Rate and Review: "The D'oh-cial Network" (PABF04)

[zartok-35]

Make Milhouse the Zuckerberg counterpart and have Lisa serve as somewhat of an Eduardo/Erica combo - let Milhouse's obsession over SpringFace's success consume him as he loses the only thing in his life that ultimately matters (Lisa).

I wonder if Brian Kelley would have written it that way. He usually does a good job of staying true to the plot elements in a movie parody, even if his shows are terrible.

[jayleno]

Interesting how that completely unrelated Halloween-esque skit tacked on at the end of this episode was better than probably the last 5 THOHs combined.

Doesn't make up for the rest of the jumble of WTF that this episode was, though.

[THUG LIFE]

WHAT THE ?!
This episode was very good and very true !!!
Websites like Facebook and twitter had a big impact on our lives
Looks like so many of you guys didn't understand the meaning of this episode

[Handsome B. Wonderful]

Still wondering why they weren't named Macebook and Mitter.

[Tubbb!]

Still wondering why they weren't named Macebook and Mitter.

We don't often agree... but I'll admit that was funny!

[Veganpunk]

Vegan, watching The Simpson's in a bar is a very strange thing to do.

It used to be the norm back in the day. The only reason it was on was because of the football game.

[jonnymack]

I kinda liked the Edward Gorey homage at the end. Everything else was tedious and hackneyed. And South Park did it first. And better.

[alex_on_ice]

Wow Season 23 is turning out to be pretty bad (IMO)! This episode went all over the place.

The first seven minutes of the episode at the mall had nothing to do with the movie The Social Network (and a lot of the scenes in the first seven minutes were boring, bland and useless). I don't know ; but when a show announces to their fans that they will be making an episode that is going to reference the movie called The Social Network and they don't have anything that is similar to the movie and to a larger extent to facebook for almost half of the entire twenty minutes : something is wrong with the script. I find it's almost insulting in a way. I mean, the writers even make sure they come up with a title that is similar to the title of the movie they're trying to parody and yet not even 50% of the episode has to do with Facebook.

I laughed quite a bit throughout this episode (and there were some good jokes) but jokes can't catch up a script and a storyline that's going all over the place! What the fuck was that mini-ending in black and white at the end of the episode with Milhouse and Bart! It was completely out of context and it brilliantly wasted about 2 to 3 minutes of precious episode time.

They have to cut back on all the modern references that they're making these days. It ruins the show! I've heard enough about Facebook, Twitter and especially Apple. The writers need to be a little more creative and realize that even in todays world there is something else to life other than Facebook, Twitter and Apple. I want a story that makes sense for once (one that makes sense for twenty minutes).

Season 23 will most probably turn out to be the worst season in my books if it doesn't change courses pretty darn soon. There have been a whole bunch of junky, crappy episodes in this season and the only episodes I have truely enjoyed so far have been : The Book Job, Holidays Of Future Passed, Replaceable You and The Food Wife to a lesser extent. The other seven episodes are not just average episodes, they're downright horrible.

I'll be VERY nice and give this a 8/20.

[altoids30]

I always rely on the DVR recording so I can watch it later. I'm usually out shopping on Sunday nights.

Thank you NFL for f!cking things up. I hate sports.

[That Don Guy]

Another thing:

What was with Marge getting rid of the "Burns & Noble" gift card? Shouldn't have that been something like "Hoarder's Books" instead?

[Rich Uncle Skeleton]

I guess I'm one of the only ones who'd give this a 3/5.

[Boris Johnson]

Hey can anyone tell me, from the UK, where the hell I can watch this???
Because I recorded all the simpsons in the sky planner but they didn't aire the episode, neither today nor yesterday.

[Blobulle]

Unfunny episode but good plot.
The end was so weird. 2.5/5 rounded up to 3/5

[THUG LIFE]

The rating for this episode is 6.8 lol
and family guy 4.4

[Drunk Barney]

I hate to say it, but that was one of the worst Simpsons episodes I've ever seen. I saw that it was a J. Stewert Burns episode and thought after his amazing track record it would be good. So where do I start?

Well, the couch gag summed up this episode nicely. Highly drawn out and unfunny. The first 7-10 minutes were utterly irrelevant time wasting, with the terrible car joke scene, which Marge laughs at. Why? That's not her character. We then have some stupid Lenny jokes (why not, they've clearly got time!). Finally when the plot does get going the idea is solid. In fact, it's a great concept. But, how long was the main plot? 7 minutes? Shocking. We then had more bad characterizations from Bart. Bart isn't a bully and wouldn't beat Martin up. That said, the conundrum joke was good as too was the scene with 'delete, delete' and the scene with Grampa and Homer. The Patty and Selma subplot, if you could call it that was pretty poor and then of course to sum up the episode they had enough time (apparently) to throw in the unfunny Milhouse/Bart scene at the end.

All in all, this was possibly the worst episode that I have ever seen and I'm not just saying that. I always thought most Al Jean episodes (in S13-S18 - I haven't watched much since then) have been worthy of 3 or usually 4/5. Occasionally 5/5. This wasn't even worthy of a 2/5. The idea was there, but there was no where near enough time for it to develop and what we had of the 7 minutes or so featured mainly mediocre jokes and poor characterizations (Lisa was OK I suppose). And this was the best part of the episode. So sad, if these sort of episodes persist, give me Mike Scully anyday.

So, overall a few good jokes occured once the plot arrived and Lisa's characterization was good. Other than that, this episode was dire. D 1.5/5.

[Zombies Rise from the Sea]

It says "Global HD" in the bottom corner so it's not Fox, so I'm not sure where this copy comes from. Probably some global internet distribution company.

It comes from Canada. Global is a Television Network that airs most of the shows from Fox and NBC; owning most of it's stations such as CIII-DT and CHAN-DT and as the norm with all TV networks, being owned by a company which provides cable, which is seemingly ironic seeing as how only one TV network (NBC) is owned by a cable company.

[Toomanygrandmas]

A confused mess of an episode. There was little plot, and there was so much unecessary filler. I'm not grading it in the poll as of yet, as I'm torn between a 2/5 and a 1/5. Longer review will be up later.... sometime.....eventually.

[Boris Johnson]

My goodness, where to begin? I have a lot to say about this having just finished it.

Well, the problem that's plaguing this season currently and especially this episode is that there are just too many jokes. Yes, too many.

And the problem is that that are loads and loads of different scenes (the director is obviously on some sort of stimulant) and loads and loads of jokes, but they do not cohere, as in they do not link together so I can say, "Hey, I liked 'so and so' scene a lot because of this really funny joke...".

They do not focus the audience's energy and attention into one single joke like they did in classic era Simpsons, that's the problem. This causes the audience to find the episode un-memorable.

And the jokes that are there are, well... dry and boring. That is, if you even understand them - in older episodes they would not extend references over a full episode. And they always seem cheeky, but not in a funny way, in an incredibly obvious way. It's like a comedian who keeps having to explain the joke to you every time he tells one.

I did laugh a few times e.g "Groundskeeper Willie was not in this episode.", but even those jokes are out of place and not given timing for effect. It's like a headache, watching them roll out joke after joke every flippin' second.

What about the story? Well, because I don't use Facebook, I didn't understand a lot of the jokes in this episode. That's a severe flaw. The Simpsons appeals to all 7,000,000,000 people in the world, not 250,000,000 specific people. The producers are just being childish and immature when they demand the episode to be centred around a topic that not everyone knows about. You're leaving out the rest of the 6,750,000,000 people that might watch. Hm, if they all had TVs. But whatever.

The story is basically depressing and nonsensical. Are the people of Springfield so dumb that they all go on the mapple-phones every bloody minute, even in the FRIGGIN' car? Hm, that makes sense. That's good plotting. Well done, well done, kudos to the lame-brained idiots who didn't know how to end a story which was doomed from the start.

Although I give a very teething review here, it was actually bearable... And kind of offbeat. If you keep it as a background and not focus too much on it it's not bad...Like watching a very bad Scully episode.

3 OUT OF 5 J STEWART BURNS' BRAIN

[That Don Guy]

The rating for this episode is 6.8 lol
and family guy 4.4

Don't celebrate just yet - I wonder how much of the 6.8 was from the overflow from the football game (when people stuck with Fox rather than switching to something that started 15 minutes earlier), and how much of a hit Family Guy took when people tuned in at 9 and got the middle of a Napoleon Dynamite episode.

[biffwestwood]

Another thing:

What was with Marge getting rid of the "Burns & Noble" gift card? Shouldn't have that been something like "Hoarder's Books" instead?

I agree with that one especially since she also threw away a card that said "Cropduster Video" when a pun on Hollywood Video such as "Hollyrock Video" would've been a more logical choice since Blockbuster Video is not out of business yet but still on its last legs.

[cloneasaurus]

What a strange strange episode.

• Firstly, the couch gag - too long but I've seen worse. Still, completely unnecessary considering the potential of the story. Also - season 5 anyone?
  
• I actually laughed at the McBain bit. "Reptile dysfunction" was so bad it was good
• I didn't mind the story being retold from a courtroom. What I did mind is the time this episode wasted; Lenny in the doll shop, alcoholic hippo, Ask Jeeves, Jimbo and Bart, Nelson in the computer room - all jokes that went on way too long and were incredibly unfunny
• The family walking around the shopping district wasn't too bad a set up but it felt long in comparison to the rest of the story which felt about 10 minutes long
• The idea of the town descending in to chaos because of the website was completely ridiculous and made it hard to really respect the plot in any way
• Lisa characterisation was okay... but they did barely anything to advance the "Lisa has no friends" part of the plot, instead we get Lisa repeating "I have no friends" over and over again. Also the marco polo bit came out of nowhere even if it was an okay ending note
• Didn't like the Dark Stanley ending cartoon, nice animation but so pointless and why was Sideshow Mel/Vincent Price narrating? okay technically it's not pointless because it was obvious time filler, but c'mon, they could at least give us something funny. What ever happened to "The Adventures of Ned Flanders"?

It just saddens me that the show these days puts out shows like this. I mean, there was genuine potential here. "Summer of 4'2" rehash perhaps, but still loads of potential. Instead we get unfunny gag after unfunny gag instead of a well developed story...

I'd give it a D (3/10), slightly better than Politically Inept but still a shoddy episode. Generous 2 in the poll because I disliked it but didn't hate it (unlike Politically Inept).

[MagicalManFromHappyLand]

The Simpsons appeals to all 7,000,000,000 people in the world, not 250,000,000 specific people. The producers are just being childish and immature when they demand the episode to be centred around a topic that not everyone knows about. You're leaving out the rest of the 6,750,000,000 people that might watch. Hm, if they all had TVs. But whatever.

It's hardly as if Facebook is an obscure reference if 10% of the worlds population use it, they've had much more obscure plots before (most of them being recent episodes but still).

I can't believe that they could only think of 10 minutes worth of plot for the social network spoof, the main plot wasn't half bad but the rest of it was awful.

2/5 Too much filler

[Swoony]

It's not like you have to use facebook to get facebook related jokes. Unless you've been living in a hole facebook is fairly well known around the world.

[Boris Johnson]

I still think it's a bit dumb for the whole plot to be based around a social network.
Even if 10% of people in the world use it :P

Edit: 10%? My original figure must be inaccurate

[MagicalManFromHappyLand]

I don't think it matters if 10% of the world use Facebook now, give it 5 years and this episode will be irrelevant and dated.

[Swoony]

I'm not a big fan of any pop culture driven plots on any show so i'm predicting that I won't be the biggest fan of this one (I hated the Futurama episode "Attack of the Killer App" for the same reason). It's just lazy to me when they use what's popular at the time heavily in any show as opposed to actually connecting to the viewer and writing a plot the involves family conflict or more relatable topics like they often did in the first 8 or so seasons. After all everyone can relate to everday struggles, but facebook isn't nearly as universal (nor does everyone like it. I know I don't).

[Dark Homer]

Not sure if we're allowed to post these here, but here's the ep:

nope

[Homer the Vigilante]

nope

Why not? It's totally gay that we can't do dat!

[Financial Panther]

...How old are you?

[Dark Homer]

Why not? It's totally gay that we can't do dat!

because it's quasi-illegal and could get the board in trouble you homophobe