The Musk Who Fell to Earth

This episode of the long-time running series The Simpsons proves that the show is slowly losing the quality it once had. It is misguided and unclear in the way it is written, and even fails to present any memorable jokes.

The basic premise of the episode is inventor Elon Musk descending in a spaceship into Springfield, starting to hang out with Homer, being hired and then fired by Mr Burns, and finally leaving the town. It sounds like a decent outline, yet it is executed very poorly. The biggest problem in this episode is this; the episode lacks an engaging plot, and rather flows like several ideas pieced haphazardly together.

The episode begins, strangely enough, without a couch gag. It then goes into a rather strange story; a bald eagle eats some of the Simpsons' pet bird, and as revenge they capture it. After nursing it back to health (which makes no sense...wasn't this revenge?), the eagle is burnt up by the spacecraft that Musk descends into Springfield in. At this moment one has to check the episode isn't a Treehouse of Horror. The writers truly did not only add a nonsensical moment into the episode, but also literally burnt up the first few minutes of the episode spent on the bald eagle. This truly seems pointless; the family don't even care that the eagle they got so attached to is now dead.

The episode continues to limp for the remainder of its length, with weird and inexplicable moments throughout. One of the biggest problems of the episode is when Elon Musk, now hanging out with Homer Simpson, begins turning some of Homer's nonsensical thoughts into brilliant ideas. Musk has a ridiculous faith in Homer Simpson, reminiscent of Herbert all the way back in Season 2 (Oh Brother, where art thou), and yet this faith is never really tested. We never do see these paper meatballs, or a cream cup that dissolves as sugar into coffee, or anything else that Homer suggests, and yet Musk seems to love Homer. So used to seeing the negative consequences when Homer's ridiculous ideas failing miserably in episodes such as ''Beyond Blunderdome'', the aforementioned ''Oh Brother where art thou'', and ''Trash of the Titans'', it is strange and perhaps disappointing that these ideas were never conceived in this episode.

For the remainder of the episode many things happen that make little sense to the plot. Bart manages to hack into one of Musk's self driving cars and, with Lisa, goes on a joyride around Springfield. At first it seems similar to the ending of ''Mobile Homer'', albeit in a car and not a gigantic RV. Yet Lisa and Bart get to no mischief in the car; you read right, nothing happens. They get in the car, see the town, and that's it. It even ever so briefly appears that they are going to gatecrash Burns and Musk's gathering at his plant, but they don't even do that.

Smithers at no point trusts Musk, believing he's up to no good. He tries to tell Burns this, but Burns merely shrugs it off. It turns out that Musk WAS up to no good; he was spending at a pace that was putting Burns' plant into deficit. Yes, his plan all along was to create an environmentally friendly Springfield, not caring about the money. This is not even remotely evil; all of Smithers' worrying that Musk is up to no good is foreshadowing, and yet leads to nothing.

Homer decides he does not want to be friends with Musk anymore, and Marge shows Homer how to ''break up'' with Musk. This is executed rather strangely, especially the timing of when Homer chooses to break up with Musk, just after Musk saved his life from Mr Burns' assassins. Burns' attempt to assassinate Musk is ridiculous enough, but Homer breaking up with Musk at such a moment is even more ridiculous.

We are ever so briefly reminded of the beginning of the episode when Musk gives the family a birdhouse, before he leaves Springfield forever. And, with that, he leaves behind what truly is a disappointing episode.

Everything is very mismatched; Homer and Musk's relationship, Burns' wishing, trying, and failing, to assassinate Musk, Smithers' suspecting Musk of more evil intentions, and Bart and Lisa randomly going on a joyride. The newer episodes of The Simpsons are frowned upon for their ridiculous plots; this episode should be frowned upon for the very absence of a plot, at least one that is coherent or engaging. It plays like four or so different ideas that the writers decided to string together without any proper thought. The episode is of such poor quality it makes such an episode as ''Kill the Alligator and Run'' look like ''Who Shot Mr Burns'' (well, perhaps that's an exaggeration, but you get my point). It marks one of the poorest episodes in the on the whole underwhelming Season 26.

I'm genuinely shocked this is currently rated at 5.6 on here. Did the producers learn nothing from "Lisa Goes Gaga"? Dedicating a whole episode to one (and I use the term loosely) - celebrity - does not work in modern Simpsons.

Firstly, what's the point in Musk? I honestly think of him as so irrelevant. So why on earth did they feel the need to give him so much air time? Secondly, he CANNOT voice act. He sounds so dull and bored in the episode. Did they only capture one take?

The plot line is stupid (especially the first bit - putting an eagle in a sack and almost beating it is just offensive to me); the jokes are not funny; and Musk is definitely one of the worst guest voices they've had on the show.

This show needs a bullet to the back of the head PLEASE.

I have been a fan of the Simpsons for a long time and I have watched every single episode at least once.

There is no interesting plot, the entire episode is one long suck-up to some "inventor" guy that is so full of himself that it makes the episode so annoying that it is very hard to watch without turning it off in disgust and boredom.

Why the Simpsons can fall so low at doing entire episodes based basically on nothing, except some guest doing his/her own voice, is beyond me. Many of the characters act completely out of character just to give as much space as possible to the guest star? what for? What's the point? I watch the Simpsons to have a laugh and relax for half an hour. There already is far to many programs about glorified interviews/talk-shows about specific persons on TV and if I wanted to watch one, I would have turned on one of those shows. It is not Simpsons role to do them! Based on this, I have to say that this episode stand out as the worst Simpsons episode I have ever seen.

An entire episode kissing the arse of this self obsessed, deluded and quite objectionable individual? No way, and sadly, it's a pile of steaming manure!

The Musk Who fell to Earth is a decent Simpsons episode with a mediocre storyline and a few funny scenes, but certainly not enough. They make the same mistake here as they did with Lisa Goes Gaga (my least favourite Simpsons episode ever), in which the episode focuses way too much on the guest star, pushing the main characters in to secondary roles, I really don't like this as we watch the Simpsons to see characters like Homer and Bart, not an animated version of a celebrity. Another issue is that Elon Musk is not well known, he may be a billionaire, but he is not a household name and I am sure I'm not the only person that looked him up on Wikipedia to see who he was, also he isn't an actor so his voice work is very poor and he clearly dosen't know comedy. It's not the worst episode ever, but it honestly isn't far from it, there were some funny parts and I don't hate the Musk who Fell to Earth, but I couldn't say Simpsons fans need to watch it either.

When billionaire entrepreneur and inventor Ellon Musk swings by Springfield, he has big plans for the Nuclear Power Plant