“Why did you shudder just now, Mom?” – Lisa Simpson
“I don’t know.” – Marge Simpson

There’s no new Zombie Simpsons until September, so we’re going to spend the summer overthinking Season 9.  Why Season 9?  Because we did Season 8 last summer, and Season 9 was when the show started becoming more Zombie than Simpsons.  Since we’re too lazy to do audio and too ugly to do video, we’ve booked a “chatroom” (ours is right between the one with the sexy seventh graders and the one with the bored federal agents pretending to be sexy seventh graders).  So log on to your dial-up AOL and join us.  This text has been edited for clarity and spelling (surprisingly enough, not on “Grieg”).

Today’s episode is 912 “Bart Carny”.  Tomorrow will be was 925 “Natural Born Kissers”.

Charlie Sweatpants: While I wholeheartedly endorse the off label use of prescription drugs, ought we get started? Naked people or carnies first?

Mad Jon: Carnies.

Dave: As an aside, I watched both of these episodes in double-speed.

I don’t know if that made them better or worse.

Charlie Sweatpants: What do you mean double speed?

Mad Jon: It made them faster I would assume.

Dave: I set VLC to 2x playback speed.

Charlie Sweatpants: Ah ha.

Mad Jon: Not a fan I see.

Dave: Well, no.

Mad Jon: If it makes you feel any better I turned them on and looked at new golf clubs the entire time.

Dave: Heh.

Mad Jon: But I think I got the gist of it.

Charlie Sweatpants: Both of these suffer from long stretches of nothing at all interesting happening, that’s for sure.

Dave: That’s where I landed. I didn’t care enough to sweat the details, a glossing over was sufficient.

Charlie Sweatpants: I’ll slightly disagree there, since the details are about the only good parts of either of these.

Mad Jon: I am sure you’ve seen them plenty before, I almost didn’t even turn them on today. But that kind of makes me feel like I must think they are at least so-so as I’ve seen them enough times.

Dave: I’m not saying they were bad. I’m saying I didn’t care.

Charlie Sweatpants: Oh no, they’re bad. But the good parts are almost exclusively one liners and asides.

Mad Jon: There are definitely some funny lines.

Dave: Yes, episodes bad. Funny bits, lol.

Charlie Sweatpants: From Bart Carney, the only thing I use on a regular basis is the bit about slang from the 30s.

But there are a couple of other good jokes, though they tend to go on too long. The "Tooth Chipper" comes to mind.

Mad Jon: That’s funny. Also I like the beaten by the best.

Only because I lose a lot of arguments at work and it fits well.

Charlie Sweatpants: That is a good line, and Jim Varney delivers it well.

Mad Jon: May he rest in piece. Or pieces… How’d he die anyway?

Charlie Sweatpants: Nothing exciting, Wikipedia says he died of lung cancer: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Varney#Death

Mad Jon: That’ll happen.

Dave: I actually like the morning montage at the carnival.

Charlie Sweatpants: That’s another good part.

Mad Jon: I like when the burger wrapper opens up. Nice visual.

Charlie Sweatpants: They’ve even got the Grieg music.

Dave: It’s almost as though they put thought into something.

Charlie Sweatpants: So there’s good stuff here, but that’s true of pretty much all of 9. If I may be allowed a brief rant, I think the whole season can be neatly summed up by the whole glass bottomed boat thing.

The toxic waste and slurry containers on the sea floor are funny, and so is the other sunken ship, and I love how casually the guy describes it as going down with "88 souls".

  But then they spoil the joke by having Homer and Bart standing on the glass and taunting the shark. That right there is the kind of payoff that the show would’ve made subtle just a year or two before, and now it’s Homer and Bart acting out for no real reason.

If the shark was bumping the glass in the background somehow, that would’ve been much better, instead it’s face meltingly obvious and they have Homer and Bart acting like partners in crime instead of their more naturally adversarial relationship.

Dave: Nailed it.

Charlie Sweatpants: Well, we’ve missed the luau, but I want to thank you for letting me get that off my chest.

Mad Jon: He card reads good!

Charlie Sweatpants: In general this episode sports the whole Bart and Homer as a team thing that I don’t like, that one scene just epitomizes it.

Mad Jon: Yeah, even in the other team scenes, like when they are running the game for instance, it’s one balancing out the other. Mainly Bart being street smart and Homer being a dolt, but with the boat scene they are too much on the same page, which is a trap I think the writers fall into a lot when looking for the visual gags from this season out.

Charlie Sweatpants: Well, Homer has reached his overly dumb/enthusiastic phase in this episode.

Dave: They can’t leave well enough alone, basically.

Mad Jon: This is definitely the Homer that would have starved in any other country.

Charlie Sweatpants: There really is no reason for him to be at the carnival in the first place, but they’ve got it in their heads that he has to be acting crazy at all times, otherwise all the other characters would just be standing around asking "Where’s Poochie?"

Mad Jon: Still, thankfully, no access to a time machine. But tune in to season 22.

Charlie Sweatpants: I’d also add that this episode is another sad step in the complete degradation of the storytelling.

Mad Jon: I am sure I agree.

Charlie Sweatpants: The opening is unrelated to anything, there are a number of "huh?" moments that take you completely out of things (Homer and Bart’s various jobs, for instance), and the whole third act doesn’t make any sense even if you grant it one insane conceit after another.

Mad Jon: It was pretty slapped together plot wise. Indeed.

Charlie Sweatpants: Anything else here, or can we be done?

Mad Jon: No, I think its covered, bad plot, a couple of good jokes, dead Ernest, Homer bad… etc…

Dave: Let’s move on.

Charlie Sweatpants: About the only other thing I have to add is that while I like Marge’s little shudder when Homer invites in Cooder, I would like it a lot more if the show had ended soon after.

Mad Jon: I do think that was clever.

Charlie Sweatpants: That joke just doesn’t work anymore once you know there’s another fourteen years of even crazier shit about to go down.

Mad Jon: Fair enough, but at the time that may have been the funniest scene in the episode.

Charlie Sweatpants: Okay, time for some public nudity?

Mad Jon: Oh yeah.

Charlie Sweatpants: Alright, let me just untie my drawstring and open the blinds.

Mad Jon: This is going to get worse before it gets better.