The Simpsons Season 32 Episode 8 Review: The Road to Cincinnati

This The Simpsons review contains spoilers.

The Simpsons Season 32 Episode 8

The Simpsons season 32, episode 8, ” The Road to Cincinnati” gets off to a bumpy start. It stars two less-than-charismatic secondary characters, and the Simpson family barely make an appearance. The episode is basically a road trip, but Chalmers and Skinner are no Hope and Crosby, and the destination is a city over-crowded with used punchline fodder: Cincinnati, the “birthplace of Pete Rose’s gambling problem.”

The episode opens at the District Principals Meeting, where Principal Seymour Skinner becomes the center of unwanted attention. He tries to tell a joke, but can’t read the room. He goes for a high five and gets a low blow. The big news at the meeting is Superintendent Garibaldi Chalmers is going to give the keynote address at the national administrative education summit, EDUCON. He’s booked at the enviable Proctor and Gamble room. The scene is loaded with edumacational references, but is further Simpsonized by the “Have you seen this mug?” poster on the bulletin board. The missing coffee cup under the masking tape turns out to figuratively be Skinner, who after having his dignity siphoned off, gets robbed again.

The keynote speaker gets to take one of the local principals along, and Chalmers fixes the criteria so the more affable, and witty Principal Finch (Hannibal Buress) from a magnet school tags along for the ride. Chalmers tells Skinner he was never even in the running. That’s gotta hurt. Chalmers is still much more of a caricature than Skinner, who has a much more central role on the series. The Superintendent has been making more frequent appearances. We’ve gotten a lot more backstory. He’s dated Skinner’s mother. But for the most part, he’s just there to yell “Skinnerrr!” at Skinner. “The Road to Cincinnati” might give us too much information.

We’ve always gotten too much information on Skinner. Everything around him conspires to emasculate him. The turnaround this episode is that one of the biggest conspirators is the one who gives Skinner the clarity to do something about it. Bart may not do very well at school. He’s a troublemaker who spends far too much time in the principal’s office. But in all that time, he’s gained a lot of insight. He’s seen Skinner’s history of humiliation. Hell, he’s at the center of at least half. Bart knows however Skinner is treated, he will come back for more. He makes Skinner see that’s a super power.

The first thing it unleashes is blackmail, even though it’s not said. Skinner only makes the trip because he dangles the non-refundable $65 registration fee over Chalmer’s head, which the superintendent loses before his plane makes it off the tarmac. The emotional support animals in the airplane scene make for very effective gremlins. The atmosphere turns claustrophobic, and when the superintendent realizes they are all going to die in a flying zoo, it is an effective air pressure drop. Chalmers comes off like a lone nut, but it is only an annoyance when it could have been a memorable mini-spoof on The Twilight Zone’s “Nightmare at 20,000 Feet.” It does get him bagged in a “threat sack,” and banned from Cincinnati Air forever. The tragic punchline is that’s the only airline which will fly into Cincinnati.

At the start of the trip, Chalmers wants to die. But just as he’s pondering whether to be or not, he makes Skinner pick up a trio of hitchhiking improvisational Shakespeare performers. This gag is actually quite revelatory about both characters, as we see how accommodatingly easygoing Skinner is next to Chalmers’ Ophelia. The joke also pays off unexpectedly at the end of the episode, with iambic dividends. The Greasy Chain Bar sequence works as a skewering of biker bars. It turns out cyclists are scarier than bikers but not for the most obvious reasons. It’s just what happens when you can’t decide whether you’re a pedestrian or vehicle. It is very funny how, during the getaway, Skinner and Chalmers come to a full stop at a stop sign on a completely deserted road. That’s instructional driving humor, the kind which will save your life. For some reason, all the cars are being winterized, but both Seymour’s mother’s Buick and the judge J.T. Winchester’s Cutlass are convertibles with the tops down.

Throughout the episode, Skinner’s worth becomes apparent. As a mama’s boy, he knows how to charm the Depends off old ladies. Skinner is also pretty perceptive and speaks common truths. Jason Bateman was made for low-resolution screens. Seymour knows para athletes’ biceps are bigger than the cyclists’ quads. His Bed and Breakfast points score the pair great elderberry wine. Chalmers admits Seymour has utilitarian skills. But the betrayal comes as no real surprise. Skinner must have known this was coming from some job evaluation.

While there are some moments where it looks like Chalmers is coming to an understanding of what Skinner has to offer, he’s forever looking for the catch. He always finds it, and ultimately the pair get so far on each other’s nerves they get into a physical brawl at a Bed and Breakfast. They even destroy the brochures nobody reads. The scene feels like it’s missing something, as there are no consequences, or even a bill to be paid after the place gets trashed, and they’ve been running at a loss.

After the ballroom blitz, Chalmers has to deliver the speech which will make or break his career. Through a lazy contrivance, he is forced to go up unprepared, and instead makes a speech about his trip which teaches the superintendent the value of a good principal. It’s corny, especially as he realizes it after a shout from one lone heckler in the audience is all it takes for him to see what a good guy Skinner is. Maybe the jacket is too tight and cuts off oxygen to Chalmers’ brain. It was supposed to be touching but it didn’t quite make it.

While the audience is supposed to be focusing on Skinner’s growth, we really get an insight into what a screwup Chalmers really is. Sure, he comes up with some interesting epithets, like “Satan’s jockstrap,” and his hair recedes in a fully authoritative way, but put him up against some pedal-hardened cyclists and what is he? A Superintendent of a small school district who doesn’t understand the principles of gravity or the gravity of principals.

When Chalmers bumps into the pre-synced bike-computers he is truly cowed. He’d never last a week in a middle school, dealing with kids all day, every day, in hallways, near lockers, and at water fountains. He’s the one who’s screaming about “who’s screaming” on an airplane. All the trouble the pair get into is because of him, whether it’s his inattentive driving, wanton disdain for genetically modified soybeans, or inability to tell Cincinnati from Cleveland from the skyline.

As god as my witness, I thought turkeys could fly, and believe one of the good things about choosing Cincinnati as the setting is the excuse to hear the two WKRP in Cincinnati theme songs. Sadly, that’s a highlight of a fairly lame trip. This is what remote learning does to The Simpsons. “The Road to Cincinnati” is paved with too many good intentions. The Springfield faculty gets to get out of town but ultimately there’s nowhere to go but Cincinnati.