Review: The Simpsons “Panic On The Streets Of Springfield”

Overview (Spoilers Below)

This week’s episode kicks off with Homer buying the most ridiculous pickup truck money can buy so as to get an increase in testosterone and show Marge that he really is a man. Meanwhile, Lisa discovers the wonders of streaming music and discovers a band akin to The Smiths. After a school cafeteria incident involving her accidentally consuming real bacon, Lisa ends up obsessing over the band so much that she begins to hallucinate that the lead singer, Quilloughby, is her best friend.

The hallucination begins to get so severe that Lisa starts doing things she wouldn’t normally do. She dresses differently, has a more narcissistic attitude towards her elders, and eventually works up enough courage to steal Homer’s credit card and get tickets to an outdoor festival. It’s here that Lisa starts to grow increasingly frustrated with how nuts her attitude is towards things and is shocked to learn that the real-life depiction of Quilloughby has changed everything she’s come to know about the singer. The rest of her family shows up for the rescue with Homer sleeping behind the wheel of his truck fantasizing about rescuing Lisa with his pickup, instead, he’s caught behind the wheel knocked out from a sugar coma.

Our Take

We’ll get to Morrissey’s already damning response in a bit, but I’ve got a few more issues with Tim Long’s script other than the negative depiction of the legendary lead singer.

It’s very rare nowadays that kids are obsessing over rock bands anymore. While I think this premise could’ve worked in the early 1990s with the rise of grunge, music really hasn’t been a dominant art form for a very long time. It’s even more confusing to the fact that Lisa took the time to get obsessed with a band she discovered on a streaming music service, but didn’t bother with any additional research of who the band is to determine what they are like today. As someone who frequents discovering new bands (music is still a dominant art form for me, a nineties kid), the first thing I do after being exposed to their music is Google them, follow them on socials, etc. For Lisa to not know until a music festival that her singer is a dick, is unlikely in 2021.

That said, even if Quilloughby was the biggest dick in the world, it’s not required to follow the auspices of any one member of the band. True fans of music are in it for the music, not anything else. I love Devildriver, but don’t care for the extreme vegan views of it’s singer Dez Fafara. I swear by the Deftones, but I won’t subscribe to guitar player Stephen Carpenter’s “flat-Earth” theories. I’m a huge fan of Tim Long’s tenure on The Simpsons, but with him hailing from Canada, I’m not quite sure he’s from a country that has ever lived through the musical trends that we here in America have experienced. When Americans really got into a band, it was always the music first…Almost Famous showcases this to perfection. Nowadays it’s a little different, the humorous take on the festival does a great job of showcasing just that. “Panic On The Streets Of Springfield” just misses how music trends both work and have worked in the past, and somewhat wastes a half-way decent guest spot from Benedict Cumberbatch.

That’s not also to say that we also were expected to gloss over the fact that Lisa’s depression may or may not have manifested itself past that of an imaginary friend and into the arms of schizophrenia. This isn’t the first time we’ve seen Lisa with an imaginary friend, but this friend seems to stem a lot more from her ongoing battles with depression rather than an infatuation with a lead singer from a band. Typically if you subscribe to a band so much that you become lonely, the records become your friends, negating the reason for an imaginary one. I think we have literally watched The Simpsons get to the point of accepting mental health issues as less of something to try to work on and more as something you just dance with. It’s a dangerous but slippery slope. I recall early interviews with Robin Williams talking about depression, and that he will sometimes have a little voice in his head recommending ways to deal with the pain of depression, suicide being one of them. To imply that music could somewhat be destructive towards a kid is a negative notion, not understanding of what the art form is for, and attributes itself to the extreme liberal/conservative sense of thinking that the entertainment industry has any impact on the mental well-being of kids. It’s the argument of “Does Mortal Kombat and Grand Theft Auto turn players into violent criminals?”, “Does The Simpsons teach kids to be mischievous?” The answer to these questions are no. It actually strengthens Hank Azaria’s recent take on “Apu”, despite the science constantly saying otherwise (by the way, Kevin Michael Richardson’s take on “Hibbert” gets his largest role yet since the voice change, and I’m not a fan of the new voice thus far).

The Simpsons may have just shown us their new colors, unfortunately.