Monday, January 28, 2013

No One Wants Those Kids

The Simpsons, S24E11


After getting trapped in a life-threatening situation, Homer and Marge sought to find guardians for their children.  They were unable to find appropriate guardians among people they knew, so they happened upon a surfer and an environmental lawyer who were too eager to take the kids.  Homer and Marge learned quickly that this couple was prepared to take their kids before Homer and Marge had even passed.

Well, this was a mildly interesting topic for a story: who would raise Bart and the girls if Homer and Marge died?  Well, despite they know pretty much everyone in town, there aren't a lot of people that they were willing to give the kids to, nor a lot of people in Springfield willing to take them.  I guess I thought it was little funny that they were being avoided by anyone who passed them in town after they failed to find anyone in the family who could properly take the kids.  People were actually opening circles around them like they were playing "guardian tag."  It's sort of sad that they had to cruise around some beach to find strangers rather than anyone they had an actual relationship with.

What I liked best about the couple who agreed to have the kids was that Portia was voiced by Rashida Jones.  She just has a cute voice that sort of sounds like a bit of a know-it-all (not unlike Lisa).  I actually had hoped that the couple would turn out to be not as good as they sounded and something more exciting would happen at the end, but it was just that they liked Bart, Lisa, and Maggie so much that they were willing to take them into their family before it was all legal.  That was the disappointing part.  I had hoped something more unexpected might have happened that would make Homer and Marge run back to get their kids.

I didn't really think anything was that funny.  There's only about two things that almost made me laugh.   One of such was when Homer was having Portia and Mav sign the papers and Portia asked where Bart was:
Oh, uh, well, he wanted to be here, but I’m going to decrease the volume of my voice and mumble so you can’t really understand what I’m saying, and I’ll just keep doing it.
Another was at the beginning when Lisa revealed that playing Emissaries to Byzantium wasn't her idea either:
I don’t like this game. Nobody likes this game. Even the kids on the box look bored. They’re miserable.
The kids on the box looked like they were going to die from boredom.  That was about the most visually amusing thing in the whole episode.

I didn't really care for this episode. It got me thinking about what would happen if Homer's foolhardy actions made both him and Marge die, but in the end, they didn't really come to a solution.  That would have been fine if the path they took to get to that conclusion was fun to watch, but it was missing excitement and humor.  There weren't a lot of memorable scenes, so I can easily see myself forgetting this episode even existed.

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