March 22nd episode - In the Name of the Grandfather

This week The Simpsons episode was entitled “In the Name of the Grandfather.” The Simpsons decide to buy a new hot tub in the beginning of the episode, and the family proceeds to spend the rest of the night and the next day soaking in it. They are so absorbed by their new purchase that they forget about a family reunion they were supposed to attend. This upsets the grandfather as he realizes that he doesn’t have a lot of time left to do the things he’s always wanted to do. So the family takes a trip to Ireland so grandpa can go back and have a drink at his favorite pub from his youth. Like in the episode that we watched in class about their trip to Australia, it seems that the Simpson family, particularly Homer and his father, do not respect the laws of other countries while they are visiting them. When they drunkenly agree to buying the rundown pub, they realize that they have no customers, so they go against the law and allow smoking within the building to promote sales. Homer and his father don’t see it as a problem that they are blatantly breaking the Irish law, and when they get arrested and go to court, Homer plays the innocent card by saying that they did it to bring the ways of old Ireland back. I see this as an indication of ethnocentrism, in that Americans think their ways are the best and they should be treated differently than everyone else. I also found it funny that the potato-headed judge at the end makes a comment about deporting all of the Irish “incompetent halfwits” to America, where we foolishly made them police officers, as we learned about with immigration.

March 1st episode - How the Test Was Won

This week, the Simpsons episode “How the Test Was Won” was funnier than I had expected it to be. It was my first time actually watching a new episode on my own, for I had never been a fan of the television show in the past. The opening to the show was obviously the first thing that captured my attention, with its references to other popular TV families such as the Brady Bunch and what I thought to be the Cleavers from Leave it to Beaver. These are shows that I was familiar with, and it was amusing to see those connections being made.
The two main focuses of the episode are Homer forgetting to mail the family’s insurance check, and most importantly, Lisa and Bart facing the Vice President’s Assessment Test at school. The superintendent of the school is only concerned with getting a lot of money from the students’ good test scores, and the episode shows all of the drastic ways in which he tries to get the kids to learn facts. He even ships away Bart and some of the other “under-achieving” students on test day because he does not want them bringing down the school’s average score. The school principal is also tricked into being sent away with these boys, and after spending the day with them, he ultimately finds that the best way to learn is by being able to relate things to real life situations and people, and not just by drilling facts into someone’s head. I think this is the main lesson that the episode is trying to get across, underneath all of its witty comments and the bizarre and entertaining story line.