REVIEWS: The Wettest Stories Ever Told

[Fionn]

Okay, here's the good: Love most three-part episodes (provided they don't cheat and just have two and and sorta one story, like the last Tree House of Horror).  The historical settings allowed for more original routines and jokes. 

All and all, I think that the best segment was the first one, followed by the second, with the third sufficiently tying it all together.  Loved CBG's reaction to "Alone Again, Naturally".

The bad: not many major complaints, I actually laughed out loud a few times.  I guess the only problem was lack of serious intellectual depth, a la the episode with Mr. Bergstrum, or "Homer the Heretic".  But, hey, what can you do?

B+

[Lisalover1]

I didn't think it was so great. Although I normally like an element of surprise, its use in this episode was annnoying, like in the Posidon parody, the Simpsons being the band, that was weird. I really didn't see that coming. Did anyone notice the huge, very common mistake in the first cartoon? There were 2 ships, not just the Mayflower. The other one was sunk in the storm. Not to sound anal, but I just wanted to point that out. Captain McCallister playing basketball was funny! " Yarrgh, just six more games!" All in all, I would give this episode a 2.5/5

[Vulgaris_Prime]

Forgettable enough that I can't remember much about it.  A couple okay jokes, but mostly blah.

Final rating: TWO BOLTS (scale is 0-4).

[missygal21880]

In a season of mixed-bag episode, this ep is about the ultimate mixed bag for me:

Summary:  The Simpsons are stuck at the Frying Dutchman waiting for their meal.  To pass the time, they tell stories of seafairing tragedies.  The first is offered up by Lisa with the encouragement of Captain MacAllister in an effort to placate the Simpsons, whose entre is in a knife fight with the cook:

Story 1: Puritan Marge and her son and daughter travel from England to the New World under the stewardship of Reverend Lovejoy and Puritan Leader Ned Flanders.  At the start of their journey, they meet drunken ne're do well Homer Simpson, who's not interested in their religeon but is sure interested in the widowed Marge.  His rival for her affections is Moe, who decides to introduce Homer and the crew to the ship's store of beer.  He and the crew get drunk during a raging storm, and when Flanders is knocked unconcious it's up to Homer to get everyone safely to the New World.

The Simpsons' dinner is still delayed.  Marge encourages Bart to tell a story - "Traditionally, the weakest story"- , which he recalls from a comic book.

Story 2: Bart = Mister Christian, Principal Skinner = The Captain.  The plot follows the mutiny on the Bounty storyline fairly well, and when the crew doesn't get to go to Tahiti as promised, Mister Christian brings his crew to mutiny.  He then enthusiastically tosses the steering wheel overboard.  Whoops.  The end up in the South Pole thanks to Mister Christian's lousy sense of direction, where they apparently die.

Captain MacAlister has given up entirely on getting the Simpsons their dinner and is now playing Skins versus Shirts basketball out in the side alley with the waitstaff.  Homer tells the final story, which is based on his fuzzy memories of the past:

Story 3: In a direct parody of the Posidon Adventure, The Comic Book Guy = Shelly Winters AND Red Buttons, and somehow Selma = Gene Hackman.  When a cruise ship captained by Mister Burns manages to capsize after being struck by a large tidal wave, a family band and several surviving passangers manage to climb from the ballroom to the hull of the ship.  Outside, they meet up with the ghost ship of Mister Christian, which has been helplessly circling the globe in search of Tahiti.

OPINIONS: As I said: total mixed bag with this one.  Story #1 sank under the weight of being mostly made out of "thee-and-thou-hee-we-sure-talk-funny" language jokes.  As an actual Person Who Lives In MA and Goes To Plymouth Every Year And Has Been on the (Fake) Mayflower Tour (No Fooling), I could point out a few innacuracies, but that would be cruel.  Jerkass Homer actually saving the day and not being a totally incompitant boob was pretty cool - Puritan Ned Flanders amused me occasionally, too.

Story #2 was, ironically, the strongest story.  A good, solid parody of the Bounty which wasn't overlong, featured a crew of well-used characters transported to this particular time and place, and had some solid jokes.  the Skinner character being completely impossible to please -even as he's being dragged down to the ocean floor by a peeved sea turtle - gave me a good giggle, and this was the best use of Kearney and Jimbo since "Marge's Son Poisioning".  And of COURSE Bart/Christian would cock it all up thanks to his innate boldness not matching up to his lousy sense of direction. 

As a Posidon-head, I was thrilled by three and can only say there should have been more time alloted to it.  I wish they'd cut the first sequence and foccused more on this one.  The fact that there were more "survivors" on this voyage than who actually survive the Possidon movie (not the book - the book's a whole different subject) made it hard to synch up who was playing who (for instance, CBG dies like Shelly Winters does in Posidon, but he has the characteristics of the Red Buttons character, AND there's an Old Jewish Couple aboard, one half of which was played by Ms. Winters).  The Simpsons playing the Band = genius, but the only member of the band who survived to the end was Nonny, the lead singer.  I was expecting either Marge or Lisa to pop up from the wreckage and have a "hillarious" moment of histrionics over the corpse of Homer/Bart,  just like Nonny gets in the film, and was surprised to see everyone live.  The best part of the whole thing was an authoritative, in-charge Selma playing the Reverend Scott part crossed with the role of little brother Robin from the film. 

Despite my being a Posidon nerd, I enjoyed this one almost as much as the Bounty parody- best of all was the mocking of the fameous stunt scene that sent a guy from hanging from a table on the "floor" through a stained-glass ceiling pannel with Homer and a New Year's cake; it = rolling on the floor for me.  I only wished there was MORE to this sketch.

The sewing together of scenario #2 with scenario #3 was kind of bizzare and maybe it should've been eliminated for a wrap-around at the resteraunt.  Maybe one of the waitresses could have been one of the Marge and Homer character's -from the first skit's - drunken descendents and could have gone all balistic when the Simpsons asked for bread: "but my ancestors brought you to the new world!" HOMER: "But I wanted fries with that!"  But what we ended up with was actually pretty funny and Could Have Been a Whole Lot Worse.

GRADE: C-.  Your best bet is to watch the second skit first, the third skit second and the first skit not at all. 

[Sweet Sour Rose]

First off MissyGal, Homer was the one that told the last story. Lisa told the first.

  I know this is late but I want to make my review before the next new episode pops up.

  I thought the stories were pretty funny. Got a good kick out of most of it. MissyGal makes a good point. They should've scraped the first story(or at least some of it) and made the final story longer. The only thing that bugged me though was that they made Sideshow Mel looked too stupid and the others into selfish jerks at the end.
  Uh, Mel....honey,....during,.....Stud muffin,....There was plenty of water right near you(like overly a great pool of it with the tied rope still in it ). You could've just dunk your head into the water, or splash some of it onto your hair to get the fire out.
    The other remaining people weren't much help either. There was not much they could do to help save the most of the others(CBG dying of a heart attack for examp.) but there was still ENOUGH time to save Mel(leading him to the water or whatever). Instead, they just stood there doing nothing but watch, making no remote attempt to help him.

(This part I made up)
Lisa(muffering though the side of her mouth): I would've helped but I'm being limited to animation.

One of the survivors(nonchalant): Yeah, sorry we couldn't do much to save you, like lead you to the water that's right near us and just gonna leave you to die.(shrugs) All well. (everyone else walking out of the ship) Oh, did we ever mention thanks, for being one of the people, that helped our selfish hides with your switchblade bone thing?

One of the rescuers(also nonchalant): Yeah, sorry I lead you to this fate. Ma' bad. We'd all go and check if you're even still alive and just passed out but.....you know.

Canon quote: "I don't know which pains me more, the flame or the irony......Can you say it's the irony?"

But them again this WAS jerkass Homer's tale so that's understandable.(Him kicking CBG into the water and Marge was all 'My Hero!', hugging Homer.) Homer That reminds me of Homer's first story from "Tales from the Public Domain".(kicks Jerkass Homer in the crotch )

  MissyGal gave it a C-? Hmm, not a bad idea, but I'm just gonna leave it a C+. I'd give it a B+ but that part I just mentioned took away bonus points from it because: I don't generally like seeing Sideshow Mel 'die'(Homer's tall tale or none). That's not a very fair reason, but that's how I feel.

Also I'm sorry that I never answered back at my last post nearly two weeks ago (I told you I was shy). In short, to answer about the character I was talking about: I'll give you three guesses and the first two don't count.        

[missygal21880]

First off MissyGal, Homer was the one that told the last story. Lisa told the first.    

Noted!  I changed the review above slightly to correctly corroberate what happens.

But them again this WAS jerkass Homer's tale so that's understandable.(Him kicking CBG into the water and Marge was all 'My Hero!', hugging Homer.) Homer That reminds me of Homer's first story from "Tales from the Public Domain".(kicks Jerkass Homer in the crotch )

Homer from the folk tales episode: "I like it, cause I was a judge in it."

You know, that actually makes the story a little bit funnier.  The rushedness and the reactions of half of the passangers to his vaugely jerkassy actions with CBG.  It's Homer's fantasy, so he'd do that.  Now I wonder why he didn't include Milhouse, since he hates him to an almost unhealthy level...