I've come back to this?!

LITTLE ORPHAN MILLIE (Current Season)

original air date: Nov. 11, 2007

SYNOPSIS

At a picnic with the Simpsons, the Van Houtens announce their intentions to remarry. While a jubilant Milhouse bunks with Bart, his parents embark on a honeymoon cruise. Unfortunately they're on one of those ships without railings and the couple find themselves floundering in the big drink. In SAVING PRIVATE RYAN fashion, representatives drive a long dusty road to break the bad news to Milhouse. The boy is taken in by the Simpsons, but he is inconsolable. Transforming himself into a brooding loner, he finds the peer approval so savagely denied to him in the past. A jealous Bart plots to pump up his friend's happiness ratio, thus squelching the intrigue of Milhouse's lone wolf persona. The solution comes in the form of Milhouse's Uncle Norbert (inexplicably, an Indiana Jones adventurer type). Norbert and Milhouse agree to a new life together. Floating away in Norbert's hot air balloon (don't ask), they crash into the Van Houtens flying a makeshift glider they concocted to escape the desert island they were...deserted ...on. They didn't die! Tragically, they did perish in the collision. No, they didn't.

GEESH, what an episode to come back on! LITTLE ORPHAN MILLIE is not an offensively bad episode, just a relentlessly mediocre one. Milhouse's plight has some potential for humor, but the writers can't seem to find the jokes. A contrived "Dane" versus "Dutch" rivalry doesn't work at all, nor does a sequence where Milhouse is offering a series of products suggesting oceanic themes. What laughs there are feel vaguely incidental. A bar brawl video game provides a "ask for the check" option, and Marge displaying a heretofore hidden talent for crumping, for instance. Homer gets one good Homer moment; mercifully we don't hear the story he been telling to the kids that ends, "and that's why to this day, you'll never see a shark with monkey arms." Otherwise, he is relegated to the "B" story which involves his obliviousness to Marge's eye color, ("Is beautiful a color?"). To keep him challenged, Marge wears sunglasses throughout the episode. Not only is this moronic, they make also make her look like Poochie.

The only notable element of the episode is that it blatantly "borrows" a joke from a television commercial. "What's the combination to our wedding album?", asks Homer. "Our anniversary", answers Marge. "Doh!" I'll have to check if Southwest Airlines got a "consulting producer" credit for that one.

Crumping. This got me to thinking. How about a list of all the other dances the Simpson's characters have done?! Well...not really.