Tonight saw the third episode of The Simpsons’ 35th season, entitled “McMansion & Wife” (a reference to the 1970s police procedural drama McMillan & Wife), and below are my brief recap and thoughts on this installment of the long-running animated sitcom.
“McMansion & Wife” begins with Homer Simpson (voiced, as always, by Dan Castellaneta) fantasizing about what his life would be like if he owned a Lambuggini– obviously a clearable parody of the Lamborghini Italian sports car. In his dream, Homer’s life is quite a bit more exciting, to the point where he’s able to make himself look cooler in the car’s rear view mirror and jump the Springfield Gorge to soar through the air with Chitty Chitty Bang Bang– Dick Van Dyke even pops up briefly to voice himself in this sequence. Homer then wakes up to the harsh reality of his humdrum existence, only to find that the Simpsons are getting new neighbors– a wealthy Lambuggini salesman named Thayer (Hank Azaria) and his wife. Thayer quickly befriends Homer, taking him out for drives and playing pickleball with his new neighbor, eventually making him sign a contract that Homer doesn’t quite grasp the magnitude of. The next morning Homer and Marge wake up to the sound of construction on the house next door– Thayer’s contract meant that Homer gave permission for the house to be remodeled from the ground up.
Meanwhile at Springfield Elementary School, an assembly to advise children on the dangers of bullying leads Nelson Muntz (Nancy Cartwright) to become an even bigger bully, He begins to pick on Bart (also Cartwright) and Milhouse (Pamela Hayden) even more than usual, which prompts Lisa (Yeardley Smith) to intervene. Lisa makes a website that collects Nelson’s most embarrassing moments, including eating his mother’s lipstick and nursing an injured hummingbird. This strategy proves effective for a while, but soon Nelson enlists his own nerd, Hubert Wong (guest star Rosalie Chiang from Pixar’s Turning Red, replacing Tress MacNeille in the role) to hack and shut down Lisa’s website. This B-story ends with Lisa bonding with Hubert, while Bart and Nelson forget what they were arguing about and enjoy a see-saw ride together– I have to admit I laughed pretty hard at Principal Skinner (Harry Shearer) offering Superintendent Chalmers (Azaria) the next “up-and-down.”
Back in the main plot, Thayer attempts to buy Homer off by letting him borrow a Lambuggini until the construction is complete, and this works out until the air conditioning unit being installed on the remodeled home interferes with Homer’s ability to nap in his backyard hammock. Soon Homer and Marge (Julie Kavner) find themselves sitting and muttering about their seemingly unsolvable problem, until Lisa and Hubert combine their efforts to discover that the Simpsons’ home is in fact the historical site where Jebediah Springfield founded the town, making Thayer’s construction illegal– not to mention preventing Homer from ever making improvements to his own home (that elicits a “woohoo” on both counts. So the central narrative ends with Homer returning the keys to his Lambuggini and he and Marge driving away in their less-than-perfect car, which they end up having to push down the road. This episode didn’t really do it for me, either story- or joke-wise, which brings The Simpsons’ recent winning streak to a disappointing end, but I did enjoy the mid-credits sequence further exploring the mythology of Jebediah Springfield and then flashing into the future to show how the Simpsons’ house has become a museum, complete with some fun Easter Eggs referencing classic episodes. There wasn’t enough of a cohesive whole that I could dig my teeth into this week, but a handful of memorable moments like that did stand out along the way.
New episodes of The Simpsons air Sunday nights on FOX, and are available to stream the next day via Hulu.