Wild Wild Retro Review

When Netflix recommends such an amazing farce as Will Smith's 1999 blockbuster, Wild Wild West, you have no choice but to rewatch it and revel in the glory days of Smith taking every role he could find. The movie stars Will Smith, Kevin Kline, and Kenneth Branagh, along with a giant mechanical spider.

Yes, Jon Peters, apparently upset about the failed Superman Lives film, made sure to get plenty of mileage out of his giant spider concept. We see Spider Canyon, two mechanical spiders, a plan about designing a flying machine involving a wasp eating spider somehow, and plenty of spider motifs. Nearly the entire movie was built around the giant mechanical spider bot, despite it's clear and obvious weakness of "Why don't we just shoot at the open deck the driver is standing on?"

Seriously guys. It's right there.

Technically speaking, the film also "stars" Salma Hayek. Her role seems to consist entirely of being a trophy for the male characters to argue over for no purpose whatsoever. She is a football, to be passed between the men to reiterate just how horny they all are. That's not hyperbole. This movie is very obsessed with Loveless's(Branagh) sexual frustrations. More on that in a moment. When I say Hayek's Rita Escobar character does nothing, she really does nothing. She ends up in various stages of near rape, begs people to save her father, tags along to help, does the opposite of help one time, resulting in their capture, and in the end is reunited with her husband, because she is female, and the only thing a woman can offer a man is apparently the promise of sex.

S01EP013 The Crepes of Wrath

The Crepes of Wrath
Air Date: April 15, 1990
Production Episode: 7G13
Written by: George Meyer, Sam Simon, John Swartzwelder, and Jon Vitti
Directed by: Wesley Archer and Milton Gray


The Crepes of Wrath sees Bart as a foreign exchange student working on a vineyard in France. The episode starts with Homer taking a nasty fall down the stairs due to Bart's toys on the floor. While lying by the front door, unable to move, we see Santa's Little Helper wander up and take a nap. This is the first we've seen of him since the Christmas episode. This is because The Crepes of Wrath was one of the last episodes written for Season one, meaning they could add in the one shot of SLH, who was unknown when the other episodes were being written.

Oddly enough, Maggie joins them, despite Homer having been established as being upstairs during the time it took Bart to enter the house and go to his room. Clearly Homer is not the most attentive father, leaving a baby to wander downstairs without supervision. It's almost like this becomes a recurring character trait.

Marge comes home to rescue Homer, scold Bart, and then it's off to school the next day. Here we meet Agnes Skinner for the very first time. Possibly under some sort of medication, because she's nothing like the Agnes Skinner we've come to know. Here she's a sweet old lady who is proud of her son. As she goes to the little girl's room, Bart is in the boy's bathroom flushing a cherry bomb. The resulting waterspouts fling Agnes into the air.

The source of Agnes' hatred of everything?

Skinner drags Bart to the Simpson's house, where Homer is lying in pain on the couch from his previous fall. At this point in the series, the house was internally consistent, or at least as consistent as it ever was. Oddly enough though, it's consistently wrong in this episode. Homer is in the front sitting room with the bay window and fireplace. The views through the two doorways are accurate, but in the wrong position. Usually this is a momentary mistake, but for this entire extended scene, with multiple cuts from one character to the other, the back of the house is seen through the doorway that should lead to the front door, and the staircase and dining room are seen where the back of the house should be. Skinner even enters from the left side of the couch after entering through the front door, despite the bay window that looks out on the front door being visible on the opposite side of the room.

 

notice both doors are visible in this shot

 

Skinner suggests enrolling Bart in a foreign exchange program. He'll go to lovely Paris, while the Simpsons house a child from the (currently communist) Albania. That's north of Greece and west of Italy's heel, for those of you who are geographically challenged. Bart heads off to France, while Adil heads towards Springfield. At this point we have two concurrent stories, one following Bart, and the other following Homer. Let's start with Homer.

Homer takes an immediate liking to the polite Adil, who is not shy about extolling the virtues of socialism to Lisa. Adil asks Homer to take him to the nuclear plant, where he intends to steal nuclear secrets from the United States. He shouldn't have bothered, though. Albania became a parliamentary republic exactly a year later, in April of 1991. We're a bit more open to sharing nuclear secrets with those non communist countries. Adil is eventually tracked down by the CIA, and is taken into custody to exchange for one of their child spies, who is delightfully 90's in his design.

 "I'm getting too old for this"

Meanwhile, in France, Bart is taken to a run down vineyard where he is starved and forced to do slave labor. Cesar and Ugolin are his exchange family. They reappear once watching a major sporting event on TV (Lisa the Greek), and they have a prominent role as traitors to the French Resistance in the Simpsons Movie Game level Medal of Homer. They aren't very good at making wine, only letting it ferment for three days before deciding to bottle it. For the curious in the crowd, this stage should last three to six months. Also, it's really fun and satisfying and you should all try it at least once in your life. 

To compensate for the complete lack of fermentation, they decide to add some antifreeze. You may recognize this as something that actually happened. In a surprisingly dark turn, they have Bart test the doctored wine. When he doesn't go blind, they send him out to pick up more antifreeze. Bart heads out in the rain to the town. He meets a police officer, but can't communicate to him in French. In a sitcom cliche, his frustration results in him spontaneously figuring out how to speak French, at which point he informs the officer of the abuse he faces and the tampered wine. Bart is rescued, the wine tampering is stopped, and Bart eventually returns home with souvenirs for the family.

S01EP012 Krusty Gets Busted

Krusty Gets Busted
Air Date: April 29, 1990
Production Episode: 7G12
Written by: Jay Kogen and Wallace Wolodarsky
Directed by: Brad Bird

Here we go. This is it folks. The first time Sideshow Bob turned to a life of eeeeevil.

Get used to it, Mr. Terwilliger.

This is easily one of the most complicated episodes of Season one. All the clues to the real identity of the Krusty that robbed the Kwick-E-Mart had to be brought out one by one over the episode. We learn a lot about Krusty and Sideshow Bob, more than any other secondary character at this point. And they had to do it all while somehow making Bart a part of it all. For a celebrity, Krusty sure spends a lot of time hanging out with nobodies over the series.

Viewers might be aware of the trivia that Krusty was originally Homer in disguise. Whether the idea was nixed here or in The Telltale Head, which also had Krusty speaking directly to Homer, is unclear, since both were being produced very close together. On the topic of plot points that were dropped early on, did you also know Marge used to be a giant rabbit?

The episode starts off with an episode of The Krusty the Clown Show. This is an interesting bit of framing. Each act begins with a shot of Krusty's face, showing the progression of the episode. The first act opens with the curtain on his show. The second act begins with a shot of his face behind bars. The third and final act starts with Sideshow Bob's face in the office instead of Krusty's.

Krusty opens his episode with a birthday wish, where the lucky viewer gets to choose between a song or seeing Sideshow Bob shot out of a cannon. Sideshow Bob's resignation to being shot out of a cannon clearly shows how poorly he is treated on the show. Back in the Simpsons household, Patty and Selma are arriving with the first of many, many vacation slideshows. I'd like to imagine they're still using a projector even in 2015. They seem like the type. Marge calls Homer at work and sends him off to get ice cream for them.

At the Kwick-E-Mart, Homer is a witness to "Krusty" robbing the store at gunpoint. Here's where we see the clues that are revealed throughout the episode. Krusty is microwaving a burrito as Homer walks in. He's reading the Springfield Review of Books. And finally, when Homer turns around, he steps on the end of Krusty's foot. All three of these events eventually prove the culprit couldn't have been the real Herschel Krustofski.

Kent Brockman makes his first appearance in this episode in the second act, giving us the expository information on Krusty. We learn about Krusty's heart problems and habit of blatantly hawking products on his show. It makes me wonder how many people realized his pacemaker meant he couldn't be near the microwave in the Kwick-E-Mart, given how prominent the warning label was on the screen.

In the courthouse we meet Judge Snyder for the first time. We also meet a lawyer who eventually prosecutes Bart for the murder of Principal Skinner in Bart the Murderer. The beloved Lionel Hutz and the Blue Haired Lawyer don't exist yet. During the trial we see Krusty's illiteracy and small feet brought up, revealing the final two clues that he's innocent.

Entering the third act, we see Sideshow Bob taking over the show and speaking for the first time. His erudite voice and penchant for the arts is introduced. While Lisa is overjoyed at the more highbrow show, Bart is still convinced that Krusty was set up. He implores Lisa to help him figure it out, as she is the smart one, now officially declared as such on the show, instead of implied as in earlier episodes. They go to see Sideshow Bob, where we see his gigantic feet, giving us the final clue as to the robber's true identity.

Bart and Lisa receive tickets to the show, where Bart is called onstage to talk to Sideshow Bob. Bart goes over the first two clues before Bob cuts him off, resulting in a clever joke that I didn't notice for twenty six years.

Sideshow Bob says " Bart, open your heart. I admit I have some mighty big shoes to fill.". This triggers Bart to recall all the events while that phrase is repeating in his head. We see the robber shouting as his foot is stepped on over and over again with neon feet spiraling towards the center of the screen and, well, see for yourself:

Twenty six years, Wallace and Jay. Twenty six years that joke went over my head.

Bart interrupts Bob and reveals his giant feet, declaring him the robber. Wiggum, who is still a competent police officer at this point, sends Eddie and Lou to arrest Sideshow Bob. He declares revenge as he's dragged away, and Krusty tells Bart he'll never forget him, a promise that is immediately broken in season 2 and onward.

The shot of Sideshow Bob being arrested is a perfect example of how they were still working out the animation in the first season. We see a circle of people, with the camera situated behind the first row, blocking off some of the action. It makes for the same claustrophobic feel a lot of the early episodes had, until they began dropping extraneous details to keep the scenes less cluttered.

As first season episodes go this one is easily the best. It also introduced two characters who get a surprising amount of mileage over the years, to the point that Krusty received his own videogames and almost even had his own spinoff series. Sideshow Bob of course breaks out of jail over and over. Which is one of the first examples of the timeline issue the show has. Since the characters don't age, the show has to take place over the same year and some odd months. At first, they were repeating all Bob's antics each time he appeared. Eventually, this resulted in a criminal being let loose after a matter of weeks over the course of a few months, so they stopped. The fact that it would take most of an act to list them all probably didn't help.

S01EP011 Life on the Fast Lane

Life on the Fast Lane
Air Date: March 18, 1990
Production Episode: 7G11
Written by: John Swartzwelder
Directed by: David Silverman

Now familiar, well tread territory, the first infidelity episode featured none other than Marge Simpson. While one could say Homer's Night Out was also about infidelity, Marge made it quite clear that she was upset with the lesson Homer was teaching Bart, and not the dancing itself. This episode begins with Homer forgetting Marge's birthday and rushing out to buy her a gift. Being Homer, that gift is a bowling ball for himself.

Determined not to let Homer use the gift he obviously bought for himself, Marge decides to go bowling. It is here she meets sort of series regular Jacques. While not a major recurring character, he has appeared in more than a few crowd scenes, much like Princess Kashmir from the previous episode. After much back and forth temptation, dates, and many bowling related pick up lines from Jacques, Marge chooses to visit Homer at the plant, referencing the ending to An Officer and a Gentleman.

 There's not much to say about this episode. It has a lot of clever and not so clever bowling jokes, take that as you will. Compared to most other infidelity episodes, it falls short. There's really no chance Marge is going to sleep with Jacques, despite his desperate attempts to do so.

(truer words were never spoken)

In most other cases, the character tempting Homer or Marge has some redeeming quality or is filling some void in their marriage. In this case, it's just someone paying attention to Marge. And not even someone with any redeeming qualities. Jacques is simply pure scumbag all the way through. The whole episode feels a bit flat, like they just picked a plot from a grab bag and ran with it.

As for other characters introduced, this is actually our first look at Helen Lovejoy, with her trademark love of gossip. She was mentioned in Homer's Night Out, but this is her first onscreen and speaking appearance.