The Simpsons Season 7 Episode 22: Raging Abe Simpson and His Grumbling Grandson in "The Curse of the Flying Hellfish

Bart brings Abe to school in a special day for grandparents and he proceeds to embarrass Bart by lying. Abe gets a piece of mail saying that the seventh Hellfish is dead; this leaves only two of the Flying Hellfish left alive. When one is left, he will get to claim the legacy of art treasures they kept from the WWII. The only other Hellfish who hasn't died yet is Mr. Burns. Abe doesn't trust Mr. Burns, who is scheming on how to steal the treasure. Mr. Burns hires a world-famous assassin to take care of Abe, but none of his attempts kill Abe. When Abe goes to tell Homer and the family his tale, they do not believe him. He stays in Bart's room until the coast is clear. 


Abe tells Bart the story of the Hellfish, where he used to be ranked above Mr. Burns. Bart is highly skeptical. Mr. Burns comes in the night to steal Abe's key. When Bart sees this, he decides to help Abe stop Mr. Burns from taking the treasure. They take the Flanders' boat and go diving for it. After Bart brings it up onto the boat, Mr. Burns takes it from them and then he tries unsuccessfully to drown Bart. Mr. Burns and Abe and Bart have a scuffle on the shore, and Abe and Bart wins. Just as Abe gets set to take the treasure, the authorities come to take the treasure back its rightful owner, a rich German man.

My thoughts:

How many times have I watched it: Twice, one time was last week.

Storyline: Eh, not a bad episode. While this episode is very entertaining, it feels like a Saturday morning cartoon because there are elements to the plot that is just action (the assassin setting up many elaborate plans just to simply machine gun everything down), and the other parts embrace it as a good plot device (the chase at the end). But that's okay for me to watch, I don't mind. The war flashback was fine, but it was weird that Burns was even in the war. He seems like the sort of person who'd somehow slither his way out of duty. 

The episode had an adequate amount of jokes. The fake Homer and Marge was funny, Grampa humiliating Bart at school was amusing, but I hated how a rich German person claimed the paintings at the end. Some think it's funny, but I just wanted to punch him because he had a SHIT attitude. Anyways, even some small parts fit the story well (ex. Bart tugging the boat 64 times).

At the end, solid a solid story with Bart, Grampa, and Burns leading the way, but I don't know how I can give this an excellent grade with not enough jokes.

My grade: B+