
“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.
Tell Aaronson and Zykowski:
The Mob Has Spoken