Review: The Simpsons “Fan-ily Feud”

Overview

Homer publicly disparages a pop singer and faces the ire of her vindictive and highly organized fan army.

Our Take

The irony of The Simpsons to comment on toxic fandoms is not lost on me. I have never considered myself a toxic fan of anything, just passionate. Toxic fandom to me is shit like this. That said, I’m probably going to sound like a toxic fan to some with my opinion of some of the elements of this week’s episode, but I assure you, its for the love of the franchise and animation as a medium in general.

Why in the hell is it NOT okay to have white actors voice POC characters, but POC actors CAN voice white characters? Can anyone explain this to me? Personally, if the producers had left the show alone and allowed everyone to voice whomever, I wouldn’t have had a problem here. But with The Simpsons going through the ringer and Hari Kondabolu continuing to guilt trip Hank Azaria into doing promos for his shit-ass stand-up comedy routines.

Ironically, Broti Gupta writes this week’s episode of The Simpsons, featuring guest star Jade Novah, to voice TWO roles, one white and one black. The singer best known for being an NAACP award nominee in 2019 certainly doesn’t fit the mold of a modern-day actor who should be voicing white characters like Ashlee Starling, though one that DOES voice the role of Echo. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not undermining the quality of either Jade or Broti’s contributions to the series, both were great, but why is THIS okay but not Harry Shearer voicing Dr. Hibbert?

The toxic fandom that the producers REALLY should have pointed to aren’t the ones who enjoy music, those I can live with. It’s the fly by night Hollywood fans, producers, and social justice warriors that are nowhere to be found in the ratings and continue to allow plot holes to develop in their ridiculous rhetorics. I hope all of those parties at Patrisse Cullors mansions were well worth this franchise’s bruises which were put on display during even the episode’s own looking back at its own classic era where they didn’t give a shit what censorship groups thought of them.

Hell, the religion bit at the end finished off the amount of irony this episode featured, because while the intent was to highlight the ridiculousness of people going to houses of worship on Sundays for fear of a Bro Ghost, a lot of the bubbles and Twitter tribes that had developed over the course of a mostly bored COVID era are shells of their former selves given all of the changes made at the social network, here’s hoping THIS franchise can even make it to season forty as a result, and maybe the SJW’s can get a heaping helping of comeuppance.