"The Simpsons" Recap / Review: Marge Has "Top Gun," Rock Hudson, and "The Joker" Fantasies in Double-Length Disney+ Episode "Extreme Makeover: Homer Edition"

Last week, Disney+ released an exclusive new double-length episode of The Simpsons entitled "Extreme Makeover: Homer Edition" (the title being a reference to the reality TV series Extreme Makeover: Home Edition, though that doesn't have much bearing on the actual content of the episode). Below are my recap and thoughts on this streaming-only installment of the long-running animated sitcom.

"Extreme Makeover: Homer Edition" begins with Bart writing the chalkboard gag "I will not hit the 'Skip Intro' button," a funny acknowledgement of this episode's streaming nature. Then we get an elaborate Omega Mart-themed couch gag from the folks at the immersive art collective known as Meow Wolf-- as a fan of both The Simpsons and Meow Wolf, I definitely appreciated this quite a bit-- if you haven't yet visited Omega Mart in Las Vegas's Area 15 (or Convergence Station in Denver, which is the other location my friends and I have made a pilgrimage to), I highly recommend it. A new Meow Wolf location will be opening in Los Angeles in late 2026, and I personally couldn't be more excited.

Then the episode proper begins with Marge Simpson (voiced, as always, by Julie Kavner) scrambling to find an outfit to wear for a night out with Homer (Dan Castellaneta) and his friends. Marge rifling through her closet offers an opportunity for some nice callbacks to Simpsons episodes from the past, and she finally settles on a simple denim jacket just as another problem arises-- the babysitter is late! So Homer insist that Marge head out ahead of him while he deals with the situation. She arrives at a nostalgia-centric restaurant and gaming location, where she meets up with Lenny (Harry Shearer), Carl (Alex Désert), and their respective dates Amy (guest star Betty Gilpin from The Hunt) and Naima (Dawnn Lewis, who joined the cast of Simpsons regulars in 2017). Back at home, Homer learns that their regular babysitter Shauna Chalmers (Tress MacNeille) has suffered a leg injury by falling off a roof while helping her boyfriend Jimbo Jones (Mo Collins) shoot stunt videos for social media. Shauna insists that she can still babysit thanks to being heavily medication, and to Homer's credit he quickly realizes this would be a bad idea.

But after calling everyone he can think of around town, including Ned Flanders (also Shearer)-- who is stuck under his car-- and Principal Seymour Skinner (Shearer again)-- who is already babysitting Ralph Wiggum (Nancy Cartwright)-- Homer decides to leave all three of his kids on the front lawn and have them looked over by the watchful eye of the family's Ring-like front door camera. He even puts Santa's Little Helper's shock collar on Bart (also Cartwright) to keep the boy restrained to the yard. At the restaurant, Marge is surprised to find herself holding her own in conversation, until Homer shows up and makes everything about himself and sports in which the ladies have zero interest. But when Marge discovers how Homer dealt with the babysitter situation, she really loses it, sending her husband back home. This also triggers a series of fantasies about different versions of Homer that will take up most of the episode's remaining running time, the first of which is a Top Gun parody that casts Homer in the Tom Cruise role, complete with numerous jokes about the actor's height. Marge is the taller, smart/sexy psychiatrist that Homer is assigned to in order to deal with the trauma of constantly losing his wingmen. That and a running gag about being in a conflict with a nondescript, no-named country will be best appreciated by those who are familiar with the Top Gun franchise.

The second fantasy segment sees Marge imagining Homer as a manly Rock Hudson-type (of course Marge wouldn't be aware that in real life, Rock Hudson was gay) in 1950s and 60s movies like All That Heaven Allows and Seconds. There are also hints of the acclaimed drama series Mad Men in this send-up of post-war suburban ennui, where Marge is a beatnik bartender who lures Homer away from his (also unfaithful) wife in this reality, Helen Lovejoy (Maggie Roswell). The Ned Flanders B-story in this segment serves as a parody of the 1968 Burt Lancaster movie The Swimmer, and some research has told me that the 1956 Gregory Peck film The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit may have also influenced the imaginary narrative here. To top it all off, there's a wonderfully animated montage that pays tribute to animation and advertising styles of that period, as well.

Then the third and final fantasy segment is a fairly direct send-up of 2019's Joker movie starring Joaquin Phoeniz as the title character and its heavily derided sequel Joker: Folie à Deux from 2024, with Lady Gaga as Harley Quinn. Here Homer is cast as the Batman villain (though Batman himself is contractually prohibited from appearing) and Marge is his demented mate. Homer-as-Joker admires Krusty the Clown in the same way that Phoenix's Arthur Fleck idolized Robert De Niro's Murray Franklin, though in this version of the story Krusty invites the street punks who beat up Homer (and knock him down those famous stairs) onto his show instead of the would-be clown. Homer and Marge seek revenge on the society that has wronged them, and there's a very clever extended gag involving the overly melodramatic musical choices in Folie à Deux.

Anyway, at the end of the final dream sequence, Marge heads home to an empty house, but finds that Homer-- having locked himself out in multiple different ways-- has snuggled up with the kids in Bart's treehouse. Her realization that she loves her husband just the way he is come across as a little tidy for me, but that's always the way these things go, isn't it? At the very least, this episode is worth watching for the inventive takes on three vastly different movie genres in the fantasy sequences, some quite lovely animation, and a good amount of laugh-out-loud gags sprinkled throughout. It's an interesting way to tackle an anthology-style episode that isn't Halloween-themed, though a truncated version of the Joker segment could have easily worked in the context of a "Treehouse of Horror" if the writers had chosen to go in that direction. Ultimately, in my opinion these exclusive releases add a lot of value to a Disney+ subscription for Simpsons fans, and might even garner some new viewers who stumble across them on the streaming service, as well. I'm looking forward to the other two that have already been announced.

The Simpsons double-length episode "Extreme Makeover: Homer Edition" is now available to stream, exclusively via Disney+.