The Simpsons opening sequence Bart writes "Being right sucks", a reference to the 2000 episode "Bart to the Future" where Lisa succeeds Trump as Commander-in-Chief. During the opening sequence, Lisa is seen being ejected from band rehearsal due to her non-conformist saxophone playing. She exits the room playing a saxophone solo, which sometimes changes. Some of the solos have similarities with pieces by Donovan, Frank Zappa, James Brown, and Charlie Parker. "The Simpsons" composer Alf Clausen said that the session musicians who perform her solos do not try to play at the second grade level and instead "think of Lisa as a really good
The War of the Simpsons Blend said "The War of the Simpsons" felt "a bit flat", but "even in [its] lowest points, humor is easy to find." Jeremy Kleinman of DVD Talk said it was "another great episode, featuring first, a new level of Homer's debauchery after drinking way too much at a party the Simpsons host, Reverend Lovejoy's marital retreat, and an epic battle with a legendary fish named General Sherman. Each of these portions of the episode are filled with laughs, perhaps the funniest being Homer's distorted high-society recollection of the previous night's events in which he is hailed as charming and a