Photo courtesy of Fox

I hadn’t caught any promos or news of this week’s Simpsons, so I had no idea that we’d be seeing Lurleen Lumpkin again. While the reintroduction of a character that we’ve barely seen in sixteen seasons could have felt awkward and forced, this episode provided a lot of laughs.

The show began with the discovery that the town of Springfield was broke, which led to a hilarious gag about the town trying to trick the federal government out of relief money. I tend to not like The Simpsons when the show gets too political, but this brief joke worked really well, especially with the FEMA guy turning out to be a con-man. The town then turned to collecting back taxes, which led us back to Lurleen.

The country crooner apparently suffered s downward spiral, despite Homer’s warning to avoid them. Of course Marge had her misgivings about taking Lurleen in, but the scenario played out more organically than many other times the Simpson family have agreed to take in people they shouldn’t have, such as Homer’s floozy Vegas wife. Lurleen’s experiences at Moe’s were also really funny, with Moe’s fake moustache and Miss Lumpkin fending off advances from both Lenny and Carl. Though Marge remarked that’s like a person not liking hamburgers or hot-dogs, Lurleen prefers to bag herself a Homer look-a-like.

I liked the fact that this episode didn’t re-tread familiar waters by having Lurleen throw herself at Homer again, but the turn of reuniting her with her father felt jammed in, and the story was not really fleshed out. If he just wanted to cash in, why not just mooch off Lurleen’s success, instead of selling out her song to the Dixie Chicks? That seems less “Deadbeat Dad” and more “Manipulative Jerk For The Sake Of A Celebrity Cameo Dad.”

Though the story wrapped up very quickly and neatly without much explanation, this episode was still very funny, and it was nice to see a familiar face from the series’ early days, even if many of the show’s current fans weren’t alive when the Colonel Homer episode first aired. Might we get another visit from Unkie Herb sometime in Season 21?

If you missed the show, check it out over at hulu.com.

Alan’s Score: 7.9 out of 10