This The Simpsons review contains spoilers.
The Simpsons Season 33 Episode 8
The Simpsons season 33 episode 8, “Portrait of a Lackey on Fire,” is a celebration of the long-running series’ most closeted icon. For years, Waylon Smithers did time as an all-too-standard bearer of hidden identity in a workplace where labels stick with the half-lives of atomic residue. The innuendo-laden repartee with his boss, Mr. Burns, includes some of the cleverest writing of the series. In earlier seasons, Smithers’ personal life barely intruded into the office, unless you had to get past his network firewall to see his introductory screensaver. Here he is gifted with the most fashionable accessory, a fully realized episode.
In “Portrait of a Lackey on Fire,” garish and loud disposable fashion threaten to make Black Friday a daily reality. While we know the punchline to Lisa’s transformation at Michael’s hands from the moment she denigrates fashion as trivial, the plot twist she instigates is harrowingly unexpected. Smithers has a type, and it resembles Mr. Burns, right down to how his “exquisite” sounds like the nuclear plant mogul’s “excellent,” the kind of tyrannical powerhouse who could hate art so much he only buys paintings to keep them out of museums.
Evil comes in all colors, even plaid, and Michael can give Mr. Burns a run for his money when it comes to vile deeds. Oh, except Michael has much more money than Monty Burns, and his toss-away fashion sweatpants shops are way more environmentally destructive than the Springfield Nuclear Power Plant. And it does it for no reason. Burns is amazed, impressed and giddily humbled by how even his Chernobyl-in-waiting mutant factory produces something people need, power. But Michael has achieved the dream. He’s color coating the ozone for useless objects no one needs. It is brilliant.
Smithers faces real pain, loss and confusion. He is truly at a crossroads in how he sees himself. He really is not the kind of person who can accept the love he deserves at the cost of damage inflicted on others. Burns sees it as a no-brainer, and advises his minion to marry that man, immediately, “who cares if you have to pretend to be gay?,” which is also subversive comic mastery. It encapsulates every bit of history Smithers and Burns have ever had, and still leaves enough ambiguity for future comic, and interpersonal, possibilities.
The episode was directed by Steven Dean Moore, with a script from father-son writers Rob and Johnny Lazebnik. Each of the side characters on The Simpsons have been highlighted in episodes. In many cases, it gives them a chance to grow, like Principal Skinner’s relationship with Superintendent Chalmers, or like Moe, whose character develops consistently, like mold.
Highlighted episodes keep Mr. Burns young, Grampa Simpson old, and Gil Gunderson employed. Smithers’ portrayal has been an evolution, slowly unthreading from the fabric of executive material. “Portrait of a Lackey on Fire” is clever, empathic and bittersweet. It panders, but in unexpected ways which keep the humor coming regularly, but never uniformly. The episode works more as a character study than a joke-fest, but the character is ultimately Springfield, not Smithers, and Springfield is no Milwaukee.
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