Review: The Simpsons “The Marge-ian Chronicles”

Spoilers Below

Flanders has, apparently, gotten chickens. When Homer finds out how delicious the eggs are, he steals them. The happy-go-lucky neighbor quickly puts a stop to the theft. That means the Simpsons get their own chickens, to the delight of Lisa. However, their eggs are not as tasty as the stolen eggs. So Homer and Bart go back to stealing Flanders’ eggs. Lisa found a new home for their chickens and the place just happens to be a company trying to put people on Mars. Obviously, Lisa signs up to be one of the colonists when the flight leaves in 10 years. Marge starts stressing about how Lisa wants to leave her family to be a Mars colonist. Homer teaches Marge how to deal with women using reverse psychology. If they say Lisa can’t sign up, she will want to do it even more but if they support her, she will lose interest. So the entire family signs up for the program.

Marge, realizing that life in the habitat isn’t that much different from taking care of her family, thrives while the boys fail miserably. Only Marge and Lisa qualify to continue in the program. The two women continue to argue as Bart and Homer start to freak out, realizing that they can’t take care of themselves.

At a press conference announcing the candidates going to Mars, the lead scientists announce that the ship will be leaving Thursday instead of 10 years from now. Everyone, except Marge and Lisa, quit. The two women get ready to blast off before making amends and finally agreeing that neither of them actually want to go to Mars. Luckily for them, the rocket was fake anyway. The Simpsons are reunited and Marge and Lisa are getting along again.

Our Take

I know I’m probably going to catch some flak for this but this episode was rather misogynistic. Homer frequently told Marge how to “deal” with Lisa by pretending to support her instead of actually supporting her. He even admitted that he did this sort of stuff to Marge herself, though Marge didn’t understand that was what he was saying. Then Homer taught Bart how to “deal” with women by simply nodding and agreeing with them while they vented their anger. At no point were Marge and Lisa treated as actual people. Lisa knew that the family was trying to trick her into giving up but she didn’t ever call them out on it. She just played along in an attempt to get them to admit what they were doing. It was a frustrating and annoying episode.