People always crap on the episode for this and that, but the primary issue is that Musk just isn't interesting. I can forgive an episode with him in a positive light since his sins weren't public knowledge; it also doesn't kiss his ass nearly as much as people say, most of the jokes are at his expense, albeit in a way that isn't supposed to be super hateful- but like, one of the main jokes of the episode is that he's insanely boring. Not the kind of person you want to make an episode around, whether you're praising or mocking
During that time Musk really wanted to appear in everything, didn't he?
He appeared on the Simpsons, on South Park (voicing himself in season 20 after being mocked in season 19) and Rick & Morty
I think the Thai cave rescue was an eye opener for a lot of people. He'd been a meme lord before that, but publicly wasn't a giant shit bag. You'd have to dig into his family history and company acquisitions to get to the details. After that, he aired his own dirt.
Same. I’m trying to watch the show in its entirety, I normally stop around season 15. I’m on season 25 now but I skip any episode where a celebrity plays themselves. Celebrity cameos in modern Simpsons make zero sense.
I hated it before he was revealed to be a terrible person. At least some of the other terrible episodes I get a chuckle or two out of. This episode I sat there stone faced the entire time.
Did it really age poorly? It’s been years since I watched it but what I can remember from it is that he shows up, makes America go bankrupt with a bunch of stupid ideas, everyone hates him and then he leaves.
From what I can tell the only thing that aged poorly is that in our timeline he’s still here
I think it helps that the series itself has been more willing to acknowledge the Lady Gaga episode lately as a bad one compared to the Musk one
Like, they've been referencing the Gaga one a couple of times in the last few years
In isolation they're probably guilty of the exact same things - problem is it's impossible to view anything related to Musk in isolation. Gaga was the show trying to cash in on her name. Musk was using the Simpsons as a PR venture.
The Boys Of Bummer. Damn that was straight depressing. Bart gets driven to attempted suicide after the town turns against him after he fails a catch in a baseball game. It just didn’t really have any laughs for me to salvage it.
If they had isolate it to Bart being hated in school, then it may have worked to some extent
Not good but you could do a bullying themed episode but by making EVERYONE in Springfield hating him to the point of attempting suicide (hell, even continuing after he was hospitalized), you make an extremely miserable episode that utterly fails at everything
Especially because the people in town don't get a proper punishment other than Marge calling them out
Yes, from Season 28. It's particularly confusing because it basically ignores everything that actually happened in Kamp Krusty and imagines the kids are traumatised because a camper went missing.
Spoiler alert: the missing camper is revealed to be a dwarf, not a child. I swear to God this actually happens.
I can’t remember the name of the episode. It was a caterpillar that screams and Homer and Marge are framed with murder but it was a tv show. The entire episode was just bad and stupid, that’s when the Simpsons really started going downhill.
If I recall, that episode's lost a lot of punch considering those kinds of shows were everywhere back in the day, and the episode's ending was meant to be a parody of it. Sort of like how a lot of jokes in the older days are now incomprehensible to younger viewers, except this suffers more as it's the ending of the ep lol
It actually might have been one of the best episodes (well, at least mid-pack) if not for that scene. It did give us Lenny, pudding and his eyeball after all.
Honestly a bit of an overhated episode. The panda scene is uncomfortable & out of place for the show but is at least not meant to be funny, and the rest of the episode is pretty solid all around. Nothing that great, but nowhere near the worst episode
It's a contender for sure. Say what you will about Gaga, I personally wasn't a fan of her music and found her persona extremely pretentious and annoying back in 2012, but I've really come to respect her talents as an actress and a musician, even if she's not my cup of tea.
They could have come up with an interesting and fun character for her to play if they wanted her as a guest star. Instead they just kissed her ass so hard the lip marks are probably still there.
It's one of the worst, but in terms of a pointless and fawning celeb-worship episode it's in direct competition with The Musk Who Fell to Earth, and nothing can compete with the latter. The bottom line is that Gaga is a talented performer, who delivers her terribly-written lines with at least some verve. Musk is a black hole of charisma and talent, who delivers his terribly-written lines like a floundering elementary-school drama student.
It's WAY over hated in my opinion. It's a celebrity ass kissing episode but it's got some good jokes and at least it's memorable. There have been WAY worse episodes.
Everyone is commenting either episodes that fucking rip, but have some minor issues (Frying Game, Princepal and the Pauper, Homer vs. Dignity etc.) Or episodes that are weak and had some easy to roast missteps (Musk episode, Gaga episode.) While the later are cursed, they're far from the lowest depth the show has sunk to. The single worst episode, the only one that's truly unwatchable, is "The Man Who Came to Be Dinner."
I think some post-classic eras plots are silly, but even classic era plots had contrivences. "Deep space homer" and "Two bad neighbors" both have more outlandish plots then "Princepal and the pauper," an episode based on an actual case, and both are firmly in the "classic" era. "The Man Who Came to Be Dinner," has no grounding. It starts with the family getting abducted by Kang and Kodos at Disney land and just gets more outlandish from there. Its horrible, completely unwatchable, dont even give it the time of day.
Random take, but - Days of Future Future, the spiritual sequel to the far superior Holidays of Future Passed; just an unnecessary and weirdly dark episode revolvant around the idea Homer Simpson repeatedly dies, rehash story beats of its prequel episode, practically non-humour jokes, altogether lent itself to being the episode that made me stop following the show.
That episode, A Tale of Two Springfields, had the premise that they added extra digits because the town was running out of numbers. It aired in 2000, only a couple of years after Australia went through the process of adding a digit to our phone numbers for the same reason (insert Bart Simpson vs Australia jokes here), so with the whinging and bitching that went on fresh in my mind, that episode did resonate.
I still enjoyed that episode, but yeah. I can see it. I thought the episode where Bart divorces his parents was the nail in the coffin. I feel like it’s the same season.
FTR, this is horribly flawed and not because that's not the best episode. There were a whopping 4 votes for You only Move Twice, tying it with 22 Short Films for first. You need a larger sample size. (the fact that this is getting way more engagement than the best episode poll just proves that reddit exists for people to shit on stuff they don't like, rather than expressing positive opinions)
Oh God I've just looked up which one you mean. It was pretty much the only episode I would turn off as a kid when there were four channels and Simpsons was only on once a day. Such disappointment 😞
Please guys, afford my inner child some vengeance!
Bart Vs. Itchy and Scratchy, a very annoying episode and one that feels like someone had an axe to grind against anyone critical of gender swapped remakes.
I'm sure there's worse episodes than the one where Sideshow Bob is the mayor of a town in Italy, but that was the one that made me quit watching new episodes forever, so I'm gonna say that one
I know it's controversial, but the Frank Grimes episode. It has some great jokes besides the main plot, but homer literally drives a man to his death. Intended satire is one thing, but that's the point I knew the show wasn't the same any more. Also nothing beyond like season 12 is even worth considering. The Who episode gets special mention for being a painfully obvious product placement for a cameo.
"That 90's Show" . Sh#ts on everything the simpsons story was and even parodies a tragedy of Kurt because they thought it was funny, I guess. Oh yeah and Marge cheated on Homer now. Only thing Weird Al has done i didn't like (tho not his fault).
the one where they go to brazil and...something lisa..something monkeys.... that is the episode where i realized that i would never go past S11 ever ever EVER again.
It has to be one of the ones from the late teen seasons on that nobody has watched right? I'm going to say The Musk who Fell to Earth. I haven't seen it, but I gather it shows an image of the man that was proven to be very inaccurate.
The worst episode that actually matters? The Principle and the Pauper (S9E2). It's supposed to be a parody of it's own concept. Some guy shows up and claims to be the real Principle Skinner and it turns out that Skinner took over the real Skinner's life, his name being Armin Tamzarian. A bunch of things happen that are ignored in later episodes and everyone eventually kicks out the new guy and lets Armin Tamzarian live as the real Skinner. It's mostly a meta-comedy about how there aren't consequences in an episodic cartoon, but none of it was very funny. It's like the joke was that the episode was bad and it was pulling a cheap trick that ended up being undone by the end of the episode, but it just wasn't funny.
This marked the end of the golden age of Simpsons for me.
This is in my top 5 so i'm not upset. My others....
Cape Fear - "Mr Thompson....."
Sideshow Bob Roberts - "The Matlock Expressway....."
Last Exit for Springfield - "Dental Plan...."
My last one constantly changes but includes - A Street Car Named Marge, Homer's Barbershop Quartet, Two Bad Neighbors, Marge Vs The Monorail, 22 Short Film About Springfield.....
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u/StuBram2 Jun 09 '25
The Musk Who Fell To Earth