Review: The Simpsons “Hostile Kirk Place”

Overview

When Milhouse’s dad, Kirk, takes exception to a school history lesson that paints one of his ancestors in a bad light, Kirk goes on a crusade to censor and control the school curriculum — a crusade that Homer co-opts for fun and profit.

Our Take

This week’s episode largely focuses on the conservative argument of removing books from schools in an attempt to not teach historical context, otherwise known as CRT. Yes, we get a dash of the other-side’s argument, but maybe not enough time to fully and thoroughly dig up everything which may be saved for another episode.

Woke vs not-woke, The Simpsons certainly doesn’t give us South Park’s much more meta-based arguments, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t a lot to be had here. The Shaq bits were hilarious, Hans was blown away into the stratosphere, and Homer making a ton of money on not worrying about who is right and just worrying about the moolah is classic Homer.

I’m sure producers of The Simpsons wrestle with the questions presented by this episode every week. On one hand, the show is continuing to evolve with new voices, but for old characters (I’m sorry, Grey Griffen’s take on “Martin” has to go), but also with new characters that have new voices, which clearly shows progress. The moral of this story is if you erase the past then you are doing a disservice to the present, but when the show continues to replace its legacy characters with new voices, is the show contradicting itself?

Probably, as the end of the show’s 34th season comes into focus, let’s see what else the show has to say.