Poorhouse Rock

Look, I know the Simpsons has always been of a left-leaning persuasion, and part of the musical number I agreed with.

It is true that the middle class of the United States has been declining, that income inequality is getting worse, and that it's generally harder to work your way up the ladder to achieve social mobility. The problem is that the Simpsons reverts to blaming this on a specific voting base.

They began the musical number blaming the increase of income inequality on "corporate greed" and "shortsighted politicians" and the "decline of unions." Yes, yes, and yes. However, as the musical number goes on, it begins finger pointing at conservative voting base and essentially says, "look, this is what you guys are responsible for." I don't agree with that.

This breaks my heart, because I couldn't have imagined that my most beloved show would participate in the typical Disney culture-war, virtue-singaling nonsense. I'm not conservative, but the entertainment industry is making it very clear that it has disdain for a fairly large contingent of the U. S. population. Why can't entertainment generally be wholesome and not engage in so much senseless political pandering? I like the Simpsons being edgy, I don't like the Simpsons soapboxing like a college-aged activist. I deal with this stuff enough being a 22 year old college student in 2022.

So this episode was written by Tim Long, who's been with the show for a while. A number of his shows I've liked. This one however seems to have fallen into the modern Simpsons hole of tackling societal issues with little-to-no cartoony-cushion to surround it with. It feels like too many new episodes put an agenda over the jokes and story itself. There have been muscial episodes in the past, some better than others- and this one sadly falls in the others category for me. It just feels like they made it a musical to really emphasize the subject matter vs for comedic effect. For the sake of the plot, Bart seems to have completely forgotten that Homer's job sucks which really makes no sense (flexible reality yeah yeah). It just feels like the retcons and reimaginings to serve the plot of a single episode are out of control as of late. I guess the show wants to try to say some important things on it's way out the door (I really feel like it's coming soon) but the show didn't get to where it is today by being a podium for every facet of society to broadcast their grievances. Maybe if it was done in a more classic Simpsons comedy way I wouldn't mind as much but as it is- I find almost every new episode harder and harder to sit through and it makes me sad.

But it doesn't stop it from being the truth... This is the 1st episode in a long time that I stop what I'm doing to watch in admiration since as of late the Simpsons had become background noise. The wit, humor and satire involved in this episode was refreshing to see again in the Simpsons as I had moved on to Family Guy for that kind of intellectual stimulation. The only surprising thing was that Fox allowed for it to air.

It was way to hard to Robert Reich pretend that he doesn't vote for the same politicians as well as advocate for them all the time while earning US$500K a year writing books on how bad politicians are.

His type of advocates against right to self determination and anti-capitalism rhetoric is so tried and boring.

Its a wonder this actually got made.

This episode, overall is pretty good. I agree with the message in the episode and find it relatable, and I found a lot of the gags funny. Robert Reich cameo is pretty awesome. Would have liked some more comedic cushioning similar to that of 90s Simpsons but oh well, I still liked this episode good enough. Of course not as good as classic Simpsons (any season in double digits never will be) but a pretty solid episode. Excited for Season 34. Hope we finally meet Graggle.