“Eww, this place has got old man stink!” – Hitman
“Oh.” – C.M. Burns
“Don’t listen to him, sir. You’ve got an enchanting musk.” – Mr. Smithers
I never bothered to watch the Lady Gaga episode a second time, so this comparison may be a little looser than I think it is, but the Elon Musk episode sure felt a lot like it. A mega famous person arrives out of nowhere in Springfield (Gaga in a giant train, Musk in a spaceship that lands in the Simpsons backyard), crazy shit happens for a little while, then the mega famous person leaves. There isn’t anything that remotely resembles story, conflict or satire, and the jokes, for whatever little they’re worth, are mostly just exaggerated plays on that mega famous person. Lady Gaga had a crazy bra, Elon Musk has self packing luggage, har har.
Even by Zombie Simpsons standards, this one was disorganized and scatterbrained, so buckle up.
– No couch gag.
– Homer just showed up to hold up a quarter against an eagle.
– Marge is here now too.
– The Eagle has Maggie, and now Homer is punching it.
– “Ha ha, stupid eagle, it wasn’t the mouse we were after, it was you!”
– Oh, good, the broom vs. eagle fight is continuing.
– Homer’s eyeball popped out.
– So, Homer trained the eagle for four weeks?
– And now Elon Musk is descending in a space pod.
– Homer is weeping and bowing now. This is more schizo than usual.
– Lisa is now explaining who Musk is.
– “So, what brings you to Springfield, Mr. Musk?” Exposition Marge is here for us.
– After Musk explains why he’s here, Homer asks him if he’s interested in visiting him at the plant. Musk replies, “I am, and I will”.
– Lisa just read out loud what Musk wrote on a piece of paper. This is also going slower than usual.
– I was going to try to explain what’s happening now, but Lisa did it for me, “He’s taking your Homerisms and turning them into his own great ideas.” This will go on for a while.
– Musk and Homer drove by Lou and Wiggum. There were gunshots.
– Burns is reading suggestions out loud.
– Burns is being happy and nice, always his best traits.
– This Imaginer(sp?) guy interlude was bizarre.
– But it got weirder as Homer and Musk sit on top of the cooling towers.
– Then they hugged.
– “I don’t trust Musk.” Exposition Smithers is trying to move the plot along. I do like that he simply told us how he was feeling instead of us getting to see why he thinks that way, though. It saves time for all the great stuff they’ve got here.
– Smithers just woke Burns up in the middle of the night for some reason. Then the hounds were released indoors.
– So, everyone has self driving cars now. That was unexpected.
– I didn’t see this musical interlude coming.
– Burns just informed us that he’s going to have Musk killed.
– Marge and Homer are in bed. Marge reminded everyone of what’s going on, then Homer described Musk again.
– A bunch of old guys just shot at Musk and Homer. Then Homer told us what just happened.
– Musk is apparently going back to his home planet now.
– But first he built Bart a real lightsaber. Okay.
– And, after some zero-g tears, it’s over. Huh.
Anyway, the numbers are in and they’re about what we expect with no football on. Last night just 3.40 million people wondered why Elon Musk wasn’t doing something more interesting with his time. That’s good for #4 on the all time least watched list and doesn’t auger well for the remaining ten or so episodes this season.
charliesweatpants.com
(The crotch really does wear out too fast.)
That above quotation from “The Old Man and Lisa” was honestly the first Simpsons-related thing that popped into my head when I first heard anything about “The Musk Who Fell to Earth.” (Again, great minds think alike!) The first actual thing I thought about related to this episode (other than, “Ew, what a fucking unappealing title–is there, like, a giant ball of garbage about to land on the Earth?”) was how the name “Elon Musk” sounds like a very cheap cologne you’d find in one of those dollar stores that contains a ton of counterfeit products.
-“Ew, what a fucking unappealing title–is there, like, a giant ball of garbage about to land on the Earth?”
No, “Futurama” did that, though The Simpsons is so desperate for ideas that ripping off “Futurama” might not be a problem.
-the name “Elon Musk” sounds like a very cheap cologne you’d find in one of those dollar stores that contains a ton of counterfeit products.
“Elon” is actually a rarely-used, Jewish name from the Hebrew language meaning “tree” (specifically an oak). It’s a very rare name, but, yeah, pair it with Musk and it does sound like some cheap, gas station cologne. At least Elon Musk is rich as a distraction from that unfortunate name.
*sigh* The ball of garbage thing was supposed to be ironic, and I was very well and aware of the Futurama episode when the thought first popped in my head. And I’ll admit that I wasn’t aware of the origins of “Elon,” but I knew that it was one of those older names that you don’t hear in circulation much any more. I tend to like a lot of those sorts of names. Though, I think in general, “Musk” is an unfortunate last name for just about anyone.
I think it’s a penis joke. Like “Tony Stark” or “Bruce Wayne”. Hey, stop touching your bruce wayne!
See, that’s exactly what sickens me nowadays. They cram in a celebrity, and hardy har, it’s suddenly supposed to be funny. Why would someone give a shit about seeing Musk simpsonized… I could understand Gaga, but Musk? All those caring about this name-for-a-show, all those still discussing it are simply wasting their time. And I pity all of you.
I get the feeling that there actually is someone on the staff who admires Elon Musk to the point that they want to blow him, and used this episode as an excuse to meet him. From what I understand, this sort of thing even happened during the show’s good years–supposedly, Tito Puente is in “Who Short Mr. Burns?” because Matt Groening was a huge fan of his and wanted to meet him and the writers didn’t know who the fuck he was–but the writers tended managed to actually make the celebrity appearances work.
Apparently, the whole reason Mr. Plow exists is because Jon Vitti wanted to meet Adam West.
Yeah, but back in that day, they made a one-time catchy number with Puente (I have to admit, I still remember the ‘corazon del perro’ part). Musk isn’t a musician, he’s not even a philanthropist for all I know. He’s just a nerd who yippied his way up to the top. Like Zuckerberg. Or Assange (sans the legal shit pending). So he’s privatizing outer space programs. Big deal.
Wanna know the real reason why he was simpsonized? Franklins. And lots of them.
Zombie Simpsons loves to beg for nerd cred.
“Homer’s eyeball popped out.”
Ugh! What is it with Zombie Simpsons and their love for popped eyeballs these days? It’s like someone on the show is just using the bland mediocrity to fulfill their sick, secret fetishes.
Zombies’ eyeballs pop out, right?
*sigh* I saw some doodles of Homer’s eyes popping out that David Silverman had posted from the table read of this episode, and I was really hoping that they were those crazy, weird, and irrelevant doodles that a lot of drawers and illustrators like doing for fun and the hell of it and not something that actually was part of the script.
You mean “irreverent,” right? “Irrelevant” is used to describe something that’s useless and has no importance (much like the current episodes of this show).
….n-no… he means irrelevant. Because he thought those doodles had no importance to the… the script. How the fuck…
“Irrevelvant” is correct, but “he” isn’t. But, anyway, the doodles were on the script itself and not on a drawing pad, story board, or anything official in regards to the animation aspect of the show. The scripts don’t contain pages or areas that are really conducive to anything other than doodling. While he sometimes does doodles that are script-relevant, I doubt that Silverman’s doodling is always relevant to his work at hand.
It’s a low level of gore/shock value humor. I guess the writers want to do that kind of humor without going far like Family Guy or American Dad might.
“So, everyone has self driving cars now. That was unexpected.”
I’m guessing everyone on staff was given free cars for creating this episode.
The episode wouldn’t have been AS bad* if it wasn’t centered around a guy who cannot act AT ALL. I guess they thought if they lampshaded his “emotionless voice” then everything would be OK.
*Don’t misunderstand, it still would have been a terrible episode.
This show sucks the big one nowadays.
Although I used to watch religiously (even reruns), I’ve had an uncomfortable feeling about the show in the back of my brain from the beginning (or at least from the 6th season when I first began watching episodes air for the first time, although they’d still replay older episodes). That vibe only gradually grew over time and surfaced after the millennium began (even though I gradually became desensitized for awhile after). It was inevitable IMO.
Also, all this ‘Futurama’ praise ignores the fact that ‘scifi’ has been virtually pushed by our academic establishment as ‘the truth’ for decades, even though much of it is irrational, illogical & mostly nonsense. Relativity, quantum physics & the ‘big bang’ make little to no sense when looked at objectively (compared to, say, biology & earth science).
Sorry for the cartoon-unrelated tangent.
Look who’s back. Scratch my back.
I can’t scratch backs over the ‘net, sorry.
Sexless freak…
No, I mean not over some blog :|
It was a Chalmers quote actually, you know I respect you =)
Oops, shoulda known that, what with my Skinner avatar & all. Thanks, mister.