The Simpsons Season 28 Episode 22 Review: Dogtown

The Simpsons: Season 28 Episode 22

This The Simpsons review contains spoilers.

The Simpsons Season 28 Episode 22, “Dogtown,” panders to puppy love and yet somehow manages to mangle the mutts into a mangy mess of mischievous mayhem. Who doesn’t love cute puppies, playing piano, getting their snouts stuck in pickle jars or scratching their butts along the concrete to clean their fire hydrant debris? Cats will get their day, but doggies are adorable. They are instant memes, man’s best friend, blind people’s eyes and the saviors of drunken arctic explorers.

There used to be a popular T-shirt that read “the more I know people, the more I love my dog.” Homer gets to put that to the test when his GPS system guides him careening down garbage alley with just enough room to spare either perennial ne’er-do-well-enough Gil Gunderson or his own roving greyhound Santa’s Helper. Homer pulls Snoopy’s Choice, but with only a smidgeon of reluctance, and even that because of the looming lawsuit. The Simpson family practices groveling to screw the biggest failure in town out of his one sure win, a court fight with the guy who casually opted to hospitalize him. They are callous. They