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The Simpsons Review: “Yellow Subterfuge” (Season 25, Episode 7)

After a one week break for American Thanksgiving festivities, The Simpsons returned with a new episode that didn’t necessitate a trip to the store in order to get your favourite food to eat when disappointed. The focus of “Yellow Subterfuge” is Principal Seymour Skinner, and another scheme to bring Springfield Elementary under his fastidious desire for uniformity with the promise of a field trip on board a submarine. Even Bart Simpson summons the restraint to stay away from pranking in order to gain a place on that field trip, but is mere restraint enough, and has Skinner gone a bit around the bend this time?

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The B plot this week found Lisa having to save Krusty from another bout of financial ruin. She has a simple idea for Krusty’s money problems: license the Krusty the Klown brand to foreign producers to make versions of the show in other countries. Krusty, having just lost the Monet he had only looked at once, agrees.

The whole international Krustys gag wore pretty thin and the jokes seemed way to easy; the Chinese Krusty had Sideshow Mao, the Irish Krusty was a Joyce novel come to life, and the Jamaican Krusty featured the cartoon Itchem and Scratem (“They smoke! They toke! They smoke and toke and smoke!” Get it?) What was funny was the idea that the other Krustys become very popular in their home countries and the original becomes the least popular variation of the character, but nothing much comes of that idea. Also, don’t expect this to be the last “Krusty has money issues” story, because it certainly wasn’t the first.

Overall, there was nothing flashy about this outing, and like most of this season’s episodes, that seems to be the policy that works best. Even the couch gag, the family as Wacky Waving Inflatable Arm-Flailing Tubemen, was pretty low-key by recent standards. There were some nice call backs though, especially the “New Kids on the Blecch” reference and Bart’s skill will dirty aliases, and there were some pretty hilarious new gags too, including Bart crank calling Skinner using a Barack Obama soundboard and what I’m pretty sure was a Gravity gag (which would be a pretty quick turnaround for an animated show).

Krusty’s story was typically Krusty, his avarice and greed as intensely on display as it’s ever been. The way Krusty broke down his 75 per cent take on the foreign Krustys was pretty funny, but I fail to see how those versions were successful given the broad stereotypes. I mean, is the newly elected “President-for-Life” Krusty in Romania a vampire? We never found out, although I suppose an argument could be made that the original Krusty is a caricature of America: overweight, living beyond his means, obsessed with status and the accumulation of things… On second thought, maybe the whole sketch was spot on.

Either way, another solid entry with more than a couple of laughs, but I wouldn’t have minded a few more scenes on the USS Tom Clancy. A ship with a name like that is bound for adventure, right?

Next week, it’s another Simpsons Christmas with the “White Christmas Blues.” Stay tuned for our review.