The Simpsons (TV Series) The Caper Chase (2017) User Reviews

Simply Enjoyable,

[lesleyharris30 · 6/10 · 19 October 2017]

The Caper Chase is a great Simpsons episode with a well written plot and a bunch of very funny scenes. It's an enjoyable episode that pokes fun at the Trump University news that came out several months ago, as we see Mr. Burns start his university for the sake of more profit. It has many very hilarious moments and made for a great twenty minutes.

I did feel the episode could have had more conflict, it was fun to see Homer as a professor and events do occur, but nothing major that could really grab us as viewers.

I love how convoluted this episode got, it was not afraid to go where it went and did not doubt itself for a second in doing so. It features some unlikely guest appearances, most notably Neil DeGrasse Tyson, that are thrown in nicely and did not feel like they were just there for the sake of having these big names on the show.

Good fun from beginning to end. The Caper Chase is a Simpsons that embraces it's ridiculousness, and is all the better for it.

Homer is hired as a professor when Mr. Burns decides to open his own university.

Pros And Cons Of Caper Chase

[snorlax3111984 · 7/10 · 2 April 2017]

Pro: 1. The X-Men couch gag was fine. My one complaint is they should have done it for "Camp Krustier" so it would have been the weekend of the release of "Logan".

2. The one good thing about the company baseball scene was Bart's comment about Homer still running to 2nd base after 5 minutes.

3. 2 of my favorite things from my childhood are Seinfeld and Disney's Hunchback of Notre Dame so you can imagine how delighted I was to hear Jason Alexander was appearing on the show. I don't feel he really got any good lines but just the fact they got Jason Alexander is freakin' awesome. Nice to see Alexander and Dan Castellaneta reunited 2 decades after their days on "Aladdin The Animated Series". Let us not forget the Duckman episode where Homer Simpson recited that show's immortal line "What The H--- Are You Starin' At?".

4. I loved the joke about Homer causing Lisa's hair to curl in nervousness. Even better was the following moment where Bart as "the good child" complains directly to the audience about Lisa's drunken antics.

5. Definitely the best scene in the classroom is Clancy Wiggum's miserable attempt at being an undercover narc.

6. I laughed out loud at Lenny giving his professor's cap credit for ending Apartheid.

7. Glad to see Homer in a dress. As Burns stated in the episode with the Red Hat Ladies, Homer is buxom and flirty. And it gives me an excuse to make the following statement: Ah Ah Dude Look Like A Lady... Ah Ah Dude Look Like A Lady...

8. Glad to hear Lisa is going to Yale. The farther she gets from Syracuse, the better off Syracuse is.

9. Thanks Screenwriter Guy. I 'm glad I'm not the only one who usually hates this show's final pre-closing-credits scene. I did enjoy the end of the closing credits when Burns sicked the hounds on the annoying choir singers

10. Best Line Skull & Bones Doorman: Living Or Dead? Burns: Living but you'd better hurry.

Cons 1. I pretty much hated all scenes at Yale. All that poking fun at Liberal schools was not fun for me. To be far, I went to a Division III school so going to a top-notch school like Yale is nothing I would know about.

2. I laughed at the "Dead Poet's Society" joke in the episode where Edna Krabapple is nominated for Nation Teacher Of The Year but after Robin Williams' death this episode's "Dead Poet Society" joke was just in very poor taste.

3. Speaking of poor taste, I did not appreciate the joke about Moe confusing pedagogue with another word.

4. It's not true that this episode has Lisa's first slurred words. She got drunk in the "Italian Bob" episode (which, coincidentally, also referenced Trump). I believe she also acted drunk in "Burns And The Bees" when she drowned her sorrows with Root Beer.

5. Yale has a sign naming it "The Harvard Of Connecticut"?. Since when has Captain Obvious been making signs?

Sooner or later everyone turns into an old fool.

[hartj-75983 · 2/10 · 25 November 2020]

To quote Abe Simpson 'I was with it then they changed what it was'.

If you live long enough you will reach a point where the next generation or the one after that makes no sense to you. Even Noam Chomsky ended up that way though to be fair it took him 91 years to do it so that's an achievement in itself.

This episode attempts to parody 'woke' ideas and politics but does so from a position of someone who simply does not get why it exists or what young people are now trying to achieve.

Putting in a joke about young people being unable to contemplate outdated and unfashionable ideas without experiencing trauma is both ignorant and patronising.

I appreciate that the script writers also attempted to poke fun at the powerful but the whole episode came across and both smug and lazy.

Some funniness, terrible start

[ngaparker-19-587678 · 16 April 2019]

I love this show, but sometimes there are episodes that I just wish they'd put more thought into making. This one is an example.

The story starts with a desperately unfunny parody of Yale. The writer rather seems to be a 'you kids get off my lawn!' type. There's rather mean-spirited attacks on universities and students today, with tired jokes about political correctness, something that does not exist.

The point of satire is that it is based in reality. You take something from real life, you exaggerate its features and you say something about it with humour and scepticism. What the writer does at the beginning is instead find something that only exists in their head based on a misconception (or just plain ignorance), and then satirise that. This is not satire, this is merely ignorance put on display. Satire punches up; this punches down, attacking defenceless students (and even using a real-life student's quote without any context) while providing us with no satire of the very powerful people who run universities and indeed businesses like Mr. Burns' power plant. A very disappointing display from a show so well known for satirising the powerful in full view of and in the service of the humours of those who are affected by these people. I'd suggest the writer needs to relearn how satire works. You need to understand something before you can satirise it, as the recent Comic Relief parody of the second Mamma Mia (in Great Britain) did not learn (the writer did not seem to have watched it.)

The rest of the episode is alright. A brilliant joke appears surrounding Homer's changing voice over the years. Another great joke involves one of the esteemed guest stars telling Marge, in the middle of a sentence, 'kill him for the insurance money,' us all knowing who this is about! The ending resolution fails the episode however, returning to robots exploding while bleeping words the author clearly does not like hearing, but does not seem to understand. I would never dream of using proper terms that I don't understand to portray someone else as a robot- no matter how much I'd like to!

All in all, the actual teaching segments are great and there are several very funny jokes in this episode, but it just feels like someone utterly bored with a society they don't want to understand or participate in wrote this episode, and we have enough people like that in the world as it is!

I would never say that the Simpsons has declined in quality, since I don't believe this to be the case. I wish the people who keep claiming it would maybe calm down and not say it in every single forum, YouTube comment section and so forth they see about the Simpsons. However, I do think that with this episode and some others, the Simpsons no longer understands its role as satirist. I hope this is found again soon!

You'll instantly forget what it was about

[nathanjhunt1 · 2/10 · 3 April 2020]

Another typical season 28 episode - no laughs, a forgetful plot, drunk Lisa??

The episode gets an extra star for the "frosty chocolate milkshakes" line, which put a smile on my face - something hard to come by in modern Simpsons.