Between the drawings of Marge in Playboy and the plot being launched around an (implied) nude calendar, Zombie Simpsons is now more or less totally basing its appeal on masturbatory fanboy voyeurism. Dave and I watched last night’s crapfest together and I was drunk and traumatized enough when we wrote it up that I forgot to set an over/under on the ratings. It’s just as well because the over would’ve had it. Last night’s rambling, Desperate Housewives-esque tale of improbable career moves and potential promiscuity drew in 9.04 million viewers. That makes it the second highest rated episode of the year and puts Zombie Simpsons at a 3-2 advantage over The Cleveland Show (which sucked in at 7.01) in their ratings battle that no one else cares about. Still, no episode this year has cracked double digit millions and we’re still on course for the lowest rated season ever, so there’s that.
Also, commenter Celia was right that they fed Marge booze to get her to take off her clothes and I was right that Zombie Simpsons was clueless about the fact that that’s a pretty awful thing to do and didn’t even try to make a joke about it. The show is so oblivious now that it’s become unintentionally offensive. If that’s not a marker of of inept television I don’t know what is.
Dead Homer Society 
13 responses to “Pornographic Cross Promotion (Kinda) Succeeds”
As I said in the last post, they probably assumed that making the photographer Julio would make it all okay, since obviously he wouldn’t do anything, obviously his interest is strictly professional. This still doesn’t make it okay. What makes it even less okay is that Julio then apparently went to the printing people with all these revealing pictures, without consulting Marge or anyone else, and had the calender printed up for any and all perverts to gawp at, and Marge only finds this out when there’s a huge crowd of men perving over her and her pictures.
Also, that nobody complained about this perving. When Nelson (who I’m sure is only ten years old, still) starts making comments in class, Mrs. Krabappel says nothing. It’s not seen to be really unpleasant (not to mention out of character) when Skinner and Chalmers start making comments in front of Bart. At the church, nobody (not even Reverend Lovejoy) makes an effort to suggest posing nude is sinful – which I’m sure someone would. None of the other women in the “Charity Chicks” group were disgruntled about Marge taking up the whole calender. No other woman went “who does she think she is?”. Call me cynical, but you can tell this episode was written by men. Oh, and I’m glad I have somewhere on the internet to offload my long-winded wank about The Simpsons. Some people were giving the episode 5/5 on the No Homers forum, you know.
I just remembered this blog is written by men, and I didn’t want it to sound like I was doing the entire male sex down. Just saying that a man might be less able to see why such things as I described might be problematic. Obviously you can see that.
:( I should be in bed.
I couldn’t help but notice this; especially the part about Lovejoy. Why was he just standing there smiling while everyone else was checking out Marge’s calendar? That isn’t the Lovejoy I’ve been a fan of for so long. But the writers are determined to forget he exists, so maybe it’s not that surprising.
Even Smithers was just stood there placidly while Mr. Burns was waxing lyrical. This is a change from his expression in Large Marge, when Mr. Burns is all “Boobies!” in the restaurant. Curiously, both Smithers and Revered Lovejoy are voiced by Harry Shearer, and I did hear about how they had used fewer of his characters for a while because of the pay disputes thing. I don’t think that’s still going on, but I do wonder.
They certainly seem to prefer Hank Azaria’s characters to Harry Shearer’s right now; which is a shame for me, since most of my favourite characters are voiced by Shearer. It does make you wonder, doesn’t it?
One of the main reasons I’m getting tired of the show now is because of this strange attitude they have towards the characters. Even after Zombie Simpsons got stale, I stuck with it simply so I could see more of the Lovejoys (back then I was a hardcore fan who wrote a lot of fanfiction). They even managed to keep those two roughly in character back then. Now they seem to prefer using certain characters constantly – CBG, for instance. Was there any need for him to show up at the church? – and ignoring others, and I just think this whole scene was a step too far. As you pointed out, Smithers just stood there placidly, Lovejoy was smiling at nothing… in fact, most of the characters were just bizarre in this scene. Look at their expressions:
http://www.duffzone.org/framegrabs/index.php/labf17/labf17-098.jpg?action=big&size=original&fromthumbnail=true&preferredsize=resize
They’re all blankly staring ahead. What on earth is up with that?
Sorry, the link didn’t work. It’s:
http://www.duffzone.org/framegrabs/index.php/labf17/labf17-098.jpg?action=big&size=original&fromthumbnail=true&preferredsize=resize
Agreed that the scene at the church was terrible. It’s like they decided that the Comic Book Guy and Burns lines were better than the others, so they just used them, regardless of whether or not either one of them should be there. Meanwhile, Lovejoy and Flanders, who would have more to say about a member of their congregation posing like that, are silent. Shearer’s off the cuff lines in that podcast about Marge in Playboy would have been a tremendous improvement and actually made sense in the context of where they were.
Then there was that school scene, where Bart has a problem and then we don’t hear anything about it for the rest of the episode. When we were watching it Dave and I were wondering if that might be a B plot. Nope, just dropped completely. It’s like the idea that one scene might have something to do with the others is foreign to them.
If they’d used that as a B plot, it could have been interesting. I say “could have” because these writers seem to be able to make every good idea suck – when they have good ideas, that is.
As for the church scene… well, as I mentioned, I’m sick of CBG (and have been for a long time), so having him say something while Lovejoy does nothing was particularly irritating for me. And who was that other lady meant to be? Honestly, why bother have them going to church at all? They may as well have been at the Kwik-E-Mart or something.
It’s funny you should mention those lines from the podcast, because they were the first things that came to mind when I saw Marge pulling up outside the church.
(Incidentally, the screenshot I was trying to post doesn’t work. It features a scene where everyone in the background is staring vacantly ahead. Is Zombie Simpsons living up to its name?)
For whatever it’s worth the link worked for me in Firefox but not in Chrome.
You might also be able to get the framegrabs here:
http://www.springfieldspringfield.co.uk/media/framegrabs/viewframegrabs.php?episode=s21e05
I couldn’t get yours to work, alas, but there’s a couple there that are probably similar.
Thanks. I felt awkward posting that link twice and it not working both times.
Yeah, that shot’s there. It’s the scene where Burns is talking. Honestly, the way everyone is staring vacantly at Marge is just bizarre. When did they stop putting effort into background characters? Even Agnes Skinner looks traumatized. (Oh, and apparently Helen did show up. And she didn’t say anything either…)
And all people complained about was that MARGE was out of character? I’d say nearly everyone was out of character in this episode.
I would say Marge was rather less OOC than Lovejoy or Ned. Or Smithers, indeed, as I say. Or any of the women who would surely have been annoyed and/or jealous at the attentions Marge was getting. Instead, they just stand there smiling as if they meekly accept Marge’s physical and sexual superiority. I suppose that could be seen as healthy (that’s an argument for a whole other blog, though) but for a lot of them, it’s not in character.
And the random black lady that showed up – was that just an excuse to cram in some “sassy black woman” stereotype? Or is it a reference to something American I missed?
@Celia: Charlie and I were chatting about the “sassy black woman;” we thought it was an oblique reference to Tyler Perry, an African-American comedian who often portrays a character named Madea, who is, as you might have guessed, a sassy black woman. I am terrified that I know all of that.