Review -The Simpsons: "Boy Meets Curl" Firefox News (blog)
The Simpson family are images on a tarot card, with Maggie as the death card.We cut to a wide shot and discover that it’s Grandpa who’s having his cards read.On seeing the death card, he nervously gives it back to the gypsy reading his tarot, who promptly has a heart attack and dies.
Of all of the many things Marge and Homer have tried to jump-start their romantic life over the course of the history of this show, Olympic-style curling is definitely a new one.And it all begins because Homer arrives too late for a dinner date with Marge, resulting in a last-ditch trip to an ice rink.
While there, Homer and Marge join forces with Agnes and Seymour Skinner, and the foursome develop into an unbeatable curling team, which eventually gets them invited to an exhibition game at the Olympics in Vancouver.Even though Agnes - motivated by her bitterness over losing a medal at the Summer games due to Seymour’s in utero error – tries to get Marge to dump Homer (dubbed a weak link) from the team.Marge refuses and the team does well enough to make the finals, but then Marge is injured and the team just might be forced to forfeit.
Meanwhile, Lisa becomes addicted to the hobby of collecting Olympic pins and soon becomes so desperate she sells her pearls to a vendor, leaving Bart to come to the rescue.
“Boy Meets Curl” isn’t the sort of episode you can judge against classic-era, emotionally rich episodes.“Boy Meets Curl” is full-blown wacky era Simpsons, a somewhat surreal outing that features a concluding ice dance featuring Homer and…a blow up of his own chin.It’s the sort of episode you have to judge on jokes alone, and the jokes are decent, if not stellar.Decent gags like Milhoose, Bob Costas’ running commentary and the Agnes Skinner flashbacks (firmly relegating The Principal and the Pauper to the retcon pile) and the Swedish Olympians’ Bergman-esque sense of fatalism stand along side such “what the heck was that” moments as the Tom Brokhaw cutaway, Lisa having a dress made entirely of Olympic pins (“It’s ALL PINS”), and Marge’s sudden left-handedness.It’s lunatic in its best moments, but not much above average when its parts are added together.
