I liked this one. I daresay it's the best Simpsons episode to come along in many years. It was actually a story driven by the characters rather than by gags and zany situations, and it had a sincerity and sensitivity I haven't seen in the show for a long time (although it was present in the movie). The interspersing of the present day with two flashback periods was interesting, and the parallels were good and often quite funny (I particularly liked Bart and Lisa acting like a married couple on a drive). It was neat to see how Homer met Ned, and fascinating that he liked Ned at first -- though we also got to see the foundations of Homer's hatred for Flanders, and it actually made sense rather than just being some random goofy occurrence. (I meant to check the credits to see if that was Maggie Roswell returning as Maude, but I missed it. Anyone know?) Of course, it wasn't all character-driven humor, but the slapstick was actually good. The final sequence with Homer and Marge on the tree had me laughing out loud progressively harder as the scene went on, and that hasn't happened with this show for a long damn time. And one nice detail -- they actually got Maurice LaMarche to play Toucan Sam in his 3-second cameo! So far this season has been unimpressive, but this episode was the best the show has been in ages. Hopefully it's the start of a trend.
Pretty good episode. The part with Lisa and Bart acting like a married couple was funny but disturbing in a redneck kinda way.
What were some of the couples on the tree...what caught my eye was "ATT + SBC"... even though it should look more like a complex math equation ==> Western Electric = ATT = ATT + SBC + Southwest Bell + (all those others) + ATT Wireless = (all that) + Cingular = ATT (merged with some others) + Cingular = ATT OK...it's far more complex, but i am too lazy to think it through....
Agree, this was definitely the best episode so far this season...one of the few eps in recent years to really have a heart. Even though the flashback episodes are always big on retconning, they're also usually among the best. Both funny and sweet. It was a good night for FG and AD, too.
Not sure about retcons, but what struck me in the "Five Years Ago" flashback was that Bart and Lisa seemed almost the same age. I guess they would've been 5 and 3 at the time, but Lisa seemed older than 3.
Yeah it was an enjoyable episode, the flashbacks are always good. Gotta love the floating timeline of a 20 year old show featuring 8 year olds though
One gag needed to be tossed out on its ass, that was Homer removing Bart's ear plug and Bart's ear bones being pulled out with it. That's shit for ITCHY AND SCRATCHY and Halloween episodes. I hate when they do that; they forget that SIMPSONS universe had some rules...it's not FAMILY GUY or Looney Toons. It's even more annoying because the rest of the episode is more old school Simpsons.
I watched this out of curiosity because of this thread and I totally agree with the OP. It's probably the first emotionally meaningful episode in years... to the point where I'm surprised they didn't save it for Valentine's Day. I have to imagine that this one was basically one in a million though.