TV Verdict

Spending too much time away from the family has always been tricky for The Simpsons. Letting minor characters shine can be fun, but let’s face it: people tune in to watch the Simpsons, not the Szyslaks, or the Flanderses, or the Leonard-Carlsons. Then again, spending too much time with the family can be exhausting. This week, The Simpsons hit a nice middle ground, spending most of the episode on Moe’s short-lived relationship (get it?) but backing it up with a Homer-Maggie-Marge B-plot. Neither story soared to great heights, but “Eeny Teeny Maya Moe” was a solid entry in a (thus far) solid season.

News flash: Homer isn’t a great father. His preference of watching sports to spending time with Maggie has left her turning to the family dog for a positive male role model. Fed up, Marge forces the two to spend time together, which means Homer bringing his baby to the bar. Luckily, Moe is in a cleaning kind of mood and uncovers a heretofore unknown window that looks out onto a conveniently situated playground for babies. Free to drink and provide a basic level of dysfunctional parenting, Homer drops Maggie off next door and returns just in time to hear Moe tell the story of why, exactly, he’s tidying up.

During one of his frequent trips to use the library’s internet terminals to chat up online singles, Moe met a woman named Maya who laughs at his knock-knock jokes and (gasp) thinks he’s cute. Although they have never met, Moe’s in love with his mysterious emoticon-confidant and has invited her to meet at the bar. When she arrives, Moe finds out there’s one tiny thing she forgot to mention about herself: she’s a little person. Unfazed, Moe and Maya begin to date, and he couldn’t be happier. Problem is, he’s afraid to introduce her to his friends, and she notices. So he sets up a double date with Homer and Marge. The evening goes swimmingly, and Moe decides it’s time to pop the question. Her excitement quickly fades, though, when he makes a few too many “short” jokes. She breaks up with him, driving Moe to make the grandest romantic gesture he can think of: getting Dr. Nick to make him tiny as well.

Meanwhile, Maggie starts acting strangely at home and Marge is worried that Homer isn’t taking as good care of her as he says. So she installs a hidden camera in Maggie’s bow (courtesy of Private Eye Surveillance). She gets the footage back and is none too pleased to find out that Homer has been leaving her for hours on end, and that she’s being bullied by the other babies.

See? Pretty middle-of-the-road stuff. Even Moe felt oddly neutered this week. Maybe it was his (and the writers’) desire to not offend Maya, but he embraced her with way less hesitation than I expected. Even if you accept him hardly blinking an eye when he finds out his internet hottie is a little person, how did Moe get to be such a good boyfriend all of a sudden? It takes more to win at love than practicing kissing by siphoning gas out of other people’s cars. Even more befuddling than Moe’s willingness to not be a jerk was Maya suddenly deciding that he wasn’t right for her. How did she go from almost accepting a proposal to kicking the guy out of her house for making jokes about her size that she made first. It’s like the writers needed an out for the relationship and they couldn’t come up with anything other than the most obvious reason for a break-up. They even chickened out of making Moe go through with the operation. They saved the story a bit by giving it a sweet ending (thanks to Homer, of all people), but they could have done more.

Speaking of doing more, the Homer-Maggie plot could have been a lot more interesting, too. The idea of baby bullies is funny. Adding the surveillance angle and then half-assing the ending isn’t.

In all, a sweet-yet-forgettable episode that fell just a little short (sorry…I couldn’t resist).