This The Simpsons review contains spoilers.
The Simpsons Season 32 Episode 16
The Simpsons Season 32, episode 16, ” Manger Things,” is the 700th installment of the series. That’s more episodes than Rocky and Bullwinkle and Gunsmoke put together. To celebrate, they are gifting us with a second holiday episode. This one is a Christmas story of failing and redemption, like every other yuletide tale. It stars the Simpsons’ neighborinos, Ned and Maude Flanders.
As Bart says, Christmas is no time to think about your neighbors, but “Manger Things” repays the indulgence. It is set in the not too distant past, six years ago. But you’d never know that from Marge’s contemporary cultural and political references. She wryly explains the year which the incidents took place was the year when the Oscar went to an overrated movie nobody remembers, a politician said something stupid no one will ever forget, and Tom Brady won the Super Bowl. This is a very deft collection of memories which can be considered evergreen. We do know it is set before Abe was shipped off to the retirement home.
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The episode includes an “Itchy and Scratchy” cartoon which is so frightening, the cameras cut away before the final reveal. But Bart and Lisa, still young and reasonably impressionable, are visibly and audibly horrified. It’s been too long since the audience has witnessed the horrors of the animated-within-an-animation comic duo, so this works very well. Bart and Lisa look absolutely traumatized, which continues when they mistake a snowman for their returning father. The whole segment brilliantly condenses their fall from a loving sibling relationship to the cynicism of a broken family.
There are plenty of quick visual gags which flash by in very few instants. Some are silly, but still quite telling. The double feature playing at the Springfield movie theater is Frozen and The Ice Storm. There is a warning that chatty elves are not affiliated with the Springfield Mall. Gil, who is toiling as a mall Santa, becomes the first person in history to be dishonorably discharged by the Salvation Army. The books which are seen lost in the heating vents are “How to Get Your Baby Off Her Pacifier,” which seems a little too gender-specific for a baby book, and “How to Clean Your Vents.”
“Manger Things” works exceedingly well as a stocking stuffer, even if it does arrive on the first day of spring. Why not? The classic Laurel and Hardy feature Babes in Toyland celebrated Christmas in July. Not very long ago, we were served a “Thanksgiving of Horror” episode, which was no turkey. Fox recently renewed The Simpsons for two more seasons, so it is doubly fitting to wrap its 700th episode in tinsel. Season 32 has seen a consistent rise in both quality and laughs per minute. If the residents of 742 Evergreen Terrace want to keep their decorations up until summer break, who’s to complain? Hallmark delivered us twelve days of Christmas, the Simpson family can parcel them out as they wish, if we get episodes this good.
