Reviews in Pop Culture: The Simpsons

Season 11 Episode 3: Guess Who’s Coming to Criticize Dinner

Normally these types of blog posts don’t start with a specific season/episode listing, but The Simpsons is such a time-sprawling show that it feels necessary. Just like it’s necessary to point out that Season 11 was in 1999!

Now let’s get on with the breakdown.

If you know anything about Homer Simpson, it’s probably that he’s lazy, but if not that, then it’s that he loves to eat. And drink. “Mmm, donuts” is more marketable than “mmm, beer,” even though he “mmm’s” them both.

And it’s Homer’s love of food that leads him toward a life of reviewing, or an episode of reviewing anyway.

While chaperoning a class trip to the Springfield Shopper newspaper, Homer smells the farewell cake that’s been laid out for the retiring food critic. Her cold analysis of the spread is in sharp contrast to Homer’s exuberance (he literally sings about loving food to the tune of “I Feel Pretty”), so much so that the editor offers Homer the job if he can submit a satisfactory practice review.

Of course he can’t, but with help from Lisa, Homer lands the job. As the family visits restaurant after restaurant, from the Frying Dutchman, to Planet Springfield, to a space needle-style rotating restaurant in the sky. And though Homer originally did not want different treatment for being a reviewer, he soon finds that people listen to what he says - the evidence being every Springfielder sporting a large belly, having filled themselves at all the places Homer loves.

But that’s where our first wrinkle is introduced. The fellow newspaper critics (TV, Theatre, Farm Implement) take Homer to task for his overly positive reviews, specifically calling out his “nine thumbs up,” and challenging him to leave negative reviews. And simple as he is, Homer listens.

Review after review is course and cruel (and funny), and even Marge’s dinner of pork chops isn’t safe from Homer’s ire. Fed up (oh my, a pun) with the negativity, Lisa refuses to help Homer write any more, and he’s left to his own devices. To an extent.

While struggling to describe a night out, Homer looks to Maggie who sucks her pacifier, giving Homer the word he needed to finish his sentence, “sucks.” When he needs to describe the meal, he looks to Santa’s Little Helper, the family dog, who barks “Ruff,” which Homer takes to mean “rough” and dismisses it, telling the dog he’s been “offering that all night.” So the dog says “chewy.” And Homer takes it.

That one scene has stuck with me for years. I’m sure you have little word-quotes like that too. Aren’t we humans weird, and isn’t it great when we find someone else with that same odd point of reference? Anyway, back to the post.

Homer’s dog and baby-assisted review doesn’t pass muster and he’s told he needs to do better at the upcoming food festival. That raises the stakes, doesn’t it? Well raising them even more are the local cooks and restaurant owners who simultaneously plot to murder Homer at the festival by luring him into eating an irresistible éclair that just so happens to be poisoned.

At the fair, Homer continues his negative reviewing, so we in the audience know that things could get bad. Luckily, the writers decided to have Bart overhear part of the plot to murder Homer and the rest of the family set out to find him, just as he’s found the éclair.

As Homer raises the éclair to his mouth, Lisa shouts that it will kill him, but this is something he’s heard plenty of times before. He’s a man who likes to eat, after all. It’s when Lisa shouts “It’s low-fat” that Homer listens and throws the éclair away, to explode and destroy a food stall.

Just when it seems that Homer will have gotten away unharmed, a mob pursues him and we fade to black.

Is this the best episode of The Simpsons? No. Few would call it a classic, though it does show an interesting side to Springfield. But… but. It holds a power over me, that one scene, that one line. And sometimes that’s all you need. That’s what buoys my review of this episode and makes it rewatchable. So if you get the chance, if you have Disney+, check it out. Bon Appetit.