“Marge, I have always carried myself with a certain quiet dignity, tonight you robbed me of it.” – Homer Simpson
Only at Dead Homer Society, you can see the exclusive, sneak peak, first look, WORLD PREMIER of the couch gag for the May 2 Zombie Simpsons episode “To Surveil, With Love”:
Presumably they will animate it before it airs.
I wish I were kidding, but this morning reader Alex wrote in and tipped us off to this latest Zombie Simpsons nadir. Behold, the press release from hell:
Don’t miss a note of “FOX Rocks,” a week of music-themed episodes kicking off Thursday, April 29 and airing through Wednesday, May 5. Throughout the rockin’ week, FOX’s primetime series – including BONES, FRINGE, HOUSE, GLEE, THE SIMPSONS, THE CLEVELAND SHOW, FAMILY GUY, THE WANDA SYKES SHOW and AMERICAN IDOL – will feature a variety of musical elements.
[…]
THE SIMPSONS (8:00-8:30 PM ET/PT) – “To Surveil, With Love”
During a special musical couch gag, SIMPSONS characters sing along to Ke$ha’s smash hit “TiK ToK.”
Zombie Simpsons is farming out the couch gag. Apparently they thought someone else could come up with a humorless, over-animated montage just as good as theirs. Or they breathed a sigh of relief when they realized this would help kill a few more precious seconds of screen time. Either way, less work for them! By the way, as of this writing, “Tik Tok” is #9 on the Billboard pop chart, down from #5 last week. So, once again, Zombie Simpsons has missed its chance to be topical.
Taking a step back, what we have here is a couch gag used to promote a hit song that was put out by an artist who (as far as we know) isn’t a guest voice, and all timed to coincide with FOX’s little musical week. Didn’t this show used to pride itself on its lack of network interference? I have imaginary friends who have more integrity than Zombie Simpsons.
By the way, I’m setting the over/under on length for this little program-linked-advertisement at 40.5 seconds.
Update at 5:07pm EDT: And the hits just keep on coming. Via Alex’s Twitter feed I see that “American Idol” will be gracing Zombie Simpsons on May 23rd for the season finale. I guess that advertisement for “24” they passed off as an episode a few years ago is considered such a classic that they decided to do it again. Though, given the relative ratings for “American Idol” and Zombie Simpsons, it seems like this is more of a favor to Zombie Simpsons than from them.
Dead Homer Society 
6 responses to “EXCLUSIVE: Zombie Simpsons Couch Gag Preview! (Updated)”
I heard about this today and was actually quite disgusted. I actually like the song (please don’t hate me) but that doesn’t mean I want to see it in an episode. What the heck is supposed to be entertaining about the Simpsons singing “Tik Tok”? It sounds stupid enough on paper; I dread to think what it’ll actually look like, especially since this is Zombie Simpsons we’re talking about.
“Network interference” is the key point here. Either a) they are subjected to Fox’s will now or b) They just don’t care, and actually thought this was a great idea. And knowing Al Jean, it’s probably the second point. Indeed, judging by today’s other soul killing announcement of the American Idol episode, maybe it’s a little from column a and a little from column b… What’s next? Homer gets a job as Seth MacFarlane’s PA? I miss The Simpsons.
God, who doesn’t? I really hate this damn season. First we have the tedious “greatest story ever doh’ed” and now this. I didn’t think I could despise any season of this show as much as season 19, but season 21 is coming really, really close.
Give me 1-9 any day of the week.
I have never heard any songs by this performer and this is not really making me want to start. It is, to be frank, a step beyond the sycophantic “My god! [celebrity]! What are you doing here in Springfield?” stuff that bad celebrity cameos are made of.
I’m going to take the under on this one, not to give ZS any credit, but because the RIAA probably doesn’t want to give away 40 whole seconds of the song upfront.
Too bad we couldn’t rent a soundtruck similar to the one used to blare insanely loud music at hostage situations and aim it at the Fox network and play this song over and over.