The Simpsons, Seasons 21-31. Season 21, Episode 7 “Rednecks and Broomsticks”

We’ve reached episode seven of Season 21 and my goodness there are so many episodes to go. So many. In case you missed last week’s review you can read it here.

“Rednecks and Broomsticks” (first aired November 29, 2009)

Futurama billboard this week is an okay gag about the Springfield Retirement Castle. Chalkboard gag references teachers unions. Politics! Couch gag is related to watching football on Thanksgiving. Straightforward and fine.

A plot revolves around Homer becoming a moonshine tasting expert. We get there via 1) a car accident following the destruction of a “Bonk it” and 2) the Simpson family getting rescued by Cletus, who introduces them to the ways of the hillbilly prior to them returning home. Yes, Bonk It is a Bop It reference. I was going to goof on this for being a dated reference and then point out the irony of somebody who runs a nostalgia-themed website doing that, but then I remembered my cousins’ kids getting a Bop It at Christmas in the fairly recent past. That’s because Bop It was reintroduced in 2008, making this a pretty reasonable reference in 2009. Am I out of touch? No, it is the children who are wrong.

B plot involves a coven of Wiccans that Lisa discovers while wandering the woods near Cletus’s shack. Homer becomes buds with Cletus while the viewer is subjected to every stereotype about rednecks (all of the gun ones don’t even read as satire, to be honest), Lisa gets interested in becoming a Wiccan, a moonshine competition gets broken up when the cops show nearby because Flanders sicced them on the Wiccans after seeing Lisa pretending to transform her cat, the stills get knocked into the river, and a confluence of plots is born.

The Wiccans are put on trial for being Wiccans and the judge, as the only reasonable person in Springfield, rightly dismisses the case, but not before a tossed off remark about blinding people is seen as evidence of witchcraft after half the town goes blind. This means its time for some good old fashioned mob justice. Lisa puts an end to the madness after deducing that the blindness was a result of the moonshine stills polluting the river. Episode over.

This episode was fine. Wow I’m getting tired of this exercise, so let’s just go to the final remarks.

Best Joke: Selma “…the night we made out in the back of the Seafood Hut.” Kent Brockman “We all did crazy things on 9/11.”

Worst Joke: Nothing terribly egregious this week.

Rating (out of 5 D’ohs): 2.5. There’s nothing overly bad about this episode, but nothing really stands out either. It’s a fairly nothing episode, so right in the middle.

Stray bits:

• “Oh why do my actions have consequences?”
• There’s a staging of the Bambi and Thumper playing on the pond scene, right before Homer smashes into Bambi with his car, sending her flying.

That’s it for this week. I’ll be back next Monday, hopefully with more enthusiasm.

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