"White Christmas Blues" is the eighth episode of the 25th season of the American animated sitcom The Simpsons, and the 538th episode of the series. The episode was written by Don Payne and premiered on December 15, 2013, on Fox.[1] It was the first Christmas episode since "Holidays of Future Passed" and the sixteenth Christmas episode of the show.
Plot
As global warming causes a national holiday crisis due to the complete lack of snow anywhere else in the U.S., Springfield experiences a bizarre micro-climate event where steam leaking from SNPP and the raging tire fire lead to unnatural but very real and bountiful snowfall totals in the area. When this leads to large numbers of frustrated snowbirds heading to the city, the local officials and business owners happily gouge the tourists; while Marge is not happy with either the crowds or the seasonal aspects in general, she decides to open up 742 Evergreen Terrace and finds many travelers have lots of cash to shell out for a place to sleep. While Bart and Homer take to their impromptu hotel management roles, Marge gets increasingly annoyed by the tourist requests and becomes short-tempered towards them. Her holiday issues find a parallel in Lisa's plan to buy her friends and family gifts that are have more to do with feeling good about herself than buying things they will actually like; her choice of a present for Bart, a book, leads him to confront her with this and she admits it is true. She later trades in another gift and gets Bart an e-Reader. Marge is surprised when the tourists seem to be confronting her but sing a song of holiday spirit and thanks. While she is touched by the gesture and wishes them safe travels, she remains ill at ease to the end with Christmas holiday music.
Reception
Critical reception
Dennis Perkins of The A.V. Club gave the episode a C, saying "While The Simpsons has always excelled at tossed-off sign gags and the like, this sequence is just a jumble of writers’ room bulletin board material—and not especially inspired material at that. A few hit—the loony not-logic behind “A Zombie Christmas With Bing Crosby And The 1932 All-American Football Team” smacks of something alumnus Conan O’Brien might have come up with—but all too often the rest truck in either laziness or the aforementioned pop-culture references. (If The Simpsons never mentions a Kardashian again, that would be a step in the right direction.) The same goes for the closing credits, where we see all of the out-of-state license plates Marge marveled at earlier. Like so much of The Simpsons this year, there are some decent jokes scattered in there—any guesses on which is the “Touch It With A Stick State?”—but, as any grumpy old man would say, the show would be better served jettisoning the bulk of the extraneous spitballing for a coherent plot and some decent character development."[2] Teresa Lopez of TV Fanatic gave the episode two and a half stars out of five, saying "The Simpsons Christmas Specials have always been one of my favorites (along with the Treehouse of Horror), but tonight's episode was a disappointing, uneven, and (again!) overly familiar installment."[3]
Ratings
The episode received a 3.5 rating and was watched by a total of 8.48 million people, this made it the most watched show on Animation Domination that night beating American Dad!, Bob's Burgers and Family Guy.[4]
References