“Children, we’ve just been tipped off that Superintendent Chalmers is planning a surprise inspection, so let’s clean up this pigsty!” – Principal Skinner
Posts Tagged ‘Whacking Day
02
Sep
19
Quote of the Day
10
May
19
Quote of the Day
“Did you bring the pre-whacked snakes? . . . Beautiful.” – Mayor Quimby
Happy Whacking Day, everybody!
13
Dec
18
Makeup Quote of the Day
“I’m new in town. Be there a cool loch where a lass could wash her long, red hair?” – Hot Scot
“Nay, but there’s a pool at me apartment complex. There was a rat in the deep end . . . but we got him!” – Groundskeeper Willie
“Ach, lead on!” – Hot Scot
18
Sep
17
Quote of the Day
“Forty-eight, forty-nine, fifty. Flag’s up to date, very good, Seymour.” – Superintendent Chalmers
Happy birthday David Mirkin!
10
May
17
Quote of the Day
“Here you go! Official Whacking Day parking! Ten dollars per axle! . . . Woo-hoo!” – Homer Simpson
“Hooray” – Axle Car Guy
Happy Whacking Day, everybody!
02
Apr
17
Quote of the Day
“Ack, my beauty! Wait until the superintendent sees you! Were it not a violation of God’s law, I’d make you my wife!” – Groundskeeper Willie
29
Nov
16
Quote of the Day
“Beans, beans, the musical fruit, the more you eat, the more you toot!” – Bart Simpson
“Avert your eyes, children! He may take on another form!” -Springfield Christian School Teacher
29
Apr
16
Quote of the Day
“Tonight on Eye on Springfield, the Munchkins from the Wizard of Oz, where are they now?” – Kent Brockman
11
May
15
Behind Us Forever: Bull-E
“I guess I’ve always used violence as a way of getting attention.” – Jimbo Jones
“Yes, yes! Me too!” – Nelson Muntz
Bart gets bullied, so Marge gets the town council to pass an anti-bullying law, which allows Wiggum to lock up a bunch of random people, which puts Homer into group therapy for bullying Flanders, which causes Homer to become a hero, which causes Flanders to resent him and make him beg for forgiveness. That terrible sentence took you much less time to read than this episode would to watch.
– Weird couch gag with all the soccer balls, but at least it was brief.
– And we are off to a bad start. Willie explains to Skinner that he’s going back to Scotland and that he got Johnny Mathis as his replacement, which leads to a shot of Mathis cutting hedges while singing. Expository celebrity crap started early this week.
– Hey, something not entirely terrible! While reading the morning announcements, Skinner announces a school dance as a, “treat for the popular children and a chance for the rest of you to look within yourselves and ask what’s wrong.” Of course, it’s barely part of a larger sentence and is immediately followed by Agnes materializing out of nowhere to yell at Skinner, but that was at least an attempt at cynical satire.
– Because nothing gets explained on this show only once, now we’re at the Simpson house with Marge pulling a flyer out of Bart’s backpack and reminding everyone that there’s a dance coming up.
– Homer is spinning his fence with the Flanders like a propeller to decide which one of them gets the part Ned just painted.
– Montage with a Soul Train opening called “School Train”.
– Okay, the fake Thomas the Tank Engine saying, “I’m going to die, children, and so will you someday” was good. It, of course, was immediately taken too far by hauling him off to be crushed in a press, but I’ll take what I can get.
– Ugh. The “Puberty Demon” just showed up and told us who he was after Bart asked him directly.
– Bart is now dancing with some new girl. Didn’t get get a new girlfriend last week?
– Hey, if you’re gonna pay for a Daft Punk song, you gotta let your second montage of the episode really go on to get your money’s worth.
– Bart won a dancing trophy and is now outside getting beaten up by the bullies.
– After an anti-bullying speech at the dinner table, Marge is now at a town council meeting to, presumably, repeat what she just said.
– Yup.
– They passed a bullying law, so now Wiggum just arrested the bullies while restating what we saw in the previous scene.
– Wiggum is now explaining to Brockman what he’s going to do next, start arresting adults.
– I guess we’re on an arrest sequence, so far it’s Krusty, Apu, and Bumblebee Man before Lisa starts restating what we were just told would happen and then saw happen.
– There goes Chalmers.
– It took a while to get there, but Rod and Todd had a fantasy about Jesus being bullied before God complained that he raised a wuss. Not bad.
– And now the jail is almost full and it’s Homer’s turn.
– This episode really needs a B-plot.
– Oof, they just cuffed Homer, but then he walked out of the house with his hands uncuffed and slipped on a slip-n-slide. This show has an attention span of approximately four seconds.
– And Homer has been sentenced to a bully rehabilitation program being run by Albert Brooks. Hi, Albert!
– Ugh, Brooks is mostly monologing here. It’s not great.
– Now Agnes is crying.
– Now Chalmers is yelling.
– Now Homer’s yelling about Flanders. This scene is interminable.
– Brooks told Homer to go “deeper” and Homer lowered his voice. Rimshot.
– Brooks is still yelling at Homer.
– After a short PSA style ex-bully commercial, we are back in the therapy room. Ugh.
– And now Homer is some kind of celebrity, throwing out the first pitch at a baseball game.
– Homer is still a hero, now riding in a parade float. Meanwhile, the Flanders boys are on their second go-round of pointing out how unfair that is. Expositastic!
– Flanders is now directly telling Homer how he feels before ending with, “Now do you feel remorse?”. I do so enjoy it when characters tell us exactly how they’re feeling then ask other characters to do the same.
– Homer’s now on his knees begging Flanders for forgiveness. This could take a while.
– Montage!
– And the story ends with Flanders forgiving Homer.
– But since that didn’t fill up the allotted time, we’re back to the School Train, with Otto on LSD and Ms. Frizzle from The Magic School Bus yelling at him. They’ve really taken a shine to these post-story sketches. By Season 35, this will just be a sketch comedy show.
Anyway, the numbers are in and they are right where you’d expect. Last night, just 2.78 million people decided that bullying might not be so bad after all. That’s good for #3 on the all time least watched list and has pushed Season 26’s average viewership down to 4.90 million, breaking Season 25’s record of 4.99. There’s one more to go, and the lower it gets, the tinier the audience for Season 27 will need to be to break this record again next year.
10
May
15
Quote of the Day
“And the Lord said, ‘Whack ye all the serpents which crawl on their bellies and thy town shall be a beacon unto others’. So, you see, Lisa, even God himself endorses Whacking Day.” – Reverend Lovejoy
“Let me see that.” – Lisa Simpson
“No.” – Reverend Lovejoy
06
Jun
14
Quote of the Day
“I got separated from my platoon after we parachuted into Dusseldorf. So I rode out the war posing as a German cabaret singer . . . Won’t you come home Franz Brauser, won’t you come home?” – Abe “Grampa” Simpson
“Yoo-hoo . . . Ach du lieber! Das is not eine booby!” – Adolf Hiter
Happy Birthday Sam Simon!
10
May
14
Quote of the Day
“Everyone likes Whacking Day, but I hate it. Is there something wrong with me?” – Lisa Simpson
“Yes, honey.” – Homer Simpson
Happy Whacking Day everybody!
10
May
13
Quote of the Day
“Take that snake! And you too! Snakes, snakes everywhere!” – Barney Gumble
“Getting ready for Whacking Day?” – Lenny
“What’s Whacking Day?” – Barney Gumble
Happy Whacking Day!
29
Apr
13
Quote of the Day
“Now, we give ’em the bikes, no one sues.” – Principal Skinner
“What if they’re dead, sir?” – Groundskeeper Willie
“Then we ride these bikes to Mexico, and freedom, Willie, freedom!” – Principal Skinner
“Freedom? Yeah, I’ll turn you in at the first toll booth.” – Groundskeeper Willie
Happy 20th anniversary to “Whacking Day”! Original airdate 29 April 1993.
17
Jan
13
Quote of the Day
“Bart, I’d like you to read this copy of Johnny Tremain, it’s a book I read as a girl.” – Marge Simpson
“A book? Pfft.” – Bart Simpson
“I think you might like this. It’s about a boy who goes to war, his hand is deformed in an accident.” – Marge Simpson
“Deformed? Why didn’t you say so? They should call this book Johnny Deformed.” – Bart Simpson
24
Jul
12
Quote of the Day
“Hey, kids, how was school?” – Homer Simpson
“I learned how many drams in a pennyweight.” – Lisa Simpson
“I got expelled.” – Bart Simpson
“That’s my boy!” – Homer Simpson
10
May
12
Quote of the Day
“But killing snakes is evil.” – Lisa Simpson
“Maybe so, Lisa, but it’s part of our oh so human nature. Inside every man is a struggle between good and evil that cannot be resolved.” – Homer Simpson
“I am Evil Homer! I am Evil Homer! I am Evil Homer! I am Evil Homer!” – Homer’s Brain
It’s May 10th, Happy Whacking Day, Everybody!
01
Oct
11
Quote of the Day
Image yoinked from here.
“So, what’s the word down at One School Board Plaza?” – Principal Skinner
“We’re dropping the geography requirement, the children weren’t testing well. It was proving to be an embarrassment.” – Superintendent Chalmers
“Very good, back to the three “R”s.” – Principal Skinner
“Two “R”s, come October.” – Superintendent Chalmers
“And why is a cafeteria worker posing as a nurse?” – Superintendent Chalmers
“I get two paychecks this way.” – Lunchlady Doris
“D’oh.” – Superintendent Chalmers
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 (embarrassingly so on “hepcat”).
I’m in no position to be a sanctimonious scold over this because I never met either Phil Hartman or Doris Grau, but there is something inherently off putting about the way his characters were permanently retired while Lunchlady Doris keeps popping up. I understand that he was much younger, a vastly bigger star, and that his death was enormously more shocking. But Lunchlady Doris was inextricably linked to Doris Grau just as Hartman’s characters were to him, and it seems more than a tad callous for Zombie Simpsons to have a poor facsimile of her inimitable voice say things this disposable:
We can’t keep serving the same thing every day. These kids have mashed potatoes coming out of their ears.
Sometimes shows have to replace actors because, hey, death happens, but you ought to have a better reason than something that extraneous.
Grau made Lunchlady Doris what she was, so much so that even the non-speaking parts were imbued with her trademark indifference. When Lisa asks her if she remembers when she lost her passion for her work, Lunchlady Doris doesn’t say anything as she presses the Independent Thought Alarm, but you can practically hear that raspy voice anyway. Like it or not, that died when Grau did, and Zombie Simpsons would’ve been better to leave it alone.
[Dave’s back this week, and just in time too because Mad Jon couldn’t make it.]
Charlie Sweatpants: You ready to go?
Dave: Let’s.
Charlie Sweatpants: I’m not sure where to start with this one, but neither were they.
They had not one, not two, but three non-relevant openings.
Dave: It was really a lousy pastiche of all the things that are reprehensible about the direction the show has taken.
Charlie Sweatpants: First there was Comic Book Guy talking into the camera, then there was Homer’s weird musical intro, then there was Marge’s celebrity dream. It almost felt like they were reluctant to start the episode.
Dave: But one of them was semi-interactive and fourth wall-breaking!!
In all seriousness they were terrible.
Charlie Sweatpants: To be fair, they ended the episode in much the same way. I’m pretty numb to Zombie Simpsons weird changes in direction, but I didn’t see North Korean Musical coming.
Dave: That can’t be construed as a good thing.
It was just a thing.
Charlie Sweatpants: I guess when you’ve already done it so many times what’s one more fade to white? But, wow, that was unexpected. Did someone eat bad noodles and watch Team America?
They’re making it harder and harder to resist the Family Guy comparison, at least a quarter of this episode is either a dream, a flashback or a flash-forward.
Dave: Well right, the obnoxious and incessant pop culture references that are tangential to the "plot" don’t help their cause.
Taiwanese CGI. Okay cool, but that was at least 6 months ago.
Charlie Sweatpants: Are you referring to the training flashback? Because that was awful.
The CGI thing was easily the best part of the episode, but even it a) went on too long, and b) isn’t nearly as topical as they want it to be.
Dave: Yeah, the flashback was bad. And the Taiwanese CGI wasn’t all that hot either.
It wasn’t topical because the show is painfully late to the party that started online weeks ago.
Charlie Sweatpants: Both struck me as promising to start, but I’ve learned not to get my hopes up for jokes like that because they pretty much always drag out.
For the CGI thing, the kind of people who are going to get that joke are the same people who are already kinda blase about it. When they try to be hip and cool like that they just end up showing their age worse than ever. South Park was on restorestephenbaldwin.com like two days after it hit on-line.
The insane Taiwan news reports are funny, but just copying one doesn’t make you clever.
Dave: Right. The show just isn’t on the right production cycle to pull these kinds of stunts off.
Charlie Sweatpants: Exactly.
The training sequence was more traditionally their style. It was going well right up to the pike man or so, I think he was third, then it just became an excuse to reference as many things as possible.
Dave: Yep. Just a few beats too long.
Charlie Sweatpants: I’d say more than a few. When the guys from "The Warriors" came out I knew they were scraping the bottom of the barrel.
Even outside of the many dream sequences, there was still a ton of that pointless action they seem to like so much. Why did Bauer’s fight with Snake take a minute and a half?
Dave: I mean, why not? We’re looking for an answer that doesn’t exist.
It’s just the pace and MO of the show now.
Charlie Sweatpants: I know. All summer I kept seeing things in Season 10 that were like Zombie Simpsons, but in doing so I managed to forget (or block out) how truly awful the real thing is.
Say what you will about the Loch Ness Monster ending, and I have, but even that makes more sense than a shootout with ice skating gangsters and Homer frozen into a hockey rink.
Dave: Indeed.
Charlie Sweatpants: And then the mascots and other ice dancers showed up.
I don’t think television scripts are supposed to be based on free association like that.
Anything else here particularly jump out at you as unusually bad?
Dave: Nah. I mean, we had a repeat guest star and a random guest star in a show that more or less stitched together random pop culture errata but ignored what made its predecessor so successful in the first place – the family and the faintest semblance that it was all somehow grounded in reality.
Charlie Sweatpants: Good summation. I thought the desperation to get in on hepcat internet humor was probably the most desperate ploy. Ooh, auto-tune humor. Take that 2008!
Dave: Seriously. What will they think of next?
Charlie Sweatpants: There were two things I liked that weren’t subsequently spoiled by them dragging them through the mud. One was the closed sidewalk sign that said "Pay Sidewalk Coming". I don’t think that made it all the way to funny, but it’s definitely clever.
The second was Homer’s description of a terrorist fist bump as "the warmth of human contact with a manly whiff of violence". That one is funny. It wasn’t worth twenty minutes of my time, but it was funny.
Dave: Agree on the second point, lukewarm about the first.
Charlie Sweatpants: Sorry, I was trying to be lukewarm on the first. I just didn’t think it sucked the way the rest of this did.
Dave: Fair enough.
Oh, one quick thought.
You’ve talked about this in the past, but I couldn’t help but notice how flat the show looks these days in HD.
Utterly flat and devoid of character.
Charlie Sweatpants: No disagreement here.
Dave: It is not an animated show that benefits from HD, like Archer or Futurama.
Or hell, even South Park, which is flat to begin with.
Charlie Sweatpants: I agree, though this is an instance where I’m inclined to give them a little slack. These characters and layouts were never designed with HD in mind.
I can and do blame them for the repetitive stories, the boring plots and all of the other ways the writing has fallen apart. But while the animation has definitely gotten stiffer, they are really limited with what they can do with modern animation while still keeping the overall look of the show.
Dave: Who knew you could be benevolent with Zombie Simpsons?
I learned something tonight.
Charlie Sweatpants: I didn’t say it doesn’t suck.
It does.
I just said that in this one, narrow area the fact that it sucks isn’t due to apathy or laziness.
Okay, anything else?
Dave: Nada. I can’t believe we’re on Season 23 and have 22 more of these to go.
I just made myself sad.
Charlie Sweatpants: Look on the bright side, maybe it’ll only be a 20 or 21 episode season.
10
May
11
Quote of the Day
“Let’s hear it for our own Miss Springfield.” – Mayor Quimby
“Gentlemen, start your whacking.” – Miss Springfield
It’s May 10th, happy Whacking Day everybody!
charliesweatpants.com
(The crotch really does wear out too fast.)
The Mob Has Spoken