Image shamelessly stolen from IMDB.

“Why don’t we let our guest do it?” – Lisa Simpson

There isn’t much to say about this commentary, mostly because guest commentator Delroy Lindo (who did a voice for this episode) basically hijacks it to play Twenty Questions. On the whole this is not a terribly bad thing, it’s mildly entertaining to listen to. But it also means that there isn’t much here for the Simpsons fan, as the commentary turns into every Al Jean interview you’ve ever read. Lindo asks about the history of the show; he asks about why there are so many people listed as producers; he asks about how they animate the guest stars. Not wanting to be rude to their guest, they let him run roughshod over them. They hardly discuss the episode at all, which might be for the best as it is very dumb.

Including Lindo, there are seven guys on this one.

0:35 – Someone, sounds like Jean, asks Lindo if he saw the episode when it came out or later because with guest stars they never know. Lindo replies, “I saw it a lot later.” I’ll take that as (mild) evidence that doing a voice on Zombie Simpsons is nothing special at all. It’s become just one more thing for actors and celebrities to check off on a list of things you can do when you’re famous.

0:45 – Lindo was asking what all the producers and co-producers at the beginning are for, but they have a microphone problem. Lindo is apparently “in a separate room”, meanwhile things keep going. Jean answers the question anyway, saying “There are seven million producers because none of us want to leave the job. It’s [inaudible] cushy.”

1:30 – Still missing Lindo, Jean recounts a bunch of jokes that were changed by the censors to things that were arguably more vulgar.

2:45 – Lindo’s back, but he didn’t hear the answer, so we’re rehashing things. It raises an obvious question though, this thing doesn’t have a pause button?

3:20 – To Lindo’s credit, he doesn’t let them skate without answering the question. Unfortunately, we’re now four minutes in and have discussed precisely one topic on account of technical difficulties.

4:15 – Still discussing all the producer credits.

5:15 – The producer thing finally petered out thirty seconds ago, and now it’s just silence. Also, the episode is degenerating as Maggie calls the police.

5:35 – Wow, taking things all the way back to the beginning, Lindo replies to the original question about when he watched it by saying that it was when it was being rerun after his nieces and nephews told him he was on it.

6:15 – Jean replies to Lindo’s story by talking about how other guest stars, or even just people they mention, will get calls from their kids when something airs. This is basically Jean’s stock answer to guest voice questions whenever he has to give an interview.

7:45 – Lindo asks a long question about whether or not they look for guest voices to fit the character models. The response is that they design the characters after they hear the voices.

8:20 – Mildly interesting note as Jean, in response to the question, says that when they’re considering voices, he’ll shut his eyes and just listen to the voice.

9:30 – Still joking about characters not sounding like they look.

10:05 – Delroy Lindo Question Time continues, though it is better than discussing this episode anyway. He asks if any of them saw the success coming. David Silverman (who’s been on the show the longest) gives the standard response: that they never expected this to happen.

10:50 – We’re still doing the standard background responses. Now they’re talking about James L. Brooks.

11:45 – Lindo’s next question is about whether or not working on the show has opened a lot of doors for them to work on other projects. On screen a bunch of cougars and wolves are trying to eat Homer and Lindo. No one notices.

12:30 – After some of the older guys recount other things this has let them do, our old friend Matt Warburton chimes in to let everyone know that this is the only job he’s ever had. He got it out of college and has never left, and this episode was the first one he ever worked on.

13:00 – Lindo asks if it’s true that this one was nominated for some environmental award. This gives the rest of them a chance to pat themselves on the back of getting a lot of award nominations over the years.

14:00 – Lindo’s next question is about where this episode lands in the “canon” of the show and how things have changed over the years. This leads to a small discussion of ratings and the fact that even though they’re down, everyone’s down and they’re still #6 in terms of advertising rates. I have no trouble believing that, but it doesn’t change the fact that the ratings are embarrassingly low.

15:00 – After some back and forth about how far they’ve come in twenty years, Jean launches into a general history of the show. If you are interested enough in the show to be reading this, it is very unlikely any of this is new information.

15:30 – Lindo clearly displays that he is not that interested in the show, asking “You guys came along before South Park, right?” That question is pretty indicative of how this whole conversation is going. Lindo comes off as one of those capital “A” Actors, who takes his craft and the creativity that goes with it very seriously but doesn’t care about the generalized pop culture that is the show’s bread and butter. Jean continues on about the history of the show.

16:00 – Now Lindo and Jean are talking about how much their kids like the show even though they’re much younger than the show itself.

17:00 – Lindo sounds like he’s getting ready to bail, and Jean actually talks about what’s going on in the episode for the first time in the entire commentary. He’s pleased with them for sewing up the loose end from the Vegas episode when Homer and Ned left their wives.

18:05 – For a second there I thought the commentary might have ended with that, but it’s picked back up again. I’m not sure if Lindo is still here. This was the first episode that Joel Cohen wrote, and it was the first episode Jean did as the solo show runner. The table read went great, too bad the finished product is meandering crap.

18:45 – They seem to be under the impression that the Vegas wives were really beloved characters and that bringing them back was a no brainer. It’s not entirely clear why.

19:20 – Jean jokingly defends the show’s anti-Irish bias by noting that he and many of the rest of them are Irish. I miss Lindo.

19:50 – Complements for the director.

20:40 – For the second time in about two minutes, they get confused between this one and the Vegas one.

21:00 – Now they’re laughing about all the questions Lindo asked them, joking that he’s really a FOX lawyer and now they’re all going to get fired for not justifying their jobs.

21:25 – A few jokes about the laziness of bringing back the wives.

21:50 – The clusterfuck continues. Lindo’s back, but they thought he left. He got dropped by technical difficulties again (they must have him on a video conference or something), he just thought they were done. They end by thanking him for being on and offering to send him some more episodes.