The Simpsons has certain traditions that are never going away. As long as the series stays on the air (and in the good graces of the Disney corporation), there will always be Treehouse of Horror episodes. There will always be “the Simpsons are going to ____!” episodes. And, of course, there will always be Sideshow Bob episodes. The show may have changed a great deal over the past thirty years, but some things are too ingrained in The Simpsons’s DNA for the show to move on.
Thankfully, one of those indelible elements is Kelsey Grammer, whose mellifluous baritone has graced episodes both great and god-awful over his three-decade tour of duty. Fortunately, “The Great Louse Detective” leans more toward the former than the latter, if only just barely. As I discussed on The Simpsons Show Podcast, this episode manages to inch its way toward quality, due in no small part to the presence of Springfield’s favorite attempted murderer. (But we like you too, Fat Tony!)
The problem is that “The Great Louse Detective” is the absolute pits until Sideshow Bob finally arrives. The episode’s first act has nothing to offer but a series of lame riffs on spas and those who patronize them. The show’s usual early episode throat-clearing doesn’t have to be a sin, but if this sort of introductory nonsense isn’t going to be a significant part of the plot, then by god, it should at least be funny.
The Simpsons’ trip to the land of massages and facials fails on both counts. The family winning a trip to some resort does, at least vaguely, tie into the major events of the episode (albeit in a largely tangential way). But this early interlude is mostly an excuse to make stale, hackneyed jokes about men deigning to receive spa treatments or to serve up cartoony gags about Homer’s back fat acting like quicksand. While there’s the occasional fun bit of wordplay (see: “Stagnant Springs” and “Dr. Mas-Seuss”), the first five minutes of the episode are all but disposable.
You'll see Lisa is served by Thing 1 and Thing 2. But this spoof is Fair Use so his family can't sue!
From there, however, the plot kicks in. Sideshow Bob arrives, and what follows is one of his better post-classic appearances, despite some truly idiotic choices as the episode wears on. After a cartoony attempt on Homer’s life while he’s in the sauna, the Simpsons go to the police for help. The Springfield P.D. naturally decides to enlist Sideshow Bob to help find the killer (and thereby earn him his choice of roles in the prison musical), reasoning that it takes a murderer to catch a murderer.
The odd couple routine between Homer and Bob that ensues is an instant upgrade for the episode. Casting Bob as the Hannibal Lecter-style helper, unspooling one of the show’s usual sideshow-adjacent mysteries, and pairing the bouffant bungler with the Simpson family patriarch to hunt for the killer makes for a winning recipe. Say what you will about the state of the show in its fourteenth season (and there’s plenty to say), but Kelsey Grammer and Dan Castellaneta are still total pros. Letting them play off one another for fifteen minutes makes “The Great Louse Detective” work on the strength of personality alone and helps cover for the episode’s other faults.
That’s a plus, because that pair’s superb dynamic has to make up for a host of dated, exaggerated, or downright lame bits in this one. References to George Foreman and Tom Brokaw, digs at Disney’s California Adventure, and Tom Shales-belittling spoofs of That 70s Show have aged like yogurt in the sun. And shtick like Maggie getting trapped in the vacuum cleaner, Homer trying to hide behind the curtains, or Wiggum not knowing that the word “serve” is on his badge, all reduce the show to a state of unbelievable, unfunny stupidity.
That said, sometimes the absurdity works. The barroom door that flips open a few extra times is a goofy laugh. Moe’s photos with his pickle jar are ridiculous but amusingly earnest. And “The Museum of Swordfish”, along with Marge’s pronouncement that it’s been “nothing but trouble,” lean into the slack silliness of this whole exercise. Hell, even the ridiculous stilt chase in the third act goes from foolish-to-funny when the show doubles down on the gag, adding extra-high walls and even a cops-on-stilts unit for good measure. In places, this episode’s exaggerated comic vibe helps to let its more outsized bits work.
"There's a thin blue line between order and chaos, and you have to be up pretty high to see it."
That said, there’s a knowing, almost winking quality to a good portion of the humor here. After Bob sees a cadre of random Springfielders attack a poorly-disguised Homer dummy, he inquires of Marge, “None of this seems odd to you?” — a query she shrugs off. Lenny and Carl marvel at how a grown man of Bob’s prodigious intelligence could have failed to slay a ten-year-old boy after so many tries. Bob is similarly agog that an ordinary man like Homer could earn himself so many enemies over the years. Even Homer’s trip to the Kwik-E-Mart results in Bob reminiscing about his “one successful crime,” indulging in a comical dose of shared season one nostalgia with Apu.
In an episode that calls back to any number of old characters and bits, “The Great Louse Detective” seems almost self-aware about this type of shtick. That gives the proceedings a certain fingers-crossed quality. No viewer with any sense would truly believe that Homer might succumb to his mystery assailant or that Bob will really kill Bart. Nearly a decade and a half into its run, The Simpsons continued to poke fun at its own status quo-preserving limitations, including the fact that it was still doing this routine fourteen years after Bob first framed his harlequinned bête noire.
I think that’s why I don’t truly mind the admittedly insane reveal of who’s been trying to kill Homer. It turns out to be Frank Grimes Jr., the son of the hard-working man who lost his sanity and his life when both ran aground on Homer’s improbable cozy existence in “Homer’s Enemy”. It’s Junior who’s been luring Homer into all these traps and trying to get revenge on behalf of the father who suffered unjustly in the shadow of Homer’s blithe buffoonery.
On the one hand, it’s a surprisingly clockwork payoff to the mystery of the episode. Bob’s epiphany montage all but holds the audience’s hand when connecting the dots. But the wrench locking Homer in the sauna, the greasepaint smudge on the invite, the mechanic who “tuned up” Homer’s float at the parade, all connect nicely to the already disgruntled mechanic who deals with Homer’s car at the midpoint of the episode. The nuts and bolts of the mystery (no pun intended) work unexpectedly well.
It's just like my grandmother always said. Never trust a man with an extensive wrench collection.
On the other hand, the motive and explanation of this character’s very existence is downright bonkers. You can feel the writers straining to revive the man who arguably hated Homer more than anyone in the world so they can make him their culprit. The problem is that they don’t seem to care whether, you know, that makes any sense.
It’s improbable that Frank Grimes would have a son who’s basically a duplicate of him and who also seems to be more or less the same age. And when Homer points out that ol’ Grimey didn’t have a son, only for Junior to retort that he “happened to like hookers,” it’s lazy and insulting. This isn’t just some “I sure hope someone got fired for that blunder” nitpickery. It’s the episode offering a preposterous solution to its central question.
And yet, it’s all roughly entertaining enough, the adventure silly enough, and the tone loose enough that, against all odds, I find myself willing to give it a pass. At so many intervals, the episode seems to be saying, “We know this is silly, but just go with it,” and most of the time, despite my better judgment, I’m willing to say, “Sure, why not?”
Maybe my standards are too lax for a show that was still slowly pulling itself out of the tailspin of the Scully years. Maybe it’s just nice to see Sideshow Bob back and capering once more with Our Favorite Family, no matter how implausible the setup is. Maybe I’m just a sucker.
Though there's no shame in that, right Maggie?
The Simpsons is comfort food for a generation of fans raised on its cynical charms. Long past the show’s creative sell-by date, many of us still tuned in every week (and still do) to enjoy its soothing glow. Most of us have long-since disabused ourselves of the notion that the show could ever reclaim its former glory (give or take a Matt Selman promotion), but there’s still something comforting on a primal level to watch this thing that still superficially resembles the show we once loved.
That’s the odd allure of this era of The Simpsons, and “The Great Louse Detective” in particular. There’s an almost Uncanny Valley quality to one’s ability to enjoy it. The Simpsons’s worst episodes feel so divorced from the show’s glory years, so antithetical to the things that once made it great, that they can only inspire revulsion. But most post-classic episodes, at worst, occupy a space of inoffensive pleasantry. They’re close enough — in form, if not in substance — to the successes and joys of old, that they can still trigger those happy chemicals in our brains, particularly when bringing back fan favorite bits and characters.
It’s joyous to see Sideshow Bob once again crooning his heart out like an “original cast recording.” It’s funny to see Homer once again guilelessly annoying an ersatz version of “Grimey.” It’s amusing the watch Springfield’s usual cast of oddballs act as hapless allies and ridiculous red herrings.
There’s nothing new to any of this. The combination of these elements is shaky. And the resulting episode is a diminished reflection of what the show used to achieve on a regular basis. But by god, it’s fond and familiar. So to this day, The Simpsons keeps trotting out Sideshow Bob, and trios of scary stories, and other reheated versions of things we once loved, things just close enough to our warm memories and the show’s old glories to pass muster. And saps like me keep watching. Some things never change.
Odds and Ends
– Bob’s whole blimp rescue bit shamelessly violates the laws of physics, but I like that he at least relies on his old sideshow skills — namely getting shot out of cannon — to save the day.
– Count me as one of the few who enjoys the running gag of the shock garter. It’s undoubtedly absurd, but the show keeps finding new wrinkles to it, and returns to the bit enough that it crosses the line twice. (Though it is, admittedly, a pale imitation of our beloved rake gag.)
– One of the reasons the shock humor succeeds is the superb design and animation work on Bob during his various electric adventures. (I particularly enjoy how a simple floofing of Bob’s tresses turns his hair from fro-to-fronds.) Whatever you think of the story here, one of the show’s early adventures in digital ink and paint pays dividends.
– Homer’s warm words to his son — that Bart will understand risking his child’s life to save his when he has kids of his own — is assuredly a dark gag. But that sort of joke has always been the cynical counterweight the series’s stealthily wholesome heart. The follow-up gag about it being every parent’s dream to outlive their children works in the same terms.
– There’s few truly memorable lines in this one, but Homer attributing his collection of enemies to him being “a people person….who drinks” is an all-timer.
– Similarly, Marge pouring cold water on Homer’s carefree Mardi Gras dreams by noting that it’s a regular Tuesday and he’s already had six beers, only for him to agree but note with derision that he’s “not drunk,” works as a quick but funny “dark side of suburbia” gag.
– Of all the meta gags in the episode, Lisa racing to solve the mystery at the last minute, only to quietly kick away her “discovery” that the culprit is Bumblebee Man, is my favorite. You’ll get ‘em next time, Lisa!
