The Simpsons Season 31 Episode 11 Review: Hail to the Teeth

This The Simpsons review contains spoilers.

The Simpsons Season 31 Episode 11

The Simpsons, season 31, episode 11, “Hail to the Teeth,” turns Lisa’s frown upside down, Arty Ziff’s bride inside out and teaches a valuable lesson. We should smile, whether our teeth are aching or our ideals are breaking, because when the world smiles with you, it also laughs with you.

The episode is loaded with quick humorous asides, tossed off like classic episodes of the past. It opens with what amounts to both ecological and self-referential satire. Lisa is reading the latest issue of “Ecowarrior” magazine. The cover read “Doomed.” Yes, these are weighty issues and should be fought with a strong unwavering commitment, but the little girl with the pearl necklace brings too much gloom for the message to stick. It’s like she never learned the lesson “you don’t win friends with salad.” Her liberal ire is further stoked when a random older man says she’d be more attractive if she smiled.

The effrontery is a little too on the nose given the soft jabs from the magazine and the progressive cliché Lisa occasionally becomes. We know protests and therapy lie ahead. But first comes braces. Dentistry has loomed large in the Simpsons legend from the earliest episodes when Mr. Burns cut the dental plan for the employees at the nuclear plant. We learn tonight that the braces the Simpson family fought so hard for were ineffective because they were put in by a rogue periodontist passing as an orthodontist.

The episode updates the predictive facial deconstruction of the earlier episode by showing how Lisa will look if she ignores her teeth on a social media level with updated technology. It also shows how Bart will mature into the top social realm of adolescence until he’s ultimately dead at 17. A perfect score.

Kidzrule, which means “kill all the children” in Simpsonian Romanian, Orthodontry turns Lisa’s nightmare into a nitrous oxide dream. Lisa is stuck with a smile on her face while the upper braces hold her lips up and balks until she gets enough laughing gas to fill in the emotions. While she knows the doctor should have her license revoked she really likes the gas. This is a kind of foreshadowing to the gratification she’ll get when her sunny new outlook wins her popularity. However, this also goes back to when Marge changed her mind about forcing Lisa to smile when she was the unhappiest girl in grade number two in the episode which introduced Bleeding Gums Murphy. He also had a difficult relationship with dentists. He’d had enough pain in his life.

When the other kids begin to pay attention to Lisa, she quickly sees how shallow people are. Nelson is so taken with the new Lisa, it makes him feel well-nourished. He then goes on to prove Americans can be fat and poor, a secret to making America great. Poor Millhouse, who has been in love with Lisa since Bart first let him talk, is now just part of the crowd. It is quickly forgotten that that was his thing, when Nelson proves his thing has always been crying when he’s punched.

Lisa is also disturbed by how good it makes her feel, sending her on spiral of, if not self-improvement, an odyssey to improve the world around her. This gives The Simpsons a chance to look at the popularity contest of electoral politics. The kids on the slide are up and down when Lisa runs for class president. The Simpsons goes retro in the election though, leaving the Trump presidency out of the running in favor of a popular hayseed candidate named Dubya, whose negative ads are virally violent. The campaign makes for effective commentary in miniature as the candidates fight for the moral center of Springfield Elementary. The winner gets to dictate the social conscience and calendar, while the loser gets detention. This is a very veiled commentary on promising to lock up political opponents.

The other plot follows Arty Ziff, who has found his soul mate and is getting married. He invites the Simpsons to the wedding with a prerecorded hologram so they can’t talk back but, being as he is the ever-egotistical showman, he still leaves gaps for anticipated laughter. Ziff knows this is a hard sell so he promises a true matrimonial extravaganza seemingly designed for Homer. The festivities will include deep-fried ice sculptures and someone who low-guesses people’s weight. Because he is a self-absorbed hologram, Artie also traps a hologram of Tupac Shakur like a genie in a bottle doomed to serve for eternity. 

The wedding itself is fun. It is attended by local celebrities. Newsman Kent Brockman gets shot down trying to hook up with a server, no details at 11. Homer really gets into giving away the mysterious bride. His walk down the aisle is a virtual tour de force of wedding bliss, even threatening horrible vengeance if Arty hurts his little girl.

Arty has always been in love with Marge. He’s been plotting to get rid of Homer one way or another since the High School prom, once almost getting Homer sentenced to jail to get him out of the way. The wedding, of course, is a ploy to make Marge jealous, which works about as well as the replicant Marges Arty has developed in search of the perfect wife. Robotics is a consistent gag for The Simpsons, especially discarded prototypes, like the ones Mr. Burns made of himself a few episodes ago. His love solution has a touch of The Bride of Frankenstein in it. There is a very familiar spindly legged spider-Marge on the trash heap, but the best model is a Marge who has a toaster built in her head which doesn’t have slots large enough to toast bagels.

Both Lisa and Marge are ultimately fighting people’s limiting views of them as people and as women. The episode, which was written by Elisabeth Kiernan Averick (Crazy Ex-Girlfriend) takes on stereotyping and second class citizenry, while it updates how the series comments on social change. Marge says change is coming, Lisa knows the promise is long overdue, and may possibly still be a promise for an even longer time. Both plots work on “Hail to the Teeth,” with each segment containing a lesson. Arty learns, once again, that he is one of the most self-centered men on the planet, and Lisa learns smiling is for suckers, which will ultimately put her on the best seller list. Arty actually appears to learn something, though if we’re lucky he won’t retain it. The episode goes a long way toward moving The Simpsons to a new paradigm.

“Hail to the Teeth” was written by Elisabeth Kiernan Averick, and directed by Mark Kirkland.

The Simpsons stars Dan Castellaneta as Homer and Abe Simpson, Krusty the Clown and Groundskeeper Willie, Julie Kavner as Marge Simpson, Nancy Cartwright as Bart Simpson, Yeardley Smith as Lisa Simpson. Hank Azaria plays Comic Book Guy, Kirk Van Houten, Chief Wiggum, Professor John I.Q. Nerdelbaum Frink Jr., and Moe. Harry Shearer is Seymour Skinner, Kent Brockman, C. Montgomery Burns and Waylon Smithers. Pamela Hayden voices multiple parts. Guest voice: Jon Lovitz as Artie Ziff.

The Simpsons episode “Hail to the Teeth” aired Sunday, Jan. 5, on Fox.

“Hail to the Teeth” was written by Elisabeth Kiernan Averick, and directed by Mark Kirkland.

The Simpsons stars Dan Castellaneta as Homer and Abe Simpson, Krusty the Clown and Groundskeeper Willie, Julie Kavner as Marge Simpson, Nancy Cartwright as Bart Simpson, Yeardley Smith as Lisa Simpson. Hank Azaria plays Comic Book Guy, Kirk Van Houten, Chief Wiggum, Professor John I.Q. Nerdelbaum Frink Jr., and Moe. Harry Shearer is Seymour Skinner, Kent Brockman, C. Montgomery Burns and Waylon Smithers. Pamela Hayden voices multiple parts. Guest voice: Jon Lovitz as Artie Ziff.

The Simpsons episode “Hail to the Teeth” aired Sunday, Jan. 5, on Fox.

Keep up with The Simpsons Season 31 news and reivews here. 

Culture Editor Tony Sokol cut his teeth on the wire services and also wrote and produced New York City’s Vampyr Theatre and the rock opera AssassiNation: We Killed JFK. Read more of his work here or find him on Twitter @tsokol.

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