Review: The Simpsons “Estranger Things”

Overview

When Bart & Lisa stop watching Itchy & Scratchy together, Marge fears that they’ll start to drift apart… but she has no idea how bad things are about to get!

Our Take

The season 36 finale of The Simpsons is here and even though we’re at the end of something we’re at the start of something else…that being a life without Pamela Hayden as part of the show. Having already had her take on Jimbo being replaced earlier this season, the big news this week was Kelly Macleod taking on the voice of Milhouse moving forward and after first listen I’ here to tell you….the jury’s still out.

Yea, the line that Milhouse gets is very short and it’s set in a scene that’s in the future so it almost sounds like Kelly is trying to add some age to the character so it’s not fair for me to say right now that the new voice of Milhouse is a slam dunk until we get a full on take of the character in a not future setting. Oh, by the way, did I mention we have a future setting? In what is pretty much a yearly tradition at this juncture we get to see all of our favorite characters in the future with the exception of Marge and Lisa and a glimpse of what would happen if Lisa and Bart begin to drift apart.

The segues going from past, to present, then future are pretty loose in the plot with not a good foundation, but long-time writer Tim Long does is best to make sure the jokes are there and they definitely are. For starters the future of the NBA looks bleak and the new map of Florida is borderline a Family Guy gag somehow caught on The Simpsons. We also get to see a smorgasbord of various franchises getting The Simpsons-ized treatment including The New Girl, Toy Story, Grand Theft Auto, and my personal favorites, Smiling Friends gets the official nod from the longest running sitcom in animated primetime which should make show creator Michael Cusack feel all warm and fuzzy on the inside.

Next week I’ll post up a whole wrap of season 36 which had a lot of adventurous episodes but we’ve seen The Simpsons in the future enough times where I don’t think that even counts as adventurous anymore and instead could be placed next to the Treehouse episodes as expected and almost being ranked alongside each other. Some stern predictions have been made and it remains to be seen if any of these come true, but overall “Estranger Things” doesn’t really get that strange and is a bit more vanilla than other efforts of this like. Moreover, the show lampoons Itchy & Scratchy and kids outgrowing an animated franchise that eventually gets a reboot which isn’t unlike what the show was trying to do with the show’s season 36 kickoff. In both instances the producers forget to look in the mirror and maybe let us know what THEY see in their own future of the show, Milhouse’s new voice is indicative of producers that may have forgotten the spontaneity the show once had in developing new characters with new voices, maybe a reboot isn’t that foregone of a conclusion after all?