Review: The Simpsons “Pretty Whittle Liar”

Overview (Spoilers Below):

Cletus discovers that his wife, Brandine, has been hiding a secret love of learning. Meanwhile, Lisa discovers the League of Extraordinary Geniuses.

Our Take:

Love can be complicated sometimes, especially when your partner favors something else in secret. The episode features another supporting character that I haven’t seen in The Simpsons in a while: Cletus Spuckler. Like my experience with Martin in “Boyz N the Highlands”, I didn’t miss much from Cletus, as he’s the same hillbilly we know and love since his introduction in season five. This episode puts not only Cletus into the spotlight but also his wife, Brandine, who happens to grow a brain, thanks to her interest in books.

Unfortunately, her intelligence concerns Cletus, resulting in Brandine leaving him to stay with the Simpsons. The storyline explores several elements throughout the episode, mainly Brandine’s growth from being a hillbilly’s wife to an intelligent woman. This was an interesting piece of development that happens to work pretty well, especially with how the other residents react to it. It would’ve been better if the episode expanded on these reactions more, but it’s serviceable enough to transcend Cletus and Brandine’s stereotypical personalities based on what I saw.

More importantly, the episode reflects on the fear of revealing the intelligence, especially in Lisa’s case, where her explanation of the Matilda Effect resulted in her being attacked by bullies. The same goes for the League of Extraordinary Geniuses, who pretended to be dumb to avoid getting bullied. However, she later stood up for herself to save the students from Principal Skinner. This element is excellent in teaching the viewers not to be afraid to embrace their intelligent nature, even though its execution may not be as bright as Lisa’s mind.

There’s also another element that involves concern in marriages. The most prominent case is when Marge discovers that people believe she could’ve been better than Homer. Homer then sees that he won’t be as good as Marge expects, but he’ll never stop trying. This segment would’ve worked best as a separate episode to get more context out of this intriguing development between Homer and Marge.

Overall, “Pretty Whittle Liar” strives in its intelligence, even though it struggles to juggle its elements into a single storyline. It offers a nice piece of development for Brandine and even Cletus, who even attempts to learn how to read books. The episode also offers some genuinely decent humor, including Homer lighting his fart on fire and the “Cletus on Books” segment during the end credits. It doesn’t take a genius to know that it’s yet another enjoyable episode in the show’s thirty-third season.