Review: The Simpsons “The Yellow Lotus”

Overview

The Simpsons vacation at a high-end resort.

Our Take

When it comes to TV shows I never cared to watch, The White Lotus is definitely one of them. So, if The Simpsons are going to do a parody laden with references from the series, I’m not going to get any of them so the show is going to have to be funny without me having any knowledge of whence they are lampooning. Fortunately for the producers, this week’s episode is hysterical regardless.

Those expecting a grandiose Sideshow Bob (Kelsey Grammer) plot will be disappointed to learn that, at best, Bob is in this episode for a grand total of about five minutes. Even his new wife Tasha, played by Chloe Fineman, gets a bit more screen time than he does but even with an episode that features all the major players of a classic Bob episode, be it Krusty, Bart, Lisa, and even Mel, Bob actually has a pretty chill episode.

I continue to not be in favor of mimic voice actors like Jay Pharoah and Kevin Michael Richards taking over voice roles of Drederick Tatum and Dr. Hibbert from Hank Azaria and Harry Shearer and I don’t think I ever will. Personally, if you’re going to welcome those two actors into the franchise, maybe have them introduce some new characters as opposed to doing not great imitations of classic ones. That’s not taking away how I feel about both voice actors, both are some of the best in the world, this is a lazy producers quandary and one that should be remedied.

It may be sounding like I’m complaining a lot, but really this week’s episode of The Simpsons gave us the most important point of what makes a great episode of the show…comedy. With this, the Loni Steele Sosthand-written script delivers in spades with various digs at the vacation industry in general, more specifically the ridiculousness of timeshares that are pretty much scams but didn’t stop a number of people of putting their life savings in anyway. The producers go nuts on these scams by using The Simpson family as a bunch of freeloaders while even Mr. Burns’ dogs get the fancy-pants treatment and Bernice Hibbert nearly OD’s. The otter going nuts was hilarious, even if a tad short, but overall, this week’s episode of The Simpsons was a romp.