Review: The Simpsons “3 Scenes Plus a Tag from a Marriage”

In an episode filled with guest stars, we get another look at how the Simpsons family came to be.

Overview:

The episode starts off with the Simpsons family hitting the theatres to watch the latest Marvel Cinematic Universe film.  After sitting through multiple after-credit sequences, they head for home.  To avoid the heavy traffic home, Homer takes a short-cut through the old meat-processing district where he and Marge used to live.

Taking their kids to visit their old apartment, Homer and Marge begin sharing a story of how they lived like kings before they had children.  Children ruin everything, and the episode covers how having Bart and Lisa cost them their freedom, friends, and careers.  For some unexplained reason, they continue to show the fake happiness of marriage and convince another young couple to have children.

Our Take:

“3 Scenes Plus a Tag from a Marriage” starts off with one of the most psychedelic couch gags created by Bill Plympton.  A sketch of Homer that keeps turning in on itself and twisting and changing is worth watching the whole episode but stands on its own.  This creative piece was a nice change from the more familiar couch gags, have a look:

Other than the high opening, this was an episode that resonated with me in many ways.  Not only am I a sucker for the Marvel cut-scenes that the producers did such a great job of making hilarious, but children also ruined my life.  Okay, maybe ruined is a harsh term, but it is true that having kids does cost you a lot, from friends to jobs.  I think the writers did a fantastic job of capturing every young parent’s struggles.

There were some memorable guest stars to take this episode over the top including, Kevin Pollak, John Baldessari, and JK Simmons more or less reprising his role as J. Jonah Jameson from Spider-Man.  Each cameo made this episode a little bit better in their own way.  However, seeing the contraception of baby Lisa, and evil baby Bart, kept this episode fun.

They are running out of space to do flashback episodes into the history of Marge and Homer’s marriage.  Every time they write a story that dives into The Simpson’s canon, I cannot help but feel like it contradicts with past episodes.  Either way, though it may have stepped on some previous stories toes, it was still an enjoyable episode.

Score
6.5/10