Review: The Simpsons – “Gal of Constant Sorrow”

Bart and his friends are sledding down a huge hill. After kicking Milhouse off his sled, Bart careens into the cart of a homeless woman, knocking it into the nearby pond. Feeling guilty, Bart lets Hettie move into his closet for the low, low cost of one dollar per day. When Lisa finds out about the arrangement, she threatens to tell their parents. Until she hears Hettie sing, that is. It turns out that she comes from a family of folk singers. Feeling a kindred spirit, Lisa offers to let Hettie sleep in her closet as long as they can talk about music. Whenever Hettie feels like talking anyway. Lisa puts together a local concert, complete with press, in order to help Hettie get on her feet. During an interview on NPR, Hettie reveals that she is a heroin addict who has turned away multiple offers for help. As Bart predicted, this completely devastates Lisa. After a drunken talk with Homer, Hettie eventually shows up at her concert and sings a song. The audience left long ago but Lisa still forgives the woman. Thankfully, Hettie heads off to rehab a short time later.

Meanwhile, Homer has been quite busy. Marge offended him at breakfast when she found a loose tile on the floor. She wanted to hire a handy man (different from a handyman) and Homer insisted that he was a handy man. Thanks to a video tutorial provided by Lisa, Homer was able to fix the loose tile. But he accidentally trapped the cat under the floorboards. Then the cat ended up in the wall. Then the cat ended up in the ceiling. When Homer saved the cat from inside the wall of the basement, he found out that the dog got trapped as well. Marge revealed that she knew the pets were in the walls but they were fine and she had been taking care of them the entire time. She just liked Homer pretending he was handy.

Even though I haven’t really been a fan of The Simpsons for a long time, I have to admit that this episode tugged at my heartstrings. There was a good mix of hope, disappointment, and music to keep the episode on track. I hope that we’ll get to see Hettie as a healthy, productive woman sometime down the line. Though I know that addiction is difficult to beat and the likelihood of her successfully beating her addiction is slim. But, like Lisa, I have hope for her.