“Bart, I know you children see me as some sort of “booger” man, but I’m really not such a bad “dude”. Oh, your milk’s gone cold, I’ll ring for the maid. Oh, sorry, wrong button.” – C.M. Burns
Posts Tagged ‘Burns’ Heir
12
Apr
16
Quote of the Day
14
Apr
15
Quote of the Day
“Careful, Smithers, that sponge has corners, you know.” – C.M. Burns
“I’ll go find a spherical one.” – Mr. Smithers
“Hey, you know we’re getting into golden time?” – Estonian Actor
“Yes, well just get it right or you’ll all be back doing ‘Come Blow Your Horn’ at the Westport dinner theater!” – C.M. Burns
Six months ago, we got word from Al Jean himself that the current TABF production run was indeed a full twenty-two episode order. The most recent episode was TABF10, which means that they have twelve more episodes to broadcast under the current contract.
Last night, commenter Mr. Incognito e-mailed me to let me know that Erika Isabel Vega, who’s been with the show since 2006, tweeted this yesterday:
Today’s a good day for contract/renewal news. We’re past the ultimatum & it’s the start of a week. Who will report first? #TheSimpsons
What’s this ultimatum? Going back a couple of days, we find this exchange between her and Matthew Schofield, who’s been with the show since 1999:
No joke-I just got an email for our mtg on the last episode on contract. If we don’t get renewed this will be the final one. #TheSimpsons / @eiVega you need to calm down / @Mr_Schofield Hahaha…I honestly think I’m more calm than most of the crew. I do think we’ll be renewed. I’m just more dramatic online. ;)
What does that mean? It means that we’ve reached the deadline I mentioned six months ago when I noted that the renewal notice was overdue. Production is at its contractual end, and, since there’s no way to keep that quiet in this day and age, we are officially into overtime on whether or not Zombie Simpsons will be renewed for a full Season 27.
[Please note that sites like IGN and TV By the Numbers list the show as “renewed” because one way or another there is going to be a Season 27. The current contract will still have episodes (probably seven of them) left on it after the Season 26 finale. What we’re talking about is a renewal beyond the current TABF production run.]
In a tweet from last week, Vega noted that she and the rest of the staff usually find out about renewals through the news media, so she’s as in the dark as the rest of us. Just to be thorough, I poked around a few other Simpsons staff Twitter accounts, including Jean and Brooks, and didn’t see anything. (Although Jean did say that Hugh Jass from Flaming Moe’s was originally going to be Hugh G. Rection, heh.)
So, is there going to be a full Season 27? As always with renewal, it’s safest to bet on “Yes”. These negotiations have gone down to the wire several times over the (sigh) decades, and they always find a way to pull through because everyone involved keeps making money that way. Yes, the ratings get lower every year, but that’s true for network teevee in general; and for all its many (many) problems, Zombie Simpsons is still strong among the youthful demographics that advertisers pay top dollar to reach. (Those unoriginal AAA video games and Liam Neeson movies aren’t going to sell themselves, you know.)
All this means is that, one way or another, we should be getting word very soon. As has been true for years now, there are only a few possible scenarios:
1. The talks fail, they halt production, and Season 27 will be a short one.
2. There is a partial renewal that brings the show a full Season 27 but not a full production run and it ends in May of next year.
3. There is a full renewal for one (or more) 22 episode production run(s), and we go through this again.
If there is a renewal announcement this week (or sometime soon), the important thing to note (which most of the entertainment press will ignore because they are awful at their jobs) is how many episodes. That’s the difference between #2 and #3 above.
Whatever happens, I just hope it’s definitive. It’s annoying as hell when half-sourced rumors start ricocheting around the internet and I have to sort through them.
One final note, people like Vega and Schofield make the show go. As I’ve said before, most of the folks who work on it aren’t rich or famous, and neither, for that matter, are they the reason it became Zombie Simpsons. If there is any anger at FOX or elsewhere over this post, please direct it at me and not them. They didn’t do anything wrong; it’s their bosses who are screwing things up, not them.
23
Aug
14
Saturday Marathon Open Thread
Per IGN, here’s the schedule for the next 24 hours:
8/23 11:00 AM ET – “Burns’ Heir”
8/23 11:30 AM ET – “Sweet Seymour Skinner’s Baadasssss Song”
8/23 12:00 PM ET – “The Boy Who Knew Too Much”
8/23 12:30 PM ET – “Lady Bouvier’s Lover”
8/23 1:00 PM ET – “Secrets of a Successful Marriage”
Season 6
8/23 1:30 PM ET – “Bart of Darkness”
8/23 2:00 PM ET – “Lisa’s Rival”
8/23 2:30 PM ET – “Another Simpsons Clip Show”
8/23 3:00 PM ET – “Itchy & Scratchy Land”
8/23 3:30 PM ET – “Sideshow Bob Roberts”
8/23 4:00 PM ET – “Treehouse of Horror V”
8/23 4:30 PM ET – “Bart’s Girlfriend”
8/23 5:00 PM ET – “Lisa on Ice”
8/23 5:30 PM ET – “Homer Badman”
8/23 6:00 PM ET – “Grampa vs. Sexual Inadequacy”
8/23 6:30 PM ET – “Fear of Flying”
8/23 7:00 PM ET – “Homer the Great”
8/23 7:30 PM ET – “And Maggie Makes Three”
8/23 8:00 PM ET – “Bart’s Comet”
8/23 8:30 PM ET – “Homie the Clown”
8/23 9:00 PM ET – “Bart vs. Australia”
8/23 9:30 PM ET – “Homer vs. Patty and Selma”
8/23 10:00 PM ET – “A Star is Burns”
8/23 10:30 PM ET – “Lisa’s Wedding”
8/23 11:00 PM ET – “Two Dozen and One Greyhounds”
8/23 11:30 PM ET – “The PTA Disbands”
8/24 12:00 AM ET – “‘Round Springfield”
8/24 12:30 AM ET – “The Springfield Connection”
8/24 1:00 AM ET – “Lemon of Troy”
8/24 1:30 AM ET – “Who Shot Mr. Burns? Pt. 1″
Season 7
8/24 2:00 AM ET – “Who Shot Mr. Burns? Pt. 2″
8/24 2:30 AM ET – “Radioactive Man”
8/24 3:00 AM ET – “Home Sweet Homediddly-Dum-Doodily”
8/24 3:30 AM ET – “Bart Sells His Soul”
8/24 4:00 AM ET – “Lisa the Vegetarian”
8/24 4:30 AM ET – “Treehouse of Horror VI”
8/24 5:00 AM ET – “King-Size Homer”
8/24 5:30 AM ET – “Mother Simpson”
8/24 6:00 AM ET – “Sideshow Bob’s Last Gleaming”
8/24 6:30 AM ET – “The Simpsons 138th Episode Spectacular”
8/24 7:00 AM ET – “Marge Be Not Proud”
8/24 7:30 AM ET – “Team Homer”
8/24 8:00 AM ET – “Two Bad Neighbors”
8/24 8:30 AM ET – “Scenes from the Class Struggle in Springfield”
8/24 9:00 AM ET – “Bart the Fink”
8/24 9:30 AM ET – “Lisa the Iconoclast”
8/24 10:00 AM ET – “Homer the Smithers”
8/24 10:30 AM ET – “The Day the Violence Died”
Looks like it’s gonna be a Season 6 kinda afternoon. I will be dipping in and out on the Twitter machine, since this is the kind of event at which it excels.
14
Apr
14
Quote of the Day
“Okay, let’s make this sporting, Leonard. If you can tell me why I shouldn’t fire you without using the letter e, you can keep your job.” – C.M. Burns
“Uh, okay, um, I’m a good work . . . guy.” – Lenny
“You’re fired.” – C.M. Burns
“But I didn’t say-” – Lenny
“You will.” – C.M. Burns
“Eeeeeeee!” – Lenny
Happy 20th anniversary to “Burns’ Heir”! Original airdate: 14 April 1994.
20
Feb
14
Quote of the Day
“I have nothing to offer you but my love.” – Milhouse van Houten
“I specifically said no geeks!” – C.M. Burns
“But my mom says I’m cool.” – Milhouse van Houten
“This is my pride and joy: I’ve had hidden cameras planted in every home in Springfield. I got the idea from that movie ‘Sliver’, what a delightful romp.” – C.M. Burns
If there’s one thing Zombie Simpsons has perfected, it’s taking familiar elements of The Simpsons, blasting away everything that made them wonderful, and then propping up the barely recognizable remains as though they weren’t decrepit garbage. In its own ass backwards way, “Specs and the City” was a tour-de-force of that. Homer actually spent time at the nuclear plant and stopped for a beer at Moe’s when he was done. Marge was running the house. The kids even managed to go to school. There weren’t any magic powers or post-apocalyptic hellscapes, there was nary a drawn out chase scene nor even a bizarre celebrity cameo. But even within those relatively calm confines, Zombie Simpsons still managed to create a husk of an episode with few to no jokes, nothing that could be called a coherent story (or ending), and lots of expository filler.
To take just one particularly wretched scene, Nelson is for some reason obsessed with the Valentine’s Day cards he gets from the other kids. (Did I mention that it was Valentine’s Day? Well it was, until it wasn’t anymore, and then it was again. Yeah.) Not only is the entire classroom set up as a line to Nelson’s desk (there was a notable and distinctly awkward absence of Mrs. Krabappel), but for some other reason Dolph and Jimbo(!) are acting as fourth grade muscle to punish kids whose cards don’t meet with Nelson’s approval.
And they weren’t the only ones who were just slapped into scenes with no regard for who they are (or were). Incompetent Burns was back, letting Homer easily break into his office, stay there for several hours, and then allowing Homer kick him out. Marge got mad at Homer for wearing his Google Glass thing while they were fooling around, but didn’t notice until Homer told her he was wearing them even though they were glowing through the damn sheets. Moe gave Homer atrociously terrible advice, which wouldn’t have been bad in and of itself, except that it worked like a charm.
– So the couch gag has stopped even being a couch gag and just become another way they can kill a minute before they have to start the actual episode.
– The stress ball was dumb the first time someone swallowed it.
– “You wear them like eyeglasses, but inside the lens you see information about the people and places around you”, thanks Exposition Smithers!
– So Burns had a wall of TV screens installed behind his wall of TV screens?
– And he spent too much money on them? Here’s a mini-compare & contrast for you, this dialogue . . .
Burns: Smithers, how much did this company lose to office supply theft last year?
Smithers: Seven thousand, forth-three dollars.
Burns: Yes, well, no more of that thanks to this twenty-six million dollar surveillance system.
. . . and this quote about the same thing from Season 3. Notice how in one Burns is evil and competent and in the other he’s hapless and costing himself money. These are two very different Mr. Burnses.
– And we’re supposed to be surprised that he’s spying on his employees when he’s been doing that since the start of the show? Not to mention the whole town? And why is Smithers shocked?
– Apparently this is also a Valentine’s Day episode. Huh.
– Frontline/Firstline, comedy gold!
– “right after I decide if these videos are funny or die” – ah, a preview of the exact thing you’re about to do.
– Why is Marge surprised he’s wearing the glasses in bed? He was already doing that and she can clearly see them. And they could’ve handled his getting caught wearing them during sex well if they were so inclined. Homer could sneak the glasses on, whisper something to them to get some information, turn on a sex app, anything but having him just wearing them and Marge somehow not noticing would’ve shown at least some care toward what they’re doing here.
– “Burns gave us those glasses so he could spy on us”, for the sweet, uncompromising love of Jebus, please just give us one scene where something happens without you telling us what it is. Just one!
– And then he tells us exactly what we’re seeing on the monitors.
– The floating head Moe scene certainly took up some time. Well done.
– Apparently the Valentine’s Day plot is going to drag on past actual Valentine’s Day. (And let’s not even get into the weirdness of having an A-plot where Marge and Homer are fighting and a B-plot where it’s Valentines Day and yet the holiday never comes up in the A-plot.)
– We see the happiness (Wednesday) and sadness (Tuesday) montages, and then Homer explains what we just saw in case nobody noticed the several times they put the day on screen. Six-year-olds don’t need things explained to them this many times.
– That ending was . . . unexpected. This episode basically had three things going on, Burns spying on everyone with Google Glass, Homer spying on Marge’s therapy sessions, and that bizarre, unconnected Valentine’s Day plot with the kids. Not a single one of them had an ending, or even really a conflict, and they wrapped it up with a completely unrelated scene with Ralph drawing on his face. I was actually surprised when the credits rolled.
Anyway, the ratings are in and we have a new champion for least watched episode ever. On Sunday, just 3.91 million people wished they were playing around with Google Glass. That easily breaks the previous record of 4.00 million people set back in Season 23. We’ve still got half the season to go, but it looks like Season 25 is going to easily break Season 24’s recently set record for least watched ever. But hey, there’s Legos and Mr. Potatohead now, so we’ve got those.
charliesweatpants.com
(The crotch really does wear out too fast.)
The Mob Has Spoken