I had a pretty good inkling that they were going to cram some crappy shows in just before the 500th episode celebration. Knowing that the feel-good feeling goodiness of watching the 500th episode would be able to wash backwards in a wave of sentimental retroactive amnesia, and all would be forgiven.

 

And yep: this episode. 

 

It had some promise at first. I was heartened to see a sitcom Valentine's Day situation where the guy not only remembered about Valentine's Day, but prepared correctly beforehand. Homer is at the ready with nice clothes, roses, the works. 

But the episode quickly devolved into a chopped salad of tropes and ideas that didn't really go anywhere. At first, it seemed like the episode would be about bonds being forged and broken - a timely theme, given the Valentine's Day thing. 

 

The same basic set of activities causes Bart and Homer to bond, and the rift between Marge and Lisa to widen. This also explored some of the themes the show has brought up recently, about the relationships between fathers and sons, mothers and daughters, and how those relationships can go wrong. And of course it presages the future schism between Marge and Lisa.

 

But then Lisa falls for a smart boy who is just pretending to be Hemingway-esque, who is also Michael Cera, and we leave behind any useful commentary on relationships. Lisa has proven herself time and again to be so desperately, pitifully willing to delude herself in the name of a boy crush. And here it is again. 

 

I also liked the IDEA of Bart and Milhouse playing "Mythbusters," despite Adam and Jamie's strict and constant injunction not to try this at home. But I really thought they could have done something better with it. It was also a little weird that of the myths they decided to tackle, one of them (going all the way around the swing) had already been addressed by the real Mythbusters. But they must have known that this had already been done on Mythbusters, because Bart and Milhouse clearly built on the Mythbusters' research by attaching a bunch of rockets to Milhouse from the very beginning. So… I don't know. It was confusing. 

 

Anyway, can you believe the 500th episode is coming up next week? I can't believe I have been watching this show for the last 23 years. At 22 minutes per episode that's 11,000 minutes, or 183 hours, or 7.6 days straight. If you watched every episode back-to-back it would basically be a full-time job for 4.5 weeks. I'm not saying that the 500th episode doesn't have some big claims to live up to, but…!