Review: The Simpsons – “Much Apu About Something”

During a Springfield parade to celebrate a new Jebediah Springfield statue, the Kwik-E-Mart is destroyed by the police department’s tank, thanks to one of Bart’s pranks. While Apu wants to rebuild, his brother, Sanjay, wants to retire. Sanjay gives his controlling stake of the store to his son, Jay. Jay takes the opportunity to build a health food store instead of rebuilding the convenience store.

Unfortunately for Bart, Homer caught his prank on video. Homer forces the boy to promise that he will stop pranking people. Bart takes his promise to heart and becomes a good, upstanding citizen. Even when Milhouse tries to goad him into pranks, Bart refuses. However, when Apu needs a way to get rid of his nephew’s new store, Homer asks Bart to prank again. Bart agrees to go bad once again and ends up burning down the new store. Apu finds a scratch-off lottery ticket in the rubble, which wins him one million dollars. He uses the prize money to rebuild the original Kwik-E-Mart. All is right with the world again.

It was interesting to see a bit more behind the scenes of Apu’s life. While we all thought Apu was his own boss, this is where we find out that, due to an addition to scratch-off lottery tickets, Apu gave most of his shares of the store to his brother. It’s rare for a cartoon to give us that much back story about a side character. While the episode, as a whole, wasn’t amazing, it was nice to shift the focus away from the Simpsons family for a little.