Review: The Simpsons ‘Specs and the City’

Spoilers Below

The opening to this episode has an introduction by the lovely Zooey Deschanel (who is attractive even in cartoon form) after she got an introduction by a live-action Curt Menefee, further blurring the line indicating when the episode actually began.

The intro also featured cameos by the entire Fox NFL Sunday host lineup, as well as the Fox football robot. (Anyone else wonder why a football robot even exists? Or why FNS felt the need to have a mascot? Either way, I don’t like him. Too much of a showboater, if you ask me.)

The Super Bowl couch gag was well done, however the episode surprisingly kicked off looking like a Christmas episode (football pun possibly intended) and didn’t end up involving the big game after the triple NFL intro.

In fact, it ended up being more of a Valentine’s Day episode, and to a lesser extent a New Year’s, Martin Luther King, and Groundhog Day episode. However, the Christmas beginning was necessary in order to show how Homer first received his Oogle Goggles (an obvious spoof of the Google Glass) as a company Christmas gift from Mr. Burns.

Homer’s reality soon became whatever he spied through the goggles, and – upon the insistence of his family – he gave them up to Marge.

After finding out Mr. Burns had a video feed of whatever each of his employees (plus Marge) saw through their specs, Homer discovered his wife was seeing a therapist once a week. After some advice from Moe, Homer decided to confront Marge in her therapist’s office. However, when he saw how much the therapy helps her (and in turn benefited himself) Homer decided to let the issue go. The two got “intimate” (S2E11 “One Fish, Two Fish, Blowfish, Blue Fish,” anyone?) that night with Marge still wearing the Oogle Goggles, to the horror of a spying Mr. Burns.

In the episode’s alternate storyline, Bart refused to give Nelson a Valentine’s Day card, and was then forced to come up with an extra special one in order to avoid a massive bully beating. In the end, Bart gave Nelson a card that said how much he fears the ruffian, accompanied by a funny little limerick. Nelson was touched by the gesture.

A few other bits worth commenting on:

1) Kudos for the nod to How the Grinch Stole Christmas with Smithers wearing a backward antler, playing the little dog to Mr. Burns’ implied Grinch.

2) It’s weird to see the show break the fourth wall by having a character actually reference the show’s cloud introduction sequence.

3) Marge was hilariously reading an aptly-penned book called “Heaven is Real” by Captain Nutso.

4) The ingredients of a Krusty Burger are far worse than anyone could have imagined.

5) Muppet Chess is a game that desperately needs to actually be made.

6) Why is Lenny painting a clown face on Carl?

7) I would love to try “Ben & Jerry’s Occupy Walnut Street.”

8) It still tickles me every time Moe refers to Marge as “Midge.”

To be honest, before seeing this episode I judged it pretty hard based on its description. The idea of using a recent piece of technology (that both immediately dates this episode as a new era Simpsons episode, and also gives a major spotlight to a device that will be probably be obsolete before this installment hits syndication) as a gimmick seemed like a bad call. Not to mention the fact that “Oogle Goggle” is the least inventive name since Avatar called its highly-sought natural resource “Unobtainium.” However, despite this early bias and the aforementioned facts, the episode delivered.

Although I felt this episode lacked particularly big laughs, there were enough smaller chuckles to make it successful overall. I could take or leave the B-side Bart plotline, but Homer’s Google Glass antics were surprisingly humorous.

Despite oftentimes finding myself mulling the fact that the early days of The Simpsons – where almost every episode was a 9, and the only ones that weren’t were the 9.5s, and in rarer but not infrequent cases: full blown 10s – are gone, I still find solace in the fact that they can still produce quality episodes on a continuing basis. Especially the last couple seasons. Not only that, but they can achieve this feat while using the same formula that made the show initially great. Some pop culture references here, some general silliness there, add some snarky wit, freely use the enormous character list, and you’ve got yourself a show that will last as long as the creator’s & talent’s demands stay reasonable and they all avoid the pitfalls of fame (like hookers, and OD-ing, and hanging with hookers that are OD-ing) everyone, including the viewer, can continue to reside on easy street – which is currently called Evergreen Terrace.