Review: The Simpsons ‘Let’s Go Fly a Coot’

Spoilers Below

It’s Milhouse’s birthday! And it’s so flamboyant that Homer heads to all of the kid’s birthday parties and destroys them all so this way his kids don’t get any ideas. ‘Big Birthday’ shows up to exact revenge in the form of a banning, but a deal is made where Homer has to throw Rod Flanders a birthday in exchange for not getting banned.

The party takes place at an air museum where Abe’s former Air Force colleagues show up giving us a reunion of sorts, but the guys aren’t exactly thrilled with the way Homer treats his dad. As a result, they show up to his house and beat the shit out of him. The Air Force cadets eventually take Homer and Abe to a VFW and keep them at gunpoint, but let them go.

Meanwhile, we meet Milhouse’s cousin Annika and Bart’s just plain smitten after she introduces him to the wonders of smoking e-cigs. Marge finds out and she FLIPS out, but it’s still legal to smoke e-cigs in whatever state we’re in. Annika gets sent home and Abe tells this story about how he met Mona Simpson. Turns out, Bart never really liked this girl, and gives up smoking for good.

Abe’s Air Force peeps go home and Abe learns about the joys of smoking.

Our Take

This is by far one of the worst episodes of The Simpsons that I’ve ever seen. The start of it had so much promise, too so that makes me even angrier. I certainly would’ve sat through an entire episode all about Homer’s war against birthdays and the agencies behind them. Instead, we get some sort of cliche’d effort where we get the 1000th take on Abe’s past and another girl that Bart tries to impress. I’m alright with Bart trying to get on with the ladies, but there was nothing presented that made me care one way or another if Bart ended up with Annika so I didn’t really register much with the twist ending.

The only thing stopping me from giving this episode a zero is the opening bit about the kids’ birthday parties. Bob’s Burgers had done a decent birthday episode, I would not have minded a second one.

Score