Season Twelve - Episodes 7-21

Episode 7: The Great Money Caper
There is a reasonable and highly satisfying review for this episode... Surf's up! Gotta love that cop-out ending. Despite the ridiculousness of the plot I enjoyed this very much. Even with it's ridiculousness they really seemed to give full effort anyway to make sure that nothing was just popping up in the end. There's clues that you spot in the repeated viewings that point out that not all of it is as it looks like. It's fairly entertaining throughout, drunk Marge is excellent, you gotta echo the sentiments of Bart that Marge should be drunk more often. 6/10 seems to be the way to go.

Episode 8: Skinner's Sense of Snow
This episode is hilarious and setting is good, these school-centric episodes tend to be easy to relate to despite situation being more rare. It's top stuff humor-wise: "We hit something" "I hope it was Flanders!" and Homer's hallucinations in the end are those that cracked actual laugh out loud. It was perhaps more low brow than usual, as proved by line "Now Nibbles, chew through my ballsack!" but it works, it just works. Best episode of Scully-era show far bar the THOH's, I give this full 8/10.

Episode 9: HOMR
Nice and short title at least. This was another solid episode, seems like Scully started to somewhat pick it up in his third season. It pisses with the continuity a bit again, but like I've said that doesn't matter. Premise is intesting but the way plot moves forward is a little heavy-handed, they could've made it better. The ending was pretty good. It could use a little more laughs as well. It's one of the rare Scully episodes that rely on emotion more than humor. 6/10.

Episode 10: Pokey Mom
I though that this was an okay episode too. Jack was an interesting character that got ruined with the ending in my opinion. I guess I wanted better explanation than him just going batshit insane for him getting into jail. People really hated this though and I have to admit, there's not a lot of jokes in it. No good ones, at least. Overall I think once again the potential of the premise was not fulfilled and that resulted in a mediocre and forgettable episode. 3/10.

Episode 11: Worst Episode Ever
While Agnes and CBG is probably the most bizarre pairing we've seen, this is fair enough episode, certainly not worst episode ever. Most enjoyable moment of the episode was probably Milhouse's imagination in the shop. Those bootleg videos had potential for more than what materialized. Overall it falls into the mediocre category with it's thin plot and some weak characterizations. B-plot is pretty much the bettter one here. 3/10 namely because of that.

Episode 12: Tennis the Menace
There's that absolutely massive tiredness again. It's perhaps not the episodes fault but this did little to help the matter. I mean this is one of the most pointless episodes that there is. Only decent scene is the scene with Homer's imagination and frankly I think even that is too bizarre for most of people. The quest appearances didn't really work and took the attention away from plot which wasn't that strong to begin with. Besides, they were pretty useless: all Andre Agassi said was "I'm Andre Agassi." Think about that situation in the studio. That's actually funnier than most of the episode. The worst thing in the episode was the dinner table scene where everyone went "psych, psych,..." It's bad, 1/10.

Episode 13: Day of the Jackanapes
When it comes to Sideshow-Bob episodes, this probably one of the worse additions, but it's not terrible. It falls to the average range like most of this season's best episodes have. There was some funny jokes like "Maggie shot Mr. Burns again" and the plot was okay. There was no particular flaws in it. I'd say this is 4/10. Somewhat memorable, but not exactly inspired.

Episode 14: New Kids on the Blecch
Considering the great premise of Bart in a boy band they really didn't do much with it. I mean South Park had the same premise but their boy band episode was much better. Gonna Fingerbangbang you into my life, girl I wanna fingerbang every night... Sorry got distracted. This has mostly uninspired songs, though "Yvan eht nioj" was kind of catchy. They really didn't get much humor beyond Ralph's voice and one of the N'Sync guys saying "word" all the time. But it really isn't that bad. Though ending does suck. I'll give it 3/10, there was enough funny stuff for that.

Episode 15: Hungry Hungry Homer
This episode had certain classic feel to it. Homer for one isn't a complete jerkass, instead he is standing up for the little guy, cause that's the guy he is "this week." Also the baseball theme brought some old time spirit into it. It could've been funnier and during classic era this would've been little under-the-average episode for me. I'll rate this 5/10.

Episode 16: Bye Bye Nerdie
Things are starting to pick up for the Simpsons again. Another pretty decent episode. Lisa is well-characterized in this fairly funny episode where Homer on the other hand is again standing up for the little guy, this time protecting babies to be exact. You can make what you will about bullies being chemical and all that, but I'll pass it by considering it was needed for the episode. That said for a poor resolution it suffers a little. Still solid episode if nothing else, I give this 4/10.

Episode 17: The Simpson Safari
One of the worst episodes of all-time. This just makes you feel dirty watching. It's not obscenely atrochious, it's just bad. There's an excuse of a plot, mostly boring gags and a ridiculous ending combined with paper-thin characterizations. There were some redeeming factors, moments that provided at least some humor. I'm still going to have to give it 1/10, as this episode is almost equivalent of a curse word by now.

Episode 18: Trilogy of Errors
This was fairly well-plotted episode that got elevated to it's current classic status by it's unique way of telling the story from three point of views. There's some goofy stuff in the plot like the hole grammar robot thing, but it works with the rest of the plot and you don't even notice it if you don't stop to nitpick. Fairly good humor in this and the stories are told in such order that there's lots of suspension for the last round. It's easily the best of Season Twelve and probably whole Scully era. Solid 8/10 for this one, perfect execution of decent premise.

Episode 19: I'm Going to Praiseland
I guess it could've been funnier, but the plot was okay and it was continuation to the Maude's death episode still within the same season she died. Ned's characterization is bit off though at times, especially cutting Rachel's hair seemed like something he wouldn't do even when as obsessed with Maude as he was. They really could've used this chance to delve a little deeper into Ned's character, but they didn't take it. That said, it's at least solid 4/10.

Episode 20: Children of a Lesser Clod
This was okay, a little formulaic, but it works well enough. When Homer tries to escape from the hospital after the surgery and his leg cracks, that really made me feel uncomfortable and sick to my stomach. There was some decent jokes, not particularly much, but they were there which is the most important. What it all boils down to is the fact that it's nothing spectacular, but not bad either. 3/10.

Episode 21: Simpson Tall Tales
Fairly memorable three segment episode, all segments were good if not excellent. First one was probably the best followed closely by the third. The middle segment was fairly forgettable, but even it had it's merits and good gags. Wraparounds were somewhat nasty, but as I'm sick fuck, it didn't really bother me. Nothing too spectacular but solid showing anyway, deserves 5/10.

That's the end of that season. Thankfully these worst seasons ever have been a little shorter than classic era seasons. Next we're going to hit up to Jean-era and we ought to see slight change for the better. But let's tally the points for best and last Scully-era season, but it edges the other two surprisingly closely, only 4.29 average. That said even that average is not that terrible.

Averages:
Season Three 6.21
Season Four 6.18
Season Six 6.12
Season Seven 5.88
Season Five 5.73
Season Two 5.59
Season Eight 5.40
Season Nine 4.88
Season One 4.69
Season Twelve 4.29
Season Eleven 4.14
Season Ten 4.00

Great episodes:
Season Seven 13 (52 %)
Season Six 12 (48 %)
Season Three 11 (46 %)
Season Four 10 (45 %)
Season Eight 9 (36 %)
Season Five 8 (36 %)
Season Two 7 (32 %)
Season Nine 6 (24 %)
Season One 3 (23 %)
Season Twelve 2 (10 %)
Season Eleven 2 (9 %)
Season Ten 1 (4 %)

Fifteen episodes already today, gotta do eight more to keep up with the daily quota, but I need to aim a little higher to lighten the workload. I might do 30+ episode days in this month, but still I need to have some lighter days in between.