Kredit Kookies: Shortened intro for the first time! Couch Gag: The  couch is a piñata, and when Ralph Wiggum smacks it with a stick, the piece of furniture breaks open and sends the Simpsons tumbling to the floor.
 
Dumbing It Down: Marge injures her eyes while witnessing a solar eclipse without the intervention of a camera obscura - she gave hers to Homer when he accidentally crushed his own, then couldn’t stand to be left out of what became a family bonding moment. She’s forced to rest her swaddled eyes, which leaves Homer in charge of the family, which of course results in the house going to pot – in this case, they’re infested with rats.

Homer tries to solve the pest problem by buying rat poison, but he crashes his car on the way back home. “Why did I bring the dog and the baby with me to the poison store?!’ he laments, trying to figure out how to get them all to safety, as the rowboat he’s discovered cannot bear the weight of himself, Maggie, Santa’s Little Helper and the jar of poison. He can’t leave Maggie alone with the poison, and he can’t leave the dog alone with Maggie (she’s brought a toy with her and he covets it).

Ultimately, he decides to take each across, one at a time, Maggie first. To keep her safe, he places Maggie on the doorstep of a convent. Unfortunately, she’s taken in as a foundling, and they refuse to give the baby back when Homer returns with the poison and dog.

Homer brainstorms a solution up, in which Lisa poses as a novice and infiltrates the convent and Bart fills in for Lisa. Replacing Maggie: Homer’s fist, which he dresses up to fool a still-blinded Marge.

Lisa eventually deduces that the nuns are holding Maggie for a reason. Her search leads her to a series of puzzles that seem to direct her toward the discovery of a ‘precious jewel’.

She solves a puzzle in the convent that eventually leads her to a belltower, where she discover she’s been shadowed by Comic Book Guy and Principal Skinner.

They direct her toward the Springfield sign, where the entire group is intercepted by Freemason Mister Burns and his ‘loyal albino’ Waylon Smithers. He gives a convoluted backstory that explains the convent’s origins and how they and the Freemasons once tangled. He orders Comic Book Guy and Skinner to dig their own graves while Lisa’s left to solve the last puzzle.

Her version of the solution tells them that SHE is the jewel. Lisa races back to the convent and bursts in on the group of nuns while they’re in worship (and singing “O Fortuna”). She declares herself the jewel, but the Mother Superior informs her that she’s quite wrong – the actual answer to the anagram is “It’s Maggie, Sherlock.”

Maggie, sitting on a throne before the congregation, really is the jewel, and her ascension causes peace to spread across Springfield.

Enter Marge, who’s figured out Homer’s lie. She briefly considers leaving her daughter with the nuns, but ultimately the sight of Maggie – the first thing she sees after Maggie unwraps her bandages – spurs her to remove he daughter from the holding.

Homer offers Bart as a replacement, with predictable results.
 
Red Dress Press: If you look up ‘wacky’ in the dictionary, a screencap from “Gone Maggie Gone” would likely appear there (preferably a shot of Bart Simpson evoking hell in a convent). I won’t bother judging this episode on the level of more serious fare the show’s offered previously; if you’re looking for an episode as trenched in the reality of the Simpsons’ universe as last week’s “No Loan Again, Naturally”, this one won’t be an enjoyable experience for you. It is, however, at least a dozen cuts above such ‘wacky era’ episodes as ‘Homer vs Dignity’ and the series’ nadir, ‘Saddlesore Galactica’.

As a Da Vinci Code parody, it’s little more than decent, as the episode misses several crucial and ripe points of parody contained in the book and movie. Gone Maggie Gone does, however, do a good job of making the book’s puffed-up sense of importance seem foolish in general, and hits the book’s main theme (religion vs the Freemasons) with a few nice, devastating jokes. My favorite’s the convoluted way the sisters of St. Teresa got to Springfield.

Lisa’s character gained a tad more depth in this episode – this is the righteous ‘knowitallist’ side of her personality in play. Homer was more a tool of the plot than anything (“Let’s have Homer do ‘x’ so that ‘y’ can happen. Who cares if it doesn’t really make sense?”), and the episode was witty enough to mock that.

It was nice to see Skinner and Comic Book Guy working together again; theirs is one of the most strange and fraught of all friendships on the show (CBG has, after all, slept with both Skinner’s mother and his ex-fiancée), and one that deserves more play than it gets, as the two characters play well off of each other.

There was also a nice callback to Snake’s history as an archeologist - at least that’s the explanation I’ve decided to accept for his knowing instinctively about Maggie’s ascension. I’d also like to think the ‘does kissing Milhouse count?’ joke harkens to the future world of ‘Lisa’s Wedding’.

Yet the episode in general lacks a certain punch. The jabs against organized religion generally felt limp, and the Ratatouille joke was a weak one-off that would have worked better in another episode. A fine movie like that deserves as better a much more extensive and sharply-honed parody.

Altogether, ‘Gone Maggie Gone’ works as a romp but would have performed more smoothly as an AU-universe episode. Though it’s a bit of a comedown from the emotions evoked by ‘No Loan Again, Naturally’, if you like your Simpsons adventuresome and far off the canonical beaten path, ‘Gone Maggie Gone’ is about as good of a ‘crazy’ Simpsons episode as you’ll get.

Did It Fail At Masonry?: It depends on how wild you like your average episode of The Simpsons to be. If your favorite episode is ‘Lisa's Substitute’ and you despise the show’s occasional flights of fancy, stay far away.

What The Screwballs Think: The show pulled a 2.8, coming in third in Fox’s Animation Domination block. And yes, American Dad is gaining on the show, besting it this week.

Springfield Shopper: “In The Name of the Grandfather”, which already received a special early premier in Europe, will make its international debut on March twenty-second. Be sure to check back here on the twenty-third for a full recap!