The Simpsons: The Kid Is All Right, Review

You can fog a mirror, but I wouldn’t call you alive.

This is shaping up to be a classic season on The Simpsons. “The Kid Is All Right,” takes the question Simpsons, liberal or conservative? straight on and concludes a little from column A and a smidgeon from Section B. They’re both losers. Well, no, Democrats are losers, but only because Republicans stack the deck.

One is the loneliest number that you’ll ever know. Two can be sad as one. It’s the loneliest number since the number one. No is the saddest experience you’ll ever know. Yes, it’s the saddest experience that you’ll ever know. Because one is the loneliest number

You get the point. Lisa is a loner, not by choice but because she has lofty ideas that no one could possibly live up to. Not even Harry Nilsson, who died of a heart attack that he suffered on a Valentine’s Day. The heartbreak being that one of the greatest songwriters of the end of the Twentieth Century had his biggest hits with other people’s songs. Personally, I still miss Harry almost weekly and I fully appreciated the homage. That and the return of Mr. Bergstrom, played so memorably by what’s his name.

The lonely Lisa finally finds a friend who is at home in the library as she is. Even if it’s only to finish Atlas Shrugged. As opposed to Charles Manson: In His Own Words. Isabel Guiterrez (Eva Longoria) can make Bronte references, solve anagrams and she doesn’t have a green M&M in her inner ear. A perfect partner for a presentation on FDR, by most accounts America’s best president. Except that every reform he ushered to save a floundering country was unconstitutional and went against everything America stood for, standing on your own bootstraps. Those would be Republicans. Not Lincoln Republicans or Reagan Republicans, not even George Bush I Republicans, they are the new Republicans. Who can’t be bought by the old Republicans, who are losing them to the Libertarians.

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Lisa is comforted that conservatism is just a phase, but really, liberal phases are more transitory. Conservatives get more conservative. Isabel is a non-practicing Jew from Argentina. Just the kind of candidate the Springfield Republican Party needs to infuse a little blood into their lecherous rankles. Although she can’t be bought, she can take advantage of money ill-spent. No bombardment can overcome the threat of losing Pizza Friday.

Superintendent Chalmers has obviously been bought by the GOP, the Gravy on Pancakes. His mispronunciations of Lisa’s name, that he’s said hundreds of times, is throwing doubt on her as a candidate. It doesn’t sound right. If it doesn’t sound right, vote it out. Or hang it in the banner shed. That worked with Dukakis, Mondale and Kerry. They are only ghosts of their present selves and their relevance is shrinking faster than the national debt is rising. Unless Kerry can deal with Asian currency issues.

Lisa almost stoops to negative campaigning to stop the influx of unsolicited contributions, but she doesn’t stoop low enough. You really can’t stoop low enough when ants have trouble limboing under the bar. And not the bar that Maggie tends as a baby Moe. Lisa learns the lesson all dirty liberals learn, people like their ideas, want to subscribe to their newsletters, but as people, they don’t want to deal with having to listen to them. What they say might be alright, but really, that voice? Do they have to hear that voice? Those pointy haired know-it-alls.

Burns’ fragility is a consistent larf. Whether he’s crawling through the grates of a school locker or being knocked savagely to the ground by balloons, it never ceases to amuse.

“The Kid is All Right” was written by Tim Long. The barbs are softer this time around, maybe because it is after all, a second grade election where the worst scandal is riding a bike with training wheels. But the laughs still came fast and steady. Anderson Cooper guests as himself, in the future, getting all the easy answers from candidate Lisa Simpson.

In the opening Silly Simpsony, as Maestro Burns gets ready to conduct his classical sounds, Lisa passes the Bardland, The Pick E Mart, Bow’s Tavern. The homework that Bart is spitwadding is Lisa’s paper on “The Effects of Sibling Rivalry on Academic Development.”

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Den of Geek Rating: 3.5 Out of 5 Stars

 

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Rating:

3.5 out of 5