Marge is trying to forge Bart to play an instrument at school, and he reluctantly agrees. They settle on a "hobo guitar" but Homer starts to freak out when he realizes that he'd have to pay for it if it is broken. Bart uses this to terrorize Homer, who eventually smashes the instrument on his own. Homer then rushes off to Moe's, but Moe shuts the bar down early after he gets a phone call from someone he clearly hates. Homer calls Marge to pick him up, but they spot Moe outside and decide to follow him. They discover him fighting with an old man who happens to be his father Morty.
Moe tells Marge and Homer about the "evil business" his family is involed in: mattress sales. He doesn't respect or like this profession, dating back to an act of sabotage that his father tried to make him commit as a kid. He refused to sabotage their rival business, but those people ended up sabotaging the Szyslak mattress store. This caused Moe to be outcast in the family, which he's still angry about. Marge and Homer both convince him to give his family another shot. They drive him to his family's store. Morty is ready to make amends, but his siblings Marv and Minnie are still angry. Marge invites them all over for a family dinner, which goes about as well as you'd expect. They continue to fight, but things turn around when Homer plays an old Szyslak mattress ad. Morty tells them that he will be retiring soon, and gives each of his children a mattress store. Suddenly, Moe doesn't seem to hate the mattress business.
It's the day of the grand re-opening of Moe's mattress store, but when he displays the commercial, he discovers that his siblings sabotaged him. Everyone leaves, and Moe's devastated. He and Homer get into mattress wars with Moe's siblings, but Marge is disturbed when she discovers they broke the law. She goes to get Morty's help, and when they arrive at the warehouse, they find Moe atop a mattress pile, ready to release bedbugs onto them. Morty is actually pleased by this, who's wanted Moe to be "man enough" to finish the job ever since he failed to complete it years ago. That's when Marge tells him that maybe some families just aren't meant to be together, which Moe agrees with.
Wrap-Up:
Well, that was a TON better than last week. Just thought I'd start with that. Now that I got that out of the way, on to the actual review. For the most part, I really enjoyed this Simpsons episode. It had plenty of laughs and fun moments, but it just felt a little... off. Moe seemed to finally be burying the hatchet with his family, and the writers just ruined that and made the episode much worse in the process. Had it ended with the Szyslaks reconciling, the episode would have been really good. But having Minnie and Marv still hate Moe for something so minor and Moe accepting that he's just better off without any family at all was a disappointment. Still, the episode had more than enough solid moments for it to pass as an enjoyable (yet flawed) episode.
Score: 7.5/10
Grade: B-
