I'm a fan, not a huge fan but The Simpsons will always be on my 'love list', not matter how many crummy episodes. And yeah, sure, almost every series has at least a few bad episodes and with a series like The Simpsons (23 seasons and counting) it is to be expected not every episode will be an 8 or higher. But, well, I just can't accept a milestone episode being below a 6, and this episode was just that.
Short summary: The Simpson family discovers a secret town meeting is taking place about kicking them out because of all of their shenanigans over the years, and this of course happens. They discover some sort of off the grid semi-redneck community between Springfield and Shelbyville and try to settle down there. Marge soon admits to missing Springfield and Homer sneaks her and himself in. They get caught and are about to get kicked out again, but Marge takes the high road by saying she's not looking for people who don't take them for who they are, and they go back to the community. Soon (the next scene) people from Springfield are starting to show up there and the community starts to look like Springfield. The end.
The problem with this is that it has been done already, by themselves and a lot better if I may add. I'm not even that glad they didn't turn this into a 'remember-that-time' episode, which could have been a lot better than this garbage, if done correctly. This was just a quick attempt by the writers to whip up an episode that portrayed Springfield is willing to forgive the Simpsons... because... Eh, to be honest, I don't know. I really couldn't tell you why Springfield UNANIMOUSLY voted the Simpsons out of their town, then apparently cared again when they found out Marge and Homer didn't want to stay where they were not welcome (now that's a shocker), and subsequently all came after them.
This is beyond sappy, this is bad writing, and a great example of it. Most of the characters either admitted earlier in this episode to being glad to get rid of The Simpsons or are known not to care for them anyway. I could go on and on about the many plot holes in this story, but I'm not.
This was the 500th episode and it really, REALLY, sucked. And you know what? That made me mad. Enough so to write a review for this single episode. I didn't expect fireworks, I would even expect an episode this bad once in a while (they do have their ups and downs), but I simply didn't expect such a blatantly bad episode as their 500th.
One other thing though. They knew it was this bad. The subtitle "500th episode; the most meaningless milestone of all", and the title-card at the end (yes there's a title-card) saying "Thanks for 500 shows. All we ask is that you go out and get some fresh air before logging onto the internet and saying how much this sucked." kind of say it all. And just so you know, I did not respect their wishes on the title-card. Simply because they choose to not respect my wishes to put at least some effort into the 500th episode, instead of making this trash, admitting it's trash and have the guts to ask us not to go and call it trash.
4/10, and I believe I'm being generous
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