This The Simpsons review contains spoilers.
The Simpsons: Season 30 Episode 5
Further reading: The Simpsons Season 30 Episode 2 Review: Heartbreak Hotel
Further reading: The Simpsons Season 30 Episode 3 Review: My Way or the Highway to Heaven
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Smithers is very impressive tonight. Early in the episode, he at his passively aggressive sycophantic best. He informs Mr. Burns the new CarGo company has a progressive policy about the LGBT community, which the nuclear plant owner translates as Lazy goof-off baboons and transgendered. But the long-suffering, love-addled aide also turns out to be a tech wizard. He figures out how to shut down all the cars by hacking into the car’s computers and cab hacks everywhere rejoice.
Further reading: The Simpsons Season 30 Episode 4 Review: Treehouse Of Horror XXIX
Burns is bested and at his best. He sees the genius in his rival corporation’s plans. He knows he can’t beat them. It would come at a cost and Burns hasn’t met a cost he hasn’t passed off to some unwitting victim. But here, even he admits he is the lesser of two evils.
“Baby You Can’t Drive My Car” is a very good episode, maybe the closest to a classic The Simpsons have offered in a long time. It is purely episodic. The subtle tweaks at the ruling class are timely, and the struggles at the center of it are universal. It’s all about jobs. It’s the economy, stupid. “Baby You Can’t Drive My Car” works specifically because the workplace is what we all have in common. Left, right and center, we all line up to earn a paycheck. We all want the perfect job. Many people have to drive to work, so we want the perfect car. Whether we like smoothies or not, we could all agree it would be fun to be able to make them while driving. In a driverless car society, the only thing to worry about is real drivers. This reviewer would like to know what the DWI laws will be, because a lot of cars ride on ethanol and, having drunk ethanol on the advice of Moe the bartender, it can be quite impairing.
“Baby You Can’t Drive My Car” was written by Rob LaZebnik and directed by Timothy Bailey.
The Simpsons‘ “Baby You Can’t Drive My Car” aired Sunday, November 4 at 8:00 p.m. on Fox.
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.
