Archive for the 'Simpsons' Category

25
May
12

Reading Digest: Outsourcing Edition

By Charlie Sweatpants 6 Comments
Categories: Reading Digest, Simpsons and The Simpsons
Tags:

Trash of the Titans5

“Can’t someone else do it?” – Homer Simpson

This week we’ve got two links to reviews of “Lisa Goes Gaga” that use my favored technique of pointing out how crappy Zombie Simpsons is compared to The Simpsons.  If this keeps up, maybe I can just outsource all of the criticism next season.  In addition to that, we’ve got a great new Tumblr, a couple of longer reads about The Simpsons and other comedies, some fresh information about the Maggie short that’ll be in theaters this summer, an old video game review, two people who agree with us, and lots more about that post-apocalyptic Simpsons play that’s opening this weekend.

Also, Chapters 9 & 10 of the book are now on-line for your Friday afternoon distraction.  And don’t forget to vote for tomorrow’s Simpsons-Beer Marathon.  Season 2 is ahead right now, but Season 7 is still very much in the running. 

Enjoy.

MOVIE SIMPSONS – Smooth Charlie’s Link of the Week is my new favorite Tumblr.  (via)

Sunset for the Animated Giants – A thoughtful (albeit somewhat soft on Zombie Simpsons) discourse on how old so many of the original generation of animated comedies have become.  Between Zombie Simpsons, Futurama, Family Guy (and it’s various spinoffs), and South Park, pretty much every big animated series that’s still running was started a long time ago. 

SNEAK PREVIEW: Mr Burns Goes to Washington – Feature – May 23, 2012 – Lots more detail about the play that’s opening this weekend in Washington D.C.:

The second act of Mr. Burns, set seven years later, finds the same group of survivors readying themselves for a live reenactment of "Cape Feare," complete with staged commercials, and vying for audience members with rival troupes of sometimes violent fellow reenactors.

And in the third act, set 75 years in the future, the actors — now dressed in yellow face paint and four-fingered gloves to approximate the Simpson look — are now enmeshed within what Washburn calls "an institutionalized Simpsons theater that produces the Simpsons legend." In their play-within-a-play, Sideshow Bob has been replaced by a version of Mr. Burns, the proprietor of the Springfield Nuclear Power Plant, who serves, according to Washburn, as an "amalgam of a lot of figures…but has become the [personified] fear without a name or face."

See, Zombie Simpsons?  This isn’t that hard.  You make each act build upon the one before it.  If you’re in or around D.C., you can get tickets here.

‘The Simpsons’: Exclusive details on Maggie’s (short) big-screen adventure – Jean gave out a few tidbits about the animated short, most notably that it’s four minutes long, has no dialogue, and will feature a return to Ayn Rand School for Tots as well as the baby with the one eyebrow.  More on this next week. 

Worst Simpsons Episode Ever – The first of two epic takedowns of “Lisa Goes Gaga”.  This one explicitly compares it to several episodes (including “Stark Raving Dad”:

I went in thinking to myself that this was going to be a half hour advertisement for her and I even considered not watching, but you know what, I gave the episode the benefit of the doubt. I went ahead and sat down to watch, I chuckled at the couch gag thinking this might not be that bad. That chuckle was the only positive response I made towards the episode, the rest was just too unbearable to watch (at least that one Ke$ha opening sequence a few seasons back was relegated just to the credits). I honestly do not know whose idea it was to base an ENTIRE episode around Lady Gaga, but it was exactly what I thought it was going to be, just a half hour promotion for her. It seems as having  Lisa depressed that she was the most unpopular girl in school (which was already done to better effect in Season 8′s  “Summer of 4 Ft. 2″) was the best reason to work Lady Gaga into the “story”, what followed was stupid costume changes, dance and music sequences, and a kiss between Gaga and Marge (what the %*$# was that about!?) that only seemed to serve the purpose as to cater to Gaga fans.

There’s more at the link. 

Lady Gaga, Lisa Simpson, and Self Esteem – And this one basically is a Compare & Contrast, with “Lisa’s Substitute” as the good side of the Force:

All in all, “Lisa’s Substitute” achieves the same goals that “Lisa Goes Gaga” does, making Lisa feel better about herself. But it does so in a larger context, with more complexity, and in a sweeter and far more realistic way, highlighting how far this show has fallen.

So, I have a summer to decide if I really want to keep watching The Simpsons. I’m not a quitter, but there is only so much I can take before I start forgetting that the show had episodes like “Lisa’s Substitute”, and begin thinking that this is the show that brought us 22 minutes devoted to glorifying Gaga.

I say go ahead and quit, it feels great.  There’s also YouTube of Ralph’s Lyme disease report, which never gets old. 

Fandemonium: Super Fans and Building Communities – Yet more stuff from the play, specifically about what fandom, now so associated with being on-line, would look like after the lights went out. 

Eulogy: Remembering the 2011-12 Phoenix Coyotes – Excellent reference:

But it all came to an end, as the Homer Simpson boxing approach to hockey finally ran out of luck when the Coyotes came up against the Drederick Tatum of the Western Conference in the Kings. The extra fluid padding the brain — known as Mike Smith — that let the rest of the Yotes pretty much get pummeled for large portions of the playoffs without a knockout finally succumbed.

Anonymous Works: Early Bart Simpson – That is kind of creepy looking. 

More Simpsons Cat Humor – A single image with all the signs outside Burns Manor from “Rosebud”.

Wiz Khalifa, ‘Work Hard, Play Hard’ – A couple of people have determined that this video was at least partially inspired by “Homer’s Phobia”.  Can’t say I disagree.  Some women finally show up toward the end, but . . . yeah. 

Krusty’s Super Crap House – A video review of “Krusty’s Super Fun House” for Sega Genesis.  The game is not very good, though since it has basically nothing to do with the show or any of its characters, it is a perfect example of Simpsons merchandise.  (Thanks to reader Toad Titan for sending in the link.) 

How well do you know Mr. Burns? Find out at Simpsons trivia night – There are still quite a few upcoming D.C. area trivia nights if you want free tickets to the play. 

Girl on Girl on TV: Week of May 13-May 20 – I still like “Are you even left handed?”, but this would’ve been good:

The Simpsons: This week Edna walked in on Ned when he was in the middle of his LGBT meeting. “Left-gifted, bidextrous and trans-handed.” My first thought was that the acronym was an unbelievable stretch. Not a single part of that is something that people actually say. My second thought was that in the bickering that followed they missed out on an opportunity to have one of the left-handed people say that “ambidextrous” isn’t a real thing and those are just right-handed people who want attention.

Heh.

Remix: The Combining of Genres in The Simpsons – Student paper on exactly what the title says.

Homer Simpson, eat your heart out – Shh, do you want to get sued?

Jury Duty…In 10 Words – That’s right, I think words I would never say.

Chernobyl Diaries…In 10 Words – This reporter promises to be more trusting and less vigilant in the future. 

Woo-Hoo – Neck-to-shoulder body paint advertising the Simpsons game.  The rest of the site is in a similar vein, though you may want to wait until you get home to view some of them.  There are quite a few Homer face labias. 

Bud Selig and the Homer Simpson Approach – Criticizing baseball’s long time commissioner with excellent usage:

Nerd 2: What are you going to do, Mr. Simpson?

Homer: Actually, I’ve been working on a plan. During the exam, I’ll hide under some coats, and hope that somehow everything will work out.

The preceding quote is from one of my favorite episodes of The Simpsons entitled “Homer Goes To College.” Not only is it a classic Homer moment, it also perfectly sums up the way Bud Selig has handled the A’s stadium situation.

Well done.

An interview with David Mitchell – Refined British sophisticates agree with us:

And do you think it’s still as good?

No, I think probably it isn’t but I think, to be fair, it’s been going on so long that it’s had an up and down graph and I only have a vague sense of what’s more recent. I believe it’s had a better patch of late than it did a few years ago but it’ll probably never return to being as good as it was in the late 90s. But I love those characters so much that I’ll watch them even in the slightly less good episodes. And still, there’s got to be 150 amazing episodes which is a huge achievement.

It’s still mind blowing that there are so many that are so damned good.

A good show dies, and it turns out that’s sometimes alright – And finally, a spectacular agreement with us:

The reason I’m happy, then, is — well, how do I put this kindly? I don’t want to see 30 Rock turn into the Simpsons. Or as I like to call them anymore, the Zombies.

Yet again, don’t misunderstand and murder me. I think The Simpsons was a great show in its prime, a show that was easily the best animated sitcom for years, and arguably the best show on air altogether. But the problem is, The Simpsons hasn’t been in its prime for over a decade.

He basically called it Zombie Simpsons!  Awesome. 

23
May
12

Crazy Noises: Lisa Goes Gaga

By Charlie Sweatpants 22 Comments
Categories: Company Eating Rules, Crazy Noises and Simpsons
Tags: ,

Homer's Phobia7

“Come on, Homer, join the party.” – John

As part of our tireless efforts to demonstrate the many ways Zombie Simpsons fails to entertain, Season 23 will be subjected to the kind of rigorous examination that can only be produced by people typing short messages at one another.  More dedicated or modern individuals might use Twitter for this, but that’s got graphics and short links and little windows that pop up when you put your cursor over things.  The only kind of on-line communications we like are the kind that could once be done at 2400 baud.  So disable your call waiting, plug in your modem, and join us for another year of Crazy Noises.  This text has been edited for clarity and spelling (especially on “sappiness”).

We discuss the pathetically lame Marge/Gaga kiss below, and the fact that this isn’t the first time Zombie Simpsons has employed this cheap attention stunt.  (And there’s the way it apparently turned Marge on so much that she immediately needed to fuck Homer like they’d never fucked before, which adds to the stupidity and incoherence.)  But more generally, it’s further evidence of just how far behind the times Zombie Simpsons has fallen, especially compared to The Simpsons.

Gay characters were basically non-existent on television in 1990, and yet The Simpsons hinted that Smithers was gay and had Karl (who self evidently was gay) kiss Homer full on the lips.  In 1994, Homer visits a lesbian bar and thinks the only thing wrong is the lack of a fire exit.  Three years after that, they did “Homer’s Phobia”, which was broadcast two months before the famous “Ellen comes out” episode.  However important or not important those things were or weren’t, there’s no denying that The Simpsons was way ahead of its time in terms of portraying gay characters and stories.

Fast forward to today, and Zombie Simpsons is lagging behind on the exact same things.  There was Patty’s it’s-not-really-a-woman marriage, Marge kissing Lindsey Naegle (in a Homer fantasy, no less), those pathetic gay bars, and now this hapless stab at relevance.  It’s remarkable not only for how culturally tone deaf it is, but for how far they’ve regressed from where they used to be.

[Note: Our old friend Zombies Rise from the Sea joined us again this week, and we got into what may be the longest Crazy Noises ever.]

Charlie Sweatpants: Okay, we’ve got everybody. Shall we begin?

Zombies Rise from the Sea: Let’s do this!

Charlie Sweatpants: So, this episode, memorably bad or just regular bad?

Zombies Rise from the Sea: Terrible.

Charlie Sweatpants: (i.e. is this so bad that it stands out by their standards)

Mad Jon: This was so bad it stood out.

Dave: It was tremendously obnoxious. End-to-end.

Mad Jon: This was mega bad, I was in serious danger of doing some damage to the TV on Sunday night.

Zombies Rise from the Sea: Who’s idea was it to put Lady Gaga on the show?

Charlie Sweatpants: At this point, they seem to regard guest voices as sort of awards that they give out to people they like or admire.

Mad Jon: I dunno, but I imagine it was the same person who agreed to let her have 51% of the lines in the episode too.

Dave: And superpowers.

Zombies Rise from the Sea: Tim Long?

Mad Jon: I don’t even know where to really begin.

Charlie Sweatpants: Think of Jebediah, and the words will come.

Zombies Rise from the Sea: Well… I think we should.

Wait, hold on!

I think a psychic force is telling me something.

Mad Jon: I am not even sure I could coherently describe the INTENDED plot.

Zombies Rise from the Sea: That’s what my psychic force is telling me, the plot.

The Lisa plot that tries so hard to be emotional but ends up sappy.

Charlie Sweatpants: The psychic force was certainly terrible (and there was even less need for it twice), but since the whole thing was apparently some kind of off-season, no-rules-apply, Halloween episode, I don’t know that it was even in the Top 5 bad things here.

Zombies Rise from the Sea: How did they think it was a good idea?

Charlie Sweatpants: I’d say it was part of their overall “exaggerate everything about Gaga” theme.

Zombies Rise from the Sea: Gaga is clearly going to Springfield, why have some unexplainable force that isn’t even satirized or joke about tell her about Lisa?

Charlie Sweatpants: Yeah, the whole she has to cheer up the town AND cheer up Lisa thing seemed very redundant.

Dave: I think the Halloween episode parallel is pretty apt; they more or less threw their own minor rules out the window and went for it.

Zombies Rise from the Sea: Agreed Dave.

Cheering up the entire town she did easily because Springfield has basically turned into a bunch of people who would cheer at any celebrity coming their way.

Especially Lady Gaga.

Mad Jon: And even when they were trying to have a progression, they just fast forwarded it. I cite how quickly Lisa dropped the notebook that outed her as the Truth Teller.

Zombies Rise from the Sea: My god the town of Springfield has lost their personality.

That scene pissed me off Jon.

I mean why do they have people suddenly become clumsy to serve the plot? Hell, why even have the notebook with her.

Charlie Sweatpants: Agreed, Jon, the plot was very stop and start. It would move rapidly, then pause so Gaga could interact with random people, then zoom forward again (Lisa’s angry outburst and instant reconciliation come to mind).

Mad Jon: It should.

Zombies Rise from the Sea: If I were Lisa I would have held onto the notepad or even just left it at home hidden or even stored the information on a computer.

Mad Jon: I would have done anything but what happened.

Charlie Sweatpants: What’s more, and this may be attributable to the overall Halloween vibe, they had people acting weird and out of character even by their standards.

Zombies Rise from the Sea: More then usual?

Charlie Sweatpants: The school actually doing these awards, Flanders talking with Gaga out of the blue, all those people who shouldn’t have been there at the concert (Grampa in particular).

And yeah, I think it was more than usual. Think about Skinner and Hoover here. They’re both aiding and abetting the children taunting Lisa mercilessly.

Zombies Rise from the Sea: Who else has to be at the concert, without someone they wouldn’t be able to showcase how super big Lady Gaga is?

Mad Jon: Agreed. CBG wipes his face with Superman #1, Flanders was anyone but Flanders.

Zombies Rise from the Sea: And yeah, Skinner was unusually mean.

Charlie Sweatpants: Marge and Homer were the same way. It was like neither of them had ever dealt with Lisa before.

Zombies Rise from the Sea: Well it’s a consequence of trying to have an emotional sappy plot.

You know, Lisa moping, acting sad, isolated…

It isn’t even done in a way that’s substantial but people ate it up anyway.

Mad Jon: Back to Marge real quick, why was she afraid to be touched?

Zombies Rise from the Sea: I don’t know, I instantly blocked that scene out when I saw Gaga kissing Marge.

Charlie Sweatpants: I kind of felt bad for Lisa after a while. I mean, she’s basically being stalked and harassed by a celebrity with the active complicity of her parents and all she wants to be is left alone. It was creepy.

Zombies Rise from the Sea: Terrible!

Charlie Sweatpants: The kiss was atrocious.

Dave: So they could work in a lesbian kiss. Duh.

Zombies Rise from the Sea: And don’t forget the twitter hashtag the network put up to showcase the scene.

Charlie Sweatpants: What’s worse, they did the same thing like three seasons ago.

Zombies Rise from the Sea: Not the show, but the FOX network.

This isn’t even funny.

Charlie Sweatpants: Really? I didn’t know that.

Zombies Rise from the Sea: I recorded the episode, it was clearly from the network.

Dave: What was the hashtag?

Zombies Rise from the Sea: #GagaKissesMarge

I mean WTF?

Charlie Sweatpants: That’s really desperate.

Zombies Rise from the Sea: The network must want it’s now super low rated show to succeed.

Charlie Sweatpants: I mean, using an always heterosexual female character kissing another woman as publicity? That’s so low and old that it’s actually a cliche:

http://deadhomersociety.com/2009/08/24/zombie-simpsons-in-the-land-of-tv-tropes/

Dave: Huh. The twitterverse ate it up. https://twitter.com/#!/search/%23gagakissesmarge

No surprise there, I guess.

Zombies Rise from the Sea: The internet in general is stupid.

Charlie Sweatpants: Doesn’t surprise me, though I wouldn’t take it as an indictment of the internet generally. The kind of people who are going to care enough to add that to their Twitter feeds are probably going to be enthusiastic rather than bored.

Remember, we’re the weirdos, not them. Most the people who watch this show probably actually like it.

It’s only the real die hards who watch it in spite of never finding it good.

Zombies Rise from the Sea: Getting back on topic, just how sappy was that emotional content?

Charlie Sweatpants:  Honestly, the emotions were so clumsy that I’m not sure they even qualified as sappy.

Zombies Rise from the Sea: It’s like Tim Long read a book about how to write and read a chapter that described how a character can be emotional.

Charlie Sweatpants: Other than my sympathy for Lisa wanting to be left alone, barely any of this was coherent enough to even get at where they were coming from.

Mad Jon: I didn’t see as much of what I would call emotion as I did what I would call manic reactions.

Charlie Sweatpants: Gaga at the end is exactly that.

Zombies Rise from the Sea: I mean they force her into a situation that is contrived (Lisa telling lies about herself, being popular) then they have the parents try to sympathize with her, the bullies tease her and even Lady Gaga try to cheer her up all while she acts mopey, lies down in bed, cries without tears, says stuff a teenager would say.

For me to emote with a person, the situation has to matter and the moments during that situation have to be involving.

None of these moments were involving.

Mad Jon: Nobody was really ‘feeling’ anything. Almost every situation makes me think that any doctor nearby would be handing out bottles of Xanax.

Zombies Rise from the Sea: Most people who voted 3/5 on NoHomers felt something.

They actually fell for the whole “Lisa” shtick.

Charlie Sweatpants: Again, that doesn’t entirely surprise me.

Mad Jon: Neither I.

Dave: Ok guys, hate to do this but I gotta run. Enjoy the rest of your chat.

Charlie Sweatpants: Okay Dave, have a good evening.

Mad Jon: Peace Dave.

Zombies Rise from the Sea: Sad to see you go Dave, but have a good evening.

Nice to meet you.

Dave: Likewise. Later guys.

Charlie Sweatpants: The kind of sappiness that they went for was real lowest common denominator stuff. That will always play with fans.

“Friends” stayed on the air for like four seasons longer than it should have on that alone.

Zombies Rise from the Sea: But the way it’s portrayed, it seemed like it was trying to go for that 8-year old being sad but failed.

The acting of Yeardley Smith is better then usual but I don’t want to emote based on acting, I want to emote based on the situation.

Charlie Sweatpants: But that’s part of the problem with how sloppy it was.

Zombies Rise from the Sea: It annoys me because if people keep falling for this then people are going to do the same thing over and over.

Charlie Sweatpants: Literally no one in that situation (sad little girl having minor, childish crisis) would make as big a deal out of cheering her up as they did.

Zombies Rise from the Sea: Agreed.

But still, who needs an emotional moment with proper buildup and proper investment when you can just have someone act sad? And I’m talking about all of the series here.

Charlie Sweatpants: Right, pretty much everyone harasses Lisa at some point (they eve had Maggie do it for fuck’s sake) and they have their little sad moment. There is no buildup, it starts with her depressed and stays at a flat line for most of the episode.

Zombies Rise from the Sea: All while Gaga tries to be Michael Jackson.

Charlie Sweatpants: Even the end was like that. Lisa actually gives two different reasons why she’s suddenly fine.

Zombies Rise from the Sea: It just sets a poor standard for the production of TV series everywhere, Zombie Simpsons I mean.

Charlie Sweatpants: Was it because Homer’s incompetence as a parent is now endearing to her, or was it because she had a “great sneeze”?

Mad Jon: How does one define “little monster”?

Zombies Rise from the Sea: I couldn’t understand a single word Homer said.

Nor could I understand what Homer had to do with Lisa’s revelation.

Charlie Sweatpants: Jon: Gaga fans call themselves “little monsters”.

Mad Jon: Ah.

Charlie Sweatpants: Exactly, Homer’s chat with Lisa didn’t do anything.

Mad Jon: So Gaga keeps telling people they can be little monsters, meaning they are allowed to be her fan?

Charlie Sweatpants: Meaning they’re allowed to let their true, weird selves fly free. Concurrent album purchases are not required, but not discouraged either.

Zombies Rise from the Sea: No, I’m not a superfan of hers but I’m guessing it all sort of has to do with the inner beauty and desire they hold inside.

I’ve listened to ‘The Fame”, I have yet to listen to her recent work.

Maybe that’s a good thing…

Mad Jon: I see. So it’s like an apathetic version of music scientology. I have heard plenty of Gaga, but I know almost nothing of the culture.

Not that it really matters.

Zombies Rise from the Sea: So let’s talk about what Lady Gaga is trying to be, “Michael Jackson”.

Anybody remember “Stark Raving Dad”?

Charlie Sweatpants: The fact that they had Lisa saying “I denounce thee” like it was musical scientology was just part of the overall “fluff Lady Gaga” thing.

Then she comes back and is a superfan at the end. It was practically a commercial.

Zombies Rise from the Sea: Or their interpretation of who Gaga is, trying to inspire people, achieve dreams they cannot achieve.

Mad Jon: The end was horrific.

Charlie Sweatpants: And yeah, they really didn’t leave me with any choice but “Stark Raving Dad” for today’s Compare & Contrast.

Zombies Rise from the Sea: I don’t associate that with Gaga but I can understand why other people would.

Mad Jon: I associate it with hilarity.

Zombies Rise from the Sea: Just imagine Gaga and her terrible voice acting trying to bond with Lisa.

Charlie Sweatpants: That was something that bugged me right from the start. She cannot act for shit.

Zombies Rise from the Sea: She isn’t even aware she’s on an animated show, it’s more like one of those cheesy PSA’s from the 80′s.

Mad Jon: Is that what her actual voice sounds like? I’ve never heard her talk before.

Zombies Rise from the Sea: Well maybe but she’s trying to “act” so any normalcy is thrown out the window.

I imagine that when she talks she’s good.

Acting, not so much.

Charlie Sweatpants: Her delivery on “We’ve got to cheer up a whole town. Where’s the dress I wore when I met . . . the Pope” was solid wood from end to end.

And yeah, the required skill sets of “singer” and “actress” don’t actually have much overlap.

Some people can do both, but most of them can’t.

Zombies Rise from the Sea: It doesn’t seem like she knows what to do or is willing to portray herself as a character, she sounds as if she’s trying to make a voice and emote it but ends up with the opposite effect for lack of better words.

Charlie Sweatpants: It’s like Lisa’s story line, her readings were just flat.

Zombies Rise from the Sea: Maybe she’s unable to immerse herself in the character or something, I don’t know.

Heh, the irony of it.

Charlie Sweatpants: Whatever the reason, it was bad.

Zombies Rise from the Sea: Maybe she should have sung her lines, it wouldn’t have been acting but it would have been better then what we got.

Charlie Sweatpants: I’d say there was more than enough singing.

Mad Jon: Yep, more than plenty.

Zombies Rise from the Sea: Speaking of songs, is Tim Long even trying with these songs anymore?

Charlie Sweatpants: I don’t know, but some of those lyrics wouldn’t have been out of place in an elementary school production that doesn’t have a lot of help from the teachers.

Zombies Rise from the Sea: The song she sang in the beginning felt like it came off from one of her studio albums.

It didn’t even feel like it was created for a Simpsons episode, it actually felt like a song written for one of her albums.

Charlie Sweatpants: The credits had both big songs with lyrics by Tim Long and music by Rex Promise.

Zombies Rise from the Sea: Ah.

Charlie Sweatpants: A quick Google search is unclear as to who or what “Rex Promise” is.

Zombies Rise from the Sea: Possibly someone hired off the street to produce these songs.

It’s funny, this is like the first time a song on the Simpsons felt like a promotional effort.

It wasn’t satirical, it was subconsciously promoting an upcoming album from her even though it was written for this episode.

Charlie Sweatpants: I don’t know about first time, but it was definitely a promotional event.

Zombies Rise from the Sea: I will admit that the lyrics are decent, if Tim Long leaves The Simpsons then he could easily join up with Lady Gaga’s entourage and write songs for her.

The lyrics are not decent for the Simpsons however…

Charlie Sweatpants: Yes, the lyrics weren’t even trying to be funny.

Mad Jon: I wasn’t even paying attention to them.

Charlie Sweatpants: I mean, “When they’re young, all little monsters learn that they are scary/ Ugly, stupid, shunned by cupid, overweight, and hairy.

“But every monster needs to find that secret deep inside.

“That transforms doctor Jekyll into sexy mister Hyde.

Zombies Rise from the Sea: That song could easily fit onto “Born this Way 2″

Charlie Sweatpants: Christ that’s bad. That sounds like Up With People modernized so they could use the word “sexy”.

Mad Jon: That’s pretty bad.

Zombies Rise from the Sea: Agreed.

The fact that it can be placed into a Gaga album makes it worse.

Charlie Sweatpants: Yeah, but at this point we’re pretty close to the bottom anyway.

Zombies Rise from the Sea: At this point they should just sell the show to Pixar since they praise it so damn much.

Mad Jon: “It can’t possibly be bottomless” – “Well, for all intents and purposes….”

Zombies Rise from the Sea: Including in this episode, with the terrible mention of Cars.

Charlie Sweatpants: Forgot about that.

Zombies Rise from the Sea: The Simpsons tries so hard to be Pixar material but it’s not Pixar, it will never be Pixar.

Mad Jon: Yeah, I missed that too, but I’m not surprised by myself for that.

Charlie Sweatpants: Well, Brad Bird left, what do you expect?

Zombies Rise from the Sea: You do have a point there.

Mad Jon: Meh, I think they are just trying to get by, one profitable day at a time.

Charlie Sweatpants: Pretty much. Any final thoughts about this episode in particular?

Zombies Rise from the Sea: There’s still so much about this episode to talk about.

We haven’t even got to how shallow the satire is.

Charlie Sweatpants: There was satire?

Mad Jon: There may be more to talk about, that doesn’t mean that it’s worth talking about.

Zombies Rise from the Sea: Well, the only satire in this episode was how extravagant she was, how many costumes she was in and how she’s a superstar.

Charlie Sweatpants: I wouldn’t call what they did satire.

Mad Jon: I dunno, I got nothing productive to bring up.

Charlie Sweatpants: It’s exaggeration. Like things Lady Gaga would have if physics, chemistry, and biology didn’t apply.

Birds won’t actually fly around you (well, outside of Hitchcock movies, anyway), but in here you can have anything your heart desires.

Zombies Rise from the Sea: I know it’s common but it just seems like they’re honoring her rather then truly mocking her.

Even that scene where Homer eats Gaga’s meat suit seems like it’s honoring it rather then mocking it.

God how I hate scenes like those.

Charlie Sweatpants: Exactly. Though I’d go with “sucking up to” instead of “honor”.

Zombies Rise from the Sea: If your meat suit gets eaten by Homer, it’s instantly an institution.

Charlie Sweatpants: Something like that.

Zombies Rise from the Sea: Honestly, I felt weirded out listening to the Gaga music, seeing the Gaga train, the black guy…

It felt like an episode of “The Cleveland Show” rather then The Simpsons.

Charlie Sweatpants: There’s no denying that Zombie Simpsons has taken more than a few cues from MacFarlane (especially since his triumphant comeback) of late, but this was extreme even for them.

That opening and closing narration is the real giveaway.

Zombies Rise from the Sea: I forgot about that; what did that have to do with the episode anyway?

Charlie Sweatpants: They know they can’t just do it crazy, so they include this disclaimer.

Zombies Rise from the Sea: I was a dancer for Lady Gaga, bleh.

Did we already mention Lisa’s “Elementary School Musical” like song or is that not worth talking about?

Charlie Sweatpants: I don’t think it’s worth examining in detail or anything. Every complaint I have about the first song applies to the second.

Especially the “Up With People” part.

Zombies Rise from the Sea: I feel the same, but I will say that Yeardley Smith’s vocals felt auto-tuned.

And the way it ended the episode undermined everything it tried to do.

Charlie Sweatpants: No arguments here. Anything else just on the episode? After that, I’d like to get a quick opinion from each of you about Season 23 overall.

The only thing I’ll say is that the couch gag wasn’t terrible. It was five years later than it should’ve been (struggles with Wii-motes are so 2007), but it was short.

Zombies Rise from the Sea: There were some decent gags like Lady ZhaZha (for the reference) but then again, “Trash of the Titans” had decent jokes and that episode is terrible.

Charlie Sweatpants: Jon? Anything else?

Mad Jon: Nothing else about this episode.

As far as season 23, I can’t say that I could distinguish it from any of the last few.

Not that this is a surprise to anyone, but what can you say? There is nothing relevant or intelligent about the show. Again, this isn’t new.

I don’t see any point in trying to sparse out what went more wrong this year as opposed to last year. What does it matter if the splattered mass of carbon on the road was a squirrel or a raccoon?

Zombies Rise from the Sea: Season 23 is by far the worst modern Simpsons season yet. It only has like two really good and memorable episodes compared to the other episodes which are either bad or bland, hell even Season 22 had some episodes I enjoyed; Season 23 doesn’t even seem like they’re trying anymore, they’re just parodying movies, sticking Simpsons characters into situations that they think are funny and let’s not forget about the terrible ToH episode this season.

The only thing exciting was Matt Selman show running a few episodes, but only one of them turned out good, the rest were just an alternate version of what would happen had he show ran rather then Jean.

Charlie Sweatpants: I don’t think 23 felt much different than the last few. The lowlights are always a little memorable (the bar rag this year, Katy Perry last year, I think that slavery episode was Season 21), but you could have broadcast pretty much anything after the HD switch and it would probably take me until the first commercial to figure out it was a rerun.

Mad Jon: Good call.

Charlie Sweatpants: The one thing I have noticed in the last two years, and even more this year, is that the number of voices that have moved past “off” and into” barely recognizable” is increasing.

There have been multiple times the last season where I was astonished at how much even characters like Marge and Lisa have changed recently.

But that’s about the only thing change I can really say seemed to pick up this year.

Mad Jon: That’s probably enough thinking for this season anyway.

Zombies Rise from the Sea: I may dig more into this into my review of it, but Season 23 proves to the writers themselves that they don’t need to put in the extra effort as long as they have some way to gain publicity or appease the Simpsons fans that they have. They can stick Bart together with Chalmers and no matter how unbelievable and undeveloped it is, people will still eat it up. They can put Lisa Simpson in a Facebook like situation and it’ll get publicity all because it has Lisa Simpson with Facebook. I can’t say I’m surprised about the critic sites but these sites and the fans are influencing the behavior of The Simpsons, making them think that this is acceptable. They tried to do an emotional episode and have a “Stark Raving Dad” like plot but they got caught up in their own world and they thought that the script they had was good when in actuality it wasn’t.

I know it’s commonplace and I’m not getting anywhere with this but this proves that they’re not going to get out of their world anytime soon, as long as they have the media, internet, and the people who still manage to trick themselves into thinking this episode is good; they’ll keep making Simpsons.

Mad Jon: Ok, well, if there isn’t anything else, I have been traveling for most of the last two weeks, and this is my first night home since last Thursday. I am going to bed.

Thanks Taylor, Thanks Pants,

Charlie Sweatpants: Okay Jon, sleep well.

Mad Jon: Good night.

Charlie Sweatpants: You’re largely right about them slipping into their own little world.

Springfield doesn’t really resemble much of anywhere anymore.

And they seem fine with that.

Zombies Rise from the Sea: People should really demand more from The Simpsons.

And going even further, everything really…

Springfield resembles LA more then anything else.

Charlie Sweatpants: More than anything else, I’d agree, but it’s too weird to be any place anymore. Witness that scene last week when the whole town and the camera crew barged into Flanders’ hospital room to report on him and Krabappel.

Zombies Rise from the Sea: I witnessed, you’re right about that.

Charlie Sweatpants: The show has fallen a long, long way from a time when Grampa and Homer could gossip about Brockman dating the weather lady or Flanders was just a well liked guy.

Zombies Rise from the Sea: I miss the days of characters, decent plots, decent satire, hand-drawn cell animation.

Charlie Sweatpants: You and me both.

Zombies Rise from the Sea: Hell I miss the days we didn’t have Facebook.

Charlie Sweatpants: Given the way their stock offering went, those days may be coming again.

Any further thoughts, Simpsons wise?

Zombies Rise from the Sea: Though this may go against your mission, I think that The Simpsons with some fresh blood can go on, though that is increasingly becoming a pipe dream because there is barely anybody who can both make it fresh and not be susceptible to being sucked into a fantasy world like the one the writers are currently in.

Charlie Sweatpants: I gave up hope a long time ago.

Zombies Rise from the Sea: This show really needs to end.

The declining numbers will make it more certain that Fox will cancel it by Season 25, I mean what purpose would Fox have to continue making the show when the episodes that are already produced will make them millions.

It’s becoming an ever increasing reality day by day, The Simpsons time is finally coming to a close.

Even though a lot of the episodes in the modern era suck, they’re still worth something to Fox.

Charlie Sweatpants: Well, the financial incentives for FOX are very complicated, and FOX doesn’t do anything to make them clear to the public.

This show anchors a major (and profitable) Sunday night lineup for them, they’ve got the syndication rights to consider, and there’s the merchandise. All of these things are inextricably tied up with the continuation of the show. If low quality and critical apathy were going to cancel it, it would’ve happened by now. To some extent the same is true of the ratings. They go down every year, sure, but they’ve been going down every year for a decade now.

Zombies Rise from the Sea: This is the lowest that they’ve gone.

Charlie Sweatpants: True, but I don’t know nearly enough about the television business or FOX’s internal thinking to even be able to guess if it’s close to low enough.

Zombies Rise from the Sea: And there is only so much they can do to cheapen the show before Fox decides to pull the plug and just make the money off the cable rights which they gain when the show ends.

Charlie Sweatpants: I guess all I’m trying to say is, it wouldn’t surprise me if 25 is it, and it wouldn’t surprise me if it’s still going at 30.

Zombies Rise from the Sea: Though there are people who don’t want to see it go away because it’s been a part of their lives for so long but we’ll get over the loss sooner then we think.

I guess you have a point Charlie, all we can seemingly do is just point out the flaws.

Hoping…

Charlie Sweatpants: Pretty much.

I want to thank you again for joining us this evening (even if Dave and Jon conked out early).

Zombies Rise from the Sea: Always appreciated.

Even though I’m hotheaded at times, it’s always nice to let out the flaws an episode has.

Charlie Sweatpants: It is cathartic, I’ll give it that.

21
May
12

Quote of the Day

By Charlie Sweatpants 5 Comments
Categories: Happy Birthday, QotD and Simpsons
Tags: ,

Bart After Dark9

“Where is Bart, anyway?  His dinner’s getting all cold and eaten.” – Homer Simpson

Happy birthday Richard Appel!

20
May
12

Sunday Preview: Lisa Goes Gaga

By Charlie Sweatpants 43 Comments
Categories: Simpsons and Sunday Preview
Tags:

zombiegaga

Image bloodied by Dave.

The picture above is the preview image of a YouTube video they put out to promote this week’s episode.  Even if it weren’t bloody, I think flying, headless, boob-cannons nicely sums up what we’re dealing with:

Lisa tries to reverse her status as one of the least popular girls in school by ghostwriting positive things about herself on the school blog. When her plan backfires, her social ranking plummets to a new low – until a psychic force tells Lady Gaga (guest-starring as herself) that Lisa needs her help. With Gaga’s assistance, Lisa and the entire town of Springfield realize that being yourself is better than being like anyone else.

I’m curious to see how much Gaga is actually in the episode.  She could be in just one scene or in half the episode.  You never can tell with Zombie Simpsons.

18
May
12

Reading Digest: The Popularity of Others Edition

By Charlie Sweatpants 6 Comments
Categories: Reading Digest, Simpsons and The Simpsons
Tags:

Popularity Name Change

“The easiest way to be popular, is to leech of the popularity of others.” – Patty Bouvier
“So we propose changing our name from ‘Springfield’, to ‘Seinfeld’.” – Selma Bouvier

As expected, the word “Simpsons” appeared near the word “Gaga” an awful lot this week; there were links about seeing her behind the scenes, about what she thought of doing the voice, and just about any other bit of non-news that can be used to put the words “Lady Gaga” in a headline and generate some pageviews.  As there is no need to worry about any of that until Sunday, none of those links are below.  Instead, we’ve got an internet ton of more interesting Simpsons content.

This week there are several awesome fan made items (including some cartoon sculptures that change depending on how you look at them), a bunch of people who agree with us, a brief history of “embiggen”, coffee mugs, and even Mitt Romney citing the show.  As an odd coincidence, there are also three pieces of otherwise excellent usage that are just a single word off. 

Enjoy.

[Note: You may have noticed that the URL for this site is now “www.deadhomersociety.com” instead of “www.deadhomersociety.wordpress.com”.  For reasons that will be apparent in a few hours (in a post which should be up around 1pm Eastern), we’ve finally purchased our domain name.  WordPress tells me that all the old links will redirect automatically, and any RSS or other feeds should continue to work as well.  Please e-mail me if you experience any problems.] 

Just an Illusion # 26 – Smooth Charlie’s Link of the Week are these fantastic optical illusion cartoon sculptures.  The Itchy & Scratchy one is just amazing. 

The Civilians and the Development of Mr. Burns, a post-electric play – Background on how that play came together:

They did many different kinds of improvisation exercises, one of which was focused on recreating the Cape Feare episode of The Simpsons from memory (and as it turns out, our Associate Artist Matt Maher was incredibly good at this). Anne Washburn then took her notes and audio recordings and started writing what is now Mr. Burns, a post-electric play. The Act 1 recollection of the Simpsons episode is pulled almost verbatim from these exercises.

Just a reminder, it opens in D.C. on May 28th and runs until July 1st. 

Skittlebrau – Yes:

People add slices of fruit to beer all the time, so why not add fruit candy? Skittlebrau works best with lagers; IPAs and Ales are too hoppy to taste the rainbow. I don’t float the Skittles in the beer, that would be a waste of Skittles and beer. Instead I pop a few Skittles in my mouth and wash it down with a swig or two. It gives the beer a fruity flavor. It actually improves the taste if you are drinking a swill beer or a forty. Skittles and beer go hand in hand. Skittles are good. Beer is great. Good + Great = Amazing.

Note to self: do this. 

Bart Simpson custom graffiti cans and more!! – Cool as hell spray pain cans with a smirking picture of Bart on them.

Cruisers – Santa Cruz x The Simpsons – Four new Simpsons skateboards, including a bloodshot and very scared looking Homer, a creepy looking one with a Krusty doll, and my personal favorite, a straight up Krusty one that’s so much like actual Krusty stuff that it’s endearing. 

Simpsons + Bread = Awesomeness – A picture of lots and lots of loaves of bread in a Homer Simpson bag.  Going solely by the fact that the currency is abbreviated as “kr”, I’m guessing Denmark or Sweden. 

Mugshots (dedicated to coffee) – Lots of coffee mugs, including two Simpsons ones. 

lisa simpson feminist patch by nastynasty on Etsy – Exactly what it says.

Appointment Viewing: May 14-May 20 – It’s gonna suck, but just remember that it’s the last one before summer vacation:

In the Season 23 finale, Lisa tries to boost her popularity by ghostwriting positive things about herself on the school blog. The effort fails miserably—until a psychic force tells Lady Gaga (who provides her own voice) that Lisa needs her help. So, I guess there will be a couple scenes of Lisa being sad until Lady Gaga shows up and they can do a rundown of every memorable thing Lady Gaga has done. Also, I think even people who don’t give a shit about continuity will have trouble making this episode jive with the one where Lisa invents Springface.

Almost there.  Almost there. 

Inside Pitch – Crashing the K market – Mostly excellent usage:

According to Homer Simpson, when it comes to compliments, "women are like ravenous, bloodsucking monsters, always wanting more, more, more!" That pretty much describes fantasy owners with strikeouts.

Homer doesn’t actually say “like”, but other than that it’s dead on.

Doctor Who: The Eternity Clock Set For May 23rd on PSN – Video game fluffing contains mostly excellent usage:

As Grandpa Simpson once said, "If you ever travel back in time, don’t step on anything. Because even the slightest change can alter the future in ways you can’t imagine." You hear that, Doctor Who companions? Quit wandering off!

Grampa actually says “tiniest” not “slightest”, but other than that it’s dead on.

Occasions When Cow Bells Aren’t Good Enough lisa simpson tattoo cropped – Sweet tattoo of Lisa meditating.

Shawarma…In 10 Words – I love me some specialty foods. 

The Dictator…In 10 Words – To be fair, Burns was thinking about making himself a god, not a dictator, but the sentiment certainly applies. 

Battleship (movie)…In 10 Words – I don’t like to pre-judge a movie, but being deaf and senile would probably help one’s enjoyment of Battleship. 

Is ‘all-you-can-eat’ an opportunity or a challenge? – Pretty much everyone and their webmaster referenced “New Kid on the Block” in regards to this story about a guy in Wisconsin who didn’t get all he could eat.  I don’t use the word hero very often, but Bill Wisth is the greatest hero in American history.

Bartzers – I chuckled.

Young Mitt Romney, odd man out – Color me surprised:

He insisted to me that he had always found a way to fit in with his friends as a teenager.

“My faith was not a burden for me. I didn’t smoke and drink, and that was about it,” in terms of distinguishing him from his classmates, he said. Romney did allow that there had been some “boyhood indiscretions,” but when I pressed him, he laughed: “I won’t elaborate.”

Then he started recounting — of all things — a episode of “The Simpsons” that had struck a chord with him. It was one where brainy, earnest Lisa Simpson was feeling like an outcast, until her mom, Marge, explains that being different is also being special.

“It’s a helpful thing for the development of the character of a young person to be different from their peers,” Romney told me. “It’s a blessing to be different, to stand up for that.”

That description is vague and second hand enough that it could be about a dozen different episodes from The Simpsons and Zombie Simpsons. 

Simpsons (1993 – Cut Off The Supply) – Butterfinger – YouTube of the Butterfinger ad that weirdly anticipated “Grade School Confidential”. 

Woo Candy Candy – Animated .gif of Homer’s “Sugar Sugar” hallucination from “Boy Scoutz ‘N the Hood”. 

Adulthood Has Snuck Up On Me At Last – Excellent usage:

7. Wanting to say ‘back in my day’: I have half-siblings significantly younger than me. I found myself almost saying to them ‘back in my day, we had this thing called dial-up, and I would set my computer up to download music videos and it would take me two days and stopping and starting to get one’. Thankfully I caught myself in time before I suffered their blank looks. I realized my comment was along the lines of old man Simpson rambling about how back in the day ‘So then I tied an onion to my belt, which was the style at the time’.

Grampa doesn’t actually says “then”, but other than that it’s dead on.  Moreover, I love that Grampa’s inanity is so ingrained in our culture now that it’s something even young people think of when dealing with someone younger. 

No Words Forum: Homer Simpson (Pictorial) – The only way to make one of those rubber Homer masks even creepier is to hang it from the ceiling.

The Shinnin’ – This post opens up with excellent usage in the form of an extended quote from Willie and Bart.  It then earns my love by continuing thusly:

Why am I quoting a Treehouse of Horrors episode of The Simpsons, you ask?
Well first of all, a Simpsons reference will only ever improve a situation.
And second of all, shut up.

Heh. 

May 17, 2012 The 11th 24 Hours – Some interesting history about “embiggen”:

“Embiggen” was actually born in 1884, in a British journal entitled Notes and Queries: A Medium of Intercommunication for Literary Men, General Readers, Etc.  It sounds official enough, doesn’t it?  Just wait until you read the sentence that introduced the world to this new verb–”but the people magnified them, to make great or embiggen, if we may invent an English parallel as ugly. After all, use is nearly everything.”  So, there we are.  Embiggen=make great.

The 22nd Edition of the St. Ambroise Montreal Fringe Festival – Excellent usage:

Last Monday, I nervously twitched my way through an hour of traffic as Homer Simpson’s quotable, "Oh my God, I’m missing the chili cook-off! I’m missing the cook-off, it’s going on right now, and I’m missing it!" ran its whiny loop through my mind. MainLine Theatre’s chili cook-off press conference was unfolding at Les Katacombes and come Hell, high water or a turtle pace commute, I was not going to miss it.

Perfectly quoted and very apt.  No word on whether or not she got as drunk as a poet on payday when she got there.

The Weekly Feed: Mad About Mango Edition – More food related excellent usage:

In the immortal words of Marge Simpson, "Fruit is nature’s candy," and few things are sweeter than ripe mango over a bed of sticky coconut milk-laced rice.

Homer Simpson – A fan made drawing of a very touched looking Homer getting a tear in his eye as he contemplates the donut to come.  There’s far more emotion on his face than you get in most of Zombie Simpsons. 

How to Capture Pips with the Humble Triangle – I generally steer clear of lottery tips, but this one agrees with us:

Back in the 1990s, when Homer Simpson was still funny and new retail traders were first discovering technical analysis, there was a greater focus on price action alone without the use of indicators.

Well, I like the first part of that sentence.

Renewals Bitchezzzz – The season numbers are off here, but the sentiment is dead on:

American Dad as mentioned before takes the tally to three leaving me with the gout infested leg that is The Simpsons. 2012-13 will see The Simpsons go into its 26th season, a mammoth achievement and something which will probably never be matched again. Having watched some of the 25th season however, I have come to the decision that enough is enough. It is still an amusing show, in the same way that if one was stranded on a desert island, counting the grains of sand would amuse you for a period of time. What I’m trying to get at is, The Simpsons used to be funny, there were parts in every episode which would be genuinely spit-your-drink-out hilarious. Not any more.

Definitely not. 

Whatever happened to The Simpsons? – An epic rant from someone deeply disappointed in Zombie Simpsons:

The series started to decline (ever so slightly) from the 9th season onwards – it bottomed out in the 13th season and has settled on the bottom of the ocean after repeated torpedo attacks.
But why Groening? We used to love you so and your yellow-skinned creations. You used to make me laugh, no other  tv show could make me laugh like you could. You charmed me, and I fell in love with your characters. But then something changed – you tried to be like the other shows on Fox and suddenly you didn’t have any more time for me and the audience. You were so busy trying to bring in celebrities and to be like Family Guy that you forgot about what I loved you to start with.

The Simpsons – Season One – And finally, I get to end with someone who picked up Season 1 on DVD to relive the old episodes and agrees with us:

As for me, I guess I’m in the middle when it comes to that debate regarding the current quality of The Simpsons, but I lean towards the side that says the show is well past its prime.  I really don’t watch it anymore and haven’t for years.  When I do catch an episode I’m usually left underwhelmed.  Rarely do I hate it, but I forget about them pretty fast.  The only one I’ll go out of my way to watch is the annual “Treehouse of Horror,” and that’s mostly just out of tradition.

They are indeed very forgettable. 

17
May
12

Crazy Noises: Ned ‘N Edna’s Blend

By Charlie Sweatpants 14 Comments
Categories: Crazy Noises and Simpsons
Tags: ,

Homer's Night Out3

“Alright, folks, show’s over.  No more to see, folks, come on.  Only sick people want to see my folks kiss.” – Bart Simpson

As part of our tireless efforts to demonstrate the many ways Zombie Simpsons fails to entertain, Season 23 will be subjected to the kind of rigorous examination that can only be produced by people typing short messages at one another.  More dedicated or modern individuals might use Twitter for this, but that’s got graphics and short links and little windows that pop up when you put your cursor over things.  The only kind of on-line communications we like are the kind that could once be done at 2400 baud.  So disable your call waiting, plug in your modem, and join us for another year of Crazy Noises.  This text has been edited for clarity and spelling (especially on “haggard”).

Before we discard “Ned ’N Edna’s Blend” onto the forgettable slag heap of Zombie Simpsons, I’d like to point out two problems with the final scene that nicely expose just how vapid Zombie Simpsons is when it comes to character and humor.  After Flanders and Krabappel have their tiff at the reception, the next scene is Ned in the Simpsons’ kitchen learning something about not always being a perfect parent.  The scene after that is at the school where Ned and Edna reconcile.

Set aside any questions you may have about whether or not Ned was staying with the Simpsons, or what happened to Rod, Todd and Edna while he was there, or what happened to Rod and Todd generally, since neither of them is in the last two scenes.  Zombie Simpsons doesn’t care, neither should you.  Instead, just consider this last scene, where Flanders bursts into the auditorium and seizes the microphone to declare his love of Edna and willingness to change his ways.

First of all, what’s happening here is that Flanders is, very rudely, intruding into Krabappel’s workplace to make a grand show of love/forgiveness/whatever.  This is an official school function in the middle of the day, and Ned breaks in and hijacks it.  Neither Krabappel nor anyone else is the least bit upset by this, which is all the more ironic because (as discussed below) she actually apologizes for not respecting Ned’s “boundaries”.  What could be less respectful to someone’s boundaries than causing a massive disruption at your spouse’s workplace?  Like so many others, this scene has no characters, only props that look like people.

Second, there’s the reaction of the kids.  Even though Krabappel just told them she doesn’t care about children, they all clap and cheer wildly when she and Flanders kiss.  Not only is this out of character for the kids, but it’s also the opposite of funny.  Having them applaud is the kind of mind fogging schlock you’re more likely to find at the end of a low brow romantic comedy, it’s not a joke at all.

Now, if the characters had been acting like real people, that happy ending could’ve had meaning.  But with the characters acting like one dimensional nobodies, the happy ending and cheering children are just empty pandering, so there’s no reason not to at least try to make it funny.  And since the only possible joke there is to have the kids boo, Zombie Simpsons naturally does the opposite.  It’s a remarkable display of indifference to both character and comedy.

Charlie Sweatpants: You guys ready to get started?

Mad Jon: Yes sir.

Charlie Sweatpants: Well then, I thought this episode was terrible. Anyone care to disagree?

Mad Jon: No. No I do not.

Dave: Not particularly.

Charlie Sweatpants: Okay then, I’d like to alert our affiliates that we will be ending our show early tonight.

Mad Jon: Good, they can switch to the end of another chat session about a shitty TV show.

Dave: Or use their time to wisely contribute to society in some meaningful way.

Mad Jon: There were many glaring issues with this one.

Charlie Sweatpants:  Pick one.

Mad Jon: Wasn’t Ned dating Kate Hudson or something? Also didn’t he have a relationship with that Christian music person?

Charlie Sweatpants: Hmm, I don’t know. The Christian rocker lady was like ten seasons ago. I really have no idea.

Dave: There was the Christian music woman. That much I remember.

I vaguely remember murmurs about Nedna.

Mad Jon: Hmm. This was completely out of the blue to me.

Charlie Sweatpants: Since last year’s publicity stunt, the weirdness of the relationship has worn off a little, but not much.

They just make a really odd couple, and the fact that Zombie Simpsons did a whole episode about them not fitting together just made it worse.

When Flanders cries out "This marriage isn’t perfect!", I was really wondering what the point was supposed to be. Were we supposed to think he thought it was perfect before that?

And if so, why would he think that?

Mad Jon: Yeah, that was a classic zombie statement. Say something Obvious!!!!

I can call it classic, because it has been going on for about a decade or so.

Dave: No joke, a decade of mediocrity

Mad Jon: At a minimum.

Charlie Sweatpants: It’s best not to think about it.

But that mismatch between what they had the characters feeling and anything that could be called "making sense" was shot through the whole episode.

Under duress I guess I could buy Flanders and Krabappel getting into a fight at the reception, but why on Earth would he smooth things over in front of the entire school?

Mad Jon: It felt like all of the ‘dramatic’ scenes were just a needle with which to inject one of the core characters.

Not that this a new thing, but it was exceedingly apparent to me for this one.

Charlie Sweatpants: Worse than usual, I’d agree.

Mad Jon: For example, Krabappel is having an issue watching Rod and Todd, but don’t worry! Bart is standing at the open window!

Dave: Ready to cure the world’s ills.

Mad Jon: The hospital scene was both the most obvious and the most annoying.

Charlie Sweatpants: Apparently they think it’s cute to acknowledge how stupid everything is.

I’m of a different opinion.

Mad Jon: Well, I guess you are entitled to your own opinion. However drunken and Peoria-ish it may be, stupid commoner.

Charlie Sweatpants: It just bugs me that they know how sloppy their characters and story are, but don’t do anything about it.

Mad Jon: Agreed.

Charlie Sweatpants: It’s not like you couldn’t construct a decent story around two people as different as Krabappel and Flanders working things out. They just don’t give a shit.

Mad Jon: I think there are lots of TV shows based around this kind of arrangement. Some were even popular!

Great, now I have the theme to The Odd Couple stuck in my head.

Charlie Sweatpants: You have no one to blame but yourself for that.

Mad Jon: Fair enough.

Charlie Sweatpants: More to the point, the serious parts of this episode was particularly bad. The whole Marge and Homer argument in the kitchen in front of Flanders, for example.

I wonder if there was actually a segment blocked off in the script that said "This is where Flanders learns the lesson".

Dave: You mean the excuse for Homer to yell shit and get indignant?

Mad Jon: That just wouldn’t end. In all fairness I, correctly, prejudged how that scene would be and actually didn’t write anything down.

Looking back at the few, but hilarious, disagreements Maude and Ned got into, he didn’t technically have a perfect marriage back then either.

"You knew I had a temper when you married me."

Charlie Sweatpants: That’s my point. We know that both of them know what it’s like to be married, and yet the episode insisted on treating them like they were both love struck nineteen-year-olds.

Mad Jon: I do miss the Edna that just really, really didn’t care about making anyone else happy.

As opposed to the one who is taking advice from a ten year old on how to live with another man’s children.

Dave: She had a flicker of that in her snappy retort to the kids in the auditorium.

But then she returned to making up with Flanders.

Charlie Sweatpants: I miss the Edna who didn’t have to say things like, "Oh, Ned, I’m sorry too. I overstepped your boundaries."

Mad Jon: Yeah, that doesn’t sound like a combination of words Edna would be capable of saying.

Charlie Sweatpants: Beyond the half-assed and unbelievable sentiments, though, this episode also managed to step on pretty much all of its jokes.

Homer’s Twitter joke, the chip clips, pretty much everything the theater guy says, all of them over explain and exposit jokes.

Mad Jon: Yeah, most of the time it was beyond savage, as the jokes were crap to begin with. I cite the FSU/UF crying thing Homer did.

Charlie Sweatpants: Forgot about that one.

Mad Jon: But even the scene where Grandpa exclaims "Crucify Him!" after Homer says only his father can judge him seemed like it should have been funnier.

Charlie Sweatpants: The whole play was Homer explaining a joke and then making it, for example, when he eats his crown of licorice thorns. Both Homer and Bart explain the eating thing as it’s happening.

Mad Jon: I forgot about that one. That was painful.

Charlie Sweatpants: The same was true in Flanders stupid stop-motion dream. They actually named everything they were showing as they showed it.

Mad Jon: The claymation nightmare was pretty bad. I really hate when cartoons do that kind of thing. I am not entertained because you all of a sudden try to use a different format. That is not funny, that is not good writing. It is just a different format, which usually means you have to further simplify the already terrible jokes you are making.

Dave: I feel like they’ve done the stop-motion nonsense before, but I haven’t the wherewithal to confirm it.

Charlie Sweatpants: There was that one where they made Gumby or whoever want to bomb Planned Parenthood. That was in Season 12, I think.

This was much worse though, for pretty much all the reasons Jon just stated. It’s cute, but it’s so incongruous and poorly written that mostly I just want it to be over.

And speaking of bad writing, there was this “Well, we’re here to offer to throw you a little party in your honor”.

It’s a third person description of what’s going on, it’s not dialogue at all.

The same thing happened when Marge and Homer were in Flanders hospital room going back and forth about marriage.

Mad Jon: I don’t remember much of the dialogue from that part, so I’ll have to take your word for it.

All I really remember from the hospital scene is a very haggard Skinner pleading his case or something.

Charlie Sweatpants: There was that too.

Dave: I’m amazed you were both this attentive… I more or less checked out.

Mad Jon: I spaced in and out…

Charlie Sweatpants: That’s usually a good way to go. I could’ve been very happy not seeing the "extreme weddings", for example.

That was blatant filler.

Mad Jon: Oh yeah, that happened didn’t it.

Charlie Sweatpants: It was part of the not-quite-a-sub-plot thing between Marge and the other wives. Apparently they were staking out that bridal shop.

Mad Jon: That reminds me of the fact that everyone was video taping the reception to show how bad Marge is at wedding receptions or something. Did anything come of that?

Charlie Sweatpants: Not that I saw.

The episode ended with the over-explained payday loan guy and then that atrocious "rap" song.

Mad Jon: And was there any particular reason that the three marginally unrelated women were so angry at Marge?

Dave: Oh, that. Fan service with a twist.

Mad Jon: I don’t even remember who the two other than Mrs. Lovejoy were…

Charlie Sweatpants: It was Bernice Hibbert and Luann van Houten, but you are forgiven for forgetting. I’m not sure either one of them got a line.

And no, there was neither a reason nor a resolution to it.

Mad Jon: Why on earth would they even remotely care that Marge was helping her next-door neighbor plan a relatively impromptu wedding reception? Not that it matters I guess.

Charlie Sweatpants: It doesn’t matter, I think they just needed to fill in a little more time.

Mad Jon: Thinking about this episode makes me feel more and more like the robot voiced by Alan Rickman in Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.

Charlie Sweatpants: Go on.

Mad Jon: I don’t really have anything insightful to add. Every comment I type makes me want to at "not that it really matters" or "not that anyone cares" or some other depressing statement.

I am even hanging my head right now.

I feel beaten.

Charlie Sweatpants: But now you’re not caring about not caring, which is great.

Mad Jon: So, is this the bottom? Can I finally start to rebuild?

Charlie Sweatpants: Perhaps. Anything else here?

Mad Jon: Any thoughts on the Itchy and Scratchy wedding?

Charlie Sweatpants: Not really.

Any thoughts on Flanders parents’ being at the wedding but not the reception?

Mad Jon: Not really, I think they forgot about them as the episode went on.

Charlie Sweatpants: Again, probably for the best.

Dave, anything to add?

Dave: Nope, other than I’m happy to put this behind us.

Charlie Sweatpants: Sounds good to me. If they keep the show on for another twenty years, maybe Flanders will get together with the crazy cat lady.

Mad Jon: We’ll always have that to look forward to.

15
May
12

Compare & Contrast: Wedding Reception Guest Lists

By Charlie Sweatpants 52 Comments
Categories: Compare & Contrast and Simpsons
Tags: ,

A Milhouse Divided9

“Would you guys do a favor for a guy in love?” – Kirk van Houten
“Sure.” – Drummer
“Yeah.” – Doobie Brother
“It’s why we’re here.” – Keyboardist

“Ned ‘N Edna’s Blend” uses a lot of ideas, characters and jokes from earlier episodes.  There’s a religious school that’s more expository and less believably insane than the one in “Whacking Day”.  There’s Flanders calling a talking dog “the spawn of the devil” when we all know from “Bart the Lover” that it’s Todd who considers the idea of a talking dog “blasphemous”.  There’s even that poorly stereotyped theater guy, who’s not nearly as humorously delusional as the great Llewellyn Sinclair from “A Streetcar Named Marge”.  But for the starkest illustration of just how differently The Simpsons and Zombie Simpsons approach the same kind of concept, there’s nothing better than looking at the way each portrayed a wedding reception hosted at the Simpson home.

Like “Ned ‘N Edna’s Blend”, Season 8’s “A Milhouse Divided” takes marriage as its inspiration, and both episodes end up with a small party on Evergreen terrace to celebrate recent nuptials.  The differences arise when you begin to consider not only who is at these parties, but why they are there and what they do.  In the case of Zombie Simpsons, the event is less of a real party and more of a roll call of wacky characters:

Odd Party

I’m mildly surprised by the lack of Bumblebee Man.

I only count two strangers in that image (the anonymous couple underneath Moe); other than that everyone is a recurring character (and I’m pretty sure that’s supposed to be Helen Lovejoy behind the bush to the right of Disco Stu).  Here’s the guest list as of this establishing shot:

  • Bride:  Groundskeeper Willie, Superintendent Chalmers, Mr. Largo, Miss Hoover, Lunchlady Doris, and (I guess) the van Houtens.
  • Groom:  The Lovejoys and (I guess) Homer and Marge. 
  • ??????:  Moe, Lenny, Carl, the Nahasapeemapetilons, Cookie Kwan, Disco Stu, and Sideshow Mel

Half the guest list has no discernable reason to be there and we haven’t even gotten to the bizarre sequence with Captain McAllister and Lindsey Naegle.  For characters like Disco Stu and Cookie Kwan, neither of whom gets a line, there’s no reason to have them there at all.  What’s more, even the characters who have a plausible reason to be there don’t do anything.  Miss Hoover, for example, doesn’t get a word in even though we know that her and Krabappel are work friends who’ve hung out in the past.  Almost everyone in that shot is simple background filler, they don’t have anything to do with the story outside of this party, nor do they do anything in this scene.

By contrast, here’s the guests at Homer and Marge’s second wedding:

A Milhouse Divided8

Hey look, people who have reasons to be there.

Here the only people we have are Marge’s mother and sisters, Homer’s father, and the other couples that were at the dinner party that begins the episode.  There aren’t any random celebrities or Springfield eccentrics who have no connection to these people or their lives.  Not only does this make the story seem more realistic and relatable, but it also means that when it comes time for people to crack jokes and act funny, we don’t have to just drop in random characters for no reason.  Instead we get Lovejoy’s exasperation at Homer’s vows, the hip rock & roll combo with one Doobie Brother, and Kirk’s hilariously pathetic failure to re-woo Luann, including asking for his shirts back and his meek acceptance of being ejected at the hands of her vastly superior new boyfriend.

Compare that with what passes for comedy at the Flanders-Krabappel reception.  Since none of the secondary characters who should be there have anything to do with the rest of the plot, the only thing Zombie Simpsons can do is paste in McAllister and Naegle hooking up and Moe and Lisa staring dumbly at the fourth wall.  Marge breaks up the former for reasons that don’t make any sense (I fail to see how it reflects poorly on the host when two people get together at a wedding reception), and the latter is yet another attempt by Zombie Simpsons to deflect how badly the move to a four act structure has affected the show.

The entire reception scene in Zombie Simpsons is hollow.  It goes on for two minutes after the shot I grabbed above, and yet the only event that’s even vaguely plot related is Flanders and Krabappel getting into a big fight over Rod and Todd.  The rest of the space has to be filled with the out of place antics of other secondary characters (pretty much all of whom come from Season 9 or earlier) because there’s simply nothing else going on.  This is bad enough on its own, but consider what a staggering failure of imagination it represents.

This show had two characters fall in love and get married, and not just any two characters.  Flanders and Krabappel have both been with the show since Season 1; not only do they come from very different social spheres, but they’ve had countless interactions with other characters over the years.  That much history should open up all kinds of possibilities, everything from secular-religious conflicts and accommodations (which the episode barely touches) to quick and simple jokes about the backstory of some of the other characters.  Just between Hoover and Reverend Lovejoy you’d think they could come up with at least one line that was relevant and funny.  But with all those untapped ideas and rich character bios at its fingertips, Zombie Simpsons went with random flirting between two characters who are unrelated to what’s happening and unrelated to one another. 

The empty nature of the thing is another example of the way Zombie Simpsons treats Springfield and its citizens as flat, lifeless background ornamentation.  They’ve lost any interest in using the characters as characters, and instead just see them as a collection of traits that can be trotted out at any time and for any reason.  (“The sea captain gets with the business lady?  Outrageous!”)  The Simpsons never needed to resort to those kind of cheap shortcuts because it treated its characters like real human beings (even the nameless musicians have lines and motivations), and the scene is tremendously smarter and richer because of it. 

Kirk asking for his shirts back is kinda funny on its own, but it’s made so much better because of who he is and of how pitiful it is for him to still be caught up on some old shirts that we saw Luann burn much earlier in the episode.  Zombie Simpsons never does that kind of thing, and the result is weird scenes where characters act with little to no motivation and the jokes have nothing to do with the story.  In The Simpsons, as in real life, it matters who’s on the guest list.  In Zombie Simpsons, it doesn’t. 

14
May
12

A Season Best and an All Time Worst

By Charlie Sweatpants 17 Comments
Categories: Ratings FAIL and Simpsons
Tags: ,

Chalkboard - Ned 'N Edna's Blend

“Like one out of every nine Americans, I’m left handed.  And, let me tell you, it ain’t all peaches and cream.  Your writing gets smeared, Lord help you if you want to drive a standard transmission.” – Ned Flanders

I have two good things to say about “Ned ‘N Edna’s Blend”.  First, we dodged the “storytelling episode” bullet.  When they were backstage at the beginning talking about why they didn’t do Lenny’s story, I thought for sure we were in for four short, equally dull segments, but it turned out that they went with the less annoying single, long dull story.  Second, this exchange from the Left Gifted Bi-Dexterous and Transhanded community scene was one of the best things they’ve done all season:

Flanders: We’re trying to decide on the theme for our Left Is Right parade.
Left Handed Woman:  Our Scissors, Ourselves!
Left Handed Man:  How ’bout Death to Righties.
Left Handed Woman:  We have to live among them.
Left Handed Man:  To live among them is to die!  Are you even left handed?

They over explained it and kept the scene going a bit too long, but that argument is a genuinely excellent parody.  Plus, “Fete Accompli” and “A Day to Pay Full Price” were well above average sign humor.  I don’t say this often, but, well done, Zombie Simpsons. 

Unfortunately, those brief moments were surrounded on all sides by the usual array of aggravating and careless problems.  Need a character in a scene? Have them walk right up and announce their presence (there’s Homer and Bart through the window, there’s Helen, Luann and Bernice in the wedding shop, there’s Bart and the window again).  Want to cram in a personal conversation or three?  Have characters argue and reconcile in public with a total disregard for where they’re supposed to be (Ned and Edna at the party, Homer and Marge in their kitchen, Ned and Edna again in front of the school).  Feel like explaining your jokes even as you make them?  Have each punchline carefully pre-chewed for ease of audience digestion (Flanders with the chip clips, the recitation of what goes on at the liberal college, pretty much everything Homer says about playing Jesus).  And, let’s not forget that the main story involved a lot of weird, out of character behavior and bizarre plot twists. 

Zombie Simpsons has a habit of ignoring the history and characteristics of people, but asking us to believe that Ned Flanders (widower) and Edna Krabappel (divorcee) are unaware that marriages aren’t perfect was bad even for them.  Flanders and Krabappel having problems with their relationship?  Fine.  Flanders and Krabappel not seeing eye to eye on Rod and Todd?  No problem.  Flanders being unaware that couples argue?  Wha?  And how on Earth did Krabappel pull the kids out of a school without Flanders knowing about it?  All to often these characters and their actions are barely recognizable as human. 

Anyway, the numbers are in and they are the worst ever.  Last night’s meandering pastiche of marital woe and wonder was ceremoniously endured by just four million people.  (TV by the Numbers has it exactly at a flat 4.00 million.)  That is far and away the lowest number of all time, displacing “The Daughter Also Rises” from earlier this season in the coveted #1 spot.  Eight of the ten least watched episodes are now from Season 23 (numbers are millions of viewers):

#1    23-21    4.00    Ned ‘N Edna’s Blend
#2    23-13    4.33    The Daughter Also Rises
#3    23-20    4.75    The Spy Who Learned Me
#4    23-18    4.86    Beware My Cheating Bart
#5    23-16    4.96    How I Wet Your Mother
#6    23-19    5.00    A Totally Fun Thing That Bart Will Never Do Again
#6    22-18    5.00    The Great Simpsina
#8    23-10    5.11    Politically Inept, With Homer Simpson
#8    21-11    5.11    Million Dollar Maybe
#10  23-12    5.12    Moe Goes from Rags to Riches

Presumably Lady Gaga will give them a boost next week, but it would take a viewership of 26 million just to haul Season 23’s average viewership (currently 6.20 million) up to the level of Season 22, and that ain’t gonna happen. 

09
May
12

Quote of the Day

By Charlie Sweatpants 9 Comments
Categories: Happy Birthday, QotD and Simpsons
Tags: ,

Radioactive Man8

“Hey, didn’t you direct ‘Unnatural Discretion’?” – Homer Simpson
“Well, yes, I did.” – Director
“Phew-ee, whew, oh, you know I never walk out of a movie, but yecch.” – Homer Simpson

Happy Birthday James L. Brooks!

08
May
12

Crazy Noises: The Spy Who Learned Me

By Charlie Sweatpants 11 Comments
Categories: Crazy Noises and Simpsons
Tags: ,

Last Exit to Springfield6

“Ah, McBain, so glad you could make it.  Have a salmon puff.” – Senator Mendoza
“Alright.” – McBain

As part of our tireless efforts to demonstrate the many ways Zombie Simpsons fails to entertain, Season 23 will be subjected to the kind of rigorous examination that can only be produced by people typing short messages at one another.  More dedicated or modern individuals might use Twitter for this, but that’s got graphics and short links and little windows that pop up when you put your cursor over things.  The only kind of on-line communications we like are the kind that could once be done at 2400 baud.  So disable your call waiting, plug in your modem, and join us for another year of Crazy Noises.  This text has been edited for clarity and spelling (especially on “Snuffleupagus”).

In general, “Stradivarius Cain” was not one of the better ideas to get barfed onto my television by Zombie Simpsons.  His only real trait is being an exaggerated version of James Bond, which is fine as far as it goes, except for the fact that there have been so many of those over the years that it’s hard to even count them all.  The first James Bond movie came out fifty years ago, and after five decades it doesn’t seem too much to expect that decent parodies need to be a little more than cartoonish villains and a hero who looks good in a tuxedo. 

The one dimensional nature of Cain is laid bare in the opening scene where we see his movie.  A bunch of goofy looking bad guys are having a meeting when one of them steps forward to ask about Cain:

Not Quite a Nazi Guy:  But are you sure we will not be bothered by the American master spy Stradivarius Cain?
Old Guy with Mustache:  Do not worry about Dr. Cain.  The last I saw him, my beautiful mistress was about to finish him off. 

That leads to the beautiful mistress doing one of those hokey old vaudeville overreactions where she’s surprised, then she realizes what’s happening, then she covers it up so poorly that anyone who’s half awake knows she’s lying:

Old Guy with Mustache:  You killed him, right?
Beautiful Mistress:  Yes.  He was the perfect lover . . . of being killed.
Old Guy with Mustache:  It’s a weird sentence, but let’s move on.

This is a great example of Zombie Simpsons just having no clue what its doing.  The scene as shown would be more at home in a slapstick comedy than a big action movie, but because Zombie Simpsons pretty much always goes for the cheapest possible laugh, they jam it in there no matter how strange or out of place it is. 

When The Simpsons did McBain, they played it straight ahead because they understood that the concept they were parodying was inherently funny.  They knew that just having McBain’s ludicrous arms punch their way out of the frozen Venus de Milo sculpture while he says “Ice to see you” as seriously as he can was already hilarious.  They didn’t have him slip on a banana peel or his enemy act the fool because that kind of humor would actually have detracted from the satire and made it dumb. 

Similarly, in a different McBain clip, when Mendoza asks if McBain is dead, his henchmen doesn’t stammer or roll his eyes, he acts like a normal henchman.  What’s funny is that McBain comes exploding out of the conference table and tosses Mendoza out a high rise window to plummet to his death and detonate a conveniently placed tanker truck labeled simply “Gasoline”.  When parodying terrible films like those insane 1980s/1990s action movies (and there have been a lot of terrible James Bond movies), you don’t need schtick.  They’re so nuts already that all you need to turn them from action to comedy is a bit of exaggeration.  And that one, from “Oh Brother, Where Art Thou?”, even manages its own little James Bond joke by showing the credits as Grampa and Jasper get up to leave the theater:

Oh Brother, Where Art Thou8

That one tag line, “You Have the Right to Remain Dead” is a far more inventive Bond satire than anything Zombie Simpsons did with Stradivarius Cain. 

Charlie Sweatpants: Ready to get started?

Mad Jon: Let’s.

  I actually remembered to set my DVR to record an extra minute at the beginning, so I got to see the couch gag for once.

Charlie Sweatpants: Pretty sure it was a repeat again, but I didn’t check.

Mad Jon: Short and sweet is what my notes tell me. I don’t remember it, so that makes it new to me.

Charlie Sweatpants: Huh, Wikipedia says it was new. Yeah, I don’t have much to complain about there.

Mad Jon: Go social encyclopedia.

Charlie Sweatpants: The problems started right afterward though. That Stradivarius Cain movie at the beginning was awful.

It was like watching a reboot of McBain, but with none of the humor and all of the pandering taken seriously.

Mad Jon: Goddamn it that couldn’t have been worse. All I could do to fight the pain was to visualize the McBain movie where he pops out of the ice sculpture.

Charlie Sweatpants: My thoughts exactly.

  The fact that the villain’s girlfriend did the cartoony "uh, of course" kind of thing also ruined it.

McBain was funny because it was exactly like a real crappy action movie, this was like an imitation of one of those awful parody movies.

Mad Jon: The best part of those movies are that they are timeless. This was a social media version of the Star Wars movie parody where they got locked up in procedural amendments.

Charlie Sweatpants: Good way to put it.

Mad Jon: It’s a sad day when so much of my attention is going to the opening movie which leads to Homer being a in-theater commenter, who, although beloved by his best friends for it, doesn’t do it again throughout the movie.

  But it does lead to him trying to be smooth for his wife and Tony Montana.

Charlie Sweatpants: That was like the movie scene from "Colonel Homer", minus everything that made it funny.

  The whole Lenny and Carl thing was just odd.

Mad Jon: Got to get them in there I guess.

Charlie Sweatpants: It was a recurring theme. When Marge comes to the plant to drop off that basket for Homer, who should be standing outside but Lenny.

Mad Jon: Yeah, not much to say here. But anywhere Homer needed someone to further his fight with Marge, there was Lenny and Carl.

Charlie Sweatpants: That happened a lot as well. Homer needs to practice being suave, here’s half a dozen women patiently waiting their turn for him to talk to them.

Mad Jon: Yeah, where the hell was that bar??

Charlie Sweatpants: It kind of reminded me of the place Homer was asked to leave without making a fuss, but I’d chalk it up more to Springfield’s increasing resemblance to the nicer parts of Los Angeles.

Mad Jon: Well alright then.

Charlie Sweatpants: The second restaurant was even weirder.

Mad Jon: Was that a restaurant? I thought it was more like a garden party or something. It reminded me of the squid port opening.

Charlie Sweatpants: Homer called it a restaurant, but it was odd.

Mad Jon: Ah.

Charlie Sweatpants: Did you notice that Not Bond was strapped into the kid seat?

Mad Jon: Yeah, I was waiting for that to, you know, be something. Other than awkward, of course.

Charlie Sweatpants: That’s what was so strange. Why did he look all nervous and scared?

Mad Jon: He did look very strange for an imaginary friend.

But whatever. I guess that’s the price for getting to watch people make out?

Charlie Sweatpants: That’s one of the things that didn’t make sense. He was into that a second ago. Of course, here I am trying to figure the motives of an imaginary character who was brought forth with one of the most trite cliches in television: the magic bonk on the head.

Mad Jon: An imaginary character who has apparently shared an imaginary woman with Snuffleupagus.

Charlie Sweatpants: It’s best not to think about it.

Mad Jon: But other than that, probably not much to figure out.

Charlie Sweatpants: No, and in case there was, they helpfully explained everything every six seconds.

  This is a partial list of what’s in my notes, but I typed as I watched so these might be a bit off:

  “Stop saying what you’d call things”

  “Sir, that was your partner, you betrayed him to the cannibals”

  “I have eight weeks paid vacation and my family doesn’t know” – This one was right after they showed us exactly that.

  “Because I was up late lamenting the choices I’ve made”

  “Oh great, another documentary making me look like a scuzzbag.” – bonus points on this one for making no sense by having Krusty walk into the movie.

“Now that’s it’s after-noon”/”Hear your pathetic rationalizing through the door”/”Pack of raccoons” – That whole scene with Moe was them explaining what either just happened or was about to happen.

  “I thought I was making small talk, but it turned out to be big talk”.

  “The three of us are going to the most romantic restaurant in town”

I could go on. There were so fucking many of these, but I think I’ve made my point. So many words, so very little actually said.

Mad Jon: Indeed. The "The three of us…." one was the worst.

Only because even by zombie standards, that should have prompted a reaction from Marge.

Charlie Sweatpants: I’m partial to Marge’s "Stop saying what you’d call things". She literally just could’ve said "Stop". Or they could’ve actually given her a joke or something.

Mad Jon: Well, in all fairness, they were all, just, terrible.

And on top of that, only one of those lines was from the ‘B’ plot.

We haven’t even stepped into the pile which was the almost a decade old lead in to the ‘B’ plot.

Charlie Sweatpants: By all means, let’s step.

  These new Italian loafers will make short work of it.

Mad Jon: I actually don’t have a lot of notes about it, because it wasn’t that in depth.

  Bart’s plan is to fatten up Nelson so he can’t beat him up, he accomplishes this, and then Nelson and Lisa get Krusty to make him a super bully, and then it is over.

Charlie Sweatpants: There wasn’t much there.

Mad Jon: That is literally all of my notes for the B plot.

Charlie Sweatpants: Well, it did contain what may have been the most outdated joke I can recall them making in a while, the whole Alicia Silverstone was fat in that unwatchable Batman 4 movie.

  That joke expired in about 1998.

Mad Jon: I was going to say, how old was the average viewer when that made sense? 2? maybe 3?

Whatever, I often feel like boring is the methadone that helps me through these things.

Charlie Sweatpants: Yeah, but they made me think about Batman 4. That’s just wrong.

Mad Jon: Normal life, where I don’t have to watch Zombie Simpsons, of course being the heroin.

Charlie Sweatpants: Heh.

Mad Jon: Just got to take it one Sunday at a time…

Charlie Sweatpants: What was pissy about the B-plot though was the fact that Krusty was wherever he was needed. He was in the documentary, he was there when Lisa and Nelson showed up, and then his personal trainer was too.

The entire thing was filler, so they just rushed it along.

Mad Jon: Yeah, that was kind of lazy, but that’s what happens when you write yourself into a corner.

Charlie Sweatpants: Like they didn’t have enough to make it a real plot, but they had too much to make it a one or two scene joke, so we got that.

Mad Jon: Anyone who has paid attention to my chat text from these things will know that I completely understand.

Charlie Sweatpants: Fair enough.

Mad Jon: I don’t think I have thought about Morgan Spurlock since 2006, by the way… Who was sitting on that??

Charlie Sweatpants: Well, he did do that Simpsons special a couple of years ago.

  But Zombie Simpsons doesn’t generally like being with the times.

Mad Jon: Yeah, but I block those things out pretty quickly.

Charlie Sweatpants: Probably for the best.

  Anything else here?

Mad Jon: Not really, I am disappointed that there really wasn’t even 1 joke that I could consider noteworthy in a positive way.

But we’ve covered enough of the crap I guess.

Charlie Sweatpants: I chuckled at the Oscar documentary form having Holocaust and non-Holocaust as checkboxes, but that was it.

Mad Jon: Yeah, I can almost see that, but meh. Sorry to disappoint you.

Charlie Sweatpants: That’s okay, I’m long over disappointment.

Mad Jon: Good. Cause I’m not going to change for you.

Charlie Sweatpants: Works for me.

From Mad Jon via e-mail this morning:

On a side-ish note, I forgot to mention it last night, but did you notice the more-insane-than-normal sense of time that episode had?  Homer has eight weeks of paid leave, Marge finds out during week six, right?  At the same time Bart is trying to get Nelson to eat Krusty burger for a month, which actually lasts 2 weeks, and then he gets buff in what must have been three weeks, because at the very end Homer mentions he was supposed to be back at work last week.

I have been thinking about that all morning for some ungodly reason.  Work is bad enough, but my daydreaming is involving a zombiesode.  Oh well. 

07
May
12

Failing to Make Fun of James Bond, Bravo Zombie Simpsons

By Charlie Sweatpants 15 Comments
Categories: Ratings FAIL and Simpsons
Tags: ,

Chalkboard - The Spy Who Learned Me

“Well, here we are at the Brad Goodman lecture.” – Homer Simpson
“We know, Dad.” – Lisa Simpson
“I just thought I’d remind everybody.  After all, we did agree to attend this self help seminar.” – Homer Simpson
“What an odd thing to say.” – Bart Simpson 

Near the end of “The Spy Who Learned Me”, Homer and Marge are running away from a nameless (and apparently Bolivian) guy who has just pulled a gun on Homer.  This is the dialogue . . .

Marge:  Why is he trying to kill you?  And why did she call you her love?
Homer:  It was all a training exercise to make me smooth for you.  Of course, she fell for me, and of course I wanted no part of her.  Now the only one who can help us is Stradivarius Cain. 
Marge:  The guy from the movie?
Homer:  I’ll explain later!  Strad, come back!  I know you’re in there!

. . . and then Homer bashes himself in the head a few times with a rock.  I like this scene, not because it’s funny or entertaining, but because it crams virtually every problem from the rest of the episode into a single moment. 

To begin with, it’s mostly unnecessary exposition.  Take “Now the only one who can help us is Stradivarius Cain”.  There is absolutely no reason for Homer to say that.  The audience already knows who he wants to see, and while it’s true that Marge doesn’t, she’s about to vanish from the scene without explanation, which is another problem this episode has in spades.  From Nelson robbing kids right from Willie’s hand and Krusty just appearing in that movie to all those women Homer hits on, “The Spy Who Learned” me has a boatload of mysteriously appearing and disappearing people.  And there’s the fact that the scene itself makes no sense: no one else at this fancy party noticed the violence or the gun, Homer and Marge make it to the woods in no time at all, and, despite the fact that the guy compliments Homer on his hiding skills, Homer wasn’t hiding at all.  He was standing up and talking out loud, a very poor way not to be seen.*  When all is said and done, this scene is so dense with problems established earlier in the episode that, in a weird, funhouse mirror kind of way, it’s almost like an actual plot climax. 

There was a B-plot as well, something that started about childhood obesity but then ended with Nelson getting into ludicrous shape with help from a personal trainer.  It had many of the same problems, starting with the fact that Krusty’s mansion is shockingly accessible to anyone who wants to wander into it. 

Anyway, the numbers are in and they are just awful.  Last night only 4.75 million viewers realized that their imaginary friends say more interesting things than that total waste of Bryan Cranston.  That’s good for #2 on the all time least watched list, and means that (counting a tie between Season 22 and Season 23 at #5), all five of the five least watched episodes ever have come this season (numbers are millions of viewers):

#1  23-13    4.33    The Daughter Also Rises
#2  23-20    4.75    The Spy Who Learned Me
#3  23-18    4.86    Beware My Cheating Bart
#4  23-16    4.96    How I Wet Your Mother
#5  23-19    5.00    A Totally Fun Thing That Bart Will Never Do Again
#5  22-18    5.00    The Great Simpsina

The Season 23 average is now a mere 6.31 million viewers.  That’s more than 10% down from Season 22’s 7.10 million, which was already the lowest rated season ever.  As recently as five years ago this show was averaging more than nine million viewers per episode, now it’s barely two thirds of that. 

*Mr. Idle, you’re better than this. 

30
Apr
12

“Thanks, Zombie Simpsons!” – The Cruise Industry

By Charlie Sweatpants 15 Comments
Categories: Ratings FAIL and Simpsons
Tags: ,

Chalkboard - A Totally Fun Things Bart Will Never Do Again

“Don’t forget to check out the galley.  That’s real shag carpeting!” – Captain McAllister

The title of yesterday’s episode, “A Totally Fun Thing That Bart Will Never Do Again”, is a reference to a famous 1996 David Foster Wallace article for Harper’s, in which he embarked on a giant luxury liner to experience the narrow, selfish, and vapid thinking that underlies the modern cruise industry (as well as the bland and mostly uninteresting people who think of it as the height of fun).  It’s an enjoyably cruel piece of writing (it was later used as the headline piece to a book length collection of essays he published), and you can read the whole thing in PDF format.  The subtitle is “On the (nearly lethal) comforts of a luxury cruise”, and the main point is that cruise vacations are mercilessly inhuman. 

Wallace held the cruise industry in utter contempt, and not without cause.  It’s environmentally disastrous, ethically compromised, and generally unpleasant on anything deeper than a surface level.  The spectacular sinking of the Costa Concordia in January is only the most high profile of the industry’s problems.  Two years ago, they kept sending tourists to their fenced in resorts in Haiti while people were dying in earthquake rubble.  Crew members, who work long and extremely stressful hours, routinely disappear without a trace.  And just a few weeks ago, two fishermen died on their disabled boat when a cruise ship failed to rescue them even though the crew had been alerted by passengers to their presence.  In other words, this is an industry that places a higher priority on cheesy lounge acts and shuffleboard than it does on human life, and it is ripe for parody and satire. 

David Foster Wallace knew that the only way you could say something honest or interesting about cruise ships was by reveling in the ugliness that props up that gleaming facade of stark white hulls and perpetually happy people.  Zombie Simpsons borrowed his title, and then did the opposite, making their cruise out to be so awesome and perfect that they actually wrote a song about how awesome and perfect it is.  I realize it’s not their job to do exposes on irresponsible corporate behavior, but by sticking with such a sunny perspective they limited themselves to only the safest and most tame kinds of comedy (when they were bothering to attempt humor at all). 

Of course, the episode did eventually descend into post apocalyptic chaos (and I thought we were done with the “Outlands”), but only after acting as an unpaid and unquestioning endorsement for most of its run time (and concluding that the only way to have a bad time on a cruise is to take one with Bart Simpson).  And, it goes almost without saying, no part of the episode made the least bit of sense, from the completely unnecessary (and exposition filled) scenes where the family paid for the vacation, to Bart’s panic after the song, to the immediate descent of the ship into Mad Max 4: The Wet Warrior, to a quick sketch or two in Antarctica.  Along the way, characters wander in and out of scenes for no discernable reason, the plot swings wildly from one idea to another, and most of the stabs at being funny are paint-by-number bricks like this:

Lisa: It’s so diverse!  I’ve died and gone to a PBS kids show.
[Kids in wheelchairs roll up out of nowhere.]

And this:

Marge: You’ll never guess how many bath towels they gave us.  Enough!
Bart: And there’s a DVD library of movies that haven’t been released yet!  Whoa.  Whoa.

The episode wasn’t completely without its charms, “Magazine Hater” magazine is pretty clever, and the cult of the lifeguard isn’t a terrible idea.  But, again and as usual, the stuff that has a little bit of thought to it is drowned in a sea of garbage that can’t rise to the level of being semi-clever or even coherent.  When this is your ending . . .

Best Vacation Ever!

. . . the ship has irreversibly foundered. 

Anyway, the numbers are in and they continue to be historically bad.  Only 5.00 million viewers sat through last night’s infomercial for Carnival and company before hitting up the buffet.  That ties last year’s “The Great Simpsina” for the fourth lowest number ever.  The post-New Year’s episodes of Season 22 generally hovered around six million viewers.  Season 23 is down to five million, and routinely fails to get even that many. 

29
Apr
12

Sunday Post: A Totally Fun Thing That Bart Will Never Do Again

By Charlie Sweatpants 19 Comments
Categories: Simpsons and Sunday Preview
Tags:

zombietotally

Image bloodied by Dave.

It’s that time again:

In this mouth-full of a title-d episode, when Bart sees a commercial for the ultimate cruise, he begs his parents for a family vacation. Low on cash, the only way they can go is if each family member sells one valuable. Once they’re away, Bart is determined to make the vacation last forever. So he comes up with a plan to make sure they never have to return home.

I anticipate a well plotted piece of non-claptrap that never makes me want to wretch.

25
Apr
12

Duff McKagan and Duff Beer: An Internet Investigation

By Charlie Sweatpants 17 Comments
Categories: Rumor Control and Simpsons
Tags:

Pygmoelian1

“You said if I slept with you, I wouldn’t have to touch the drunk.” – Titania
“Duffman says a lot of things!  Oh, yeah!” – Duffman

In a Reading Digest last spring, I noted that Duff McKagan, bass player for (among others) Guns N’ Roses, Velvet Revolver, and Loaded, had claimed that Duff beer was named after him.  It came up again last summer, and has been bubbling up on-line ever since.  In addition to it being noted in articles and the like about him, McKagan himself has mentioned it several times.  In an ESPN.com column he wrote:

My name is Duff McKagan, and I play rock and roll music. The beer on "The Simpsons" show was named after me, and not the other way around. (I suppose it is a testament to how much alcohol I used to drink. Yeah, not too sexy really.)

In addition to that, one of those generically crappy radio station “blogs” quotes him in an (unlinked) interview:

”Our management for GN’R got a fax but it was from like an adult cartoon.  Now there wasn’t any adult cartoons in 1988.  There just wasn’t and like, ‘an adult cartoon?’  They want to use your name as the name of the beer on the thing and they just want your blessing.  It’s not like I own the name Duff, I should’ve trademarked that thing on up if I would’ve known but yeah, that think took off, that Simpsons deal.”

And here’s how he put it in his autobiography:

When Guns N’ Roses began to break into the public consciousness, I was known as a big drinker.  In 1988, MTV aired a concert in which Axl introduced me – as usual – as Duff “the King of Beets” McKagan.  Soon after this, a production company working on a new animated series called me to ask if the could use the name “Duff” for a brand of beer in the show.  I laughed and said of course, no problem.  The whole thing sounded like a low-rent art project or something – I mean, who made cartoons for adults?  Little did I know that the show would become The Simpsons and that within a few years I would start to see Duff beer glasses and gear everywhere we toured. 

That last quote caused a brief stir on-line last fall when the book was released.  The first eighty pages were put on-line for free, and that quote appears on page 9.  Just about any time a celebrity puts out a book (or someone puts out a book about a celebrity), one fact/revelation will inevitably be used as the hook to describe it so that people can talk about it without actually having read it.  In this case, that one thing was the Duff Beer-Duff McKagan connection, which was mentioned in articles about the book by everything from little blogs to The Los Angeles Times and The Huffington Post. 

Now, I don’t particularly care about this.  Whether or not McKagan’s drinking (at one point, he had a championship belt that had Budweiser caps instead of jewels on it) was a factor in naming Homer’s beer “Duff” doesn’t change Duff Gardens, Tartar Control Duff, or Duffman one bit.  However, the internet has a way of mistaking repetition for confirmation, and in the last year this idea has become truthy enough that it gets included as a throwaway fact in semi-respectable publications like Business Week:

How he drank so much beer at one point that Guns N’ Roses lead singer Axl Rose introduced him as “The King of Beers” and a producer from The Simpsons called to ask if he could name the show’s beer, Duff, after him, which they did.

As well as independent blogs:

The name Duff comes from Guns N’ Roses bassist Duff McKagan, known for drinking lots of alcoholics.

And the world’s largest source of information, Wikipedia:

In an excerpt from his autobiography, former Guns N’ Roses bassist Duff McKagan said that the beer was named after him as the writers were fans of the band and he was known for his extreme alcohol consumption.[3]

That citation, by the way, goes to Maxim’s website, where there’s an excerpt from the book that includes the paragraph I cited above.  The sentence in Wikipedia is carefully worded, but that kind of caution has a way of washing out over time, and experience says that as more people read, write and rewrite the same claim, it’ll become more and more difficult for someone to trace it all the way back to its actual origin. 

As near as I can tell, no one else from Guns N’ Roses has mentioned this story, nor has anyone from The Simpsons ever said anything similar.  That doesn’t necessarily mean it isn’t true, but right now “Duff Beer inspired by Duff McKagan” is a completely unsubstantiated claim by a single guy who freely admits he was drunk out of his mind during the period in question, put the word “Lies” in the title of his book, and wrote this in his Author’s Note:

My friends and old band members may remember some of the stories I recount differently than I do, but I have found that all stories have many sides.

In other words, it’s as far from confirmed as it is possible for something to be.  Again, it could be true, but with the currently available information, there’s plenty of room for doubt.  Maybe someone from The Simpsons did call (or fax) them, but was it one of the guys who came up with it, or was it some paranoid junior lawyer in the bowels of FOX?  Maybe someone not from the show called him and told him about it, and over the years his memory changed that to someone from the show.  Who knows?

McKagan is an extremely accomplished, financially secure guy; he has no reason to lie about this.  However, and by his own admission, he does have a lot of reasons to be confused about it.  Therefore, simple prudence says that it needs to be confirmed by one or more other sources before it’s generally accepted.  Unfortunately, right now acceptance is running well ahead of confirmation.  This post likely won’t slow that down, but it’s here if anyone cares to look. 

[Note: I’m only about halfway done with the book (through the time period when this call/fax would’ve happened), but this post is already two days late and Google Book Search tells me that the Simpsons doesn’t get mentioned again for the rest of the text.  If I come across something that changes any of the above, I’ll update this post.]

20
Apr
12

Quote of the Day

By Charlie Sweatpants Leave a Comment
Categories: Happy Birthday, QotD and Simpsons
Tags: ,

Takei Beefcake

My frame grab from Star Trek 104, “The Naked Time” (1966).

“Now, our game shows are a little different from yours.  Your shows reward knowledge; we punish ignorance.” – Wink

Happy 75th Birthday George Takei! 

17
Apr
12

Crazy Noises: Beware My Cheating Bart

By Charlie Sweatpants 22 Comments
Categories: Crazy Noises and Simpsons
Tags: ,

Duffless8

“Bart, could you go get the cupcakes?” – Marge Simpson
“Cupcakes?  Cupcakes.  Yes.  Sweet cakes for all.” – Bart Simpson

As part of our tireless efforts to demonstrate the many ways Zombie Simpsons fails to entertain, Season 23 will be subjected to the kind of rigorous examination that can only be produced by people typing short messages at one another.  More dedicated or modern individuals might use Twitter for this, but that’s got graphics and short links and little windows that pop up when you put your cursor over things.  The only kind of on-line communications we like are the kind that could once be done at 2400 baud.  So disable your call waiting, plug in your modem, and join us for another year of Crazy Noises.  This text has been edited for clarity and spelling (especially on “water weenie”).

In one of the more telling segments of “Beware My Cheating Bart”, all manner of thinly mammary-related foodstuffs are paraded before the audience.  First there’s a suspiciously round mound of mashed potatoes, then Grampa calling Bart a “boob” and talking about chicken “breasts”, and finally Marge bringing over a plate of round cookies with little chocolate nipples in the middle.  The premise of all of this can roughly be translated as, “hurr, boobz funny”.

Now, plenty of people (myself very much included) have a healthy inner 9-year-old that will usually find something like that at least mildly amusing.  There aren’t many parts of the human body that aren’t at least kinda goofy, and there’s certainly no harm in the occasional cheap laugh.  What’s so amazing about Zombie Simpsons is that they managed to screw up even this most basic form of comedy. 

Hershey kiss nipples and noting that chickens also have a part on them called “breasts” are silly and juvenile, but the scene where they do this is anything but.  It gets introduced with a shocked looking Bart accompanied by the string music of suspense, and that’s before Marge and Grampa proceed to inadvertently traumatize him.  Bart spends the whole scene genuinely freaking out, which makes me, the audience member who likes to indulge his inner 9-year-old, unsure how to react.  I can’t giggle playfully because Bart is losing it, but there’s no deeper humor or satire either. 

When Bart goes for the cupcakes in “Duffless”, he’s also traumatized, but there it’s a call back to earlier in the episode as well as a wonderfully salacious Kubrick parody.  Bart’s freak out is part of the gag instead of a distraction from it, so there’s no mismatch between what’s going on and what’s supposed to be funny. 

It’s also worth pointing out that, in the previous scene, Zombie Simpsons resorted to the ye olde tyme movie/television shortcut of we’ll-show-the-girl-from-the-back-because-we-can’t-show-her-from-the-front whereas The Simpsons had a mentally conditioned 10-year-old reach for actual sugar tits on network television.  One of those displays a great deal more creativity than the other.

Duffless3 I still can’t believe they got away with this.  The Standards & Practices people are not the sharpest knives in the network drawer. 

Charlie Sweatpants: Ready to begin?

Mad Jon: Oh sure

Dave: Indeed

Charlie Sweatpants: Shall we quickly dispense with the couch gag? I thought it was cute, but it went on too damn long.

Mad Jon: And weirdly depressing, even with the happy ending. Nothing like watching a cartoon couch kiss it’s child goodbye before committing garbage-cide to get me in the mood for a comedy

Dave: Having had the pleasure of ignoring much of this season, I did think the gag was, as you say, cute.

Charlie Sweatpants: Well, the idea of Homer actually having sex with a piece of furniture is a little odd. I confess myself slightly impressed that they got that on television, but about halfway through I was pretty much ready for it to be over.

Mad Jon: It did drag on.

  But that’s pretty standard nowadays.

Charlie Sweatpants: Indeed it is. Witness the "flame war" between Shauna and Comic Book Guy.

That could’ve been kinda funny, instead they dragged it out way too long, and had them dancing around each other instead of just standing there ignoring each other before one of them declares victory or something.

Mad Jon: I suppose that’s how it ended. I couldn’t tell what CBG was rattling on about.

Or why he let them in and acted un-CBG before calling Jimbo.

Charlie Sweatpants: Or why Bart would think to go there in the first place.

Were they planning on hanging out there all night or something?

Mad Jon: Perhaps.

  Why Bart thought that CBG would allow that at all is also confusing.

Charlie Sweatpants: I dunno, though since the entire Bart falls in love with a teenage girl thing was beyond nuts, I guess I shouldn’t nitpick.

Mad Jon: This is a romance that started with Bart commenting on how he wasn’t ready, then led to a makeout montage.

Dave: It happened already. With another one of Jimbo’s girls. Better the first time.

Mad Jon: This one was slightly more graphic.

Charlie Sweatpants: And made less sense.

Mad Jon: I dunno how I feel about Bart seeing boobs.

Dave: In what sense?

Charlie Sweatpants: The thing is, they didn’t even need the romance angle. Bart and her could’ve just become friends, like he’s the kid brother who tells her Jimbo’s no good for her or something. The whole romance/make out/visual second base thing just makes it weird and less believable without being in any way funny.

Mad Jon: Yeah, probably

Charlie Sweatpants: Jon, was there more to your boob thought, or was that it?

Mad Jon: Not really, it just felt a bit greasy.

Charlie Sweatpants: The whole thing was greasy. Real greasy.

Mad Jon: What really agravazes me, was the mall shoplifting scene.

Not only was that idea a whole plot in the worst episode ever, he has no fear of shoplifting, defying the guard, and then blowing up the mall jail somehow. All with absolutely no consequences.

Other than then getting to see boobs.

Charlie Sweatpants: All true, but Bart’s behavior throughout this episode see-sawed back and forth between little kid and capable adult.

He’s terrified of getting back to his house because the bullies are in it, then he’s in the treehouse and they’re down in the yard. He’s nervous around Jimbo, then he’s suddenly telling Shauna what to do. If this episode was the only thing you knew about him, you’d think he was bipolar.

The mall security guard was annoying because, well, everything here was annoying. They created an unnecessary situation, then literally blew it up when they couldn’t think of another way out of it. Quite frankly, I think the whole thing was to get the Segway in there, but that’s just a guess.

Mad Jon: I can see the Segway angle.

Charlie Sweatpants: And while we’re on the subject of jokes and one scene characters that sucked and went on too long: the lifeguard.

Mad Jon: Yeah, that happened didn’t it?

Dave: I’m shocked they bothered to write a series of jokes about that at all, seeing as the first wasn’t particularly funny.

Mad Jon: Low hanging fruit I guess. As rotten as it may have been.

Charlie Sweatpants: I don’t know where they were, I don’t know who he was supposed to be, I don’t know how Bart escaped after they had him tied up with water weenies, the whole thing stunk out loud.

Mad Jon: Yeah, why Dolph and Kearney let him go made no sense. But meh.

Charlie Sweatpants: Why Marge had them hang up the laundry also made no sense. I’m not honestly sure there isn’t a single scene in this episode that did make sense.

  For example, even at the very beginning, I can think of no earthly reason Bart would actually go see the little elves movie. Not a single one.

That goes for the Marge and Homer plot too. The whole Lost thing was lame, and Marge not knowing what Homer was doing defied even this show’s standards of stupid.

Mad Jon: So what? Marge and Homer’s marriage was threatened by a TV show that was cancelled years ago?

Charlie Sweatpants: It was more Marge was mad at Homer for lying to her, though since she has to have an IQ of about seventy to not have known he was lying, it didn’t have much kick to it.

Mad Jon: What do you think he did with the treadmill after he got caught and it disappeared?

Charlie Sweatpants: Um, treadmill gnomes? I don’t know.

Mad Jon: Did you guys realize that the first horn music showed up when he got the fortune from the cookie?

Charlie Sweatpants: I didn’t, but it wouldn’t surprise me.

There was plenty of that kind of fake suspense throughout. Like, what was with Lenny, Carl and Moe at their house near the end?

Mad Jon: At the discussion group that ended in an armed standoff?

Charlie Sweatpants: I get that none of them even remotely resemble real people anymore, but they treated that like it was normal. It was just weird.

  Did we lose Dave?

Dave: No I’m here

Charlie Sweatpants: Oh, good.

Dave: Just not contributing as much as I ought to be

Charlie Sweatpants: Enh.

Mad Jon: I wouldn’t feel bad about that if I were you.

Charlie Sweatpants: Nor I.

Dave: Ha. Thanks.

Charlie Sweatpants: Honestly, I don’t think there’s much left to talk about. I mean, the A-plot was weird and only really had one element, Bart and Shauna getting into trouble. The B-plot was rankly stupid and only had one element, Homer freaking out about their terrible Lost takeoff.

There just isn’t much more here. Even by their standards, this one is hollow and simplistic. It’s not even manic enough for there to be some really insane things happening.

Mad Jon: Ralph did crash a cop car into a tree under the supervision of the Chief of Police.

But again, that didn’t really shock me.

  By the way, was the make out in disguise montage something I should have recognized?

  You know, the one that had Bart driving a nice car around?

Charlie Sweatpants: There was one bit that I think was supposed to be Rain Man, but other than that I’m not sure.

Mad Jon: Oh well.

Charlie Sweatpants: Wow, I just realized that this episode so numbed my brain I didn’t even notice Bart or Ralph driving cars.

Mad Jon: One led to the other, but it doesn’t really matter.

Dave: If I saw that, I’ve since suppressed it.

Charlie Sweatpants: Best to keep it that way.

  Anything else?

Mad Jon: I got nothing. That was an unhappy 22 minutes for me.

Dave: It happened, and now it’s done. We get to move on again. For a little while.

Charlie Sweatpants: How Zen.

15
Apr
12

Sunday Preview: Beware My Cheating Bart

By Charlie Sweatpants 27 Comments
Categories: Simpsons and Sunday Preview
Tags:

zombiecheating

Image bloodied by Dave.

No good will come of this:

When Bart is forced to chaperone Jimbo’s girlfriend to a movie, she ends up developing feelings for him, resulting in a whole bunch of trouble with the bullies at school.  Meanwhile, Homer is persuaded to buy a state-of-the-art treadmill, fully equipped with a television.  When Lisa shows Homer that he can access television shows wirelessly, he develops an obsession with watching an old television show from the treadmill, but not actually working out, until Marge decides to intervene.

Since it’s not entirely clear as to which is what, I’m giving 3-2 odds that the thing with Bart and “Jimbo’s girlfriend” (where have you gone, Sara Gilbert?) will actually be the A-plot.  Of course, these days, all that really means is that it’ll occupy slightly more time after the unrelated first segment than the B-plot. 

13
Apr
12

Reading Digest: Specious Speculation (Swartzwelder) Edition

By Charlie Sweatpants 6 Comments
Categories: Reading Digest, Simpsons and The Simpsons
Tags:

Home Sweet Homediddly-Dum-Doodily7

This is a much shorter than usual Reading Digest, entirely due to the fact that just about anytime someone punched “Simpsons” into a keyboard this week it was right next to the word “Oregon”, and all of them were equally worthless.  It’s the internet, so I guess you’ve got to take the bad with the good, but that an awful lot of concentrated stupid.  There is still some good, though, including cool fan made stuff (mmm, cupcakes), a fantastically meta YouTube video, and Superintendent Chalmers on the DC Metro.  There’s also two links about John Swartzwelder, one of which debunked a cool but untrue idea about him and Ron Swanson from Parks and Recreation, and another that’s just a general fan letter.

Enjoy.

[Updated at 1:13pm because I got my drafts confused and left out Smooth Charlie’s Link of the Week in the one I originally published.]

Kirk’s Movie Blog: Listorama! My Top 10 Simpsons Episodes (Part One) – Smooth Charlie’s Link of the Week is a two parter that came in via e-mail.  It’s a great list, partly because it’s got no Zombie Simpsons, partly because each entry contains an explanation as well as quotes and a picture, and partly because of this:

Some Simpsons fans have queried whether the second season belongs to the ‘Classic Era’ of the Simpsons, but for me, there can be no question about it.

Indeed.

Kirk’s Movie Blog: Listorama! My Top 10 Simpsons Episodes (Part Two) – Just as good.

Too bad they don’t make a Radiation Queen – This is pure YouTube brilliance:

I don’t miss the crappy picture or the tinny sound, but those old televisions definitely had more personality than the generic black rectangle that most of them are today. 

Is Ron Swanson Based On John Swartzwelder, Legendary ‘Simpsons’ Writer? – Bill Oakley tweeted this yesterday, and there are at least some superficial similarities.  Unfortunately, Oakley also quashed it a few hours later:

Swanson-Swartzwelder Tweet

Oh, well.  It was fun while it lasted. 

Cupcake the Simpson Family – SELLY – This is not in English, and I have no idea what it says.  But these are some of the coolest Simpsons cupcakes I’ve ever seen. 

mattachinereview: [Sideshow Bob, from The... – You’re going to need to be aware of relatively uncommon gender pronouns to get this joke, but I chuckled. 

Laura E. Enriquez: How DREAMers Made Me Reconceptualize My Citizenship – Excellent usage:

To encourage participation we say that every voice counts but we also tend to re-frame the event -- Get Out the Vote rallies become concerts, social justice rallies have bands, feature celebrity speakers, or offer food. On The Simpsons, they tried to make jury duty more interesting by framing it as joining the "justice squadron" at the "Municipal Fortress of Vengeance." So maybe citizenship itself is in need of some re-framing so we can increase civic participation and get citizens like myself to appreciate the privileges we are afforded.

I’ve been called for jury duty three times and had to serve on a jury once, and that scene had a smile on my face all the way through orientation. 

Just when you think it can’t get weirder, it does. – Simpsons characters (and others) on parade during a fair in France.

The consolations of poetry: If the foolish call them flowers – Excellent Emily Dickinson usage:

I was first introduced to Emily by way of watching the Simpsons (the same medium by which I discovered Walt Whitman). Lisa follows Bart to military camp and, being the only girl, finds herself in her only lonely quarters: “Solitude never hurt anyone. Emily Dickinson lived alone, and she wrote some of the most beautiful poetry the world has ever known… then went crazy as a loon.”

Perfectly quoted, well done.

Appointment Viewing: April 9-April 15 – There’s new Zombie Simpsons this Sunday, and Lenny’s got us covered:

8:00 – The Simpsons (Fox): Jimbo’s girlfriend falls for Bart after he’s forced to chaperone her to a movie. School bullies notice, and that’s bad for Bart. Meanwhile, Homer is persuaded to buy an exercise machine, but doesn’t have to be persuaded to use the TV that comes with it. Why would anyone go for Bart over a good-looking rebel who plays by his own rules?

Oh good, another girl falls for Bart.  This needs to stop happening so much. 

Distorted Marge Simpson t-shirt at Red Bubble – That is a fantastic idea, but do you get $2 off because it got smeared?

Alex Rocco talks about Magic City, The Godfather and more – Heh:

The Simpsons (1990-1997)—“Roger Meyers Jr.”
AR: Yeah, what’d I do, about six or seven of those? I did a series for Jim Brooks, for Gracie Films, called Sibs. That was a really good show. Marsha Mason was my wife. And because I’m with that family, pretty soon Jim Brooks says, “Play this.” And it’s kind of fun being the owner of Itchy and Scratchy.

AVC: Do you enjoy the opportunity to do voice work on occasion?

AR: Yeah. It really is fun, because you can go in shorts and a beard, you read off a piece of paper, and you're done. It’s like stealing money. [Laughs.]

There’s another reason Zombie Simpsons sucks, no Roger Meyers Jr. 

Simpsons Runway Style Fashion Shopping Guide – To call this pageview whoring would be a gross understatement, but some people at GQ went through a ton of episodes and found real life men’s fashions that look like things on the show.  I clicked through all 36 of them (18 Simpsons screen grabs, each followed by some blank faced, real life model), and while I make no claim as to the clothes, they at least had relatively good taste in episodes.  I didn’t see anything past Season 10. 

The Three Stooges Movie…In 10 Words – Moe is their leader. 

marge simpson – Cool, minimalist fan made image for Marge. 

SQ Drawings: Bart Simpson & Family – Fan made pencil/colored pencil poster of Bart done by a guy for his son’s bedroom.  Cool, though Bart does appear to have five fingers. 

Metro Confirms That the Resurrection Is ‘Not a Standard Announcement’ – An employee of the DC Metro got on the PA on Sunday and delivered a little Easter sermon, which prompted this:

But Flanders quickly runs afoul of public-school decorum when he attempts to "thank the Lord" over the public-address system. Superintendent Chalmers becomes irate, fuming that in a public school, "God has no place in these walls, just as facts have no place in organized religion." Flanders is fired on the spot.

It’s wonderfully apt, though Chalmers actually says “within these walls, just like facts have no place within organized religion.”  Still, those are minor, so I’m still calling it excellent usage.

Bart Simpson Rag Doll (NEW) – Old school crappy merchandise still in its original packaging. 

WHO WOULDN’T? – Animated .gif of Homer showing off his new chainsaw and hockey mask.

From Duluth to the world – Hopefully this will be on a Behind the Music type show one day:

They also reminisced about the band’s early days just up the hill from the auditorium. Like their very first official band rehearsal in 2003.

"It was a Sunday, and we were supposed to meet at 7 p.m.," Carroll recalled. "We called each other and were like, ‘Dude, "The Simpsons" are on, so … 7:30?’"

Who’s Awesome #6 – Some love for John Swartzwelder that is unrelated to the brief Ran Swanson speculation agrees with us:

The period of the Simpsons that I pay attention to is seasons 3-9. Other than those seasons, very rarely keep watching. Swartzwelder was in his prime then.

Amen.  And . . . charge!

12
Apr
12

Who Gives a Shit “Where” Springfield Is?

By Charlie Sweatpants 25 Comments
Categories: Rumor Control and Simpsons
Tags:

Much Apu About Nothing7

“Now, they may ask you to locate your town on a map of the US.  So, let’s do that . . . uh, Springfield, Springfield . . . um, right here.” – Homer Simpson
“Dad, you’re not pointing anywhere near Springfield.” – Lisa Simpson

When I saw my Twitter and inbox begin to go bonkers because Groening apparently said the “real” Springfield is the one in Oregon, I thought “huh” and made a note of it for Reading Digest.  Then it kept going, literally every item in my Google Alert for “The Simpsons” was related to it, and I even saw this story on the home page of BBC news:

Matt Groening told Smithsonian magazine he based the town on Springfield, Oregon, but since it is such a common US place name he knew many would think it was their own Springfield.

The Springfield question is one of the best-kept secrets in TV history.

First of all, it’s not a secret.  It’s a joke.  It doesn’t have a location – that’s the whole point – which is why I’ve always been a little puzzled about how worked up people get over this transparently silly topic. 

On one level, this is just another example of the internet acting as the world’s most exponential game of telephone.  Groening says something relatively innocuous and, five removes later, “Springfield is in Oregon, purple monkey dishwasher” is rocketing around the globe while strangers get into flame wars and Twitter fights that boil down to little more than cycles of “nuh-uh” and “yea-huh”. 

But beyond that artifact of modern communications, what causes this much excitement and interest in something that amounts to nothing?  And I don’t mean that rhetorically, I genuinely don’t get it.  I understand the fun in having irresolvable arguments about unanswerable things like, say, who was the best soccer player ever, or what the greatest movie in history is.  It’s the reason the internet is lousy with lists that rank everything from books and rock stars to cooking shows and lists themselves.  The human brain is wired to categorize and prioritize things, and we take to it the way ducks take to water.  But why all the excitement over the obviously nonsense location of a fictional town? 

The best I can come up with is that beyond just something to talk about, it’s a need to know everything about a topic, to have a resolution, as though not knowing for sure is some kind of mental canker sore that you just can’t keep your brain from fooling around with.  But even that doesn’t make sense because they’ve said, on multiple occasions, that Springfield is nowhere.  You already have an answer, one that is far more logically consistent than any specific location. 

So, yeah, I don’t get it.  Does anyone here either care about this, or understand why other people care?  Because, in the immortal words of Dr. Hibbert, this thing has be buffaloed. 

(Oh, in case anyone is interested, here’s a nice debunking of this whole thing, via our old friends Denise and Karma.)

06
Apr
12

Reading Digest: Yup, That Ship Is Still Underwater Edition

By Charlie Sweatpants 8 Comments
Categories: Reading Digest, Simpsons and The Simpsons
Tags:

Roger Corman's Titanic

“And now, the conclusion of our thousand dollar movie, Roger Corman’s ‘Titanic’.” – TV Announcer
“We’re safe now, Clarice.  We made it away from that cursed ship.” – B-Movie Guy
“Now I can relax and take off this stifling bikini.” – B-Movie Gal

Next Sunday is the hundredth anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic.  Since there’s apparently some money out there that he still doesn’t have, James Cameron will be re-releasing his movie of the same name.  This prompted two links, one of which may be the only time in the coming hundred years that I say something nice about E!.  In addition to that, we’ve got lots of excellent usage, a list of potential Simpsons spinoffs, several fan made drawings, and a refined epicurean’s guide to beer and donuts.

Enjoy.

The Audacious Epigone: Ranking The Simpsons seasons – Smooth Charlie’s Link of the Week is someone who agrees with us, and went through the IMDb ratings to prove it.  We’ve done the same, and it’s nice to see confirmation. 

Best of Geekery: Top 10 Potential Simpsons Spin-Offs – Exactly what it says.  I would definitely watch “Future Maggie in High School”.

Shakespearean fools: Their modern equivalents – The BBC compares Homer to Dogberry in “Much Ado About Nothing”.  (via)

Bart’s Complex House of Mirrors – Very cool fan made image of Bart and Homer (who has hair for some reason). 

All My Simpsons: Lionel Hutz – A slew of great Hutz quotes that is shockingly missing the one about Judge Snyder.

Frampton, Omaha fans love your way – Here’s why you have to be creative with celebrity guests:

A lot of laughs came in the middle of "Do You Feel Like We Do." After dozens of photos moved across a video screen behind Frampton, a clip played from the "Homerpalooza" episode of "The Simpsons" that features him. The bit involves him trying to launch an inflatable pig into the crowd by stomping on a pedal labeled "PIG."

A member of Frampton’s crew placed a "PIG" pedal onstage and he held it up and said "Where’s my pig?" while the video played.

Frampton only has a few lines in that episode, but he still gets to do and say things that are memorable and funny.  Most guests these days just show up and say their names.  Frampton has something that people still recognize a decade and a half later. 

Marge Simpson teasing mr. Burns by ~kuroishin on deviantART – Great fan art that almost looks like a discarded idea from “Marge Gets a Job”. 

Feminist Reading of “The Simpsons” – Collegiate essay that sadly cites two Zombie Simpsons episodes instead of far more interesting offerings like “Marge on the Lam”, “Principal Charming”, “Lisa the Beauty Queen” and, of course, “Lisa vs. Malibu Stacy”. 

You Are What You Wear – Science sez: the clothes you wear have a psychological effect on you.  However obvious that may seem, there is this:

The concept for the research stemmed from an episode of  “The Simpsons.”

The episode featured a group of children in gray uniforms who were very quiet. After a rainstorm came and washed the clothing into color, their behaviors changed.

“[I] started thinking about how the clothes you wear and the meaning” behind those clothes, Galinsky said. “If you put on a black T-shirt, you become more aggressive. You put on a nurse’s uniform, you become more helpful.”

Homer Simpson Delight: Pairing Donuts and Beer – Which kinds of beer go best with which donuts?  This handy guide has you covered. 

Movie Review: Titanic 3D’s Impressive Effects Do the Epic Story Justice…for the Most Part – Even a blind squirrel occasionally finds a nut:

The best 3-D enhancements include any scenes where somebody looks over the deck—Rose’s suicide attempt, for example, or the now-infamous "King of the World" scene (does anyone else remember that, in fact, The Simpsons did that first in the 1990 episode "Bart the Daredevil"?).

Well done, E-online.  Now please go back to sucking, otherwise I might have to start taking you seriously. 

Let’s talk about sex, baby – Excellent usage:

There was a time, not too long ago, when the mere mention of the word "sex" had me cringing in my seat, cautious of what was about to happen on screen. Naturally, I’m talking about an episode of The Simpsons from 1995.

The episode was titled The Last Temptation of Homer, and it featured Homer Simpson contemplating whether to start an affair with co-worker Mindy (voiced by Michelle Pfeiffer)*; late in the episode, the pair go to a hotel room and Homer starts crying. Mindy asks what is wrong. "Oh, yeah, like you don’t know," cries Homer. "We’re gonna have sex!"

Perfectly quoted, and bonus points for that slightly lusty look Timothy Olyphant is giving Ian McShane in that Deadwood picture.

Technology: Helping you get a useless education faster! – More excellent usage:

In a classic episode of The Simpsons, Homer changes his name to “Max Power” and declares to Bart and Lisa, “Kids, there’s three ways to do thingsT the right way, the wrong way and the Max Power way!” Bart asks, “Isn’t that the wrong way?” And Homer replies, “Yeah, but faster!”

The belief that using the Internet to teach the same old college material will magically fix higher education is the equivalent of believing in the Max Power way — “Let’s keep doing education wrong, but faster!”

I wouldn’t call that episode a classic, but that is a great line.

Simpsons Nuclear Street Art in Chernobyl – YouTube from Chernobyl of that Simpsons mural from last week.

Team Retrospective: Denver Broncos – The Broncos are worth approximately a billion ($1,000,000,000) dollars, won back-to-back Super Bowls not that long ago, and just signed a four time MVP as their quarterback.  Nevertheless, Homer once said they suck, and so they shall suck forever.  Excellent usage.

Mad Men…In 10 Words – Without it we’d have had no fun since March of 1961!

Funk Dance 101 – YouTube of Moe’s dancing/shotgun lesson.

04.01.12 Danny Elfman and…well…Danny Elfman! – Lots of links for various Elfman projects.

Arranged – Photographic proof that they don’t just sell Duff the beer in England, they also sell Duff the energy drink.

Ulster Unionists’ Mr Burns should take a look at Rab C Nesbitt – A lengthy (and somewhat inaccurate) comparison of Burns’ run for governor with some Irish politician who said he should maybe spend some time with poor people to get to know them. 

100 Best Comedy Characters Currently On Television (10-1) – And the list concludes with Homer falling just short at #2.

Stupid Sexy Flanders! – The animated .gif.

Friday March 23 2012 | The CatBeard Project – A fan made Scratchy looking cat with a cat pirate hat and cat pirate uniform. 

Quote Hanger – Homer Simpson on the movie that made Keanu Reeves and Sandra Bullock stars, though he says “it would explode”, not “the bus would explode”. 

Santa’s Little Helper Doodle, AKA. Woof Woof! – Very accurate fan sketch of Santa’s Little Helper.

Modern Gentlemen … – YouTube of Homer’s most famous alcohol quote.

Draw Something With Kirk Van Houten – How could anyone make a word out of these lousy letters?

‘The Big Lebowski’: A cloud of weed descends on Jason Reitman’s live-read – It’s always good to have someone on hand who can do a shitload of impressions:

Another slight hitch came just moments later, as Reitman read the stage direction about The Dude, writing out a check for .69 cents in a grocery story, seeing a clip of then-President George H.W. Bush on television. A long pause followed. “Oh, we never assigned that to anybody!”

Hank Azaria jumped in to rescue, with a quavering impression of our 41st president slamming Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait with, “This aggression will not stand, this … this will not stand.” Azaria, an infinite supply of voices on The Simpsons, was also playing the pornstar nihilist Karl Hungus, Steve Buscemi’s Donny, and the private eye Da Fino — doing an incredibly spot-on imitation of character actor Jon Polito (which is an unusual impression to have in one’s repertoire.)

"Lisa Simpson is my president" – At an anti-war protest a few years ago, someone got a great picture of a sign that says “Lisa Simpson Is My President” in front of the White House.  The only odd thing is that the image is of her wearing a Movementarian uniform.  (via)

ObscureSimpsonsQuotes – Someone on Vimeo has been putting up, as the user name would imply, “obscure” Simpsons quotes.  No doubt the fun police will be along at some point, because watching five second clips will naturally destroy someone’s urge to buy a DVD.  In the meantime, enjoy.

The Weekly Listicle: Will Find Weaker Listicles And Attack – A list of famous bullies includes Nelson alongside the likes of Biff Tannen and Rachel McAdams from Mean Girls.

Simpsons Sums Up: Adventure Time – Heh.

Tele-Tuesday: A Pick Per Night 2012, The Funny Results – A fan poll result:

Reader’s Choice:  Family Guy came in first with 30% of the reader’s vote, with The Simpsons following close behind with 26%.  Is anyone else with us who can’t believe The Simpsons is still on air, airing new episodes?  How many seasons is this?  CRAZY!

Yeah, Zombie Simpsons sucks.

Lenny & Steve’s Excellent Adventure Through the 100 Best TV Episodes of the Past 20 Years: Part 3 – “Lisa’s First Word” and “A Streetcar Named Marge” are on here.  As for the latter:

S: The review “EPISODE ENJOYED BY ALL” speaks for itself.

Did he expect too much from fourth graders?

Lenny & Steve’s Excellent Adventure Through the 100 Best TV Episodes of the Past 20 Years: Part 4 – And this one has “A Fish Called Selma” and “The PTA Disbands”. 

SPOILER ALERT! – I like Titanic, but that’s funny.

April 3: cartoon architecture – Talking about Frank Gehry’s appearance on Zombie Simpsons:

Honestly, it’s not a great episode, but if you’d like to see the Gehry part, you need only watch the first twelve minutes are so

Heh. 

Celebrities are pretty much interchangeable – More heh:

Sitting opposite us at breakfast was Matt Groening, genius behind The Simpsons. He said all cartoonists were also considered interchangeable: “One guy came up to me and said, ‘Hey, you’re a cartoonist? Wow, can you draw Garfield for me?’”

‘The Simpsons’ 9 Best Movie Parodies – This list isn’t what you’d call insightful.  Basically, it just points out things you already knew, like that “Two Dozen and One Greyhounds” took some inspiration from “101 Dalmatians”, but it doesn’t have a whiff of Zombie Simpsons, and for that it deserves a link.

Simpsons Did It – And finally, nice little piece of Zombie Simpsons snark:

Quick, what was Richard Nixon’s middle name? Milhouse. What cat and mouse used to actually blow each other up on Saturday mornings? Tom and Jerry. What clown actually had a live TV show for kids that included variety acts and cartoons? Bozo. Matt Groening and his generation would have taken all of this, and the American nuclear family sitcom – pardon the pun – for granted. Today’s kids have Modern Family, making The Simpsons look increasingly like a time capsule of pop culture and American history.

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