Dead Homer Society

“Hey, Homer, you busy?” – Lenny
“Yes.” – Homer Simpson

I used to do these with more preparation, but it’s Saturday, I’m sick and tired of being responsible, and my fridge has a lot of beer in it. May the Lord bless and keep the VLC random play function…

The Last Temptation of Homer

– Bart’s parking line prank is one of his best. Especially since the punchline is the psychological frailty of the faculty.

– Look how bored Burns is when Charlie describes the fake emergency exit. He’s not even mad yet, and he’s always kinda mad.

– That plane crashed on his property!

– “Your appearance is comical to me.”

– “Hey, Joey Joe Joe!” Great throwaway joke.

– There’s such wonderful layers to Homer’s “Foul temptress! I’ll bet she thinks Ziggy’s gotten too preachy too!” It’s eleven words, moves the plot, and there’s like three jokes.

– God I miss Phil Hartman. He has one line in this whole episode, and it’s perfect.

– Fucking Season 5, I could write a whole post about almost every scene.

– Stewart callback!

– There’s no way to do the porter’s many sex sounds in text. You can’t even really quote it well. But it’s awesome.

– “Hey, kids, did anyone pray for giant shoes?”

– Simpsons Did It

– I love the immediate and unbridled hostility of the energy convention MC’s “No” when Homer asks if he can get out of dinner with Mindy.

– The ending of this episode is a great example of how the show handled real conflict and emotion with speed and humor. We get right up to Homer thinking he might cheat on Marge with Minday (who’s in the room), which cuts immediately to the reveal that it’s actually Marge in his room, which cuts immediately to her noticing that there’s a turkey behind the bed. On Zombie Simpsons that would take a minute and a half and Homer would explain how he’d been thinking about cheating on her.

Home Sweet Homediddly-Dum-Doodily

– Love the 1960s Batman sound when Marge wraps the sandwiches. #RIPAdamWest

– Count Homer’s test drive would be so much worse on Zombie Simpsons. They’d probably make it a montage instead of just using “gently massages your buttocks” as a punchline.

– “See you in hell, you wingless bloodsuckers!” (Also more great sound effects with the lice squeaking pathetically as they’re incinerated.)

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– Stupid baby

– Now that’s a quick sign gag.

– The “turn tape over” gag is a piece of history now.

– “I don’t judge Homer and Marge. That’s for a vengeful God to do.” Maude Flanders was really an awful human being and it made her a great foil for Ned.

– This isn’t the goriest Itchy & Scratchy, but it is one of the most straight up horrifying. “Why? Why? My only son.”

– Homer in front of the judge is hilarious. He actually does love his kids, but way, way less than he’s annoyed by them. His unthinking default is that he doesn’t want to be around them.

– “I want wintergreen!”, “Unflavored for me.”. On a related topic, I’ve been watching “The Handmaid’s Tale” on Mrs. Mad Jon’s Hulu login.

– “Put your garbage in a garbage can, people. I can’t stress that enough.”

– The scene where Bart and Lisa watch the Flandereses put Maggie to bed is another example of how ruthlessly efficient the storytelling used to be. It sets up Maggie as the one Simpson who might like it next door, has several jokes, and shows us how much Bart and Lisa both hate it there and miss home. It takes like ten seconds.

– The Vulgate of Saint Jerome! That’s The Simpsons, an obscure, fourth century bible translation as a punchline.

– “Ned, have you thought about one of the other major religions? They’re all pretty much the same.”

– More great storytelling, the way Maggie instantly bails on the pond soaked Homer, Bart, and Lisa for the Flandereses, only turning aside when Marge shows up. It’s perfectly in character and fast.

In Marge We Trust

– Late 90s French nuclear weapons test were a gift from God to the Simpsons writers room

– “In that case, he should’ve made the week an hour longer. Lousy God.”

– As someone who spent far too many weekend hours in un-air conditioned churches, I really identify with Lovejoy’s constancy sermon.

– “No, no, I don’t feel like going to a trash pile today.”
“It’s your life.”

– Season 8 isn’t the first time we see A and B plots that are completely unrelated, but it does seem like where it becomes kinda standard.

– “Do you know thanks to you I’ve rediscovered a form of shame that’s gone unused for 700 years?”

– Lovejoy’s decades long irritation with Flanders is a pretty solid foundation for an episode. “I think I may be coveting my own wife.”

– “Hi, it’s me again. I got another problem. This one’s about my cat.”

– Great fourth wall joke with Marge insisting that nobody is watching them right now.

– Gotta love the librarian as Homer starts clearly dialing Japan.

– I don’t know if “You’re just lucky God isn’t here” is a George Meyer line, but it feels like one.

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– “Awesome power”

– I love Season 8, but it has a bad tic of weird endings, the ape fight in this one definitely included. (See also: fan man, phony kidnapping, rocket house, The Eliminator…)

– “She taught me that there’s more to being a minister than not caring about people.”

– And then it ends on a much more entertaining, but completely a-religious sermon. It’s the little things that make this show so rewatchable. (Eat me, spellcheck, “rewatchable” is too a word.)

The Springfield Connection

– Upper lower middle class types. Heh.

– “You’re giving three card monty a bad name!”, mumbled punchlines are a great way to say something really stupid and make it even funnier than it otherwise would be. The finger thing means the taxes.

– Homer just assuming Marge is a hysterical woman saved by the police is typical of how the show made fun of sexism without getting preachy like Ziggy. At it’s most basic, sexism is stupid, and Homer is it’s perfect unthinking adherent. Look at her face here!

– Ditto the cops laughing when she says she wants to be a police officer.

– “Forget about the badge, when do we get the freakin’ guns?!”

– I think I mentioned this on the Season 6 beer marathon, but I’ve never been able to get those Magic Eye things to work.

– I watched Zootopia recently. Great movie co-directed by Simpsons alum Rich Moore. The police briefing scene there is a lot like the one here. I mean, police briefing scenes are pretty well trod ground (and this whole thing is a Hill Street Blues parody), but the way the jokes flow is very similar here.

– “This padding’s so easy on the knuckles, I could punch all day.”

– Homer and the police tape. It builds and builds and builds right up to Flanders nearly cracking as Homer wallows in his own crapulence.

– The extremely bleak politics of the show shines through when Lisa asks Marge about the police enforcing the status quo for the wealthy elite. That’s “woke”.

– Love the light flicker after Moleman gets executed.

– Poor Antoine Bugelboy

– Homer’s reflexive sexism pops up again when he tells Herman to “leave the girl out of this!”.

– The show even sneaks in a quick parody of the end of all those detective and mystery shows when Homer asks Marge how she figured it out.

Brush With Greatness

– Minor point, but Bart and Lisa holding hands about what a “great week” it’s been is pitch perfect in the way networks/channels try and get people to believe they were there for something.

– I wanna go to Mount Splashmore. Take me take me take me take me now! Now! Now! Now! Now! Now!

– Another wonderful Homer moment when his first reaction to Marge’s heartfelt tale of quitting painting and going to art class is, “Do I have to do anything?”.

– Only 35 calories . . .

– Jon Lovitz never had a Troy McClure or Lionel Hutz, but he was one of the greatest recurring guest stars. He nailed every voice.

– Case in point: “Marge, please, I don’t take praise very well!”

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– “And as the wife of an employee she’ll be easily intimidated.”

– Carl with Lenny’s voice, ah, Season 2.

– Ringo on “Gear!”, remember when the show gave celebrities fun things to say?

– “Thank goodness. Another day in this suburban nightmare and I would’ve needed half a white Valium.”

– Marge’s brief painting montage is another little moment of character display. We see her painting, but we also see 1) the whole family watching, then 2) only Lisa and Maggie watching (and Lisa yawns), and finally 3) just Maggie there, asleep in the background.

– He’s no art critic, but he knows what he hates.