R/R "Gone Maggie Gone" (LABF04)

[The Governor]

I wouldn't say it's lazy to say that, it's just realistic.

I don't know where this season 10 love is coming from, but S10 is worse than this season. Even nostalgia can't make that season seem favorable.

[Kiyosuki]

Hole in the Wall is directly based off of an old Japanese game show.. It was a semi popular around the internet for a while, and that's probably where they got the idea...but I was still pretty surprised they tried to make an American version of it.

[Nico32]

it's was funny I gave it a 4/5, but I would've given a 4.5 if there was that choice. the part where Homer was trying to figure otu how to get Santa's Little Helper, poison and Maggie across te river was hilarious.

[hughes]

GREAT episode, another winner from Season 20, I love the way they combined parody with an original story, and the ending with Bart--CLASSIC, IMO. In a season that's full of winners, I put this one head and shoulders above the pack, and the fact that it's only second best so far really speaks to how much I love "Dangerous Curves"

What else would you expect besides a 5/5, A+?

PS--this episode basically proves my theory that people only hate Ian Maxtone-Graham because of "Alone Again" and that interview he gave

[Sprocketeer]

Hole in the Wall is one of those game shows that I'd expect to find on Nickelodeon in the 90's.
Silly, silly Japanese.

PS--this episode basically proves my theory that people only hate Ian Maxtone-Graham because of "Alone Again" and that interview he gave

Personally, I felt most of his stuff from Scully and early Jean were crap, with many other swollen pimples like "Tennis the Menace" and "The Blunder Years". But I think he's been pretty good since "The Heartbroke Kid".

[Revolver]

I don't know where people are getting that the show was grounded in reality in season ten, but has moved away from that? Season 10 had a broken ship bouncing on springs flushed into the ocean, a vehicle collapsing on Homer allowing a doctor to steal his kidney, everyone in Springfield becoming happier as a result of Homer flooding Springfield for his art, etc. Not particularly realistic stuff, by any measure whether you liked it or not.

Personally, I thought this episode was pretty decent, and while wacky at times, made better use of it's wacky gags than "How the Test Was Won" which was basically just a bunch of reused gags and plots into in incoherent whole. The one was by no means a laugh riot, but at the very least it was clever and used it's mysteries to move the plot forward and keep you interested throughout. One of the better episodes of the season, in my opinion.

[Kang's Bastard Spore]

It's interesting that they're doing drama now. I was half expecting a joke by the end, though.

[Dave Shutton]

Nice to see the Warden again, to bad he wasn't voiced by Charles Napier like usual, that guy has a great voice. I guess hes to busy with Squidbillys......

[burnin']

Also masterful Mr Burns last night. The voice and facial looks were perfect.

[Nameless]

Finally, a couch gag that didn't take up a noticeable portion of the episode!!

I contribute that to a great deal of my enjoyment of the episode.

Thoroughly bizarre, moving at an almost unbelievable pace...I'm going to need to watch it at least two or three times more to give it an actual grade...B for now since I really did enjoy it.

[D'ohmer]

This was my most anticipated episode of the season. After watching it, I can say that it's better to not get your hopes up about an episode. Just kidding. I did not disappoint. This is my favorite episode of the season so far. The story is interesting and epic, the jokes are hilarious, and I didn't think any thing about this episode felt rushed. A

[Tamaki Suoh]

Also, what was with the Albino joke between Smithers and Burns? Maybe I'm missing something, but it seemed very random to me.

[sung]

Also, what was with the Albino joke between Smithers and Burns? Maybe I'm missing something, but it seemed very random to me.

sunscreen must be a subject here (since smithers responded that it was him just using too much sunscreen) but i don't know what it really relates to either...

[Godfrey]

Yeah, I'm not really sure that joke worked. My immediate thought was "How can you tell? THEY'RE ALL THE SAME SHADE OF YELLOW."

[hughes]

It was a reference to "The Davinci Code"

[Godfrey]

.........Oh.

Great. Wasn't a terribly obvious reference then, just sort of awkwardly done.

[lionelhutz123]

Hmm, I think I went into watching this episode the first time around with a poor attitude. It was alot better on rewatch, but it still had it's flaws. I'm raising my grade to a 3/5.

[Xt'Tapalatakettle]

It was a reference to "The Davinci Code"

What was the reference? I thought it had to do with Smithers being black in one episode, just like they referenced it in The Seemingly Never Ending Story.

I watched it again and I figured I'd give a more detailed review. I'm actually leaning towards giving this episode an 'A.' I laughed at things the second time that I didn't find comical the first time, which is a rarity nowadays.

My favorite parts:
The fast-paced plot
The puzzle solving aspect of the episode, particularly the first one with Homer (both before and after the commercial break)
Skinner's role (not wanting to get caught by mother AND not getting the solution)
Homer's hand pretending to be Maggie
Mr. Burns, the inspiration for the dollar bill, and the helicopter ride
"I want my baby back" by both Homer and Marge in different acts (nice touch)
Bart being offered up as the alternate gem child (predictable, but that's exactly what would have been done in any classic era episode)
The opening with the 8 ball (End of Days) and the solar eclipse animation

What I didn't like:
Marge "jazzing" it up with Bart as he impersonated Lisa (bleh)
The "Scram!" sign on the Church (meh)
Opening with Brockman (a bit long and forced, I missed the reference)


I'm always hesitant to give episodes an 'A', because that solidifies it as one of the best episodes in my mind. I will refrain from doing that, but after I watched it, I asked myself "what more could I ask for?"

[Universal Polymath]

What was the reference? I thought it had to do with Smithers being black in one episode, just like they referenced it in The Seemingly Never Ending Story.

In "The Da Vinci Code", one of the several antagonists of the story is Silas, an albino monk.

Bart being offered up as the alternate gem child (predictable, but that's exactly what would have been done in any classic era episode)

Yeah, I really like how they handled the ending, despite how predictable - and completely over the top - it is.

And the way they first reveal Bart there, when he pushes through the nuns with that smug look on his face, made me laugh really hard both times I've watched this episode, for some reason. It's such a little moment, but I find it so funny.

I also wanted to mention something else that I noticed during my rewatch - The music in this episode is absolutely beautiful, particularly during the "peace" segment when Maggie first takes the throne. It seems like they really went all out on this episode, from the writing and the animation all the way down to the music, and that aspect shouldn't be overlooked.

God, the more I think about this episode, the more I love it. And it's not that I just find it passable, because it was relatively decent, or somewhat "less horrible" than the rest of the season. I genuinely love it. It's the first time in a long time.

[Xt'Tapalatakettle]

God, the more I think about this episode, the more I love it. And it's not that I just find it passable, because it was relatively decent, or somewhat "less horrible" than the rest of the season. I genuinely love it. It's the first time in a long time.

Yeah, that's the exact feeling I have. Maybe I shouldn't be ashamed to have those feelings.

[Dave Shutton]

I just wish in the end that if had a more realistic conclusion. Not that Maggie somehow, from sitting on a thrown and letting a light shine on her, made peace. It was just alittle corny to me and didn't really make much sense. I would have rather had hte ruby be something inanimate like Lisa's necklace or something that had been handed down for generations or something along those lines.

[Mr. Krikt]

It wasn't a bad episode but it felt like if it were condensed down, it would be a Treehouse of Horror story.

Things I did like:

- Cletus

- Ratatouille joke
It was funny and didn't overstay its welcome.

- Hand puppet
Something about the way it "ate" tickled me.


Things I didn't like:

- Catholic nuns
We already had an episode where they played around with the stereotype. They didn't add anything amusing or fun to it.

- Ending
I know the episode was generally off-the-wall compared to others but it just doesn't fit into normal Simpsons at all.

- The Gem Child
I didn't like this idea. Not only did it feel out of place, it used the cliche of the secret being a person.

- Predictability
I found it took too many obvious turns, the ending again being one of them.


Wasn't great, wasn't terrible but it was pretty mediocre and may as well have been a different show.

Having looked at the writers, I'm not surprised any more. Neither of them appear to be able to write a normal episode.
Ian-Maxton-Graham hasn't written one with a standard format since season 16 and all of these have been written with Billy Kimball as well.

[Disgruntled Goat]

I really liked this episode. I'm still undecided about the ending, it felt too "unreal". It actually reminded me of the Simpsons Bible Stories ending. I haven't seen the Da Vinci Code or National Treasure so there's probably some extra stuff I'm not getting (which is good; it means the episode is probably better than I already think it is).

A few things made me lol:
- The "no entry" / "whatever, I'm not a cop" sign
- The scene with Homer dressing as a nun. When he mentioned it to Lisa it was obvious Lisa was going to be the undercover one, but having him change his mind and dress up was fun too.
- SLH swimming across the river. Nice twist on that old puzzle. (BTW anyone who likes that kind of puzzle should check out "Professor Layton" on the Nintendo DS, cool game.)

The timing in this episode was great. The jokes were fast paced and didn't drag out and become predictable, while the plot moved on steadily.
That also has to be the shortest couch gag for ages.

[TriforceBun]

What are other examples of this besides the "if you're happy" gag? I don't remember any from this episode or recent ones.

There weren't really a HUGE amount in this episode or anything, it's more of a culmination of weak religion gags from the past several seasons. I mentioned it earlier, but Bart's "He was like Jesus, only real" line was the type of really weak "zinger" that I'm talking about. Why would Bart even say that? He doesn't even like Martin, and I'm not sure what Jesus has to do with the situation at all. Additionally, it's almost 100% scientific fact that Jesus of Nazareth WAS a "real" person. A similar line would be "Good thing we believe in a carpenter that existed 2000 years ago." A little more clever and relevant, but still pretty heavy-handed and forced.

More frequent examples would be all the terrible uses of Ned Flanders over the past years. Oddly, when Flanders stars in an episode (in the Jean era), he's usually characterized really well (Home Away From Homer, Idiot Scrapes, A Star is Born-Again [debatably], No Loan Again Naturally), but when he's onscreen for a quick gag, it's almost always him being a religious zealot ("I'll be putting these pamphlets on your cars as to why you're going to hell" or something of that nature). Flanders should never get into the area of being judgemental--he's always been the Simpsons' devout Christian (sometimes to a silly degree) neighbor that is often too non-confrontational to disagree with Homer. Portraying him like a zealot is typical Jean exaggeration to the point where it feels like a potshot at organized religion more than anything. Lovejoy has gone from fairly competent yet conflicted (In Marge We Trust) to completely cynical ("This 2000-page sleeping pill," "That's Catholic, Marge, you might as well have me do a voodoo dance").

Anyway, I don't want this to get too long winded since it's already not especially on topic, but you get the idea.

Well, you pointed out that you had a problem with the line "God's busy making tornadoes or not existing". That's not harsh or rooted in misconception about organized religion...

I disagree--the line comes across to me as a sort of tongue-in-cheek comment that God is responsible for all sorts of bad things that happen, or that he doesn't exist. I think that IS pretty harsh.

I agree that the "if you're happy" gag was weak. The Family Guy "Jesus hates gay people"...well, personally, I know a lot of Christians who do believe that, or some thin variation such as "Jesus loves everyone, but doesn't love what they do" (something I really heard a Christian say once referring to homo/bisexuality). Maybe the Christianity you follow doesn't believe that or the people you know aren't like that, but the truth is that a lot of Christians (of course, not 100% of them at all, but a considerable amount) do believe a form of God hating homosexuals or homosexual behavior...

What a lot of non-Christians don't understand is that Jesus's teachings were all about loving one another, turning the other cheek, putting others before yourself, etc. People that hate gays, promiscuous people, etc. actually are going against many of the teachings of the Bible. Now this COULD make some good satire (people thinking that they're good Christians), but the way The Simpsons and Family Guy does it, it makes it sound like it's making fun of the entire faith rather than a few misguided people.

If you didn't like the satire just because it wasn't clever or funny, then I agree; it wasn't particularly good, and I agree that some of these topics of religious satire are just repetitive and dull now. But what I gathered from some people's posts was that they didn't like the satire because they thought it was too harsh on religion or that religion should be exempt from being criticized to a great degree on the show. In our media today, all types of people get bad reps from narrow-minded, hollow satirical portrayals, but that's modern satire for you...

A more balanced portrayal of people in media would be nice, but satire usually plays on the how the majority of a certain group acts, not the exceptions. I'm not saying this is right. I think media's portrayals of people can be detrimental to progress, actually, but of course satire can be meritorious to progress too...if it illuminates real problems associated with different ways of thinking and opens minds, while also providing for the fact that the satire is based on the majority and not the entire collection of certain groups. I also don't really think the show is satirizing Christianity to be "cool", since the majority of people in America are Christian; if they're using the show as a mouthpiece for their views--which may differ from the majority of society--, that's fine too...as long as it's funny and rooted in reality, which this episode was not particularly strong at accomplishing.

It's just kind of annoying to see Christianity singled out (and sometimes certain branches of it in particular, like last week's Baptist line), but never see the show make fun of, say, Buddhists or Mormons or Atheists or Muslims or the Jewish. Would that be politically incorrect? Not any moreso than Christianity jokes--either it's all okay, or none of it is.

[Mr Johannson]

Lisa seemed to figure things out pretty quickly. "It must be an anagram!". "I'll just read every second word!". How did she come to these conclusions? Marges scatting was annoying. The Gemchild thing was weird, I didn't care for it at all, though the ending with Bart was amusing. Homer's puzzle was fun. The Ed Begley Jr joke was funny too, as was the Tex Avery cartoon.

A somewhat bizarre but amusing episode.
3/5

[TriforceBun]

I'm not sure if I agree with the comments that Lisa should've taken more time to figure out the puzzles. She was incorrect in about half of them, despite typically knowing what type of code they were in. I guess to be more realistic, they could've had her thinking aloud for longer periods of time, but that doesn't sound too entertaining to watch (and this episode had a lot already squeezed in, time-wise).

[Fox Executive]

I finally watched this one and I really liked it. The ending was a little weird, though, but that doesn't hurt the brilliance of the episode. The anagrams were great, I wonder how much time it took for the writers to come up with that. Another great joke was the sign in fromt of the tower of the church. I'm glad that the "Ratatooey"-subplot wasn't stretched to a real subplot, that would've been boring. Overall by far the best episode of the season for me. A- and/or 4.5/5.

[Mindy Simmons]

I've really enjoyed all of the newest (HD) episodes, and this one is no exception. In fact, the whole season, from what I've seen, has been great. Unlike the dark, death-obsessed season 19 (which I also liked) this season has been very fun and freewheeling. It kind of reminds me of the earliest Simpsons episodes.

One of the best episodes in a while. 5/5

Why did I bring the baby and the dog to the poison store?

[sung]

I'm not sure if I agree with the comments that Lisa should've taken more time to figure out the puzzles. She was incorrect in about half of them, despite typically knowing what type of code they were in.

the problem is that lisa seemed to know what she had to do when faced with problem in an instant she saw it just too easily; nothing really wrong but really detriment in terms of setting up the tone/atmosphere for the genre of the episode like this. like what mr. johannson said, those assumptions that lisa got right every time she guessed (which is possible but do every acclaimed pop culture materials really let the characters get on the roll of automatically assuming that particular type of problem is always solved by one type of solving? i mean, i'm sure if the arranged words are always solved by reading every other words like how lisa assumed in the first place, there is no reason the other priestess couldn't get it right unless if she had no commitment whatsoever)

let's take an episode that dealt with solving a mystery... 'who shot mr. burns part II'. yeah, it is possible could get right on maggie being the shooter in one clever assumption, but that would not be good in terms of mystery writing (and considering the bumbling of wiggum's character) the brilliance of the mystery solving aspect of the episode comes with the plot itself lingering with sevearl aspects being clarified (skinner disguising as woman in the bathroom, tito fuente writing a song, smithers actually having shot jasper, etc.... yes, gone maggie gone did have its plot linger on mystery-solving aspect but the scenes of the tasks didn't, what percieved the plot to be lingering on solving the mystery in last week's episode is that there were many tasks to solve for lisa to advance while the cops in 'who shot mr. burns part ii' took a lot of time to consider only one goal, mainly because the setting up of the climax and the variables were very well prepared to be solved) while the horizon for the real answer seems to be in further distance, therefore putting more interest and tension as the time goes for the real answer. when the big clue came to chief wiggum in his dream, the episode was like in what, half done? with finding of one ultimate solution, 'who shot mr. burns part ii' spent the entire episode... without including anything that built the climax for the entire crime or anything (which was done in 'who shot mr. burns part i') i wanted a lot of details on the mystery itself for the sake of the vividness and cohesiveness of the episode itself, which is another reason why this could've worked better in two-parter. i do give credit for writers to put some struggle for lisa to find out about several aspects of the message (the ring, the message) though, but overall, it was poor imo.

... or if the writers wanted to illustrate on how lisa was quick on getting into conclusions of the tasks, they could've put some background of her sherlock-like intelligence in the earlier part of the episode. i know she is a smart person, but for the context of the episode itself, they could've really used it.

how about another comparison... in 'krusty gets busted', yeah it seems that lisa does make very good assumptions to draw the objects to theorize that krusty was innocent. similar to this episode? yeah maybe, but the big cheese here is that lisa's hypothesizing was based on what was subtly shown before ("krusty" screaming after homer stepping on his foot, the pacer not being able to get near to microwave, etc.), which makes it more understandable to see why these are tools of solving the mystery. how about in 'gone maggie gone'? other than the new task being solved by latin translation, reading the every other word, anagram, there are no elements of surprises, there's no subtlety, it's like "here, lisa's solving this like this so just watch it happen"

6/21/09 edit: so... no argument with what i wrote hmmmm?

[CousinMerl]

It was a very good episode but still not the best of the season. The start and the first act was very good and the Ratatouille parody was great, but as the episode progressed it fell together a little but that still didn't detract from the viewing experience or make this a bad episode. The solar eclipse animation was very nice; that shot in space reminded me of something from Futurama and liked the hand puppet scene with Marge feeding "Maggie" and the involvement of the secondary characters. I must also admit that it was a little surprise for me to see Burns and Smithers appearing the near the end, their part in the episode didn't feel forced and that was good. The mystery plot itself was good and the moment when it's revealed that Maggie was the gem was quite clichéd. The ending with Bart literally raising hell, as wacky as it was, was a good one.

4/5