This episode does have it's gems. The Krusty vs. Gabbo feud is an excellent parody of 90s-era cross-media phenomenas, and bits such as the citizens of Springfield turning to Gabbo for the sole reason that they can't think for themselves ("Let's listen to Gabbo, he'll tell us what to do!") or the fact that Krusty's show started out as a Dick Cavett-esque late night talkshow before peddling into kiddie fodder somewhere down the line, but this episode starts a widely mocked tradition Simpsonphiles like to rip into to this day, something that would be inevitable after Bartmania died down and the series went from early 90s flash in the pan kid fad to bonafide, consistently profitable television juggernaut, the tradition of guest stars showing up for the sole fact that they're celebrities.
Remember that one of the targets The Simpsons fired on oh so well in it's early years was the mass market media machine, from jokes about Paramount wheeling out the original Star Trek cast well into senior citizenhood even as The Next Generation crew solidified themselves into a generation of viewers, to Krusty's shameless preference of quantity over quality, slapping his name haphazardly, even if the product in question was a tad questionable and demographically inappropriate to tie in into a after-school kids' show, and of course, my personal favorite, poking fun at the guest star filled special episode by loading the list up with a load of popular MLB players at the time, and inflicting the most horrific circumstances on the guest starees, such as either being thrown off Burns' softball team, becoming hooked on and eventually overdosing on nerve tonic, thrown to the abyss, jailed for life by Wiggum's incompetence, or outright dying from radiation poisoning by the end of the episode.
Here, however, it can all be boiled down into this:
"Hey, Lis, look, it's Bette Midler. Hi, Bette Midler."
"Hey, is that Luke Perry?"
"Oh, you're Johnny Carson!"
It ends how you expect, the celebrities are all ganged up together and rescue Krusty's career, and Gabbo is thrown into the same abyss as countless other one note one time supporting characters. A weak ending to a solid season overall.
Remember that one of the targets The Simpsons fired on oh so well in it's early years was the mass market media machine, from jokes about Paramount wheeling out the original Star Trek cast well into senior citizenhood even as The Next Generation crew solidified themselves into a generation of viewers, to Krusty's shameless preference of quantity over quality, slapping his name haphazardly, even if the product in question was a tad questionable and demographically inappropriate to tie in into a after-school kids' show, and of course, my personal favorite, poking fun at the guest star filled special episode by loading the list up with a load of popular MLB players at the time, and inflicting the most horrific circumstances on the guest starees, such as either being thrown off Burns' softball team, becoming hooked on and eventually overdosing on nerve tonic, thrown to the abyss, jailed for life by Wiggum's incompetence, or outright dying from radiation poisoning by the end of the episode.
Here, however, it can all be boiled down into this:
"Hey, Lis, look, it's Bette Midler. Hi, Bette Midler."
"Hey, is that Luke Perry?"
"Oh, you're Johnny Carson!"
It ends how you expect, the celebrities are all ganged up together and rescue Krusty's career, and Gabbo is thrown into the same abyss as countless other one note one time supporting characters. A weak ending to a solid season overall.