Did you watch the Simpsons on Sunday night? It was an all-indie cast with comedians Fred Armisen and Patton Oswalt, Wild Flag and Sleater-Kinney's Carrie Brownstein, as well as the Decemberists!
‘The Day the Earth Stood Cool’, the title of the episode, sees Homer trying to become sexier and trendier when called ‘grandpa’ by a cute girl in a park. And enter the new neighbors from Portland, Terence (Fred Armisen), his wife Emily (Carrie Brownstein) their pretentious-nothing-is-cool-enough-for-me son T-Rex (Patton Oswalt) and their so-indie-named daughter Corduroy!
During the whole episode, Homer is falling hard for these hipsters, running after coolness as if it was the new donut – actually, they are selling donuts, because these pastries are back being cool – and the whole episode is a study of hipsters’ life and their new parenting method, whereas Marge is the only one not being fooled by the hype, even resisting to join the ‘milk circle’ of breast feeding mothers.
The cool neighbors have a pet armadillo, Emily has a degree in 'mid-century kitch', they don’t own TV but only use iPads, they compost at home and do midnight bike riding, and of course go to ‘Protozoa records’. They live an ‘urban nomad life style’ and have left Portland because it was too played out.
So Homer realized he and his family have to be as cool as these people, he begins to wear a wallet chain and a scarf in non-scarf-weather, but when they are invited to T-Rex’s Birthday in a decay industrial warehouse where there are even a rock band and a real tattoo parlor, everything falls apart. Emily discovers that Marge uses baby formula, a ‘corporate chemical cocktail’, and Bart and T-rex have a fight.
‘What happened to our city’, says Homer, ‘everybody is wearing clothes from the past and using computers from the future'… Springfield becomes the coolest city in the US with new farmers markets, marijuana shops, Taschen book shop and the Decemberists are the new music teachers at school… ‘the cool people are everywhere and they even made the weather rainier!’ says Marge,… but of course, it won’t last!
The episode was really funny and smart, very Portlandia, and Fred Armisen and Carrie Brownstein were thrilled to be asked to play these people as they explained: ‘I was so blown away that we were even asked to do it at all,’ said Armisen, ‘Then the more we kept finding out about the script and reading it, it was just even better because it was so funny and so good.’
Brownstein added, ’I distinctly recall in the email exchange between Fred and I following us being asked that it was just full of exclamation points. We were very excited and flattered and everything was just only hyperbole and ecstasy. We were very honored. It was just really fun.’ Let’s hope we will see more of Terence and Emily in the Simpsons soon. I forgot,… Daft Punk also made a cameo: