REVIEW: THE SIMPSONS “GONE ABIE GONE”

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Episode Synopsis: After Grampa takes it on the lam from the retirement home, a frantic Homer and Marge try to track him down, and their search uncovers some surprising secrets from his past, including the revelation that he once worked at a restaurant with Marvin Hamlisch (who provides his own voice) and fell in love with a singer at the eatery. Meanwhile, Lisa is flush with excitement when she discovers the joys of online poker. Original Air Date: Nov 11, 2012 @ 8pm EST. 

Guest Cast Anika Noni Rose: Rita LaFleur Marvin Hamlisch: Himself Jennifer Tilly: Herself

Spoilers Below

Homer wins five grand after a fast wood worker causes ‘burns’ to his face thereby winning a judgement. To help spend it, Moe recommends Homer trying on some online poker in hopes of increasing Lisa’s college fund.  With all the commotion, Homer and Marge forgot all about visiting Grampa and decide to go see him at the retirement home. Unfortunately, the home must’ve miscounted because they tell Homer and Marge that Abe is missing and they have no idea where he is!

To help and try and find Grampa, Homer and Marge head to a local biker bar of whom tells him all about Abe actually working there…a really long time ago! Turns out Abe was a fine musician and found himself a pretty attractive lounge singer to help round out his duo. We find out that the lady’s name is Rita LaFleur and that  she was married to Abe Simpson and even after all these years later, Homer had no idea…or recollection. Homer and Marge trak down Rita and learn that she hooked up with Abe soon after Homer came along and Mona was out of the picture. Evidently, when Homer was little Abe decided against moving to Europe with Rita instead deciding to stay home with his first born.  Thankfully, Homer and Marge find Abe of whom moved away and got a job as he was sick of being miffed for visits. After reconciling, Abe is reunited with Rita and make sweet music together.

Lisa discovers Bart using her online poker account to gamble. Instead, of turning the game right off, she gets hooked on it pretty quick as she starts to go on a roll.  After watching a bunch of training videos on poker, Lisa vows to keep on playing poker until she wins a lot of money and as it stands she’s already at just North of $400k!  However like all rookie gamblers, she doesn’t pull out when she should’ve and instead she lose all the money that was made. Of course Lisa is heartbroke as she just lost her college fund to Sideshow Bob! Actually, turns out Bob was Bart the entire time and Lisa was able to get her five grand back.

Wow, what a great episode of The Simpsons! We had two plots that both worked rather well and provided a bunch of laughs. Yea sure, the ‘Grampa finding love’ has been done a few times but I felt the story had a lot of sweetness to it and ended with such overbearing charm that I couldn’t deny its warmth. On the other end, Bart and Lisa give us a plot with a good moral on the back end of it but again, Marge had a very similar gambling addiction years ago and as such you kinda saw where the ending was going to go. That said, this is one of the better episodes of the short season thus far even despite the similarities to Simpsons yesteryear.

(8.0 out of 10)

About John Schwarz

John is the Chief Editor and Founder of Bubbleblabber.com. While at first a part-time project, Bubbleblabber quickly grew into a full-fledged operation and officially became a company in 2014. When John isn't running a business full-time, he likes to go to concerts with your mother.