The Simpsons (TV Series) Home Sweet Home-Dum-Diddly Doodily (1995) User Reviews

An amazing episode

[gizmomogwai · 9/10 · 18 November 2008]

Despite having a few mediocre episodes, season 7 features some exceptional episodes- Bart Sells His Soul may be the best, but Mother Simpson, Marge Be Not Proud and Summer of 4 Ft. 2 are great too. Bart Sells His Soul was aired early in the season because, as they say in the DVD commentary, they saw it as a strong Bart episode. Home Sweet Homediddly-Dumb-Doodily aired just before it, and it was viewed as a strong episode dealing with the family as a whole.

In it, Bart gets lice after playing with a monkey and the school blames the parents, and Lisa is in bad condition too after being roughed up by bullies. Government people inspect the Simpsons' house at one of the rare times that Marge has taken a break from cleaning, and seeing it's a mess, take Bart, Lisa and Maggie to a foster home. That foster home, as it turns out, is just next door, the Flanders' house. The kids, except Maggie, have trouble adjusting to their new home and miss their parents.

The brilliance of The Simpsons is that the family is dysfunctional but loving at the same time. And we can see that here- the Simpsons miss each other deeply, despite the fact that they're not perfect, and in fact the perfect Flanders family is strange and terrible, maybe even repulsive. This episode sticks up for the kinds of families that elitists look down on. Despite the sad tone of the story, it scores some laughs, particularly in the first half, and that's no surprise given that it's from Jon Vitti, the writer of Lisa's Substitute which may be the best Simpsons episode of all time. Home Sweet Homediddly-Dumb-Doodily itself is probably top 25 material.

You negligent monster

[snoozejonc · 9/10 · 26 November 2022]

The Simpson children are placed on foster care when Child Protection Services visit the home.

This is a fairly dark episode with cleverly written humour and a quite vicious parody of religious parenting.

The story is strongly written with a great arc for the Simpson family that goes to a darkly funny place, includes some humorously suspenseful moments and a very sweet ending.

I particularly like the comedy in the build-up to the CPS decision the Homer and Marge are unfit parents, which is very well thought out. Where Bart, Lisa and Maggie end up is a brilliant and ironic gag and never fails to make me laugh. Maggie is used especially well by the writers and animators.

I Liked It

[Hitchcoc · 8/10 · 19 June 2022]

I won't say much because of my disdain for people who push their religious beliefs on others. We are all entitled to believe as we wish, but keep it to yourself. When Marge leaves before doing a hundred daily chores, child services comes and takes the kids. They end up with Flanders. Ugh.

Ironically Enough, the Simpsons Are Getting Flanderized

[frankelee · 7/10 · 22 April 2022]

I've been watching all the 'Golden Age' seasons mixed together, so it is a little funny watching Homer the Heretic and then watching this episode right after. This episode is pretty funny, not top notch for The Simpsons, but full of gags I've remembered for decades. "Pwincipal Skwinner, Ah need sum soos," "illegal overhand fashion," "b*tch, b*tch, b*tch," "son, let's stop all the fussin' and the feudin'," have all stuck in my memory since 1995.

But I didn't really love this episode at the time, and I still don't. Season 7 is the first season where the show began to lose its voice, and the child protective services plot, while ridiculous and light hearted, just isn't quite right. And then the ending where the kids weren't baptized just sank the story for me. The Simpsons were satirizing the sacred cow of mid-century Americana by being that sanitized TV family living in that sanitized TV town, except screwing it up constantly. What they weren't was what your Boomer mother thought they were.

And for the weekly church going Simpsons to not have baptized their children? The most banal of American religious acts that even people who barely consider themselves Christian do? And to have Marge of all people act outraged at the idea? Who are these people? It's not just unmaking the characters from the seasons when they were at their best, it's missing the point of who they are and what the show is. If they wanted to contrast Marge and Homer from the Flanderisseses they should have thought harder and come up with something a lot less lazy than this.