Mr. Burns gives those college radioactivists an edumacation. Here is our review.
The Simpsons: Season 28 Episode 19
This The Simpsons review contains spoilers.
Bored of education? You wouldn’t be if you enrolled in a school that pays for itself, with the money you put in. Moss doesn’t grow on The Rolling Stones, so why go matriculate in a school so staid the brick and mortar walls are covered in ivy? At a for-profit college you can get a degree in professional TV recapping? I love Burns University, where children are my present (no refunds). The Simpsons‘ season 28 episode 19, "Caper Chase," is an edumacation. It makes you thimk.
Someday Mr. Burns will be nothing more than a brain in a shark that can walk on land. But he still has so much to teach. The episode opens with the Springfield Nuclear Plant’s softball team playing Indian Point’s. There’s talk that a few extra bucks could be made off of solar energy and Burns has a meltdown. His entire way of life is on the line and it is once again his mortal enemy, the sun, that blocks profits with progress.
Release me, you hound. I love Mr. Burns, unabashedly and bashedly. I can see what Smithers sees in him. All that power in a man so fragile he floats away on cigar smoke and so old his living will is a sword of Damocles hanging over a trap door that leads to a mote of nuclear waste. Every single line, except the “what what what” bit, is a joy tonight. We’ve come to our understanding of Burns through segmented antics at the expense of all who don’t like to pay. He is the embodiment of corporate corruption and political shenanigans. He could be his own Koch brother.
Taking a Kayak up the Hudson, and some off-creeks, Burns sets his sights on his old alma mater, Yale, the Harvard of Connecticut. So much has changed since he was more than mere skull and bones. Why, back in his day, men could say what they wanted to say, do and screw who they wanted to without having to run it up the campus flagpole of the squash team. Microaggressions will be the death of us all: stalling progress by rich old hetero patriarchs, dividing disgender normative resistance among multicultural empathizers in their own safe spaces, and keeping really funny comedians off college campuses. Or is that campii?
This episode has very intricate scripting. All of Burns’ life philosophies come out as one liners, each more scathing than the last, but all pushing outwardly into a ripple effect of scholarly parody. The music was horrifically apropos, though I have to agree with Burns that most a capella groups that aren’t singing in subways for cash, and some that do, are worth their deadweight in the concrete foundation of a legacy library.
But The Simpsons thrive in the passing tones. When Burns is asked to pass the alive or dead quiz he says, he’s living, but you better hurry. In the commercial he makes for the For-profit college school, you can see Mr. Burns reading off cue cards.
The Simpson family doesn’t even show up until after the first commercial. Lisa gets the best scene of the evening. She hears Homer discussing his lesson plan, as professor at the school, and has to take a drink of her mother’s wine. She’s a kid and it goes straight to her head. We’ve seen that Maggie is a cruel drunk, but Lisa is too smart for cruelty. She is a true believer and an agnostic, but she is mostly a scholar, and wants to weigh the evidence. She knows being smrt doesn’t make you a pedagogue and that carpe diem doesn’t mean fish for a dime. Carpe diem. She is a student. Not a stubot or a rodent.
The Simpsons also gets in a few swings at baseball. The triple is the most exciting play in the game it seems anyone can play. Former presidential candidate and lapdog Chris Christie even weighs in with new jersey number 387.
Season 28 is one of the best seasons in a long time and I blame this on Harry Shearer. He threatened to sit out the season if the show didn’t get better and the producers are living up to that contractual obligation. They are also giving Burns so many episodes this season I’m almost on overdose, but it’s still a happy high. I’m a Simpsons junkie again. I never quite wanted to swear it off, but now I start jonesing a half hour prior.
“Caper Chase" was written by Jeff Westbrook and directed by Lance Kramer. The Simpsons stars Dan Castellaneta as Homer and Abe Simpson, Julie Kavner as Marge Simpson, Nancy Cartwright as Bart Simpson, Yeardley Smith as Lisa Simpson. Hank Azaria plays Kirk Van Houten, Chief Wiggum and Moe. Harry Shearer is Kent Brockman, C. Montgomery Burns and Waylon Smithers. Tress Macneille and Pamela Hayden also star. Guest stars Jason Alexander as Verlander, Ken Jennings as himself, Robert McKee as himself, Suze Orman as herself and Neil deGrasse Tyson as himself. And there’s no segment so small that it can’t fit a cameo by Stan Lee.
But It All Went By So Fast: Softball today, twisted ankles tomorrow. Enjoy your last game, Vin Sully impersonator. Eli Yale was a profiteering slave trader. Shakespeare is murder. Take swords off statues. Skull and Bones door sign, room 322, you must be this rich to enter, with a picture of Mr. Moneybags from the Monopoly game. Red phones to Moscow and Washington.
Bad SATs. Arrested at interview. Spilled Juice on application.
Bats come out of a hat after the full Monty. Burns U is located between Springfield Auto Lube and a Bail Bonds place. Next to a Tae Kwon Do place and across the street from a Del Taco. Ut Uberiores Divites. The Theory and Practice of Nuclear Fission. Starfleet Academy.
Totally unqualified? Get your education at Burns University.
Patch Adams minus Mork. This guy. Wish I had his hair. Tumor – not.
You can see the radioactive residue on Homer’s shirt in the dark.
Yale University: Change in management, same high price.
