The 31st season finale, The Way Of The Dog, was written by Carolyn Omine and directed by Matthew Faughnan.
The Simpsons explore the tragic past of Santa’s Little Helper when he bites Marge.
I’ve talked about in the past how Santa’s Little Helper episodes are not all that great to be honest, in fact some of the worse Simpsons episodes center around Santa’s Little Helper, they are either really boring or just not investing at all.
So, much to my surprise, I not only found this one not boring at all, quite investing and quite possibly one of the stronger Santa’s Little Helper episodes the show has ever done. I mean, I was honestly surprised at how much I enjoyed this one.
Going deeper into the backstory of Little Helper’s past is very enjoyable, it does manage to get some good emotional moments albeit brief ones, has nice callbacks to the very first episode where Homer and Bart adopted Santa’s Little Helper although it’s humorous to see the major differences in animation in between the flashbacks to the first episode to the present.
There are a lot of funny moments throughout the episode as well, I found myself at least laughing every 30 to 60 seconds throughout the course of the episode, a lot of the jokes were funny, there are some misfires here and there but most of the time, there were a lot of really good laughs.
The Way Of The Dog breaks a long streak of lackluster Santa’s Little Helper themed episodes and makes for a very solid and entertaining way to end what has been one of the overall stronger seasons for the later Simpsons era in a while.
And now, the long wait begins for Season 32….
Follow The Reviewing Network at our Facebook page at Facebook.com/TheReviewingNetwork for continuing updates and debuts for new blog posts and also follow my Twitter feed so you can see new postings right as they are posted.
The Reviewing Network 
[…] The Way Of The Dog […]