“What’s he gonna do next, a flapping dickey?” – Jay Leno
It’s generally not a good sign when the cleverest writing of the week is the bubble-gum pop song that the network made you use for an opening. But sometimes even two montages, a stick-figure story that doesn’t go anywhere, and Flanders making “tsk tsk” noises for no reason aren’t enough to fill your timeslot. When that happens, you can always fall back on blonde jokes and meandering exposition. And when I say meandering, I mean meandering, like Wiggum going on about chairs, Flanders explaining what he’s doing, and Lisa coming to terms with something about six times.
Of course, there were plenty of small problems to go along with the big ones. There was a criminally underutilized guest voice, a meaningless appearance by Duffman, another teacher we’ve never seen before, and a completely unnecessary desecration of Lunchlady Doris. Oh, and there was that goofy, network mandated, music video opening which, combined with Bart’s non-nude nudity, served as yet another reminder that this show no longer has any creative or editorial independence whatsoever.
The numbers are in and they’re up slightly from last week but still rock bottom by historical standards, even compared to the last few lowly rated seasons. 6.06 million viewers lost a little respect for Eddie Izzard last night. That’s the first time since February that they’ve gone over six million, and only by the barest of margins. All negative ratings trends remain in place.
Dead Homer Society 
4 responses to “Last Week: Bad Puns, This Week: Bad Blonde Jokes, Next Week: Knock Knock Jokes”
Not impressed with this episode, mostly for the reasons you’ve already mentioned; especially that opening. When even people who can tolerate the song dislike it, you know it sucks.
Oh, and what was up with those random characters showing up to watch the cameras… and then getting sent off again? Why bring them in at all? Dear God.
I wonder if it was the music video that allowed them to scrape higher viewing numbers.
I didn’t like the episode but the intro itself wasn’t that bad.
Anyway, I was very, very disappointed that they waited this long to get Eddie Izzard as a guest voice. Such a waste. Before I saw the credits, I had forgotten he was a guest star in this episode at all.
I don’t understand why the English Queen was on the promo image when she only appeared for fifteen seconds at the end.
Lovejoy Fan: And it was such an odd assortment of people. Why were Kirk and Luann there? Why were Hibbert and Hoover there? It just didn’t make any sense. Helen Lovejoy would’ve made sense, but she didn’t even get a speaking role.
Derp: Agreed that it was a complete waste of Izzard. His character didn’t do a damn thing the whole episode.
Yes, Helen would’ve made sense (she probably couldn’t resist the opportunity) but, of course, she said nothing because that’s the way the writers handle my favourite characters nowadays (although we get to see CBG, of course). The others really seemed like they were chosen at random. Like you said; why were they there? It’s even more pointless because they weren’t even there for very long. The writers may as well have just had Marge and Flanders.