“I felt kinda guilty cause I was always trying to score with his wife.” – Moe
I don’t mind exceedingly cliched cell phone shenanigans when they happen in dumb horror movies. We know the characters need to be isolated, and it’s not a big deal. In fact, the chronic failure of cell phones is the kind of thing a mildly comedic show might find some way to satirize. Instead, Zombie Simpsons played it straight, blundering into another pop culture faux pas without even realizing it.
But that was only a taste of the horrifyingly unpleasant time to come: Moe acting pathetic combined with scene after scene (after scene, after scene) of marital arguments. They just kept on going, in one jokeless flashback after another we got to see poorly written and horribly cliched husband-wife tiffs. And the suspense! Ohh, how they milked it for all it was worth, is Moe really leaving forever? Which husband/wife duo would be permanently split? Oh wait, that’s right, there was never any danger of that happening. But all that suspense, combined with the long couch gag and dialog-less Mother’s Day montage, did manage to stretch this thing to the required time.
The numbers are in, and they’re still very bad. Last night’s marriage counseling session was reluctantly attended by 5.66 million viewers. That’s the fourth lowest all season and the fifth lowest all time. In “insult to injury” news, Family Guy Spinoff #1 (American Dad) pulled in 5.75 million viewers.
Dead Homer Society 
4 responses to “3 Hackneyed Teevee Marriages for the Price of 1!”
I honestly believe that since its inception, American Dad! has been better than both the Simpsons and Family Guy. Of course, if you compare to episodes from before its time, it doesn’t stand up very well.
Still, look at the treats we received at the time like Bart having a heart attack and Peter being declared actually retarded and American Dad! starts to look a lot better.
Anyway, in regards to the new Simpsons episode, it was painfully shallow.
Perhaps now that they’re reaching their end, they *could* have Moe leave forever and a couple break up but as you’ve said, we knew the ending was going to be pedestrian and the status quo would be preserved.
I think we all knew Moe wasn’t really going to run off with one of the women. Once you realise that, most of the suspense is gone.
However, I will give these writers something; they actually wrote for the Lovejoys PROPERLY. None of that shit like “disaster”; they were actually in character. They made this episode bearable for me, which, sadly, makes it better than the rest of the crap in this season.
Well, I read the episode summary on Wikipedia, and it sounds so dull. So dull, I can’t even think of another sentence to describe it.
[…] mention this briefly below, and I’ve brought it up a couple of times before, but another one of those recurring annoyances about Zombie Simpsons is the way they deal […]