This The Simpsons review contains spoilers.
The Simpsons Season 31 Episode 6
The Simpsons, season 31, episode 6, “Marge the Lumberjill,” doesn’t quite cut it. And it should. It has enough buzz saws and chain saws for a dozen massacres in Texas, but only prunes artisanal marijuana in Oregon. The promises of the premises are left at the door mat before there are any indents on the couch.
When The Simpsons softened their animation they cut the edges off their most effective humor. Here they have a chance to skewer extreme cases of the breaks in community ideals and they merely tweak them. The Simpsons are not showing the proper disrespect ideals need to face in order to prove their worth in Springfield, and especially not Timbersports, a glorified hobby. The episode only gives passing ecological commentary, Lisa is only a Lorax for a little while, speaking for the trees while Exxon Mobil is writing textbooks on global warming for the school. The episode has the forest gumption to mention it, as Marge hacks her way through the forest of an alternative lifestyle.
Marge is a very strong character, whose strengths lie in her marginalization, which may very well be why she’s got that name. In her school play, Lisa paints her mother accurately, and the world yawns. Marge is solid and steady. So solid she’s been a cop, held an extortive stranglehold on local pretzel snacks. She is so steady she ran an erotic bakery and served Mr. Burns a three-eyed fish when he was running for office. She fought for better television and took responsibility when there was nothing to watch. Her passive aggression moves mountains in Springfield.
Marge forgets her past and allows the community to dictate her self-worth in terms of the social pecking order. She’s not as exciting as videogame hacks and YouTube series breakdowns, but at least she perks up a good pot of coffee. Marge has shown her super-strengths a few times, and here she puts it to use chopping down trees with a gay prize winner her sister introduced her to. The pair bond over the competitive spirit and all the grunting and puffing that goes with it.
Jill Sobule, who wrote the song “I Kissed a Girl” which wasn’t Katy Perry’s, provides the episode’s theme song, which is of a narrative tree-kissing variety. She doesn’t bring enough vroom to the episode. “Marge the Lumberjill” is tepid. It treads too lightly on the tension of sexual orientation and doesn’t go far enough into the peril of the marriage to pull off any real suspense. Everything turns out “okay,” as Marge accepts as she agrees to go home. Which is what the episode is. Too many short cuts in a stump which could have been gutted to a pulp. The Simpsons are playing it too safe in a kind of teasing reverence to shake anything but leaves.
Chalkboard: Daylight savings isn’t something I can spend.
“Marge the Lumberjill” was written by Ryan Koh, and directed by Rob Oliver.
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The Simpsons episode “Marge the Lumberjill” aired Sunday, Nov. 10, on Fox.
Keep up with The Simpsons Season 31 news and reivews here.
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.
