Tonight's local telecast of The Simpsons was delayed by some big Nascar event; as few things in life infuriate me more than grown men wearing jumpsuits and driving around and around and around in circles, this was an inauspicious beginning to the evening's animation festivities. Perhaps Jeff Gordon and Co. are to blame for my general malaise while watching tonight's episodes—or maybe tonight was yet another installment of an increasingly lackluster Sunday night lineup.
I should rephrase that—tonight's episodes weren't big knee-slappers, laughs-wise; but they were all pretty high quality in terms of story. Then again, this is supposed to be "Night of a Million Laughs" (thanks FOX promo department!), not "Night of Solidly Constructed, Well-paced, Not-really-objectionable-in-any-major-way Prime Time Animated Programming."
Take The Simpsons: I laughed exactly once, at the final line of the episode ("The rat symbolizes obviousness!"), but I wouldn't call "The Debarted" a bad episode. In fact, I think it was my favorite of the movie parodies we've seen in the lineup this season (Family Guy's Star Wars blah-a-thon, and American Dad's not-awful Bond parody), probably because it wasn't really a full-on parody; it just limited its pop-culture riffing to a single entity for once (remember the days when The Simpsons didn't even bother with pop-culture riffs? Damn you MacFarlane!). It also felt just the slightest bit old-school in terms on the everyday-ness of the two plots—Homer didn't get a wacky new job, the family didn't jet off to some exotic locale, there were no disbelief-suspending time/reality-warps. Just some good old-fashioned schoolyard shenanigans from Bart and Principal Skinner and some silly, but not absurdly stupid, Homer antics with his loaner luxury-mobile. I wouldn't go so for to say it felt like a classic Simpsons, but it didn't have that odd sheen of desperation and hackery that many recent episodes have had. But again, not many laughs. (A couple of inward chuckles though, as documented below.)
King Of The Hill pretty much owns the good-story-few-laughs formula, but tonight was especially lacking in the joke department. After last week's episode, which was riddled with Dale/Bill one-liners, this week we were treated to a fairly dry retread of the old "Hank is too trusting" theme. In fact, tonight's episode was a little depressing, as Hank discovers his "car guy" (and probably his "appliance guy" and "electronics guy") have been ripping him of for pretty much his entire adult life. Somewhat oddly though, his typically bland plan for revenge (papering the car dealer's lot with "Liar" fliers) goes awry when he finds himself attached to a shaggy-haired, liberal-arts co-conspirator who torches the dealership. For a moment it felt like we were headed for a Debbie Grund/MegaLo Mart-explosion-style extended arc, but instead it was wrapped up quickly in the third act. While I'm not sure that I would have wanted to go through the whole "Hank proving his innocence" construction again, it was a little jarring how quickly the whole fiasco got wrapped up. Thank God for guest turns from Fred Willard and Ted Danson though, otherwise there wouldn't be much to distinguish this episode at all—it also felt desperately in need of a silly alley b-plot to lighten things up a bit.