REVIEW: Husbands and Knives

Topic: Sometimes the voices tell me to change the topic.

Users: @SuzyQ

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[Stretch Dude]

Spoiler (hover to show)

The first act was, for me, one long geek-out. So much wonderfully nerdular nerdence. The whole scene with Moore, Spiegelman, and Clowes had me rolling. All it needed to be perfect was Moore yelling "KIMOTA!" at some point. That would've ruled. Also, the OK Go reference. Squee!

I did find it weird that they didn't come back to the whole Comic Book Guy thing, though. It does explain the title, though, as there's more focus on the Marge/gym/Homer plot. Indeed, there was no real return to status quo for either plot. Odd. The aforementioned secondary plot was okay, and...I am so freaking glad the nightmare was a nightmare. It excuses all the freaky stuff in it.

Anyway. Act 1 = JOY. Hm...it'd be interesting if they made another episode later on resolving the CBG/Milo rivalry in some way.

Edit: One other thing. Loved the conversation between Homer and Marge at the end. Very nice.

[A Spy in Mancunia]

After seeing some screenshots, I actually want to see this, *because* of the guest stars. And that would be a first for me.

[Lisabella]

Yanno, the main plot of the ep was really good.  Did I mention how much I love it that they didn't retcon everything back out of existence?

Geektastic and fun as the opening was, though, it didn't really link into the second half of the episode and doesn't really exist for any reason other than the Ebert's Sinatra Clause*.  I like Black's character, and it's nice to see CBG have a true-blue rival.  Nevertheless, his character's existance and the placement of his subplot in the episode sort of made it feel unbalanced.  His segment might have fit better leading into a Milhouse or Bart-centric ep.  On the other hand, everything in the CBG/JB segment made me LOL, and the use of the celebrity voices was the best thus far this season.

Think of this ep as a lopsided, half-frosted homade cake - delicious to look at, but unweildly and no where near perfect.

Final Grade - B- for the Marge and Homer stuff, the hillarity of the Alan Moore (etc) segment (WATCHMEN BABIES!) and the introduction of Jack Black's character (MORE OF HIM, PLEASE!) 

Did You Notice: At the (very lovely) final scene as Marge and Homer walk through the center of town together, Rod and Ned are playing ping-pong and Apu and Manjula are sitting together on a bench.

*Which states that whenever we see a character in a movie and he whirls around, we're supposed to gasp "hey!  That's (name of actor!)"  See: Sinatra in Around The World In 80 Days.  In this case, we're supposed to gasp "hey!  That's Jack Black!"