TV Recap / Review: Homer's Father and Bartender Bond Over Baseball in "The Simpsons" - "Abe League of Their Moe"
Yesterday evening saw the debut of the 15th episode of The Simpsons season 36, entitled “Abe League of Their Moe" (a riff on the title of the beloved 1992 sports dramedy A League of Their Own). Below are my brief recap and thoughts on this installment of the long-running animated sitcom.
“Abe League of Their Moe" starts off with a flashback to long, long ago when a very young Abraham Simpson (voiced, as always, by Dan Castellaneta) attended a Springfield Isotopes baseball game with his own grandfather and together they carved their names into the railing in front of their season-ticket seats. “Someday you’ll bring your own grandson to a game," says Abe’s grandfather, and of course we dissolve to poor Abe sitting along in the same seat in the present. He’s so alone, in fact, that the only other attendees at that particular Isotopes game– seated way off on the other side of the stadium– is bartender Moe Szyslak (Hank Azaria). So Abe makes an effort to bond with Moe over their shared interest in being the only two fans left of this unsuccessful baseball team, and soon they find themselves attending each game together, even sometimes watching on the TV at the Springfield Retirement Castle.
That’s when a unique opportunity arises for the two sports fans– a foreign player named Aeropos Walkov (guest star Jamie Demetriou from the British sitcom Stath Lets Flats) known for a powerful two-handed pitch is looking to come to the states, and celebrities like Chris Rock and Danny Trejo (both voicing themselves) are lining up to draw him to New York and Los Angeles, respectively. But Moe actually has the upper hand in this situation, with his grandmother having spoken Walkov’s native language. So the tavern-owner fires up the ol’ gas-powered camcorder and records a video pleading for Walkov to come to Springfield, which works when the baseball player spies the famous Tire Fire and is reminded of the one in his own home town. So Grampa and Moe become heroes for bringing a star player to the Isotopes, and at first everything is great– even Bart (Nancy Cartwright) finally wants to attend a game with his grandfather.
Moe, meanwhile, acts as Walkov’s interpreter for press conferences and other interactions with the locals. But the problems begin to arise when Abe becomes frustrated by the increased commercialism of the now-booming Isotopes ballpark– now renamed Toblerone Stadium– and the transformation of his usual seats into a lush VIP area that he and Bart can’t even access: their section “J" has been relocated the the super-nosebleeds above the clouds and the Duff blimp. Then Moe encounters an issue of his own when he finds Walkov betting on baseball using one of the many sports-betting apps that are being advertised around the stadium. Bart also becomes enamored by sports betting when he sees his heroes doing it, using Homer’s unconscious face to log in to his smartphone. This leads to a tense press conference wherein Moe attempts to mistranslate Walkov’s confession and Abe eventually confronts his still-relatively-new bartender friend.
Naturally, things come to a close with the usual resetting of the status quo, and Walkov relocating to San Francisco where he continues to be “rich in a different place." And I would say the plotline of this episode feels a little meandering, but it doesn’t really matter because of how funny it is. Maybe that’s the difference between a forgettable episode of The Simpsons and a higher-quality one these days, but overall this one worked for me pretty much solely due to how many genuine laughs there were. There’s a post credits sequence with another guest star– someone named “Jomboy"-- and I didn’t get that at all because I’m completely lost when it comes to sports, but again I enjoyed watching Moe and Grampa Simpson bounce off each other so much that I wasn’t really bothered by the references that were lost on me. I got an interesting character pairing and some good jokes (including Grampa’s confusion that there isn’t an “email-man") out of it, and that’s enough for me.
New episodes of The Simpsons air Sunday evenings on FOX.