Tonight saw the debut of the eighth episode in The Simpsons’ 36th season, entitled “Convenience Airways,” and below are my brief recap and thoughts on this installment of the long-running animated sitcom.
Back in The Simpsons’ sixth season we got a now-classic episode called “Marge’s Fear of Flying,” and that’s the last time I can remember the series devoting most of an episode to airplane-based humor, though that one was spent mostly on the ground. “Convenience Airways” takes the opposite approach, having Marge Simpson (voiced, as always, by Julie Kavner) be the only member of the family not causing a problem on a flight to Louisiana for a Bouvier family reunion / pig barbecue. But first, we start in a senatorial committee meeting, where Marge is testifying about her experience flying on the titular airline, which is the only one that her husband Homer (Dan Castellaneta) hasn't been permanently barred from yet. There’s an incident with young Lisa (Yeardley Smith) having packed a vegetarian meal in a suitcase that leaks and spills all over the family’s clothes, and just before boarding Homer promises to behave during this flight. Fortunately Marge manages to snag an upgrade to First Class, leaving the other family members to fend for themselves– all while sitting separately, scattered around the plane.
Homer gets Comic Book Guy (Hank Azaria)– one of the few Springfieldian residents more slovenly than he is– as a seatmate, Bart (Nancy Cartwright) has a run-in with a desperately unfunny flight attendant named Joel (guest star John Early from Search Party, The Great North, and Big City Greens)– this might be the part of the episode I identified with the most– and Lisa is saddled with baby Maggie, who won’t calm down no matter how much classic jazz music she’s forced to listen to. Meanwhile, Marge pretty much falls instantly asleep in First Class, missing out on all the perks of being in that section but otherwise having a “perfect” flying experience, unaware of everything else going on around her. Homer does his best to stay calm when annoyed by the other passengers, but he starts to get nervous when he notices them start to disappear one by one. Eventually it comes time to change Maggie, and he must fight his way to the front of the cabin where Marge has the diaper bag tucked away in First Class. There’s a fight between Krusty the Clown (also Castellaneta) and boxer Drederick Tatum (Jay Pharoah) over a recent pay-per-view match loss, with Sideshow Mel’s (Castellaneta again) bone being used as a club-like weapon against the clown.
Here’s where Homer figures out what’s going on, as pretty much all of the unruly passengers (later revealed to be on all the other airlines’ no-fly lists) fall through trap doors into a prison between the main cabin. They would have been aware of this punishment, too, if only they had watched the safety video– this information is revealed during flash-forwards to the congressional hearing via testimony by the airline’s CEO Warren Wingspan (another guest star– character actor John Pirruccello from The Lincoln Lawyer TV series). Here we also discover that Mr. Burns’ (Harry Shearer) corporation is the one responsible for designing the planes, having had so much experience with trap doors. Anyway, down in the prison there’s a near-riot until Homer, texting with Maggie, who he thinks is Marge (she only communicates via cryptic emojis that Homer actually interprets in a semi-responsible way) has a change of heart, calming everyone down. The passengers are released and allowed back into the main cabin, where even Bart has befriended the flight attendant and Homer happily watches a Saw-like movie with Comic Book Guy.
The episode concludes at the hearing, with the senate committee agreeing that Convenience Airway’s system actually works, but Marge– having been the only passenger who wasn’t sent to the prison– declaring that the idea is inhumane. But a trap door opens from under her as she complains, dumping her into a pit below. Thankfully she lands on her hair, and in a mid-credits sequence we see more of the airline’s safety video with some additional funny rules that play out. It’s an amusing episode overall, uncharacteristically restrained mostly to one location. Airplane humor can be considered pretty “hack” in stand-up comedy circles, but The Simpsons actually hasn’t done a whole lot of it in its three-and-a-half decades, so I can be forgiving of that, especially because there are plenty of fairly clever observations made about the often-nightmarish world of air travel. It helps that I just recently had some rough experiences traveling across the country myself, so it’s probably good timing that this episode aired just after the Thanksgiving holiday.
New episodes of The Simpsons air Sunday evenings on FOX.