TV Verdict

Another season of The Simpsons comes to a close, with an up-and-down episode. The season finale, “Coming to Homerica,” begins with a great couch gag, with our heroes running through TV history, followed by a couple of solid media spoofs, with Krusty, and then with a take-off of a certain cable reality show.

From there, the main plot kicks in, where a health scare divides Springfield and neighboring town Ogdenville. As more and more Ogdenvillians move to town, working menial jobs, it seems nice at first, but the overpopulation starts to grate on everyone. The metaphor here is clearly immigration, made all the more clear once Homer joins a border patrol to keep the outsiders out, followed by the creation of a giant fence. Also, the Ogdenvillians are all Norwegian for some reason.

I’m sure many Internet peons are chomping at the bit to attack this one as a “message episode,” but it looks to me like the whole immigration thing is really here a framework to hang jokes off of. The closest thing the episode makes to an actual statement is that people should set aside their differences, etc. Or maybe the statement is people who run things at the U.S. borders are idiots. But then, this is demonstrated by having Homer get confused as to the difference between a gun and his beer. (He tries drinking the gun.)

I’d say the first half of the episode is much stronger in laughs and content than the second half, especially the somewhat rushed ending. That said, I’d find it interesting if they did a follow-up somewhere down the line, to show what became of the Ogdenvillians. This show isn’t known for rock-solid continuity, but I can’t help but wonder if there are more story possibilities here.