It would be really nice to be able to review new episodes of The Simpsons solely on their own merits and not in terms of how great the show used to be 20 years ago. But the longer the show lasts, the more it becomes guilty of retreading familiar ground and even directly rehashing old storylines. The Season 27 finale reached hinged on Marge being unfairly punished and being sent to prison, which is pretty much exactly the premise of Season 4's "Marge in Chains." "Orange Is the New Yellow" was a generally decent cap to the season, but like so many before it this episode failed to put a new spin on an old formula.
This episode was notable, if nothing else, for being the first to be scripted by ex-Futurama writer Eric Horsted, who was responsible for gems like "War Is the H-Word" and "Bendless Love." The hope being that Horsted might bring some of that trademark Futurama charm over to Springfield. There were definitely moments this week where the show had a greater energy and more scathing wit than usual. "Orange Is the New Yellow" was at its best not when it focused on the prison storyline, but in poking fun at contemporary society's overprotective approach to child-rearing.
Rolling timeline notwithstanding, Marge will always be a child of the '70s at heart. It would never occur to her that sending her children outside to play without constant adult supervision would be a bad thing. So there was something both funny and sad in seeing other adults overreact to the thought of Bart going to the park alone. And it was only fitting that Chief Wiggum's response was to drag Marge out of the house in handcuffs and then brush off the idea of leaving her children alone and unsupervised. As he put it, "You should have thought of that before we showed up here unannounced." Here, it felt like the show finally had a clever take on a hot-button issue for a change.
Sadly, this episode lost a lot of steam after that point as the focus sifted to Marge's prison sentence. The similarities between "Orange Is the New Yellow" and "Marge In Chains" really were too much to ignore. Once again, the conflict revolved as much around the chaos Marge's absence caused in the Simpson household as anything else. Honestly, how many times has this show explored Homer's bumbling attempts to pick up the slack when Marge is gone? How many episodes have followed Marge seeking respite from her stressful life as a homemaker? This conflict had nothing new to say on the matter?
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