The family is watching an Itchy and Scratchy marathon when Marge comes in and shuts the TV off. She demands that they spend family time together without being on their devices, so she takes them all away. They go to the library to get some books, but it's closed, so they have to go to the store. There aren't any books there, so they go to an old (and disgusting) store. They find actual books there, which is better than anywhere else so far. Bart gets a book about war, due to his disdain for Homer. Marge is happy that he's going to read, which is good I guess. She can be annoying when she's not happy. (Sorry Marge.)
Bart gets picked on by Nelson for reading, but he takes some advice from the book and avoids getting attacked. Meanwhile, Marge is reading Lisa her favorite book from childhood. Marge is surprised to learn how different it is to read the book now that she's older, and she stops reading it. That night, she dreams about the book and the author tells her to re-write the book to make it less offensive. Back to Bart, he's trying to get some help from Lenny with conquering Homer. His tactics work, and Homer agrees to let Bart go to a convention in exchange for some help.
Marge is ready to read the revised version of her favorite book, and Lisa is very critical of it, and even references the Apu controversy. The next day, Homer takes Bart to the Tunnelcraft convention he's been dying to go to. Bart is thrilled, but Homer has an awful time. Lisa takes Marge to meet with some people to talk about the author Burwell, and they try to convince her that she wasn't a bad person at all. Elsewhere, Flanders changes Homer into Flanders 2.0, but Bart eventually changes him back to the way he used to be.
Wrap-Up:
This was a horrible episode of the Simpsons. I mean truly, absolutely dreadful. The first five minutes were actually pretty enjoyable, and gave me a misleading feeling that the episode might be good. I was so wrong. Everything beyond that was just awful. Bart's story was not funny throughout, but the ending with Flanders was just so random and terrible. It felt like they just made things up as they went along, with no plans as to how they wanted to end it. It was terrible. Marge and Lisa's story was somehow even worse, as it was both unfunny and boring. The whole episode was paintless and bland, but that story truly was awful. I can't find a single positive thing to say about it. And the biggest problem with it was the handling of the Apu controversy. The writers handled it in the absolute wrong way. I love this show very much, but shame on them. Even if they don't agree with the controversy surrounding Apu, they could have handled it in just about any other way and it would have been better than this.
Score: 3.5/10
Grade: F
