Episode Recap: Paths of Glory

Wookiee note: As often happens we write things, put them in drafts and then more goodness drops delaying posts.  I’m a big proponent of “better late than never” and I hope you are too.  I hope you all had a very Merry Christmas or whichever holiday you choose to celebrate.  My buddies at work had a fun time gathering on the 23rd and airing their “grievances”.  This is just a note to let you know that the episode after this (“Barthood”) will be up somewhere in the future but we have time since there’s no new episodes until January 3rd.  Enjoy this one and Happy Holidays to you and yours and much love from me and mine.

Hey hey friends! Wookiee back and at my usual antics post school craziness and here with another episode recap for my favorite Addicts.  Of course, that means it’s time to take a break from building my giant snowman and slurping hot squishee to catch up on the latest episodes. Thankfully we’ve done pretty well this season and aren’t too far behind. One of the features we like to have on this site is recaps of new Simpsons episodes for all our friends who can’t watch them immediately or like our silly reviews of them. I love when there are new episodes of the Best. Show. Ever. on TV.  It’s my privilege to not only watch new episodes, which I would do with or without this awesome site, but then break them down for all of you. I stuck to the stream of consciousness format which most of you should be familiar with by now. Without further ado… here’s my thoughts on Season 27, Episode 8: “Paths of Glory”.

To start this off for accidental clickers who just prefer the synopsis, here’s what IMDb says about the episode:

“Lisa sets out to restore the tarnished reputation of Springfield’s first female inventor.  To find her invention, she scours an abandoned asylum and a restaurant that caters to men.  Bart joins Lisa at the asylum, stealing one of the homicidal patient’s notebooks, and bragging to the boys at school that he wrote the entries himself.  This revelation causes Homer and Marge to believe he is a sociopath, which Bart decides to use to his advantage until things go too far.”

Now on with the random recap observations of yours truly…

– No intro at all… straight to the couch gag… Simpsons Yahtzee?  Definitely a dice game of some sort and the last die almost completes the family with Homer but lands on Burns instead.

– The family heads to the Alternative Energy Derby, Exploiting Our One Remaining Resource: Children.  Gotta love Putt-Putt Power: Mini-Golf Windmill Farms and National Petroluem: Greening the Arctic.  The students of Springfield Elementary have created alternative energy vehicles to save the future “as determined by a short race across the parking lot.”  Try Krusty Burger’s New Sunchoke Burger, We don’t know what Sunchoke’s are either.  Mushroom Water – Cap Your Thirst!  Uter’s car is powered by hydrogen fuel cells, Martin’s is powered by wind, and Ralph’s is potato, errr, Moleman powered lol.  Lisa’s is solar powered and she can possibly win but Wendell’s has flames on the side of it, no one does that with a slow car. I really love Nelson’s Yaba-Dabba Dune Buggy powered by foot but the true guffaw comes from Rod and Todd’s car powered by prayer.

– Lisa almost wins the race but the shadow from the Duff Blimp stops her car just short of the finish line.  Uter wins and then the nerds and bullies turn on her for being a girl.  Poor Lisa.  Old Jewish Man and the leader of Los Souveneir Jacquitos cheer her up by mentioning how people also laughed at Amelia Vanderbuckle, Springfield’s original lady inventor.  She apparently went nuts and even became part of the popular lexicon of Springfield.  “Don’t go Vanderbuckle on us.”

– Lisa goes home to do research,  Amelia was an inventor in the 1800s, middle child of seventeen, well, five because twelve died from drafty windows, daughter of a human canary in the poison mines, first female graduate of Springfield Tech and inventor of the steam-powered barber chair which decapitated its clients. She was diagnosed with “acute feminine over-reachism and she was committed to the Springfield Home for the Criminally Different” aka the “Banana Cabana.”  Lisa needs to prove she’s not a criminal so people won’t giggle when they hear the words ‘female scientist’.

– Bart and Lisa are off to the Insane Asylum to try and clear Amelia’s name.  Jimbo and Shauna are also there.  “The ghosts of a thousand lunatics are making me hot.”  In fairness, the only thing that doesn’t make him hot are alcoholic step-fathers.  Lisa finds patient records and Napoleon hats and Amelia’s record amongst a bunch of Vanderbuckles.  She recorded her voice on a wax cylinder. She completed a world-changing invention but hid it because she wasn’t taken seriously due to her gender.

– It’s all in her journal.  There’s other journals too.  Laudanum Addicts… nope.  Mad Ottomans… nope.  Naked Mumblers… nope.  Homicidal Maniacs Extremely Dangerous… now Bart’s interested.  He snags the diary of Nathan Little and is enjoying reading.  He also shows it off to the kids at school.  Ralph is saddened by the journal entry of Nathan pushing a vagabond under a trolley car once he learns what a trolley and vagabond and homeless guy are.  Wiggum shows up to take Ralphie to tap class and finds his son frightened.  Ralph tells his dad he’s scared from reading out of Bart’s scary diary.  “I was so scared, sour juice came out my front tail.”  Wiggum thinks Bart is a sociopath and tells Marge but she’s not certain since Bart never writes in cursive but this may be the worst thing that’s ever happened to the family.

– Homer comes home and Marge shares the diary pages with him.  Milhouse comes over to see if Bart can come check out his grandfather’s collection of Japanese swords and throwing daggers but Marge sends Lisa instead for fear Bart would do evil.  Lisa and Milhouse head off to find Amelia’s invention.  Her diary says it’s hidden in the basement of the Springfield Suffragette Society.  And go figure… that has now been turned into a Knockers.  What once said “Votes For Women Now!” says “Sexy Women -Wow.”  They also threw a Knockers shirt on the statue of Susan B. Anthony.  Are we surprised that Nelson’s mom works here? Lisa asks for permission to check out the basement but is denied by the manager because “that’s where we wash the ketchup off the old onion rings.”

– Marge finds a test online to see if Bart is a sociopath.  They use the label maker to change the title to “Are You A Jet Ski Dude or a Motocross Maestro?”  They have Bart take it after finding him choking a stuffed monkey.  Wonder where he learned behavior like that?  The label falls off and Bart realizes his parents think he’s a sociopath so he changes his answers to make them think he is.  Does it need to be discussed that he only had to change three answers?

– Leave it to Homer to say the “good news is Bart just got his first 100% on a test.”  Now Bart gets whatever he wants because his parents are afraid of him.  Cue “Crazy Train” by Ozzy… ice cream sundaes for dinner, driving the family car and bashing Skinner’s car in the school parking lot, skateboarding indoors, antics at the Squidport and stealing Homer’s place in bed next to Marge.

– Lisa and Milhouse sneak into the Knockers basement assisted by one of the Knockers girls… who’s actually just Willie in disguise.  They use a jack hammer during loud Monday Night Football cheering to uncover Amelia’s invention.

– Homer and Marge end up calling the number at the bottom of the online test to deal with Bart’s issue.  They throw him an early birthday party with a moon bounce which just turns out to be on a trailer connected to their car.  They take him to a mysterious building where at least two other kiddies were tricked by the same ruse.  Welcome to the Insane Asylum Bart.  Bart is among some messed up kids.  After forming a line from Adderall to Zoloft… they find out they will all be test subjects for the U.S. Military testing drones.

– Marge and Homer are sad without Bart but did indeed stop to get pizza after dropping him off… Gino’s, Best Pizza In The Asylum District.  Lisa is excited that she’s discovered something amazing but discovers Bart is gone.  They can’t even call.  What went wrong?  “We did everything we could for him during the commercials.”  Seriously laughing at this fourth wall joke.

– Lisa unveils Amelia Turnbuckle’s invention to support a woman’s place in history.  It’s a loom that solves math problems… the first computational device. Meanwhile Bart is enjoying being impressive in the simulator.  Turns out the kids have actually been fighting in real life (Ender’s Game rip-off) and while the other sociopaths like that, Bart does not like hurting actual people.  Based on his reaction, the asylum realizes he’s not a sociopath and releases him stating the simulators were actually simulators.  Only future issue might be the kid who will never forget Bart or his address or the backdoor that has no lock.

– Bart’s goes home.  He’s not bad… he just makes bad decisions and as Homer says, he started off as a bad decision, the best bad decision he ever made. Actually a sweeter moment when you watch it.  And Lisa restored the reputation of a scientist and Maggie tried strawberries for the first time.  What a day!

– End episode with Lisa checking out Amelia Vanderbuckle’s Computational Loom at the Springfield Museum of National History.  No one else wants to see it though.  Not a complete loss, there’s a big line at the Science of Thor Exhibit.

– And one last scene in the credits of Homer with the Loom.  He inserts some cards and downloads pics of ladies in swimsuits.  Marge catches him as he tries to stop the massive creation by the loom.  “I know this looks like nothing but it’s actually bad.”

So there you go friends.  A complete story with two plots.  Not sure my final verdict on this one.  Unlike other episodes, I actually wrote the recap as I watched it for the very first time so they may have limited my laughs since I paused it a lot. The whole Bart sociopath angle felt a little forced and cringeworthy.  I liked Lisa championing gender issues but you can definitely tell the writers for the episode were males.  Sound off below with your own thoughts on the episode.  For me, this one is in the bottom half of the season so far but new Simpsons are new Simpsons and there are laughs to be found here.  That’s about all for now friends. Keep on tapa-tapa-tapping and TTFN.

Wookiee out!