Season 35, Episode 15
‘Who is still watching The Simpsons in 2024?’ I hear you ask. Dear reader, the answer is me. Me and my wife. Despite the fact that the show has suffered a rapid and inexorable decline in recent years, we still faithfully tune in every week anyway. It’s partly out of habit, partly because the show is occasionally capable of moments of greatness, but mostly out of nostalgia. The world’s most powerful drug. I still get a little tingle of excitement when the title card appears and I am transported back to that wonderful feeling of watching at home after school with my tea on my lap and the whole afternoon laid out in front of me…
Now, I wouldn’t normally review an episode of The Simpsons, in fact, I’ve never done so before. This week’s episode, entitled ‘The Cremains of the Day’ (the 765th episode!), is so good, however, so close to being a masterpiece even, that I felt compelled to get involved.
Larry Dalrymple, more commonly known among fans as Larry the Barfly, first appeared in the very first episode of The Simpsons and he has shown up in pretty much every episode since. You’ve seen him sat at the bar in Moe’s Tavern, bravely clinging on to his last few hairs and occasionally ogling Marge whenever she graces Moe’s with her presence. In ‘The Cremains of the Day’, Larry joins a select group of Simpsons characters that have been killed off (if you’re wondering: Bleeding Gums Murphy, Maude Flanders, Mona Simpson and Edna Krabappel along with a few other very minor characters). This prompts Homer, Lenny, Carl and Moe to attend Larry’s funeral, only to discover that according to the deceased’s mother, Larry considered the other patrons at Moe’s to be his best friends. Wracked with guilt, Homer and his fellow drunks (minus Barney who is otherwise engaged with his charity work) decide that they should travel to a special place to scatter Larry’s ashes.
What makes this episode so effective (for the first half at least) is how long time Simpsons writer John Frink handles the material. Every bar in every town is full of lonely men slowly drinking themselves to death and it is brave of an animated family show to address this topic. There is a truly beautiful flashback sequence that shows Larry in the background of various shots staring vacantly and sadly ahead as Homer and the boys have fun around him, all soundtracked to a wonderfully rendered parody of The Beatles‘ Eleanor Rigby. Indeed, this first half of the episode is as good as anything in the recent Simpsons canon and at its best it even threatens to harken back to the golden era. Unfortunately, the reveal that Larry’s ashes also contain valuable emeralds derails the episode somewhat and is endemic of the fact that The Simpsons in 2024 is never content just to tell a small story. A tale of everyday sadness. Happily, the final few minutes bring everything together nicely without being too saccharine and the finished product is that rarest of beasts in this era – a genuinely great episode of The Simpsons.
If you haven’t watched this show in years and you’re emotionally secure enough to take in an episode mostly centered around loneliness and male friendship then pull up a bar stool, crack open a bottle of Duff and raise a glass to ol’ Larry the Barfly. Maybe the world’s most famous yellow family don’t need to go the same way as Old Yella just yet.