Beekeeper Review: Springfield’s Beekeepers

The Simpsons was a pretty great show. Season Six of the Simpsons was smack in the middle of its best years. Lisa’s Rival was a good episode. Homer getting a pile of sugar was an excellent subplot. That’s when the Simpsons got Beekeepers.

Homer gives a rousing speech about why it his right and his duty to protect and sell his pile of sugar when suddenly a swarm of bees descends upon it. He tries to fight them, but can’t win (“Ow! They’re defending themselves somehow!”). Soon the local beekeepers notice that their apiary is oddly quiet (“No noise… suggests no bees”). Seeing one lone bee, so they follow it in their “beemobile”, which is actually a Chevy, and track the bee to Homer and his pile. They assume that Homer has taken their bees on purpose and are prepared to pay him to get back their swarm, but then it starts to rain, the pile melts, and the bees head home. Homer gets nothing for all his hard work.

These two are pretty great. The taller one (voiced by Hank Azaria) is very much based on Adam West’s Batman. The shorter one (Harry Shearer) is the perfect compliment to the other. It astounds me that, on a show like the Simpsons, these guys never came back. I admit, there’s a decade and a half of Simpsons that I haven’t seen, but from what I can tell from the Internet these guys have never so much as appeared in a crowd scene or anything. They don’t even have a page on the Simpsons Wikia site. What the chunks?

I can only assume the beekeepers themselves didn’t want to be seen. They don’t really display any special powers, except perhaps being able to follow a single bee while they’re in a car, so maybe the power they did have was keeping hidden. They have no preternatural control over their bees at all. Still, being given a Batman-reference for a voice is an indication of badassness if nothing else is. They do seem fairly safe from Beekeeper Rage, though. Even as think Homer is a criminal genius they don’t get very angry at him. They almost seem to respect his cunning.

Incidentally, the name of their company, Goldsboro Honey, is a reference to a song called “Honey” by a guy called Bobby Goldsboro that there is, apparently. I learned that thanks to the Internet.

Two Honeycombs out of Five.

While writing this I learned that there’s an episode in the twentieth season that deals with beekeeping, but these guys aren’t even in there. I’ll have to deal with that one someday way, way down the line.

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