But back to Comic Book Guy’s dilemma: you know, the one that Homer tries to resolve by taking Mr. Nokimora out of for a drink and having a father-to-father chat. Normally, Homer shouldn’t be offering advice to anyone, but influenced by cobra-flavoured rice wine, and some fish-wine (read: aquarium), he’s the perfect guide through a state of self-realizing hallucination. In a tip of the hat to Studio Ghibli and the work of Hayao Miyazaki, Springfield becomes an animated wonderland with references to Howl’s Moving Castle, My Neighbor Totoro, Porco Rosso, and Kiki’s Delivery Service. When Kumiko comes to him as in a vision as a sprite, Mr. Nokimora realizes that his intractability makes him the monster. (As an aside, the entire Ghibli clip was released by Fox prior to Sunday’s airing of “Married to the Blob.” I’ve mentioned before that doing this, while obviously meant to assist in promotion, robs the viewer of any sense of spontaneity in seeing something cool. Perhaps just a press release will do next time. Please.)
Comic Book Guy and Kumiko are then allowed to get married, and CBG celebrates by realizing that the sun doesn’t set on comic books alone, and promises to diversify his store to include greeting cards. Or, to put all this another way: Best. Day. Ever.
Other things to note are that Stan Lee returned this week as “the King of Cameos,” both in an imaginary form to play Cyrano for Comic Book Guy, and later to marry CBG and Kumiko. The episode’s MVP, though, is Harlan Ellison, who shows absolute glee in poking fun at his abrasive persona. When Milhouse says “I wish someone came from the future to tell me knot to talk to you,” Ellison pounces on the kid for stealing his idea. It was hilarious and on the nose, like Homer eating candy right out of the piñata.
So will Kumiko be a regular presence on the show now? It seems likely – in an interesting bit of trivia, Kumiko first appeared in Tapped Out, a Simpsons game for iOS and Android phones. Marrying her off to Comic Book Guy seems almost like nerdy incest, but it works, and clearly the writers and artists of the show had a lot of fun realizing her semi-autobiographical manga adventures. As usual, The Simpsons crew are masters of detail, and anything on the nerd scale gets their creativity going at Mach 10. That was in full display in “Married to the Blob,” and the result was a terribly fun episode that you’ll have to watch twice to catch all the gags.
What did you guys thing of “Married to the Blob?” Sound off with your comments below.
