The Advent calendar couch gag is another winner in a series of good couch gags this year.
I was so ready to talk about the recycled plots and all that stuff, but then they went and killed Fat Tony! Good lord! I really didn't see that coming at all!
It looked like introducing Fit Tony would at least be a bit of a shake-up. Then something funny happened (and by "funny", I mean, "the wheels COMPLETELY fell off") and they just FLEW through that final segment, as the episode ends with Fit Tony literally turning into Fat Tony and everything is at is was.
What the hell was that ending? It's like the writers had no idea how to end the episode, so they just slapped a bunch of nonsense together and decided "Here's an ending. Who cares?" You know, as recently as five years ago, the show would have taken this as a chance to change the status quo a bit. It would have been something on the scale of "Kurt and Luanne get a divorce", "Apu and Manjula have octuplets", or "Maude Flanders falls to her death". Instead, they were on the cusp of something interesting and decided to just take the lazy way out. It's really disheartening.
I had the thumbs cocked and ready to go up, but they went down QUICK. What a shame.
Yeah, there were maybe one or two gags that I chuckled at, but Homer as a snitch has been done. Fat Tony dying, then coming back as his brother was just weird. And yeah, I agree, the last few minutes just glossed over a ton of stuff that could've been explained/explored.
Thread rated: 6.04
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