The Simpsons: The Burns and the Bees

I haven't been laughing out loud much lately while watching The Simpsons. I still think I enjoy more episodes than I don't enjoy, but it's more of a pleasant enjoyment, not a side-splitting, pause-the-TiVo-because-I-can't-stop-laughing enjoyment. "The Burns and the Bees" was entertaining and pleasant enough, and there were some genuinely funny moments, but overall there wasn't much that stood out.

The episode opened with Mr. Burns flying to Billionaires Camp, where he sported a "Billionaires Rule" T-shirt. I'm a sucker for some Burns tomfoolery, so I was a fan of these portions of the episode. The "campers" were roasting jewels over an open fire and telling ghost stories about the Securities and Exchange Commission. There was also a classic Simpsons biting the hand that feeds them moment when Rupert Murdoch came cackling out of his cabin to change his net worth from $6 billion to $7 billion.

At the camp, Burns played The Rich Texan in a game of poker and they both ended up betting people. Burns, of course, put Smithers on the line (and Smithers did his part by placing himself on the table), and The Rich Texan bet his basketball team, the Austin Celtics. Burns won, and now he owned a basketball team.

There was a lot of potential in this, but it didn't go too far. Instead of a story about Burns running a basketball team (which could have been similarly brilliant to Burns running the company baseball team in the classic "Homer at the Bat"), the situation introduced Mark Cuban to the mix. Cuban, the wild and crazy owner of the Dallas Mavericks, did a great job making fun of the way people see him. His best and most telling line was "Hold that thought. No one's paid attention to me for ten whole seconds." But Burns' actions to become more like Cuban were weak and didn't elicit as many laughs as they idea could have turned out.

Meanwhile, Lisa became the champion of the dying bees. She learned from Groundskeeper Willie the plight of the bees when she witnessed his dead colony. Willie's bee tombstones were a great example of how recent episodes of The Simpsons can be fun to watch, while not offering up as many big laughs as they used to. "Buzz Aldrin," "Bee Arthur" and "Bee Bee King" were cute but obvious jokes. And the "Jerry Seinfeld" wasn't a very strong choice, either.

The two storylines met when Mr. Burns set out to destroy the home of Lisa's new bee colony to build a sports arena for his new team. This led to a town hall meeting which gave me my favorite throwaway line of the night: Mayor Quimby: "I regret to inform you we are not offering child care tonight. I don't know who that guy was you were leaving your kids with."

The citizens voted for Burns, and Lisa thought all was lost. But Homer, with the help of Moe, took Lisa's bees, crossed them with Africanized bees and created mutant super bees, or something. It all ended with the mutant bees, not surprisingly, taking over the new arena.

Again, with an episode like this, I'm never really annoyed by anything or find myself frustrated with plot. I just don't laugh as much as I would have liked. There were a number of funny lines and moments, but nothing built up to anything phenomenally funny. Is this due to familiarity? Have I seen it all before from The Simpsons? Or is it just lazy writing? I'm going to chalk "The Burns and the Bees" up to lazy writing, because I think the series can still do better than this.