Review: The Simpsons “Stew Lies”

Overview

Homer reinvigorates a celebrity chef’s lost passion for food — with some help from the mob.

Our Take

The stew mentioned in the episode title has to do with Fat Tony’s former boss having a legendary stew recipe that is revealed to Homer and celebrity chef Thad (voiced by John DiMaggio). When Thad finds out about it he pulls a fast one and decides to kick off a new TV show inspired by recipes he’s stolen starting with the first on being the aforementioned one that used to belong to Fat Tony.

We’ve seen numerous send-ups of popular food chefs up to and including Guy Fieri on other animated series with possibly the most prominent being South Park’s “Creme Fraiche” though the fact that the Broti Gupta script was able to wrangle the silly cameos back into a reasonably efficient plot is commendable Are we talking screaming with originality here? No, but still a fun gag nonetheless. The guest cast contributions from Mads Mikkelsen as Wilhelm von Wonthelm and John DiMaggio as Thad were great with a special kudos going to the always reliable DiMaggio who more or less just did a Bender from Futurama impression just juxtaposed with a bunch of stupid foodie catchphrases. The episode’s flashback was a bit long but understandable with how the climax came to be but because of that I think the plot suffered just a tad on the back-end.

I think I had more fun with Bart and Lisa’s tango most notably in the episode’s final seconds that features a couple of cameos that we hadn’t seen in forever doing what I’m hoping will be the next great prediction by The Simpsons.