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The Simpsons Review: “White Christmas Blues” (Season 25, Episode 8)

The Simpsons has a long, proud history of Christmas specials, from "Grift of the Magi" (the one with Funzo), "Skinner's Sense of Snow" (the one where the kids are trapped at school), and "'Tis the Fifteenth Season" (the one where Homer realizes his holiday selfishness). Heck, even the first ever episode of The Simpsons was a Christmas special, “The Simpsons Roasting on an Open Fire.” Of course, this opens up an interesting paradox since the Simpsons themselves never age and they’ve had about 14 different Christmases. So with the exception of that first one, in which the Simpsons added Santa’s Little Helper to their family, I guess each new holiday episode usurps the previous one.

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I’m not sure how I feel about “White Christmas Blues.” On the one hand there were a lot of good gags and some laugh out loud moments, on the other hand I’m not sure if the storylines were entirely well thought out. Neither story seemed to go anywhere. For Marge there was a slow-burn of frustration with the out-of-towners, but their complaints are kind of legitimate when the carriage ride you promised is really Homer steering a wagon pulled by SLH and Snowball. As for Lisa, who was she kidding getting Bart an honest to God book with words and everything? Also, Lovejoy’s sermon wasn’t that inspiring, and it certainly wasn’t inspiring enough to send an old-fashioned newspaper reporter running out to that pay phone to call in that “Lovejoy’s on fire!”

Having said that, the writers kept the jokes firing so that you barely notice that storywise, nothing was coming together. Right off the top a new Itchy & Scratchy called “It’s a Wonderful Knife” sends Krusty into hysterics. “I never watched one of these sober!” he decries. From there we see Homer adapting the Halloween decorations for Christmas with a hardy “Boo-humbug” and a Universal monsters-flavoured Nativity scene. Later at the Quik-E-Mart, Apu sells his version of Life of Pi, a home movie of him on a canoe with a big dog called “Life of ‘Pu.” There’s also a dig against Bongo Comics and The Simpsons’ own inconsistency when it comes to the layout of the family home. Meanwhile, Easter egg hunters were happy with the “Endless Christmas Special” gag that was endless, and the various “state slogans” from the license plates shown over the end credits.

This wasn’t The Simpsons‘ best Christmas, but it wasn’t the worst either. It just seems like the writers room had a bunch of gags left over from other years and created a kind of Christmas casserole to bake them all together in. At least there were laughs, but I can only imagine how funny this might have been had the gags been added to a script that made sense, or at least had a decent conclusion that didn’t hang on Marge’s disgust with the second verse of Christmas carols where they get religious and weird. I guess the saving grace is that whether its next year or the year after, The Simpsons will have a Christmas do over.

So whether you’re from America’s Second Greatest Carolina, the Jewel of the Fracking Belt, or the Still a British Colony at Heart state, Merry Christmas from The Simpsons and see you in 2014.