Another good night of Animation Domination on Sunday, which is a relief after such a bad spell of them in 2006.
Nice to see The Simpsons pushing the envelope again with a concept episode, something I don’t think they explore enough given all the backstory and relationships they could exploit. I thought that “Springfield Up” was tremendous, giving payoffs I didn’t see coming (like the Homer the Millionaire thing, or Nautical Stu, or Crazy Cat Lady) and actually being consistently funny all the way through while mocking that style of documentary and the pretentious directors who make them. And the “8 months after pill”? Awesome. And of course what review would be complete without talking about the trailer of the movie, which if nothing else looks better, art-wise, than anything ever produced by this show before. Homer whipping the dogs and “I’ll teach you to laugh at something that’s funny!” alone are better than half the gags this season. Fingers crossed on this one.
Family Guy was also much better than usual, because (and I hope you’re paying attention here) they actually stuck to the plot and didn’t just cut away to jokes the whole time. Stewie and his tan walk and disgusting skin peeling were great, and truly only this show would get away with having Peter beat the crap out of a teenaged boy in graphic fashion and then go after someone with MS (who knew it didn’t stand for Monkey Scrotum?). Very wrong and very funny this week.
However, as usual American Dad keeps raising the bar with more and more complex gags, like the National Treasure themed episode with all the Dan Brown references thrown in. And in this case, the cutaway gags to Lincoln actually advance the plot. Plus it had some of the funniest stuff seen on Sunday nights in forever, like the Cock Blocker internet lock, and the MASSIVE burn of Wikipedia at the end, which you could see coming like Popeye winding up the big punch for Bluto after eating his spinach. If I may say, PWNED. And I never say that. This show just keeps getting better and better and is actually so good that it makes the others look better when followed by it.
