Season 7 Episode 2a
There are so many things wrong in this episode, the most glaring of which is that it seems like Francine simply forgot about her cousin's Bar Mitzvah and didn't seem to want anything to do with it. A number of years ago, I went to a family friend's Bar Mitzvah and it was on our calendar for months beforehand, so unless the Frenskys are just bad at keeping each other apprised of these big events, she should've known in advance and made arrangements with the bowling as such. Also, the Brain (who definitely did not have to mansplain Judaism to Francine, an actual Jew herself) got put in charge of planning this scheme, but his plan backfired/didn't get fully executed by Francine during "Double Dare," so they probably should've just let someone else give it a go this time. Or talked Francine into going to the Bar Mitzvah. Even that backfired, as Arthur forgot to leave Francine's bowling shoes with her bike at the church. Maybe Arthur was onto something.
I don't care how big the bowling tournament is, in my view, the family occasion should always come first. While I'm Jewish, I never had a Bar Mitzvah (although it isn't uncommon for people to do it later in life, so the door is still open), but one of our family friends did and the service was incredibly moving. He worked very hard to prepare for it, and anything other than him having the undivided attention of the community would not have sufficed. Not to mention the party at the Positano Restaurant (RIP) later that night with DJ Stu on the tunes. It would've been really hard for me to have anything on my mind other than that. I won't comment much on how the bowling tournament went, other than that it seemed like purely dumb luck that Muffy had the winning bowl with her Hoosiers-esque method of bowling. That said, I'm surprised that Francine was able to get away with lying as much as she did for as long as she did. Mr. Frensky only seems to catch wind of it at the last occasion she dips out.
Cleaning the garbage truck was very much an appropriate punishment in this instance, but one only gets a Bar or Bat Mitzvah once and Francine will have to live with blowing off her cousin's. To me, that's more of a punishment than cleaning a garbage truck. And don’t think that people won’t forget this when she has her Bat Mitzvah.
By Guthrie Edson
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There are a few episodes that go into the "Arthur can't catch a break" category and this is one of them. For starters, Arthur couldn't even get an afternoon at the museum with just his dad (and you can't convince me that D.W. whining about it during the open didn't have anything to do with it). Then when it's finally time for just them to go to the lake, Mr. Read has commitments come up, and instead of just postponing his weekend trip with D.W. to some other time, he makes his trip with Arthur an entire family affair. I've noted before that Mr. and Mrs. Read have a lot of trouble saying "No" to D.W. and this episode is a prime example of that.