We can't transform on the Sabbath!

[vovat]

There really wasn't much of a plot to that episode, was there? As far as episodes about the Simpsons touring foreign countries go, it wasn't one of the best. Nonetheless, I liked it pretty well for all the incidental jokes, and Sacha Baron Cohen's rants were amusing. For what it's worth, I looked up the distance from Jerusalem to the Dead Sea to see whether Homer's trek was at all realistic, and it looks like it's under twenty miles, which I suppose is feasible. He did ride a camel part of the way, after all. As for Lisa's comment about Jews not believing in Hell, I think she's basically right, but rabbinical Judaism does contain the tradition of Gehenna (named after a valley outside Jerusalem that was used as a garbage dump) as a place of spiritual purification for the dead. At least, that's what Wikipedia says, and I've seen it mentioned elsewhere. After all, Jesus had to have gotten the idea from somewhere, right?

The Family Guy episode was pretty decent. The two plots weren't really interspersed that well, but that never seems to be a particular concern on the show. I found both Brian's original schmaltzy script and the really bad comedy it became to be pretty clever. The show is good at mocking bad dialogue. And James Woods is always great on FG. As for the Stewie plot, the total disregard that the rest of the family had for his well-being was darkly funny, and I loved Chris's Stewie impression.