"The King of Nice" is an episode of The Simpsons that first aired on October 16, 2022. Directed by Debbie Mahan. Written by Jessica Conrad. Episode Code Number UABF20. This is another episode that was originally meant for Season 33.
Krusty (Dan Castellaneta) is not doing well on Cameo. Desperate for money, he agrees to an offer from Lindsey Naegle (Tress MacNeille) to host a daytime talk show.
While shopping for pet food, Marge is asked to participate in a focus group. Lindsey Naegle likes all of Marge's ideas, and offers her a job as a segment producer on Krusty's new daytime talk show.
Krusty likes that the studio audience laugh at his jokes, and Marge likes seeing her segment ideas coming alive in the studio. But soon Marge gets wrapped up in the behind-the-scenes toxicity of the show.
Tropes
- As Herself: Drew Barrymore asks Marge for advice on a segment for her own daytime talk show.
- Audience? What Audience?: At the end Lindsey appears to be giving the audience a tour of an asylum facility for people affected by working on daytime talk shows. Then orderlies walk up and ask her who she's talking to. When she claims to be talking to an audience, they put her in a straitjacket and move her to the Ellen-tensive Care Unit.
- Bad Boss: The TMI people declare Krusty as one, much to both his and Lindey's collective anger. Krusty later comes out and admits that this is the case on camera and cancels his show after seeing Marge come out about the work conditions.
- Bizarrchitecture: When Lindsey shows Krusty the mansions of various talk show hosts, the one for Dr. Phil is shaped like his own head.
- Celebrity Paradox: Drew Barrymore plays herself in this episode, having previously voiced Krusty's daughter Sophie in "Insane Clown Poppy".
- Fictional Counterpart: Petmaxx is the fictional counterpart of Pets Plus, and Viacalm of Viacom. And it should not pass without comment that Krusty's journey through daytime talk is a time-compressed version of Ellen Degeneres's in real life.
- Fun with Acronyms: Krusty's forced to take gigs he doesn't want because he blew all his money on NFTs: that is, Non-Funny TV shows.
- Here We Go Again!: After Krusty cancels his daytime talk show, Marge goes back home to her family. But she is on-call as a social media consultant for other shows, including Drew Barrymore's. She initially declines Barrymore's offer to come to work for her, insisting her daytime days are behind her, but one look at her family's reckless behavior is enough for her to reconsider the offer.
- Inherent in the System: Marge's speech concludes this is why daytime talk shows have toxic work environments. The job is so demanding and stressful that it brings out the worst in even well-intentioned, nice people.
- Leaning on the Fourth Wall: Bart is unfazed by Krusty's show changing format, because he can still stream over 700 episodes of the classic show, and wonders why anyone would continue making more episodes since the old ones are so great. All this, of course, is a commentary on The Simpsons itself.
- New Job Episode: Marge gets a new job producing segments for Krusty's talk show after Lindsey liked her suggestions for segments during a focus group.
- Not Me This Time: The one time Krusty faces actual consequences for being a Mean Boss is the one time he isn't one—he's not involved in the production of his talk show at all and had no idea what was going on behind the scenes.
- O.O.C. Is Serious Business: Homer, who is a massive fan of television in general, tells Marge TV is destroying her, complete with an utterance of I Can't Believe I'm Saying This.
- Paparazzi: TMI, a thinly-veiled parody of TMZ somehow manage to get the inside scoop into the working conditions of Krusty's show. Despite Naegle's threats to deal with the rat, it is never followed up on.
- Sanity Slippage: The toxic work environment on Krusty's show slowly drives everyone there insane, including Marge. At the end there's even an asylum built specifically for people affected by working on talk shows.
- Self-Deprecation: With regard to Krusty's trajectory shift, Bart can't understand what justifies the continued production of a show with a streaming back catalogue of over 700 episodes. Lisa has an explanation, but Bart shushes her up before she can provide it so that he can watch Klassic Krusty.
- Staging an Intervention: Homer stages one for Marge after the pressures of working on Krusty's show have started to get to her. After she rejects it, Homer tries to pass the intervention over to Bart to no success.
-
Technology Marches On: Lampshaded by Bart. When Lisa asks him why he's not coming up with some scheme to get the old Krusty Show back as he'd done in previous instances of the show being Retooled, he replies that he doesn't need to because he can simply stream the classic episodes. - The Unreveal: How the TMI staff got a hold of the conditions on Krusty's show is never revealed.
