First of all, there was a lot of focus on Dan, who was played by Steve Carell, but his character wasn't that interesting.  Since he's the new guy, his personality and whatnot had to be explained rather quickly and I found that I didn't care so much about him until he went for Homer's help later.  Second, I was really annoyed that there was hardly any Fat Tony in a basically Fat Tony episode.  I might say he's my favorite non-Simpson family character.  Of course, they're not really going to show him serving jury duty for the whole episode, but I wish that he didn't have to be going to that at all.  Dan wasn't so funny that I wasn't wondering when Fat Tony or Homer was going to come back.  Plus, you know they are not going to do another Fat Tony episode for a while (or ever, possibly), so there's another disappointment there.

It was a little interesting to see Lisa eating things like grasshoppers.  It was also a little gross.  I've never liked insects, so I didn't enjoy all the bug-filled dishes they kept showing nor when she planted all those grasshopper eggs.  Eww.  At the beginning of the story, I did like how Bart pointed out the song they were playing was from a Bugs Bunny cartoon.  As a kid, that is where I learned a lot of classic and famous music from.  I might not know the names, but I've definitely heard the songs in one of those classic cartoons.  My favorite line, too, came from this story when Bart was making fun of Lisa eating bugs and Homer chatised him:

Bart!  This is America.  Anyone can eat what they want as long as they eat too much.

See, we could have had more lines like that had Homer been more present in the episode.  But what can ya do?

This might have been a better episode if it was just about the freaking Pin Pals playing in another tournament.  I mean, seriously.  Lisa's cheating some on her vegetarian diet wasn't a bad story, but as a side story it didn't make up for Dan's story.  I know that they've done a whole lot of Fat Tony stories, but I can't help but want more because I just love Joe Mantegna.  Really hope he makes another appearance this season!