From: garvey@simpsonsarchive.com   
      
   Surprisingly not bad, after the way I've come to distrust these future   
   episodes in recent years. As loosely followed as it was, maybe that When Harry   
   Met Sally template has some major power.   
      
   Opening credits ran pretty swiftly, finishing in under a minute (see also   
   UABF21), this time to let the writing and directing credits be done in a   
   special fashion under the episode title.   
      
   Natasha Lyonne is still voicing Sophie (as she has since 2016/WABF02), even   
   though Drew Barrymore returned in a cameo last month (UABF20). I guess it   
   would be rude to reinstate Drew even if she wanted to take the role. More   
   confusing is the credit for    
   Jackie Mason as Hyman, since he died last summer: did he record these lines   
   shortly beforehand, or is this a reuse that isn't (har) ringing a bell?   
      
   4F01: Mention of and silent clips from Lisa and Nelson's brief romance   
   (blessedly presented in 4:3)   
      
      
   That's not Latin!   
   There are various little mistakes and oddities in this episode, but I will   
   focus just on the motto seen at Lisa's graduation: "veritas et mendicam". The   
   last (new, joke) word is not grammatical. There is a group of related words   
   for poor, beggar, begging,   
    etc., and I guess the intent was something like "truth and poverty (from   
   unaffordable tuition)", but this is wrong in several ways. It's an adjective,   
   for one thing, though it can take the place of a noun, I suppose. It's   
   feminine, perhaps just because    
   veritas is too; but it's in the accusative case, used for direct objects of   
   verbs, motion toward, etc. - and certainly would not be paired with the   
   (typically) nominative veritas. As it's written, this is gibberish, and using   
   that root as desired is a    
   little difficult, but something like mendicans (or plural mendicantes), using   
   a participle as a substantive, for "truth and the one(s) (left) begging" might   
   be reasonable. Unless I'm missing something, this is just careless on a level   
   that makes 3F04's    
   incorrect conjugation of mori look downright scholarly.   
      
      
   Tonight's special time (thanks to odd scheduling for a preview that didn't   
   happen, though Flatch started at almost 8:02 after a different lengthy promo)   
   was indeed kept, with the show starting about halfway between 8:31 and 8:32,   
   and from start to finish    
   was a bit under 28 minutes (allowing for the minute or so of ads the Fox   
   schedule seems to like at the top of the hour). Only about 6:20 in   
   commercials, compared to the current norm of about 9.5 minutes of ads in a   
   31-minute slot (while The Great North    
   has to suck up the difference, as it did tonight too, just at 9:31.). Bob's   
   Burgers also got padded out to about 31 minutes, and ended almost exactly an   
   hour after The Simpsons began. Weird night.   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)