To quote the person who died on the season premiere of The Simpsons Sunday night, the episode was very "eh"(if you haven't seen it yet, feel free to continue reading. You really didn't miss out on anything).
The major character death turned out not to be Krusty the Clown as I had predicted but Krusty's dad, a character so miniscule in importance that I keep forgetting his name. Like many of those who went on Twitter immediately after the broadcast, I felt the episode was severely over-hyped. When the showrunners announced that there would be a "character death" I was expecting it to be someone like Krusty or Grandpa Simpson or even Mr. Burns-someone whose death would shake up the entire series. Watching the 26th season premiere of The Simpsons was sort of akin to seeing The Phantom Menace for the first time. You expect you're going to watch something truly life-changing and then once it's over you end up unsatisfied and asking yourself "is that it?"
That's not to say the entire episode was bad. My favorite part had to be the sleepover scene with Chief Wiggum, a cutaway gag that reminded me of Family Guy. And the B-plot involving Lisa trying to protect Homer from danger was incredibly touching. Still, Clown in the Dumps will most certainly go down as the most overhyped Simpsons episode of all time.
