Review: The Simpsons ‘Four Regrettings and a Funeral’

 Spoilers Below

Springfield is attending a funeral, but various notables seem to have regrets . Kent is probably his career, Homer financial decisions, even Monty Burns yearns for the one that got away.

We continue to hear stories of Marge and Burns’ respective trips down memory’s lanes. Kent runs into Rachel Maddow and we find out that she used to work at the same station as Kent and she thinks that he has screwed up. Turns out Kent had a chance to go with Rachel down a similar career path, but chose to stay behind to cover local smut.

Burns hires an investigator to track down his long lost love and Kent heads to FOX News. Homer at one point traded all of his Apple stock in exchange for a volley ball and now he’s paying for it…actually the ball is paid for I guess it’s more his pride that’s taking the beaten.

Bart’s taking a balloon ride down town and Burns is getting down with his long lost love interest. Unfortunately nothing quite works the way it used to unless if you are Kent Brockman looking to cover Bart’s balloon tour. Monty returns to his lady Lyla, but she’s dead so he decides to remember her by thinking of others. The cops get together and launch Homer’s bowling ball into Bart’s basket which lets him land safely. And Ken has no regrets.

I honestly didn’t laugh once in the episode until the third act, but laugh I did. Kent was rather hysterical heading to FOX news as he unabashedly took shots at NY Times, FOX, but the winner was the slight on CNN which is pertinent to the network’s current struggles. Also, both Joe Namath and Rachel Maddow were outstanding in their respected guest roles, but overall I just thought the four different plots were sloppily put together and really just rehashed from prior seasons. I mean, how many Burns love stories have we seen? The Hobbit-inspired intro was legit, but it was all downhill from there.