Season 26 Ep 7 Review: Blazed and Confused

Crap and yucky

 

"Blazed and Confused"

    Boy oh boy, where to start with this episode? I've expressed it before, but I'll say it here again: my expectations for season 26 are ankle-low. And in general, minus two bad episodes, season 26 has exceeded the ankle-low expectations (although they probably would hit the bar if it was set at the knees, to continue with this analogy). They have been bad-to-decent, and some have had some good laughs (and even some nice quotes). Sure, so far there have been far more jokes that miss than hit, and there have been segments/bits/jokes/lines that have just been atrociously bad, and you would never see that in the golden era. But, we're 20+ years removed from the golden era. I'm as guilty as anyone for constantly bringing up this golden era. It's like comparing the juiciest Granny Smith apples to the most rotten, plague-infested shit-oranges.
    A slightly better comparison? How about seasons 14 and 15. I've compared at least one episode (Wreck of the Relationship I believe) to some season 14 episodes, and I claimed that the season 26 episode was better than those season 14 ones. I've been (very, very slowly) watching through season 15, and some of these newer episodes are definitely better than some bad season 15 episodes. What exactly is my point? I don't remember. Mainly, season 26 isn't as astronomically bad as I would have imagined. This episode, however, is.
    Let's just start with the couch gag, which may well have been the best part of the episode (yikes). It wasn't too long (although I still feel like it was a second-or-two too long. I'll explain in a short bit) and was amusing. It shows the family, dressed in skiing gear, sit on the couch, which then acts as a ski lift and brings them off-screen. They then reappear, all beat up and injured. Maggie then skis in and does some dumb ski trick. If they trimmed the Maggie bit just one second even, I think this couch gag would fit right in with a season 7-8 episode (oops, comparing it to great seasons again.)
    A brief summary of the episode has a new, mean teacher come to Springfield Elementary to teach Bart's class. Bart tries to prank him, and he (his name is Mr. Lassen) in turn starts being overly mean and cruel to Bart. Bart wants to get back at him, so he and Milhouse find out he is going to be lighting a torch at some "Blazing Guy" festival. They try to embarrass him on camera at the festival to get him fired. He gets fired at the end. And then we all die a little bit.
    Overall, I chuckled maybe three times. There were two decent quotes towards the end. I thought this was going to be the first episode I watched that didn't have any quotes/lines that I deemed worthy to record. There were lots of bad/juvenile/tasteless jokes in this one that I feel are indicative of newer Simpsons. One glaring example is Maggie sucking on the (thankfully non-sharp) end of a drug needle THAT SOMEONE HAD JUST MOMENTS BEFORE OD'ed WITH. Homer, of course, finds this adorable, so he takes a picture of it and texts it to Lenny and Carl. Ugh, awful, awful joke. Another awful Maggie-centric joke (as a side note, I never found the Maggie jokes/bits, even in the classic years, all that great. They really fuck them up now though) was her sucking on the breast of a large wooden naked woman statue. Here's a good sentence I used in my notes: "I really can't believe how unappealing this episode is". That really sums it up pretty nicely.
    I would like to briefly talk about the whole Blazing Guy festival, which took up basically the second half of the episode. It's a play off of the Burning Man festival, I guess? Maybe some of the jokes are lost on me because I don't at all understand this culture. It's just people being super weird for the sake of it? That's how it's portrayed here, anyway. However, this brought about probably the ONLY good thing from this episode: the Blazing Guy segments looks great. They are full of neon colors, crazy costumes (and musical instruments), weird people, and some trippy hallucinations. It kind of game me a Futurama vibe actually. So, put that in the "good" column!
    One final thing before I get to my bullet list. The new teacher character, Mr. Lassen, is not great. I didn't care for him. He's voiced by Willem Dafoe, who I generally like. I think he did a good job in this episode playing a psychotic (so, Willem Dafoe basically).
    This was, by far, the worst episode of season 26 so far. Even the ones I gave 4 ratings too had more laughs than this one (at least Super Franchise Me had the "Freezerino" line). This one had a story I didn't much care for, some really bad jokes/bits, and there was nary a chuckle in sight. I'm giving this one a big fat...

2.5/10

    (and it gets at least a half point because of the cool imagery of the festival)

• Mr. Lassen, in the first two minutes of the episode, cuts his face open with a letter opener on Skinner's desk. Pretty gross
• Bart sneaks a camera into the teacher's lounge. How? And how did no one notice it? I hate the Simpsons with technology
• There's a Jason Vorhees bit that was over-long and unfunny. The one from Boy-Scoutz 'n the Hood was way better in every conceivable way
• Marge drinks some strange tea and trips her ovaries off. During one of her trips, she sees the Space Coyote from that very long, non-English titled episode from season 8. Kinda cool, except how in the hell would she ever know about that? That was Homer's own trip! But, who cares?
• Skinner has a picture of Nixon on his wall
• Guy at festival: "These kids are gonna ruin the ceremony. Too bad I'm just an illusion." [he disappears]
• Girl at festival: "Strip him of his nudity!" [Mr. Lassen is then forcefully clothed. Probably funniest bit in the episode]

The amount of medication you'd need to enjoy this episode