For me, the Simpsons is all about realism. Whether it is the characterisation or the storytelling, being realistic and honest in both of these departments make me feel more connected to the story and the characters, and also makes the story more believable. After a realistic episode that is all about the characterisation of Lisa, here we just get a relaxed episode all about humour and fun. Now I don't have to sound like an asshole and just jumps on the bandwagon and say that this episode is completely fine in its plot since the episode really is mostly solid and it is really hard to pick on anything that seems to be out of the left field, but since here we are all about fairness and decreasing the amount of bias I may have toward the classical era, I will use the same rigorous scrutiny on this episode as I will use on the later eras. When we do so, we see that the plotting isn't as believable as it may seem.
The story starts out completely fine though. We see that the Flanders get a brand new RV, and in typical Homer jealousy style, he goes to a local RV mall and gets manipulated into buying a dilapidated RV in a petty competition against the Flanders. Since now he has got an RV, Homer takes the whole family out camping. When Homer impulsively drives over a river and almost off a cliff, he loses the RV which drops down the cliff and explodes, leaving the Simpsons clan stranded in nowhere land. As a result, Homer, an apparent experienced woodsman, and Bart goes out to search for food, while Lisa and Marge stays back and build a camp.
When the tiny squeaking sound of Maggie sucking on a pacifier terrifies Homer and Bart into sprinting into woods, Maggie finds herself alone and encounters a bear. In a cute little scene, Maggie shoves a pacifier into the bear's mouth and the bear brings Maggie back into its cave. Here all realism is lost but the general goal isn't really to portray any realism or believable story, but Maggie's plot merely acts as a cute side story to the main story. Anyways, while the apparently inexperienced Marge and Lisa are able to build a fire and a nice shelter, the experienced woodsman Homer and Bart almost drown in a waterfall and hurls their only chance at dinner miles away. While Marge and Lisa sleeps in the warmth of fire, Homer and Bart sleeps out in the open naked with their teeth clattering uncontrollably.
On the second day, when Homer accidentally falls into a dry river bed filled with mud, he is mistaken as Bigfoot. This apparently shocks Springfield into a frenzy Bigfoot hunt. From the newspapers to the researchers, it is a great meta about how gullible and easily fooled the general public is into believing in things that aren't true. When Marge and Lisa are eventually rescued, Marge apparently claims that Bigfoot is her husband and sparks a major attraction to the park with extreme controversy on newspapers. Even when Homer is found, he is rigorously tested and at the end experts apparently still can't decide on whether Homer is Bigfoot, or just an incredibly dumb human being.
To be absolutely honest, I really do have mixed feelings about this episode. I do want to say that it is really tempting just to drop all the skepticism and say this episode is great. However, I do feel that if I do so then I am being unfair when judging later modern episodes. For example, I feel that the whole determining whether Homer is human is just silly. I mean you can't possibly expect us to believe that experts can't tell if Homer is human or not. But I also feel that if this segment is done in modern Simpsons, people will just complain about the lack of realism and the irrelevance of this scene and lash out at the storytelling ability of the episode because of it. On the other hand, the whole point of experts not being able to agree on whether Homer is human is merely just another gag about how inexperienced and stupid those so-called bigfoot researchers are and perhaps the gag shouldn't be taken seriously as to whether it is realistic or not. Same thing applies to the Maggie's story. While it is true that Maggie's story is played mostly for cuteness and for laughs only and shouldn't really be taken seriously, but judging from purely a storytelling perspective, Maggie taming four bears is just silly and lacks any realism. Notice that for both Homer and Maggie, it is no longer a question of whether it is probable, but it is about whether it is realistic. While future plots in episodes like Bart's Inner Child merely is improbable, it isn't unrealistic. Here, Maggie simply can't possibly tame four bears. But for Homer, I guess I can give in a little and say given the context of the incapability of the researchers, it is probable that researchers cannot find Homer human? I guess?
In conclusion, I am just going to say that the plot is mostly solid. I guess I will take 0.5 marks off for Maggie's story, but I won't do anything to the Homer human or not scene. In general, stories like this one has always been really hard to give a mark. You attempt to find something bad about the episode, but there seems always to be a redeeming factor that you have to consider seriously before laying down the deduction. This episode is definitely tough.
Characterisation: 5/5
Plot: 2.5/3
Subjective: 1/2
Overall: 8.5/10
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