Rate/Review: Chief of Hearts (MABF09)

[Friz]

"While completing his court-ordered community service, Homer offers Chief Clancy Wiggum a sandwich. Wiggum is touched by the offer, and the two become instant friends. Meanwhile, Bart becomes addicted to a Japanese game called Battle Ball."

Rate and review away.

I thought it was horrid. Just one unfunny joke after another. Marge searching for drugs was pretty interesting, if it didn't turn out to be so notoriously bland.

[The Wiggs]

We don't need 2 R/R threads without polls. Why did you make another Rate/Review thread man?

[Friz]

We don't need 2 R/R threads without polls. Why did you make another Rate/Review thread man?

I clearly have a poll in mine.

Also, mine's spelt correctly.

[WBadger]

hey man what makes hearts superior to the other suits?

[Nauru-1]

My prediction? A-story has its moments but ultimately suffers from flow problems and with a variety of a lazy story twists. B-story is neither offensive nor all that interesting, with no real resolution to speak of.

Well, my gut feeling was pretty much my resulting opinion on this episode. Then again, that pattern seems to be a running trend this season.

The Bart/Marge story didn't do much for me. The party opening wasn't particular funny and just kind of killed time to set the stage for the game Barts begins to like. Was the Martin/Skinner/Otto really necessary to set up the conflict even? Marge could have easily just overheard the conversation between Bart and Milhouse. Also, I'm starting to get annoyed by how the subplots are consistently unresolved. It's not there isn't any kind of ending, there just doesn't seem to be enough there the way they leave it. In this one Bart just quits his interest because Marge likes it? Not that original or interesting.

Then there's the story with Homer and Wiggum. A few irritating jokes set the stage for Homer's community service, where he befreinds Wiggum. I don't know if it was just me, but I didn't find the start of the friendship to be all that well portrayed. Wiggum wants a sandwich, basically. I did enjoy Wiggum's awkwardness with making a friend but the impact of it was hurt by some lame dialogue.

After this we have the friendship continuing with Homer and Wiggum spending loads of time with each other. Homer being able to benefit from befriending the chief of police had a lot of comedic potential, but when was the last time they were able to tap deeply into any basin of humour for more than a few moments? And although I could see it coming, the end of act of act three with a shot Wiggum was a moment I kind of like.

Next we have Wiggum in a critical state. The montage was probably my favourite part of the episode both with the absurd card game Homer was playing and how he knocks an unconscious Wiggum off his bed (slapstick with dead or seriously hurt people are cheap laughs, but I'll take 'em in this capacity). Wiggum and the story doesn't really know where it wants to go once again. The friendship souring is inevitable in a story like this but I didn't find the conflict all that interesting.

Which brings us back to the mafia, who have now kidnapped Homer and Wiggum. I can accept ridiculous ways of getting out of trouble at times, but this resolution didn't have the comedy to support any abstract kind of escape they were trying to portray. Unlike the subplot, the A-story was at least tied up competently. Although I didn't think it was all that funny, this was the closest they got to really exploiting Wiggum's position in an entertaining way. It felt complete didn't leave me with a particularly sour impression, which I guess is a positive for today's standards.

Lots of Wiggum and Homer for people who were hoping to see a lot of screentime for their friendship. It wasn't awful, but a typical barrage of weak jokes and nothing particularly standout stop the episode from being anything more than a season 21-esque episode. 2/5 (D)

[EthanRunt]

The A story could have been funny, entertaining, but Clancy was dull, homer uninteresting, and why was Sarah so anti-Clancy on the phone?

Also, the judgement of Bart on drugs, dumb and annoying, why bother?

[Snaked]

Ah well, at least the parody to Bakugan wasn't a crappy lampoon like (shudders) Mypods and the Funtendo Zii in the sense it's name wasn't shitty like calling it "Bakumon". Also, just to hear Digimon mentioned for the first time ever in the series was preety cool. If only Herman had some dialogue, though....

3.5-4/5

[The Wiggs]

I really, really enjoyed this episode. No joke dragged on too long. I felt that a real connection was established between Chief Wiggum and Homer. This was also a very funny episode. I thought that the village in the Ukraine making Wiggum's underwear was really funny. I'm glad that there was the drug aspect to the battleball thing. It made it way more entertaining and interesting. My only complaints are that I would've liked to have seen more of Lisa and Chief Wiggum's voice sounded a little off at times. However, this is my new favorite of the season. I might be a little biased because I'm a big Wiggum fan, but I'm giving this a 4/5.

[zitro]

I'd rate this 2/5. Am I the only one, or is it embarrassing that they make the Homer&Chief friendship like a teenage couple dating? with Wiggum being all shy as if he was dating Homer? with that particular music? etc. I know they played this joke with Seinfeld (Jerry and Keith Hernandez) but that managed to be funny.

Bart's subplot was ok even tho I haven't heard of that game. The animators usually do a good job this season and the robots in the game were pretty creative. There wasn't much humor and Marge thinking they're doing drugs was too hard to believe (and was similar to Homer thinking the muslim neighbor was a terrorist).

Humor/story again was rather bland tho this time they didn't attempt to make too many jokes. There were a few very good jokes like Homer's "this must be what it feels like to be pregnant" and playing a prank on Flanders.

.

[Guy Haines]

I liked the set up for the Bart plot, wasn't to bad, and pretty funny. Whilst the set up for Homer's plot was rather lackluster, and kinda stupid, but they got it over with quick. The Homer/Wiggum stuff turned out pretty nice, not too forced. The end of the first act was actually pretty good, my favorite joke being Homer's lunch.

The Second act started off rather meh. Nothing too interesting happened, the moe joke was funny as well. Not many jokes fell flat. The Bart subplot where they think he's dealing drugs was just stupid. The Wiggum/Homer friendship developed quite well, without being rushed. My only problem with it was that the plot, up until where Wiggum was shot had no real conflict.

The third act was average, with nothing too funny or unfunny. Wiggum's childish behavior didn't hold too much interest. It just felt bland. I don't have any real complaint with this episode, it just felt like it was missing something. It's pretty forgetable, the A story and the B story came to a predictable end. Not bad, not good. Just meh, 3/5.

[hughes]

It was pretty good. Most of the jokes worked, and I liked the subplot (first Otto appearance of the season, if I'm not mistaken). Homer begging to get out of community service was pretty good, as were quite a few of the jokes with Wiggum. The end with Flanders was a good way to tie up the episode. Wiggum's voice sounded a little off at the beginning, but not enough to really be a distraction.

One thing I wish they'd sort of followed up on...in the beginning when Clancy was on the phone with Sarah, I really got the impression she was cheating on him. Even though I liked the subplot, I think it could have been moved to a different episode, and something could have developed with that. But hey, that's just my mind creating scenarios that didn't happen, I might as well just enjoy what we had. 13/15

[The Wiggs]

I clearly have a poll in mine.

Also, mine's spelt correctly.

Fair enough but you didn't have a poll when I posted that.

[arii]

I enjoyed it, though it had a pretty terrible start. The birthday party bits were awful and Homer and Wiggum becoming friends didn't really-- Does listing off different kinds of parms honestly make anybody laugh? That said, though, I actually didn't mind the bit with Homer at the bank. It was absurd and incredibly quick. It worked for what it was basically meant to do and had a really great tone to it. Likewise, Homer and Wiggum lying on a park bench gazing up at clouds together was a great image.

Wiggum can't really do much wrong as far as I'm concerned when the focus is on him. Great character and he and Homer have so much in common already, it makes sense that they'd be able to hit it off, and I enjoyed a lot of their scenes together. Something that didn't really work out too well was Wiggum being overly-dependent on Homer for companionship, though. We did get a line about how it's hard for cops to make friends but there wasn't much there and despite Wiggum's line about other cops, apparently that wasn't a problem with Lou, and the scene with Wiggum waking up and Lou coming out to greet him wasn't so much funny as awkward, and not really in a comedic way. We don't see too much of Lou but he's a likeable character, intelligent, does his job, has a soothing voice. Making him the butt of such jokes honestly doesn't really work.

That said though, seriously, the Homer/Wiggum scenes were well-done. A little on the gay side - and I suppose that's comedy now? It's cheap regardless, and I'd much prefer witty dialogue over pseudo-innuendo - but well-done, until Wiggum got over-sensitive. Homer was, surprisingly, pretty blameless in this one, except for being the cause for Wiggum getting shot (which was a very nicely played out scene, for the record, with the reveal that Wiggum wasn't wearing his bullet proof vest. Good comedic timing, good direction to switch it to dramatic. Honestly, that was a brilliant sequence). And when the two of them were trapped in a trunk together, they really did seem like friends again, too. So... solid. And it ended on a great note.

As for the subplot... eh, it killed time. It had a pretty non-ending but I'm actually a fan of those and the pace of the final scene worked for me so no real objections there, and I'm not going to fault something for being true-to-life (it's a fucking parody of random Japanese games that kids here get obsessed with for some reason, you were expecting originality? Really?), which this was. It did seem rather pointless though... Bart is 10... Way to have faith in your kid by suspecting him to be involved with drugs... when he's 10. And does anybody but the writers honestly think that lines like "WELL I'LL JUST LISTEN SOME MORE, TO GAIN CONTEXT" are funny? Seriously? It's clunky, unrealistic, and incredibly fucking stupid. This could have been much worse, and it broke up the Homer/Wiggum parts nicely enough, but these are 10-year-old kids, please, let's just think for a moment here. I do prefer this sort of idea to "Bart gets overly-obsessed and needs an intervention!", but that doesn't automatically make this plot idea any more awesome; it would have been over within a minute if anyone had actually directly asked Bart anything. Eh.

Still, though, this one was just fun to watch. Loved both Homer and Wiggum in it, their interactions were great, and the episode, amazingly enough, didn't feel really rushed or anything. So. Fairly awesome.

[theinfamouselbarto]

I really enjoyed this episode. Funny and touching. 4/5

[blueguy]

Pretty bad overall. I think the only joke I liked was Wiggum saying he'd be asleep in front of the fridge. That was offset by a lot of jokes that just didn't work, and too many groaners.

[The Governor]

Eh, nothing too terrible or outstanding. 2.5/5

Longer review later...

[Dave Shutton]

meh

[The Wiggs]

I didn't see the opening. Does anyone know what the chalkboard and bilboards gags were? (I saw the couch gag)

[hughes]

Billboard: picture of Burns with the caption "Death and Taxes: Two things I avoid"

Chalkboard: "The counts as art and gym"

[SimpsonArgentina]

Lisa didn´t say anything in the episode...