TV Recap / Review: Homer Becomes Bumblebee Man's Stunt Double in "The Simpsons" - "¡The Fall Guy-Yi-Yi!"
This evening saw the debut of the 12th episode in the 37th season of The Simpsons, entitled "¡The Fall Guy-Yi-Yi!" (a riff on the title of the 1980s TV series The Fall Guy and the 2024 feature film it inspired), and below are my recap and review of this installment of the long-running animated series.
"¡The Fall Guy-Yi-Yi!" begins at one of Bart's (voiced, as always, by Nancy Cartwright) little-league baseball game, where the team's sponsor Comic Book Guy (Hank Azaria) gets into a violent argument with Uter's father (also Azaria), and Bart is embarrassed that his own father Homer (Dan Castellaneta) is far less masculine, as demonstrated by his fear of a goose. Later at home, Bart asks Homer to take him to a UFC-like match at a Springfield sports arena, though Homer would rather sit around and watch TV. But when his wife Marge (Julie Kavner) makes him decide between helping her fold laundry or spending quality time with his son, it's off to the arena, where local celebrity Bumblebee Man (now voiced by Humberto Vélez-- who notably serves as the Spanish-language voice of Homer Simpson-- though his previous voices have included Eric Lopez and, once again, Azaria) is seated ringside.
During the match, Homer's image is put up on the Jumbo-Tron during a quest for the most macho man in attendance, though he only uses the opportunity to make out with his cotton candy. But a tumble down the arena's many staircases and into the ring results in Homer catching the attention of Bumblebee Man, who takes him and Bart out to dinner, where he (at long last) provides his own origin. Then Bumblebee Man, or as he reveals his real name to be, Pedro, explains that due to the many injuries he's accrued over the years, he can no longer perform his job satisfactorily anymore, so he asks Homer to become his stuntman.
Bart finds that he is finally proud of his dad's job, but he's frustrated that he can't brag to anybody about it because of a non-disclosure agreement that Homer has signed. It seems that Bumblebee Man does not want anyone to know that he's using a stunt double, a desire that gets reinforced after an encounter with former Jackass host Johnny Knoxville (voicing himself) at a Musso and Frank's-like restaurant. What was really eerie and meta about this moment in the episode is that FOX used it as a synergistic opportunity to promote its newly relaunched Fear Factor series, which is now anchored by Knoxville, via an intrusive snipe at the bottom of the screen.
But Bumblebee Man's ratings only go up as he continues to use Homer for his ability to take loads of physical punishment (shades of the seventh-season episode "Homerpalooza" here), while at home of course Marge is concerned for her husband's safety. After a montage of Homer performing various stunt for Bumblebee Man's show on his unpredictable Mexican-inspired Channel Ocho sitcom, the pair run into acclaimed filmmaker Alejandro González Iñárritu (also voicing himself), with Homer praising The Revenant for its "hilarious" bear attack on Leonardo DiCaprio. It seems that Iñárritu wants to cast Bumblebee Man in a new film, and the performer is only too happy to accept the offer, with the only problem being he has to somehow continue to conceal the fact that he's using a double.
Their plan is to make Homer wear a greenscreen bodysuit under the Bumblebee Man costume, but this only results in Homer getting even more injured than he had been before. Soon an image leaks of Bumblebee Man working with a stunt double, and it turns out that Bart, Marge, and Lisa (Yeardley Smith) had all leaked it to the press to prevent Homer from getting further hurt.
Pedro holds a press conference denying the accusations, and says that to prove his authenticity he will invite the public to watch the filming of the movie's most dangerous stunt-- a fall down the steps of the famed Pyramid of the Sun at the ancient Mesoamerican city of Teotihuacan. But Homer, taking inspiration from Bart, asks Iñárritu for an airlift to the top of the pyramid, where he convinces Bumblebee Man and himself that neither of them have anything to prove (this reminded me a lot of the second-season episode "Bart the Daredevil"). Naturally the next thing that happens is that they both tumble down the pyramid's myriad steps, while a thrilled Iñárritu says he will "remove the gringo in post."
The end of this episode is an homage of sorts to the 2017 Disney/Pixar movie Coco, with both Homer and Bumblebee Man finding themselves in the Mexican land of the dead, though a passing skeleton tells them they have not died and are simply in lengthy comas. I gotta say, as ridiculous as a lot of this episode was, and as reminiscent some of it was to better installments from the classic period of The Simpsons, I still laughed enough to give it a pass. Plus, outside of his featured segment in "22 Short Films About Springfield" from season seven, I'm pretty sure this is the first episode of the show to actually focus on the Bumblebee Man character, so that's something. And hey, it only took over 35 years and nearly 800 episodes to get there. Ay-yi-yi, indeed.
New episodes of The Simpsons air Sunday evenings on FOX.