Review: The Simpsons “Yellow Planet”

Overview

In “Yellow Planet,” The Simpsons are reimagined as animals in a National Geographic-style nature mockumentary. Homer and Marge navigate the ocean as whales from different series, Bart hatches as an iguana struggling to survive, and Lisa leads her flock as a finch. Along the way, familiar Springfield faces appear in unexpected roles, shaping their journeys in the wild.

Our Take

We just saw director Timothy Bailey and J. Stewart Burns a couple of weeks ago for the episode entitled “The Last Man Expanding” and now we get to see the duo coming together for a Disney+ exclusive episode that is by far the most genuine Disney-fied episode of The Simpsons that this franchise has ever produced.

Disney for years have made tons of money on anthropomorphic characters including those that come from “Under the Sea” so why shouldn’t The Simpsons get in on the gravy train? And boy do they, giving us send-ups of all the name-brand characters of the longest-running animated series in prime-time that works less like the National Geographic-style nature mock that we were promised (where were the confessionals?) and more like The Simpsons in Finding Nemo. 

Even with the lack of originality of the overall premise, the dialogue in Burns’ script is rather punchy with the producers clearly having a good time at the expense of their Disney overlords in more than a few ways all-the-while unabashedly showcasing just how cute the characters from The Simpsons look as various animal species. Also of note, we got an episode with Pam Hayden reprising all of her voices which may or may not be her send-off moving forward.

A solid episode of The Simpsons that probably would have worked just fine as a TV debut episode but Disney’s not turning down cute cartoon animals ever so one can see the reason why everyone opted in going this route.