Review: The Simpsons “The King Of Nice”

Overview (Spoilers Below):

Marge is hired as a segment producer on Krusty’s new talk show, but she quickly realizes that she might be in over her head.

This episode of The Simpsons wastes little time getting into its story as we see Krusty the Clown overcome with a common case of green envy when he notices Kelly Clarkson raking in the dough from her daytime talk show. After talking to a producer, Krusty is determined to throw his clown hat into the daytime TV ring.

Meanwhile, the Simpson family takes a family excursion to a pet store where Marge gets a seemingly sudden itch to do something more with her life. Unlike the show’s previous iterations of Marge’s zest for more excitement, this revelation felt unearned as it happened too quickly to understand her frustration with life. After she is invited to a very convenient focus group, Marge takes center stage with her topical ideas and she is offered a job as a segment producer for a daytime talk show. Hmmm…whose daytime talk show could that be?

Like in the episode “Krusty Gets Cancelled”, Krusty attempts to completely reinvent himself and his show, this time undergoing a quick and fashionable makeover as he dances his way on stage to the first episode of his new show “krusty”. When Marge’s segment idea is used by Krusty, she is filled with excitement and becomes addicted to the idea of creating the next big segment. This “addicted to the job” storyline doesn’t offer anything we haven’t seen before on The Simpsons or any other animated show for that matter.

The meta-joke of the week in this episode came as Bart and Lisa tune in to “krusty”. When Lisa comments that Bart is taking the cancellation of Krusty’s old show well, Bart explains that he doesn’t need any more new episodes of his favorite show, since there are over 700 episodes of “The Krusty the Clown Show” streaming online already. This quip is obviously aimed at most diehard fans of The Simpsons, who often cite the show’s earliest seasons as its best.

Our Take: 

This episode borrows from the real-life controversies of “The Ellen Show”, except with Marge taking on the role of the overbearing boss. But this revelation has no real impact or lesson learned for Marge, who faces no consequences for her behavior. She even receives a call from guest star Drew Barrymore to come work for her when Krusty signs a deal to become a TV judge and quits his talk show.

“The King Of Nice” moves at a lightning pace and offers very little in terms of laugh-out-loud moments. In fact, the episode offers very few laughs at all. Both the A and B stories are predictable and tread some very familiar territory from previous episodes, which possibly tells the overarching narrative that The Simpsons as a show may have run its course. But like Bart said, at least we can always stream all of the best episodes from the past.