By Brandon Nolta
THE SIMPSONS, “Husbands and Knives”: Comic Book Guy loses his captive audience to abuse when a hip fellow named Milo (Jack Black) opens up a competing shop across the way called Coolsville. Hell, right there is good enough for me, especially when Comic Book Guy’s unrighteous attack on Coolsville is repulsed by the wonder team of Alan Moore, Dan Clowes and Art Spiegelman (actually playing themselves). But, to make things more amusing, Marge decides to open a gym for regular women in the space vacated by the Nerd Wonder. Naturally, business booms, and Marge becomes quite the blue-haired tycoon.
Of course, a fly shows up in the ointment soon enough: Homer meets a passel of young, handsome second husbands living on “wife support,” and they soon convince him that his time being hitched to Marge is coming to an end. What does Homer decide to do in order to keep his love? Stomach stapling. Soon, Homer’s pureeing all his food and losing weight, but it’s not enough. He goes in for a series of plastic surgeries, and just imagine where things go from there. Apparently Milo’s around to stay, at least for one more episode. But who cares? Anytime you can get the creators of MAUS, WATCHMEN and GHOST WORLD to play daffy versions of themselves, I think that automatically qualifies as a classic.
KING OF THE HILL, “Raise the Steaks”: Hank’s barbecuing, taking part in one of Texas’ state pastimes, but pained looks and faint praise quickly reveal a problem to our hero: the meat isn’t of good quality. After talking to the meat department at the Mega-Lo Mart, Hank decides to try different sources, so he checks out the local co-op. What he sees impresses him, but the membership requirement bothers the hell out of him, so he employs a hippie he knows to hook him up. However, the food is of such fine quality that Hank rethinks joining the co-op.
Oddly enough, once he joins, Hank finds himself becoming increasingly valuable, thanks to his discipline, work ethic and all-around common sense. More to the point, Hank’s sensible methods and clear thinking lead to increased success for the co-op, which ends up casting a pall over the co-op’s future. How does Hank deal with this? By taking livestock from the co-op’s farm and putting it out back. How it all turns out is an exercise in irony and smart humor, which should be one of KING’s tag lines. Like classic Texas BBQ, it’s just damn good.
FAMILY GUY, “Padre de Familia”: Peter gets jazzed up with super-patriotism after seeing a performance of “God Bless the U.S.A.” at a Veterans Day parade. Because Peter is a moron of stunning proportions, his patriotism soon turns into fervent anti-immigrant feeling, leading him to ever-more extreme actions against anyone Peter thinks isn’t legal, meaning anyone who isn’t a WASP. Unfortunately, Peter’s actions backfire, when it turns out that Peter himself is an illegal Mexican immigrant, due to his mother’s attempts to get a D & C in TJ.
Eventually, Peter finds himself working for his father-in-law in a demeaning capacity. Then again, being as stupid as Peter is lends itself to being demeaned regularly. There’s a lot of immigrant jokes and political polemic here, not all of it effective or even disguised well, but it is what it is. Nobody comes to FAMILY GUY for subtlety anyway; KING OF THE HILL seems to be cornering Fox’s market on that. They’ve done better, but considering they are probably running out of pre-strike material right about now, be grateful for what we get.
AMERICAN DAD, “42-Year-Old Virgin”: Another day, another gunfight, another kill for Stan. According to his boss Bullock (Patrick Stewart), that brings it up to 14, which earns him the right to pick the lunch for the day. Unfortunately, at the boys’ night out poker game, the truth pops out: Stan’s never killed anyone. His whole career has been based on lies, luck and encounters with a one-nutted mugger. Damn, I love this show just for the sentences I get to write.
Anyway, Roger and his killing machine buddies decide to help Stan kill his homicidal cherry, so they drag him to a crappy lowlife bar so he can off someone pathetic, or more to the point, more pathetic than Stan. But, Stan isn’t up to it, despite the increasing parade of scumbags and nutjobs that come to his door, so he ends up picking blueberries for peace with Hayley. Even the neighborhood child molester driving an ice cream truck doesn’t … well, actually that’s when Stan starts to find his murderer within. He tracks the pedophile and the boys to the water park, at which point Stan has a personal revelation: He doesn’t need to kill anybody. Of course, he then actually manages to kill someone, so happy ending all around.