Hey everybody, welcome back to Lifetime of Simpsons where we’re up for a week of remarkably mediocre episodes. And you know what helps them seem okay? Starting off the week with an almost unbelievably bad episode. Buckle up folks, we may have found a new winner for “worst episode yet!”

This turd of an episode starts off with the really weird tableau of Homer and Lisa sitting together on the couch, watching the History Channel and betting on the outcome of the Truman/Dewey election. Homer obviously picked Dewey, and thus loses, so Lisa gets to chose what the family does that afternoon. And her choice is to go build Habitat for Humanity houses, which I can’t imagine is something you can just drop by and help out. Especially when you’re eight. But whatever.

Homer and the kids get to the place where they’re building the houses, and after an awkward and cringe-worthy gay joke we do get the solid gag of Bill Clinton, Jimmy Carter, and George Bush Sr bumbling around like the Three Stooges. But when that’s over we see Homer waiting a wall, and taking his wedding ring off so he doesn’t ruin it. And just on time Lindsey Naegle and Cookie Kwan show up, trolling for single dads. So of course they see Homer, ringless, and start flirting.

And right as Homer is speaking to the two women, Marge comes rolling up to pick up the family, and seems to see Home showing off and flirting with them. She then freaks the hell out, and drives back home, not picking the family up. Oh, and we learn that Homer isn’t flirting, he’s vividly describing the birth of his children after explaining that he’s happily married. But Marge doesn’t know that, and instead of asking Homer about it, just goes home and starts to get jealous and depressed that Homer isn’t attracted to her anymore.

But before we see where that horrible decision leads Marge we’re introduced to the B-Plot, which starts off with Bart and Milhouse hanging out in the living room during a sleepover. They’re flipping through channels and end up coming across an episode of the 60’s Batman show, which is a solid find. The kids are super into the show, and stat watching it excitedly, especially when they realize that the villain of the episode is a character called Clownface, who was played by a young Krusty. Because Krusty is 100 years old. And after seeing Krusty pull off some crazy stunt where they have Batman and Robin tied to the horses of a carousel, and make it spin ridiculously fast, they decide they need to replicate it.

The next day though we cut over to Marge and Manjula, who are walking together in the park talking about infidelity. Since Manjula just had to deal with Apu’s affair, Marge decides to ask her advice, since she’s now convinced Homer is going to cheat on her. Manjula’s response is to not reassure her friend, but instead tell her that the only way to ensure Homer’s commitment is for Marge to get liposuction. Sure, let’s just roll with it folks.

So Marge and Manjula head straight to the goddamn plastic surgeon, and Marge gets signed up for a liposuction session. She’s put under, and the procedure begins. And after some time she wakes up in some mass recover ward where the other patients are all laying around. And it’s pretty quick that Marge realizes that something went wrong, and she didn’t get liposuction. She accidentally got breast implants. Whoops! Marge yells at the plastic surgeon for a while, with serious grounds for a malpractice lawsuit, and learns that he can remove them, but not for 48 hours.

Meanwhile though, we see that Bart and Milhouse have gone to school that day dead-set on replicating the stunt they saw on Batman. So at recess they tie Milhouse up to a little caurosel in the playground and use Otto’s bus to make the thing spin way faster than it was designed to. At which point it yanks out of the ground and starts flying away, straight to a group of Iwo Jima veterans who are visiting. At which point Milhouse knocks the flag down, and vomits on it. And Skinner is pissed. Which causes Bart and Milhouse to immediately squeal and blame their terrible behavior on Krusty.

Back at the house, Marge is desperate to hide her new breasts from the rest of the family, deeply ashamed of them and not wanting to explain the ridiculous steam of events that lead to the mistake. But she’s apparently bad at hiding them, and that night Homer is feeling her up and reveals the secret. At which point he starts lobbying for her to ignore her wishes, and keep them. And after an awkward family meeting where the kids learn about the breasts, they decide to make the most of the 48 hours, and take advantage of them.

Because apparently the people of Springfield are horrible pigs, and they give her special treatment just for having big fake boobs. They head to Luigi’s and manage to get a table, even though Luigi claims that it’s full, and even gives them better food than everyone else. At which point we get a ridiculous song where all the pervy men of Springfield come into the restaurant to sing about how great Marge’s boobs are now, and how they like her more. And as a cherry on top, some lady comes in and asks Marge if she wants to get some modeling gigs.

Marge agrees to the woman, and begin getting some gigs around town, mostly trade shows for household products, like oven-mitts. But I guess it’s a decent job, even though it’s mostly horny salesmen cat-calling her. But it gets pretty terrible, pretty quick. Especially because the giant breasts are now giving Marge terrible back spasms. But who cares about that!

Oh, and while all of this is going on we see that Krusty’s life has gotten pretty crappy. The stupid parents of Springfield get all up in arms when Skinner tells them that Bart and Milhouse vomited on the flag because of Krusty, so they begin picketing his show until they take all the fun out of it and it’s basically just a safety lecture. So Bart heads into the Friars Club and has a meeting with Krusty in a sauna where they come up with a plan to save his image.

And wouldn’t you know it, the plan Bart comes up with ends up getting Marge involved too, because it’s set at a shoe expo where Marge is modeling. Bart’s basic plan is to have Stampy (who is there for some reason) grab Milhouse and pretend to eat him, only to have Krusty say Stampy’s safe-word and get him to let Milhouse go, saving the day. Unfortunately Krusty forget the word, so Stampy just keep eating Milhouse, and even grabs Bart.

The rest of the people are the show are horrified, and start freaking out. They even take a break from sexually harassing Marge, who is so miserable that she has to get drugged up by her agent-lady from earlier. And the elephant situation starts to escalate when Stampy also grabs Homer, and the police get ready to shoot Stampy, and possibly his captives. And since Krusty can’t remember the special word, it’s up to Marge, who realizes the only way to distract everyone is to take her top off and flash everyone. And that works! People stop paying attention, Krusty accidently says the word, Stampy releases everyone, Krusty is a hero, and Marge goes to get her implants removed, and things go back to normal.

Yikes. Maybe I’m crazy, but I really feel like this is the worst episode I’ve had so far on the show. Which is no small order. There’s really very little that redeems it in my eyes. There’s the good Three Stooge’s joke and it was fun seeing the Simpsons do some Batman ’66 stuff, but I hated basically everything else. Let’s start with the B plot! We’re given yet another ridiculous problem where people hate Krusty, but relegated to a B Plot, so it barely makes sense and is incredibly sped up. Plus, it deals with one of my least favorite things about culture, parents getting mad that their shitty kids did something they saw on a show instead of just parenting them. But the biggest problem is the main plot. I don’t know what the hell was going on in this episode. Marge just accidently got breast implants, because for some reason she never thought to ask Homer about that misunderstanding, and then spends the rest of the episode being told that having giant boobs makes her better. And they don’t even refute it at the end! I guess she got rid of them because of the back pain, because she ends up saving the day with them, even though they seem to be making her miserable. Really, the way the episode ended up going, I see no narrative reason that she did that, other than to return things to the status quo. Because every shitty dude in Springfield was dead set on her keeping them to ogle them, and they seemed to make her life much easier. I don’t know folks, maybe I’m looking at this episode from a weird lens, but I couldn’t stand this episode, and just felt like I needed a shower after it.

Take Away: Apparently the moral of this episode is that giant breast implants makes every woman’s life easier and better.

“Large Marge” was written by Ian Maxtone-Graham and directed by Jim Reardon, 2002.