This The Simpsons review contains spoilers.
The Simpsons: Season 30 Episode 11
Abe Simpson is the babysitter of last resort at the beginning of The Simpsons Season 30, Episode 11, “Mad About the Toy.” But by the middle he needs to lie down. Grampa Simpson is already too tired for most things. He can barely stay awake long enough to finish an anecdote. Now The Simpsons are adding battle fatigue to the mix.
Abe Simpson has led an exciting life, and he’d be the first to tell you about it. Of course, if Abe told it you might not be quite so excited to hear about his long ordeals due to the ordeal of listening to his twists and turns on the long road to communication. Why, I remember Grandpa telling us about all those years he spent as a night watchman at a cranberry silo. The way he told it was just as interesting as when he remembered barely missing Hitler himself with a javelin throw at the 1936 Olympics, hitting the man there to assassinate the future Führer instead. Or when his own attempt to whack Hitler at the Battle of the Bulge was thwarted by Monty Burns.
Further reading: The Simpsons: How “Bart the Genius” Changed the TV Landscape
Abe distinguished himself in the European theater, helped by the fact he secretly liked killing strangers. But it was after the war Abe fought his real battles. Some were social, most were antisocial, but the worst were plastic. In “Mad About the Toy,” Abe gets spotted as a down and out soldier and gets recruited as a toy soldier model. For fifty bucks a sitting in a fledgling industry, Abe got in on the ground floor. He did it in a more innocent time, when Putty could be silly, and toys were fun and dangerous until they put an eye out. The job sounds like a fun life but it’s a maddening drudgery if you’re the model for a Jack in the Box. It’s even more maddening to discover Abe ran out on hundreds of millions of dollars in residual checks.
Further reading: Are The Simpsons Conservative, Liberal or an Equal Opportunity Offender?
It seems Abe’s photographer was sweet on him, mistook friendliness for flirtation and stole a kiss. The photographer was let go because that’s what they did in the forties before gay people existed. To the tune of odd time signatured jazz in a flashback session we are transported to a magical time when ad agencies had bourbon dispensers and madmen admen slapped secretaries fannies and fired people for being gay.
Abe’s past has offered quite a few clues to a more fluid sexuality. He has had dreams where men fought duels at high noon over him. He spent some time in the 40s as a German cabaret singer, or at least in women’s clothing, “oh they had designers then.” Marge thought Abe was gay in the season 24 episode “Gorgeous Grampa,” but his feather boas and blonde wigs were just a costume for his wrestling character.
Further reading: The Simpsons Season 30 Episode 7 Review: Werking Mom
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The reunion goes very well. The photographer notes that Abe has aged well, like a fine onion, and is ready for a relationship. But it turns out the granite faced World War II veteran is as straight as Gomer Pyle, the gay pride of the Marines. This is a wonderfully subversive allusion. After 38 years together, Jim Nabors, the actor and singer who played Gomer Pyle, married his partner Stan Cadwallader in Seattle, one month after same-sex marriage became legal in Washington State.
It is good to see Abe Simpson admit and fight his homosexual panic, even as it confirms his heterosexual proclivities. You can’t teach an old dog new tricks, and if Abe turned, like Marge’s sister Patty Bouvier, it could have been too drastic a wrinkle to add to the old character. With Patty, you could tell she was a lesbian from space long before she realized it herself. Abe’s reactionary crankiness is too strongly embedded in the viewers’ consciousness. The Simpsons‘ “Mad About the Toy” plays too far to the inside and tries to have it both ways. Like Grampa’s stories it takes a very circuitous road, but goes nowhere, besides Texas and New York. Grampa gets the last word, but like many of his never-ending asides, it is too much rant but not enough rave. That’s what they used to say back in his day before raves were raves and Molly was just what you called a girl who went out with a gangster.
“Mad About the Toy” was directed by Bob Oliver, and written by Michael Price.
The Simpsons‘ “Mad About the Toy” aired Sunday, January 6 at 8:00 p.m. on Fox.
Bart’s Chalkboard: My new year’s resolution was to quit school.
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.
