The Simpsons are out caroling, singing to Snake and his family (they're not related, just his hostages), to Krusty and his father the rabbi, to Burns and Smithers, and to that Blue-Haired Lawyer, who points out that many Christmas songs are legally protected by copyright. Homer goes home to write his own Christmas song...
...but Ned shows up and irritates Homer so much that Homer gives up and instead writes a very insulting song about Ned. He sings it for his buddies, and also David Byrne, who happens to be passing through town. David Byrne, who's always interested in outsider art and the culture of less-sophisticated people, insists on recording the song and turns it into a hit. The omnipresence of the song forces the family out of town, so they visit a dude ranch with no TV or radio (except when Maggie wants to dance to Britney Spears).
Homer and Bart meet a Native American tribe, whose homeland has been flooded by a new dam, built not by a heartless government, but by vicious swarms of beavers. Homer and Bart try to fight off the beavers to help the Native Americans reclaim their homes. Meanwhile, Marge has met Cookie, the cook, and Cleanie, the cleaner. Cleanie, naturally, is voiced by Andy Serkis and is reminiscent of some pale, cave-dwelling, ring-lover whose name I can't quite recall.
Oh, and Lisa falls in love with Luke, a sensitive, liberal cowboy. He's a little older than her, so it doesn't surprise her to find he has a girl coming to meet him. Heartbroken, Lisa intercepts the girl and sends her down a "shortcut" through the spooky woods, only to find the girl is Luke's sister. So, with the help of Bart and a group of outmatched beavers, Lisa saves Luke's sister and confesses her misdeed to him.
Lisa's romance is shattered, and David Byrne went off with Moe (the second hostage situation of the episode), and the family's week at the ranch is up. Well, until they hear Moe's Byrne-produced pop song on the radio, that is, which leads to a quick U-turn and another week of vacation.
I still have two links below this for you to buy this show, but I don't think I recomend "The Simpsons Christmas Volume Two." It has four episodes, two of which only have six minutes of Christmas-related material put together. Luckily, the final episode, and my next post, is all-Christmas-all-the-time, and is pretty good to boot.
As a Simpsons episode, I rate this 7/10. I love Lisa stories, and this is a great story for her: she's precocious but still too young to really be wise. At this point in the show's run, the stories whipped around at breakneck speed, but there's still well-honed craftsmanship to the comedy.
As a Christmas show, I rate this 2/10. The one-fifth of the runtime that's devoted to Christmas is great, Christmassy stuff.
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