I'm surprised this episode seems to be getting such poor reviews; I enjoyed it, personally.
let's address the main elephant in the room: this was a marriage crisis plot, the simpsons fandom's most hated of all plots. it's always a bit disappointing to see a marriage crisis episode in more recent seasons, especially since a relatively common praise of "renaissance simpsons" is that they seemingly started backing down from these plots, such as in episodes like "pixelated and afraid." this isn't even the first marriage crisis of this season, with "ae bonny romance" also being one.
however, this wasn't a dealbreaker for Me. I don't know how to describe it, but the episode didn't "feel" like a marriage crisis, perhaps because of the focus on marge's guilt, rather than just her resentment towards homer.
I've seen some criticisms that marge's reason for getting upset with him in the first place was petty. while the baseball thing was absolutely strange, she had no way of knowing that moe jammed his phone's signal; to her, it just seemed like homer was ignoring her in an already stressful situation. it makes perfect sense that that irritated her.
however, I think the episode did a poor job of driving home that homer was being unappreciative. while there were definitely signs (E.G. him throwing his pants at marge, rather than directly giving them to her or--better yet--making amends beforehand), he was mostly just chilling in his sweatpants. (also a quick note on the "pants" part of the episode: too many fat jokes. I long for the day that the simpsons no longer relies on fat jokes)
the song about him being a horrible, callous husband came out of nowhere. he absolutely neglects her (and the rest of his family) emotionally, but this episode did next to nothing to make us see homer as a bad person; although the show rarely ever sets you up to totally root against homer, other episodes have done a much better job of showing the viewers homer's toxic behavior from other characters' perspectives.
the fact that it was a "mr. grinch" parody was especially odd: it's not a christmas episode, there were no other grinch references, why is this happening? while they absolutely can and have referenced things without prompting on thousands of occasions, it didn't feel organic. compare it to the grinch reference in "last exit to springfield," which wasn't at all confusing for the context.
I have mixed feelings about the ending. on the one hand, it was very touching when I first watched it; but on the other hand, when I think about it critically, it felt rushed. like they wanted the episode to end on a gentle note, but didn't have the time to build up to it. homer just found the ring that marge left out, got angry for a moment, then suddenly found several reminders of her love for him (why did she get them baseball tickets, anyway? wouldn't he need to make up for that?).
I'm a sucker for homarge, so I liked it, but it doesn't make much sense. it's like cotton candy: sweet without any real substance.
speaking of being a sucker for things, this was only a very minor moment, but I appreciated the scene with burns and smithers. it clearly only existed to move the plot along, but it was fun. I was sort of waiting for the inevitable barbie movie/oppenheimer reference, and they pulled through. smithers' pink hair was very cute, in My opinion
I give it a 2/5. it was enjoyable, but from a critical perspective, it was very contrived. this is one of those episodes where I feel My enjoyment is rooted in My autistic special interest in the series, rather than any objective high quality.
