I know this is going to piss off some of the other people, but frankly I fucking hated that episode. Besides the whole "explanation for the sake of explanation" shit, it tries to do the whole cynical worldview thing that the series has generally done well (especially Homer's Enemy). Problem is, whereas past episodes say "Yeah, youpeople suffer, but so do we, so at least we're suffering together", there's an air of elitism to HOMR; it tries to say a "profound" message about intelligent people not finding happiness, but without even going into how self-defeating and backwards such a message is (sorry to be a moralfag, but that's just how I see it), all I get out of it is Al Jean (who wrote the episode) thinks he and his douchebag Hollywood elite are smarter and better than the "uneducated" riff-raff.
Frankly, it should've been a warning to viewers of the show's abandonment of speaking for the people for the sake of sucking off the liberal elite, and the fact that it won an Emmy just proves it, considering there were other nominees in the same category I feel deserved it more. I have other nitpicks about the episode, but I'm already inviting "Autistic" and "Mad at the Internet" reactions just by saying this, so I'll just say my piece and tell you this: HOMR is overrated dogshit and, to me at least, a sign that the episodes under Al Jean's leadership would be no better than what Mike Scully did, something that's very evident just looking up opinions online.