Spoilers Below

Bart is being accused a pulling a prank on the school marching band and is due for sentencing by the school. Lisa agrees to represent her brother to prove his innocence. Janet Reno’s in town and she’s the one presiding over the case. After everyone testifies Bart is on the verge of being convicted, but Lisa isn’t giving up.

Meanwhile, Burns always wanted to be a superhero…who knew? He decides to do just that with the name ‘Fruit-Bat Man’ and with Smithers’ help he’s off to fight crime.  Really though, all of the villains are paid as setups by Smithers as I guess a token to make Burns feel like he’s doing a good job. When Lisa shows up looking for help on her case,  Burns kind of shrugs her off after Smithers comes clean about his hero business. That said, we find out that Willie is behind framing Bart and out of nowhere comes ‘Fruit Bat-Man’ to stop him. Lisa gets Bart off scott-free, and Moe gets one more lick.

But, what of Fruit Bat-Man?? Well, turns out there is a whole team of elderly super-heroes aka The Dependables and they’ve put all of their cards on the table!

The Simpsons put together another solid episode with a bigger focus on the Burns story. No joke, this is the closest we’ve gotten to a Bartman type deal and it worked so well I wanted more of it.  All of the capers he was ‘stopping’ had me pointing at everyone thinking ‘look at that one’ and laughing a bunch with Cat Lady as Catwoman. On the other end, I was a bit worried that Bart/Lisa would get in the way of the Burns deal, but was pleasantly surprised by how both plots came together nicely and then finish with the hysterical short at the end. On this dark night, the Simpsons rose above the rest and anytime we can see a shout out to the real hero (Matt Groening) its much appreciated.

(8.5 out of 10)