“Going somewhere?” – C.M. Burns
“That’s impossible!  How did you get here first?” – Bart Simpson
“Oh, there’ll be plenty of time for explanations later.” – C.M. Burns

Zombie Simpsons Writer #1: Have we ever had Smithers take over the power plant?
[10 second pause]
Zombie Simpsons Writer #2: I don’t think so. 
ZSW#1: How do we get rid of Burns?
[20 second pause]
ZSW#2: Could we send him to prison?
ZSW#1: Why not?  How do we get him out of prison?
ZSW#2: What if Homer broke in to prison?
ZSW#1: That’s stupid-
[Intern pokes head in door] Intern: Lunch orders?
[90 seconds pass as two sandwiches are ordered.  A twenty minute discussion of condiments follows.]
ZSW#2: So, Homer breaks Burns out of prison.
ZSW#1: Sounds good.  Where’s my sandwich?

One of my most frequent complaints about Zombie Simpsons is the flat out lazy nature of the storytelling.  Case in point from this week’s exercise in bland, we have Homer, Lenny, and Carl breaking into prison to get Burns out.  I cannot discern a single reason for this to have happened.  Not one.  They didn’t need it as an excuse to use voiceover narration, they didn’t need it to set up or resolve a conflict or confrontation, they didn’t even use it for comedy effect about how easy it is to break into or out of prison.  Burns goes to prison thanks to some expository dialogue from Lou; Burns is released from prison thanks to some expository dialogue from Lenny.  That’s it.  Nothing else happens, and they don’t even give us the perfunctory courtesy of winking at the camera while they do it. 

Of course, it’d be easier to look past all that if it was funny besides, or if there were even, you know, jokes.  Instead, you get things like thirty seconds of Homer not eating a rotten jack-o-lantern, and twenty seconds of Smithers answering a customer service call.  That second scene doubled as an exposition heavy turning point in what I suppose I have to call the “plot”.  It also made no sense for Smithers to be there, and contained foreshadowing dialogue that After School Special writers would consider overt. 

The numbers are in, and they are as awful as we’ve come to expect.  “American History X-Cellent” managed to benumb only 5.65 million viewers.  That’s good for fourth worst all time.  Of the seven episodes that have been broadcast since Spurlock’s special, six of them are in the ten least watched ever, and the seventh (“The Color Yellow”) is #13.  The 20th anniversary stuff will probably keep Season 21 from being the least watched season ever, but there’s no hiding the numbers: Zombie Simpsons is getting the worst ratings in its history and shows no sign of bottoming out.