Not just, but mainly, because of their Australia episode, I hate it when the Simpsons go to other countries. In this case, it was only Homer (and Lenny and Moe) who went to Iceland in pursuit of Carl, who stole $200 000 they jointly won in the Springfield Lottery. These images are primarily the fight they had when they found him.
Yes, I am still watching it with Finnish subtitles. Makes me feel like I'm being educated.
Below the caption reads 'Start talking, or you'll get a mouthful of shark fermented in urine'.
So yes this part of story is that Carl's (adopted) family has been reviled in Reykjavik for a thousand years because they betrayed the rest of Iceland to invaders and enjoyed themselves doing so. He spent the $200 000 on buying the last page of the saga that detailed their crimes in the hope that the missing page would exonerate his (adopted) ancestors and make things better for his parents, who are living on the edge of town in a kind of exile. Well, the final page actually just digs deeper on the family's bad behaviour, but then Moe, Lenny and Homer explain that Carl himself is a good man and so the people of Iceland forgive him, and all the Carlssons, on that basis.
I've never been to Iceland (would I love to go? Fuck, obviously I would). The episode, which is from I think 2011, looks really good - you can see just from the above, it's colourful and well-designed. But on the whole, the whole Simpsons deal of 'other places are funny because they do things different' is so ridiculously provincial. It doesn't matter that they know it's provincial - they can't get away with it by saying they're making a commentary/satire of provincialness because that's clearly not true, they can't do anything else because their American audience is so provincial and ignorant it will only accept Simpsons stories taking place in other parts of the world if those places are represented as perversely weird and to a certain extent disgusting.
So you know I see people on social media remarking that the Simpsons jumped the fermented urine-soaked shark in (say) season 10 or 11, that is, close to 25 years ago, and my instant reaction is no I just watched a not-terrible episode, and then I start to describe one to you as per above and then I'm oh yeah actually, in many ways pretty terrible, but to be fair, the things I really object to are things that have always been a problem with the Simpsons and the idea of Carl saving his Icelandic family's reputation by dint of buying the last page of a saga or recommendations from his Springfield friends is not the worst storyline ever.
By the way though, when Moe etc get ahold of the last page of the saga, which is worth close to $200 000 apparently, Moe's impulse is to destroy it, which Marge I think talks him out of, but no-one says anything like, well, now we've got the result Carl wanted, let's sell the last page of the saga again and we'll all have the money we originally had (less what it cost to fly to Iceland). I know that's not exactly how sitcoms work, but fuck it, it's so fucking obvious that the money need not be lost, and what's Carl left with? A useless final page of a saga? Except it's not useless, it's really valuable. At least donate it to the nation. Why was it ripped out of the, er, saga book in the first place? Tbf that might have been explained and I wasn't paying attention, but to also bf, this aspect of the program is so messy it's not surprising I don't necessarily expect there to be a good reason.
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