QUICK SYNOPSIS

Bart and Homer befriend two carnies and invite them to stay with them, but the carnies soon swindle the Simpsons out of their house.

POINTLESS GUEST STAR(S)

Jim Varney is perfect for the role of Cooder. Not pointless at all.

WHY THIS EPISODE SUCKS

It doesn’t really suck that much. Another fairly solid Season 9 episode, and forget all the naysayers who say that this season is the pits! There are a lot more good episodes than bad, but since Season 9 is considered the first season of “Zombie Simpsons” I have no choice but to go through each one and explain why the episode doesn’t really suck. It’s a hard job, but someone has to do it.

Act 1 is fairly unnecessary with a gardening plot point that goes absolutely nowhere, but what I like about it is that it shows the “child” side of Lisa that you don’t see anymore. Lazy and defiant. Plus, the “hard work made us quit” line always sounded like it could come out of Homer’s mouth. She’s more like him than she realizes!

GRIPES! The carny characters aren’t very nuanced. They’re gross and scheme-y and you can see the twist a mile away of the two of them taking over the house once they made themselves quite at home. I also have a particular problem with two jokes: Homer explaining that the water in the dunk tank is low so that when Homer gets dunked, you, the audience, can understand the sound you heard was Homer dropping into a low-water dunk tank. And Krusty standing near the other clown faces during the water-squirting game (“WHY DOES THIS KEEP HAPPENING WHEN I STAND RIGHT HERE?” is stupid, and Krusty has no reason to be there in the first place). The not-at-all-scary ghost ride would have also been better without Bart and Lisa’s commentary.

The gripes are made up for with a few solid bits. Chief Wiggum’s bribe scene cracked me up something fierce (“Are there any Bills here?” “No… he’s Bart.”) And let’s not forget “ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding!”

This is a B- episode. Good enough for now, but it doesn’t hold a candle to the best of the classic seasons. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go ride the Tooth Chipper.

IMDb TRIVIA FUNHOUSE!

The carnival was based on The Eastern States Exposition fair. As a child, Mike Scully went to the fair, and had hoped one day to be a carny.
While the seediness and the overall lack of an education apart from grifting does seem tempting, Mike Scully made the right choice of slowly running the Simpsons into the ground along with Al Jean.

This is the only episode that Mark Kirkland told his parents not to watch, due to Bart’s line “Out of my way, I’m Hitler”. Kirkland’s stepfather was a lieutenant in World War II and was injured while in combat.
Hey, stepdad! Bart is going to say something so outrageous that you’ll drop your glass eye into your giant bottle of vodka that you drink to ease the daily pain of life.

Matt Groening said that they had several endings worked out, including one where Homer made the hula hoop over the chimney.
Shut up, Matt. This isn’t even your show anymore.

FINAL GRADE
B-