Last night saw the debut of the second episode of The Simpsons’ 35th season, entitled “A Mid-Childhood Night’s Dream” (a reference to the William Shakespeare play A Midsummer Night’s Dream) and below are my brief recap and thoughts on this installment of the long-running animated sitcom.
There’s a great episode from the second season of HBO’s iconic crime drama The Sopranos in which Tony gets a bad case of food poisoning and experiences an eerie series of lucid dreams about his situation while still having to navigate his complex personal and professional life in the mafia during his turbulent waking hours. Whether intentionally or not (I’m guessing the former), more than two decades later The Simpsons has taken that same idea and run with it, putting Marge Simpson (voiced, as always, by Julie Kavner) in an extremely similar position. But instead of nightmares about “whacking” her best friend, Marge dreams about Bart’s (Nancy Cartwright) waning childhood, with a recurring theme of her not wanting to let go– both literally and figuratively– of her “special little guy.” It seems that after a distressing parent-teacher conference with Bart’s current teacher Mrs. Peyton (Kerry Washington), Marge had something of a mid-life crisis, going on a drinking and questionable-food-eating bender with Homer (Dan Castellaneta) late into a school night.
So she starts out by revisiting early memories of Bart and Lisa’s (Yeardley Smith) childhoods together– before the birth of baby Maggie, naturally– when they would have bubble parties in the backyard. But soon the versions of Bart and Lisa from these memories begin to slip away, and Marge begins to panic. Back in the real world, there’s a school event called “Bounce-athon” that Marge dreads missing due to her sudden illness, which presents as pretty much constant vomiting in addition to these fever dreams, though the rest of the family insists she stay in bed. Homer does his best to take care of things, but as usual he’s less than competent when it comes to parenting. Meanwhile, Marge and the audience keep returning to her dream state, which sees the kids (but mostly Bart, as Marge will eventually realize to her shock, as she’s been uncharacteristically neglecting her love for Lisa and Maggie) disappearing into their teens and adulthood. She mourns for the days when Bart would hold her hand and frolic with her, before he was known as the funny school photo guy.
As one might expect, visions of Lisa in the dream pop up to act as the voice of reason, along with Homer as an otter (because he ate nachos off his belly in a kiddy pool the day before) and we get some very funny explanations and explorations of Marge’s mindset through her interpretation of what Lisa’s intellectual musings sound like. And things ultimately wrap up at the Bounce-athon with Marge collapsing from exhaustion and having another enlightening sit-down with Mrs. Peyton. The writing here is very sharp again this week, with great, memorable jokes like Homer’s invention of the acronym “FOMUMO.” But the real treat comes from the jaw-dropping animation and direction, both of which are beyond gorgeous and imaginative, giving Marge’s dreams a breathtakingly surreal quality while keeping the real world as grounded as possible. This is an episode that strikes the absolute perfect balance between top-notch Simpsons-style humor, genuinely moving character beats, and captivating visuals that may very well be among the most impressive the show has ever produced. Consequently, The Simpsons is two for two so far this season, and if this streak of quality continues I think we might be in for an unexpected latter-day renaissance for this series.
New episodes of The Simpsons premiere Sunday evenings on FOX.