There’s no bloody image this week because we respect Neil Gaiman even when he momentarily discards his love of good storytelling and voices himself on Zombie Simpsons. The episode itself, however, is going to suck and suck hard:
Lisa becomes disheartened when she learns the shocking truth behind the ‘tween lit’ industry and her beloved fantasy novel characters. But Homer decides to cash in on the craze and forms a team to group-write the next ‘tween lit’ hit, with the king of fantasy, Neil Gaiman (guest-voicing as himself), lending his expertise to the effort. After catching the eye of a slick industry publisher (guest-voice Andy Garcia) at the Springfield Book Fair, the team gets an advanced copy of their work and discovers that the corporate lit business is a bigger operation than they imagined.
Cheap formulaic culture failing to make fun of other cheap formulaic culture? You couldn’t cut that irony with a fucking lightsaber.
Respect Neil Gaiman? We can fix that!
http://americanindiansinchildrensliterature.blogspot.com/2010/04/what-neil-gaiman-said.html
If that link didn’t work, this episode should. Wow, is this ever ungood.
I am an avid reader so I have been looking forward to this episode…I am not expecting much from it though.
This episode. Was great. There is no convincing me otherwise, yet I respect your opinion on this episode.
That… didn’t suck. Like, it wasn’t aggressively bad! It used its guest voice well for the most part, had a relatively coherent plot, and actually had jokes! I am pleasantly surprised. This may be the first episode in years that I’d actually recommend watching.
Granted, it lacked a satirical bite of any kind, had a few sections where “nothing” was substituted for comedy, and had a few lapses in logic. But… it had funny! And Harry Shearer got do a good line delivery as Skinner — convincing the security guards that “No, no, it’s quite sound.” And rather than sucking up to Gaiman, they made him an illiterate, scheming toady.
All that said, I’m still eager to see how you tear it apart over the next week.
So I don’t think I’ve watched any new Simpsons episodes period since Season 21, but I get the feeling that Lisa wouldn’t have become enamored with this ‘tween lit’ thing if it’d become so amazingly popular during the early/mid ’90s.
What did Lisa read for leisure during those early seasons, anyways? I should check.
Pretty sure Lisa would at least like Harry Potter, which Angelica Button basically is…
Lisa read Gore Vidal. “And even he’s kissed more boys than I ever will”~ Lisa Simpson; back when she had a personality
“…girls, Lisa. Boys kiss girls.”
And Allen Ginsberg in ‘Bart Vs Thanksgiving’.
She read some babysitter club parody, right?
Sounds like the Malibu Stacy episode regurgitated.
That was actually pretty good! Did they hire a writer?
Al Jean wasn’t showrunner…
Sadly, it seems too good to be true that he’s stepped down.
Boring as hell. The Ralph-going-back-inside-his-mom was the only thing I laughed at.
Bleh.
Didn’t see the episode but Gaiman wrote Sandman, therefore he has more than enough credit in my eyes to survive a ZS appearance…
Pretty weak. The main parody was about 9 years behind the times, most of the jokes fell flat, and Neil Gaiman was just sort of…there. His appearance could have been done by any writer. Some of the jabs at the Twilight phenomenon were decent (and admittedly funnier than the “spoof” they did last year), but that was about it. It wasn’t an offensively bad episode, but I still felt the half hour I spent watching it could have been better spent doing something else.
And why were the smoking dinosaurs from The Far Side there? I got the reference, but it really felt like they were trying to mine humor from something actually funny to compensate for their weak scripts.
It wasn’t exactly all that funny or memorable but it wasn’t bad (and I really haven’t been able to say that about an episode in years). Gaiman was a properly used guest star: they mocked him, he appeared in multiple scenes.
Oi, these comments sections have gotten confusing lately. There’s a big influx of people remarking about how good these episodes are, and then the usual ones decrying them as an affront to God. I may have to check it out so I know if I can call bullshit…
This is the only episode this whole season I’ve actually given a damn about, partly because of Neil Gaiman (who I do have a lot of respect for, as a writer at least) but mostly because, like Chrissy, I’m an avid reader. I haven’t actually got around to watching it yet, but so far I’ve heard it “doesn’t suck” which seems like high praise by Zombie Simpsons standards.
That’s pretty much it. It wasn’t good, but it also wasn’t actually offensive. Gaiman was the only true highlight.