"Thursdays with Abie"/"Field of Streams"/"Big Man on Hippocampus"/"Don't Look a Smith Horse in the Mouth"
I almost missed the return of the Fox animated bloc tonight because who programs the Sunday after New Year's? Isn't this the time when networks burn off shows and pretend that no one is watching them? Maybe this is why Fox chose what ended up being a pretty weak slate of episodes to kick off the new year, four shows that never came together, with two of them being actively pretty bad. I enjoyed The Simpsons and American Dad to varying degrees, but The Cleveland Show and Family Guy both had their moments while still never coming together to make satisfying episodes. It's a new year, and whether Fox just burned these episodes off or whatever, it's time to take them to task! Or talk generally about their disappointments and the histories of each shows, as it were.
The Simpsons: Most of the core relationships on The Simpsons have hung on to their ability to move us. Most Homer and Lisa episodes are still touching on some level, while most Bart and Lisa episodes play off the two's easy camaraderie. One of the exceptions to this rule is the relationship between Homer and his dad. The two had some great episodes in the show's early going, as the series examined the way that Abe's inability to be a good single parent reverberated down through the years (in a much, much funnier way than that sounds). Episodes like "Grampa vs. Sexual Inadequacy" and "Mother Simpson" focused in on the way the seeming hatred Homer had for his dad was driven by something deeper, and they were weirdly emotionally resonant. But over the years, some of the spark has gone out of this relationship, as the show has mostly just turned to storylines where Homer realizes how lucky he is to have his dad. This was another one of those, as Grampa told some of his rambling stories to a newspaper columnist and ended up almost getting killed by the guy, only to be saved by Homer at the last minute. The fact that The Simpsons endlessly resets itself doesn't really hurt the relationships between the parents and their kids or between the siblings because those are the kinds of relationships that are always, essentially, resetting themselves, until adolescence starts to firm them up. That Homer and his dad can't come to any sort of movement forward feels forced, I think, and means these kinds of stories have to get more and more out there. On the other hand, I liked the Bart and Lisa B-plot, as the two tried to rescue the stuffed lamb Bart had brought home from school for the weekend (even if its resolution was too quickly glossed over), and I laughed a handful of times, so let's go with a Grade: C+