The mercilessly unfunny Sarah Silverman guest stars on tonight’s next Sunday’s “Stealing First Base,” which Simpsons Channel describes for us:
Lisa’s classmates ostracize her for being an overachiever but the First Lady Michelle Obama (guest voice Angela Bassett) comes to Lisa’s defense. Meanwhile, Bart’s crush Nikki (guest voice Sarah Silverman) sends him mixed signals when she surprises him with a kiss.
So faux-First Lady, love interest number 8,000,0005, and a humdrum plot. Sounds riveting. Get the popcorn ready.
Correction: Looks like I jumped the gun a week early, but I still stand by everything else I wrote. Also.
Dead Homer Society 
10 responses to “Sunday Preview: “Stealing First Base””
Yeah, Sarah Silverman is dangerously unfunny – hopefully it won’t affect the Simpsons though. Like your header pic – the very amateur slides of the effects of Bart’s Comet and Moe saying “Oh dear god, no!” is, for some reason, one of my favourite scenes!
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It is important that we hear the latest on a ten year old character’s love life, yes. Also, the little I know of Sarah Silverman suggests that she’s one of those “lol buttrape is a whole joke” comedians, which puts her just about in line with more recent episodes of the show.
Is it a requirement that Bart has a new love interest in every season? I’m starting to lose count on how many such episodes have been made, plus they always eeem to get worse.
According to Wikipedia, season 17 didn’t have one of those, and I’m not sure if season 16’s “Future-Drama” counts. But this next episode makes season 21 the fourth in a row where Bart must have some manner of love interest. I suppose it doesn’t seem much, but he still has a curiously exciting love life for a boy of ten.
“I suppose it doesn’t seem much, but he still has a curiously exciting love life for a boy of ten.”
Indeed, the whole love-interest-for-Bart plot was used sparingly when the show was good, only to be trotted out repeatedly by Zombie Simpsons almost every season (because it’s easy to flog the same stories over and over and/or because it’s a lazy way to shoehorn a female celebrity guest star into an episode). I think this is how the Bart’s-Love-Interest-List stands at the moment:
* Laura Powers (Sara Gilbert), “New Kid on the Block,” Season 4 (1992)
* Jessica Lovejoy (Meryl Streep), “Bart’s Girlfriend,” Season 6 (1994)
* Greta Wolfcastle (Reese Witherspoon), “That Bart Wants What It Wants,” Season 13 (2002)
* Gina Vendetti (Sarah Michelle Gellar), “The Wandering Juvie,” Season 15 (2004)
* Jenda (Amy Poehler), “Future-Drama,” Season 16 (2005)
* Darcy (Natalie Portman), “Little Big Girl,” Season 18 (2007)
* Mary (Zoey Deschanel), “Apocalypse Cow,” Season 19 (2008)
* Jenny (Anne Hathaway), “The Good, the Sad and the Drugly,” Season 20 (2009)
* Nikki (Sarah Silverman), “Stealing First Base,” Season 21 (2010)
I might have missed one or two. And I can see that after a while, the writers couldn’t even be bothered thinking up surnames for this parade of forgettable guest characters. In any case, I’m sure we can look forward to future episodes in which Taylor Swift, Dakota Fanning and Kristen Stewart guest-star as new characters for Bart to fall in love with.
They’re obsessed with Obama.
He’s gotten 3 name drops in the latest season and now his wife is making a cameo?
Why did Bush never get this attention?
Clinton got more attention than W. Actually, I’d say HW got more attention. It is a mystery.
Funny how, when Bush the First was in power, he was caricatured in the show, as was Clinto during his reign, and yet I’m fairly certain the show had a hands-off approach to Bush the Younger. The show might have made a few jabs at the Iraq War, but was Bush himself ever featured and parodied? This glaring ommission was put to Matt Groening by the The A.V. Club during an interview a year ago (http://www.avclub.com/articles/matt-groening,25525/):
AVC: The Simpsons didn’t go after George W. Bush as directly as his father, or Clinton in the twilight of his presidency. Why do you think that was?
MG: There’s never any conscious decision to skewer anybody in particular, or hold back. We try to make the best jokes we can, given the situation. We did some mildly indirect political commentary, but there was so much of it that was done so well that I think we tried to figure out “How could we be an alternative?” You also have to look at the situation The Simpsons has found itself in: When we started back in the very end of 1989 as a series, there was nothing else like the show on TV at the time. Since then, there’s been an explosion of satirical, wild animation, which has left us in a situation of being not the wildest show out there. I mean, South Park outdoes us every step of the way. Family Guy obviously has gone completely wild with outrageous humor. Then on the other side there’s King Of The Hill, which has a muted tone and is very emotionally resonant. So how we fit into the changing pop culture and the stuff around us is increasingly difficult.
So…was Groening practically admitting that The Simpsons didn’t go after Bush because they couldn’t do as good a job as other animated shows? Pure speculation on my part, but maybe the show never really took Bush or his administration to task for fear of being deemed too offensive in the post-9/11 climate.
Bush Jr did such a great job of making himself look stupid that if the Simpsons tried their current level of satire, they’d make Dubya look credible.
[…] We posted this last Sunday, but “Stealing First Base” finally is on tonight. Recycling the post seemed appropriate […]