Review: The Simpsons ‘Cue Detective’

Spoilers Below:

The Simpson Family members suddenly found themselves ostracized from their peers for being smelly, and decided to buy a new dryer. However Homer, tasked with the purchase, instead bought a meat smoker. After becoming popular with Springfield’s residents for his BBQ skills, Homer entered into a cook-off with the host of a show on the Chew Network, but his cooker was stolen prior to the competition, sending Homer into a state of depression. Bart and Lisa sought out the thief, who turned out to be Nelson, stealing it for a mysterious interested buyer.

The Simpsons reluctantly competed in the contest anyway and won, after it was discovered that Scotty Boom used their grill to prepare his entry. Turned out that Boom’s son framed his dad in order to spend more time with the chef, who would be shunned from the community when exposed as a cheat.

The episode ended with Homer getting reunited with his smoker. A credit sequence showed the future of the appliance: it gets traded to Nelson for a new dryer, and later makes appearances in apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic worlds.

In Case You Missed It:

1) No chalkboard gag & no couch gag.

2) Springfield Elementary’s scheduled safety video was: “Don’t Wear Jewelry During Sports.”

3) The students booed the 20th Century Fox logo.

4) Marge’s money stash was hidden inside Bender!

5) Homer was wearing a Spin Doctors Pocket Full of Kryptonite Tour t-shirt.

6) The sign outside of Exit 35 Appliances read, “Do not read our Yelp reviews.”

7) When Homer was crossing the road, one of the angry drivers yelled “Stinkson” out the window.

8) Lisa was using Stan Getz brand saxophone polish.

9) Nelson ran into Scrap City, “proud sponsor of the Springfield Jewish Hockey League Scrap City Scrappers.”

This episode definitely got off to a strong start. The jokes, both verbal and visual, were fired off impressively quickly, and I once again had my hopes for a successful episode raised.

But “Cue Detective” spent an awful lot of time on the cue part, and didn’t get to the detective portion until about the halfway point, which made it seem to jump around too much. First it was about the Simpsons smelling, then their dryer situation introduced the smoker element, then it seemed like it was about the cook-off, and then it was stolen, then they briefly attempted to solve the crime, then it was about the cook-off again, then back to the theft. Which kinds of sums up the episode as a whole. In fact, Homer even concluded: “Thanks for not giving up, then giving up, then not giving up, then I forget.” So the stories were interesting, but the balance was off.

Take the humor. When the detective element showed up, the humor left. Save for Marge’s little speech about Lance Armstrong, the laughs were barely present in the second half. Also, a few of the lines irked me, like Homer telling the kids, “To try is to fail.” That’s a bit too much like Homer’s classic saying: “Trying is the first step toward failure.” And was I the only one bothered by the bag of money at the beginning? If you don’t recall what I mean, it’s in the picture at the top.

Go look. I’ll wait.

Isn’t it overly detailed for The Simpsons? The animation is so simple, yet so much effort was put into that sack of savings. Why not just show a couple bundles of bills in a bag? There’s also a full trash can in the shot, yet there’s not much detail put into its contents. Because that would be weird. Anyway, not a big deal, but it weirded me out.

I’m nitpicking a lot here, because overall this wasn’t an awful episode. In fact, I’d say it’s slightly above average. But as I said before, it didn’t land quite right. The distribution issue also applied to the great guest spots (Edward James Olmos, Bobby Moynihan, Ben Schwartz, and Alton Brown). They were spread out in little bits, but the main new character, Scotty Boom, was voiced by Hank Azaria. Why not give that role to Moynihan? He even impersonates Guy Fieri on SNL. Azaria is a fantastic actor, but why not inject a little more variety into a one-off character.

Somehow I feel like this whodunit could have been a real winner. The right pieces were all there, but somehow they weren’t put in the correct places.

The only question remaining: was the installment better than last week? Yep. Just a bit.