It’s Christmas Eve, and there was a new episode of The Simpsons for some reason. Below you can find my brief recap and thoughts on this 10th installment of the long-running animated sitcom’s 35th season, entitled “Do the Wrong Thing” (a spin on the title of writer/director Spike Lee’s acclaimed 1989 joint Do the Right Thing).
“Do the Wrong Thing” begins with a news broadcast from anchor Kent Brockman (voiced, as always, by Harry Shearer) announcing that Grampa Abe Simpson (Dan Castellaneta) is retiring from his long-running stint as champion of Springfield’s fishing competition. In an interview, Abe says he’s happy to pass his legacy on to his son Homer (also Castellaneta), but privately at home with his wife Marge (Julie Kavner), Homer admits to being unsure whether he can actually win. At the contest, Grandpa says he’s counting on his fishing gene continuing on in Homer via their Simpson blood, and Homer– quite accidentally– does end up winning the contest with a fish weighing more than all the others caught. Later, when cutting open the fish, marbles spill out and Bart (Nancy Cartwright) reveals he secretly helped Homer cheat because watching him fail was so boring. And in the first act break, there’s a twist where Homer is going to strangle Bart but instead is actually thrilled that his son helped him cheat.
The B-story of this episode involves Lisa Simpson (Yeardley Smith) applying to an elite summer camp– both of these stories are set during the summer, which is another reason why it’s so odd this episode aired at Christmas– and asking for a letter of recommendation from Principal Skinner (Shearer again). But when Springfield Elementary School’s old dot-matrix printer explodes into flames upon trying to print the letter, Lisa resorts to trying to rack up extracurricular activities like stopping beavers at the local lake from chewing on washed-up mannequin arms. Meanwhile back in the A-story, Homer and Bart become addicted to cheating at minor sports like rock-skipping, cornhole, and frisbee golf, eventually leading up to a climax at an axe-throwing competition. And after Lisa is accepted to the camp of her dreams, she discovers that someone had submitted faked photos of her excelling at the sport of rowing– referencing the 2019 “Varsity Blues” admissions scandal at several top American universities.
Lisa shows up at the axe-throwing contest and accuses Homer and Bart of trying to help her cheat, but they deny it. Then she reveals that they are in fact cheating at that very contest by using a giant magnet behind the target, and the rest of the competitors become very upset. The Simpsons must flee the competition on ATVs they won underhandedly, with all the other axe-wielding Springfieldians in pursuit. Hiding behind a billboard, Bart and Homer continue to deny they had any involvement in Lisa’s camp application, and Marge is forced to admit that she was the one who faked the photos. Realizing that he corrupted his wife away from being the purely good person she usually is, Homer has a breakdown and throws up in the bushes, with the sound attracting the rioters. Homer begs Cletus (Hank Azaria) to kill him with an axe, but Cletus and the others say they just wanted to rough him up a little and that he’d have to sign a waiver first. But before Homer can follow through on that, goons from the camp throw sacks over the Simpsons heads and bring them to the campus in front of the Dean of Admissions (guest star Ken Marino).
At first Lisa begins to apologize for the faked photos, but then the dean says that this has become such a common occurrence that the camp has begun to embrace cheating in all its forms. Lisa is disgusted and manages to convince herself to walk out on the camp, with Homer also rejecting a teaching position. And at the end of the episode, with Homer swearing not to cheat at anything ever again (except for diets), we see that Bart has accepted the position as a professor in the art of cheating. It’s a funny, middle-of-the-road Simpsons episode with some pretty good gags here and there, plus a fairly cohesive throughline that actually manages to merge with the B-story in the third act. I don’t really have any complaints or accolades to give other than that, except to once again express my befuddlement regarding this summertime episode airing on Christmas Eve.
New episodes of The Simpsons air Sunday evenings on FOX.