“And now, our parody of ‘Mad About You’, entitled ‘Mad About Shoe’! Gimme a kiss baby, no tongue, ha ha! . . . Ohh, you’re not going to like our ‘NYPD Shoe’ sketch. It’s pretty much the same thing.” – Krusty the Klown
In our ongoing mission to bring you only the shallowest and laziest analysis of Zombie Simpsons, we’re keeping up our Crazy Noises series for Season 22. Since a podcast is so 2004, and video would require a flag, a fern and some folding chairs from the garage, we’ve elected to use the technology that brought the word “emoticon” to the masses: the chatroom. Star Trek image macros are strictly forbidden, unless you have a really good reason why Captain Picard is better than Captain Kirk. This text has been edited for clarity and spelling (surprisingly enough, not on “Jumanji”).
This episode consisted of half assed Simpsonizations of four other shows/movies: The Office, Jumanji, Dead Calm, and Twilight. In the hands of people who cared in the least about jokes, pacing or comedy that wouldn’t be a problem. In the hands of Zombie Simpsons it was a disaster from start to finish, laden with tensionless action sequences, bizarre non sequiturs (even within single scenes), and enough limp, toothless pop culture “references” to fill one of those wretched spoof movies.
Note: Dave couldn’t join us this week, so this is shorter and even less insightful than usual.
Charlie Sweatpants: Shall we get started?
Mad Jon: Ok then
Do you remember a time when THOH weren’t just parodies of movies?
Or when they were parodies, at least they were of things that were topical?
Charlie Sweatpants: I don’t think any of this rose to the level of parody.
Mad Jon: “Jumanji” was like 25 years ago.
And “Twilight” is several years old as well.
Charlie Sweatpants: Enh. That doesn’t bother me so much as the fact that they weren’t doing much to make fun of anything.
Mad Jon: That is true. Most of the attempted jokes were 20-30 seconds of repetitive action
Charlie Sweatpants: The board game titles were mildly clever, but then they spent the rest of the segment doing terrible – and terribly long and repetitive – physical "comedy".
The joke where Wiggum got crushed would’ve been okay if it hadn’t gone on about five times longer than it should have.
The chutes and ladders thing, I was actually embarrassed for them.
Mad Jon: Like Homer’s walk, or Harry Potter/Edward’s stopping moving vehicles, which I assume was part of that movie which I never saw.
Charlie Sweatpants: Yeah, the glorified goth kid stops a car from hitting the girl with no personality. The movie was terrible, but I watched it with weed and Rifftrax, so I had an okay time.
Mad Jon: Sounds like fun.
Charlie Sweatpants: But there was no need for it to keep happening like that.
Though for sheer boredom the end of the segment was worse.
The vampire neighborhood was just them Simpsonizing other vampires.
Mad Jon: Indeed. What was with the dog that picked up fat Homer bat at the end?
That one was over my head.
Charlie Sweatpants: Well, it was the Milhouse were-poodle, or whatever.
Like most of the attempts at humor, it had nothing to do with anything.
Mad Jon: Oh, so I didn’t miss a clever joke or insightful parody?
Charlie Sweatpants: Well, Twilight has a werewolf that also loves the girl with no personality.
Mad Jon: That’s a relief.
Fair enough.
Charlie Sweatpants: What really got me though was the bell tower ending.
They just keep it up with the suspense music about what’s going to happen, and then they go back and forth about three times.
Mad Jon: Yep.
Charlie Sweatpants: It’s too bad vampires don’t feed off of exposition.
Speaking of suspense for no reason, what was with the middle segment?
That was a great big bowl of steaming what the fuck, and then Maggie’s in the tub and, unrelated to everything, she dons the Malcolm McDowell eye makeup from “A Clockwork Orange”.
Mad Jon: I don’t know. They were on a boat, and some British guy rows to them and then some mindless violence with none of the touch of "The Shinning" and then Maggie is some evil ultraviolent mastermind.
Maybe they were banking on the fact that nobody that watches this anymore has actually seen that movie, but would probably get the visual reference.
Charlie Sweatpants: But none of it made any sense at all. If they had just kept it as some kind of creepy menage-a-trois it would have at least made sense, but they dropped that for the "It’s a Wonderful Life (Killing Spree Ending)".
All of a sudden Homer’s armed to the teeth and he kills a bunch of people for no reason.
And then Marge kills herself because . . . why?
Mad Jon: Oh I agree, none of it made sense, or tied together plot wise, even with the umpteen twists
Charlie Sweatpants: Even when you know it’s all in Maggie’s head it still doesn’t make any sense. It’s a twist that has no revelations to it.
Mad Jon: Also, would Homer J. Simpson actually help give one of his children a bath?
Perhaps the random story generator went haywire again, and nobody bothered to edit it.
Charlie Sweatpants: Editing would’ve helped.
Mad Jon: To some extent at least.
Charlie Sweatpants: That thing where Homer kept walking off screen only to come back again?
It goes on for twenty seconds and it should’ve have taken two.
Mad Jon: Also he had roller blades. That was apparently a visual gag of some sort. I mean, who wears roller blades on a rented yacht?
Charlie Sweatpants: I think the randomness was the point, but it was a very poor one.
Mad Jon: Yes, I think I understand.
Charlie Sweatpants: Well, the only thing to understand it as is filler.
Half the second segment is them either describing things that happened or having flashbacks.
Mad Jon: You know, if they would have just had Homer stop all the vehicles instead of Harry Potter, he could have had a 30 second montage of random motion in each act?
So close.
Charlie Sweatpants: Good point.
He had to settle for riding that vampire guy for no reason.
Mad Jon: That’s right, he did ride a vampire didn’t he?
Also he entered the second act via shark vomit. That’s also got to count for something.
Couldn’t he have just been on the boat?
Charlie Sweatpants: That wouldn’t have taken enough time.
Mad Jon: I suppose you’re right.
Charlie Sweatpants: Same with Bart operating the mousetrap or the strange, clock killing suicide of Milhouse.
Mad Jon: That was just creepy. Not in a funny THOH way either, like in a really creepy "Milhouse decided to kill himself" way.
Who ever wrote that little bit probably tortured small animals as a child.
Charlie Sweatpants: Well, they had to work in that R.I.P. joke. It’s just too good.
Mad Jon: Leave no line uncrossed I guess.
Charlie Sweatpants: Pretty much.
Anything else here? This one was heavy on filler even by their standards.
Mad Jon: No, nothing much. It’s really too bad, even Zombie THOH aren’t usually this bad. This was really really boring.
And also it had less transitions than a kindergarten play about thanksgiving.
Charlie Sweatpants: Ha.
Mad Jon: Things just kept happening, and then I got sad.
Charlie Sweatpants: Sounds more like real Thanksgiving.
Dead Homer Society 
12 responses to “Crazy Noises: Treehouse of Horror XXI”
I actually liked the Milhouse suicide bit, as he is a suicidal and unsure of himself person. The only prob is that it had no setup per se, so his death wasn’t really justified. The piece should’ve started with Milhouse getting eventually transformed into a fish or something, and then, with only his head left, he decides to drown himself in the water, and Bart goes like “Milhouse, please don’t do that”. But as he’d jump in, he’d understand that he has gills to breathe, and then you’d have octopus Nelson ha-hawing him downwater or something.
Also, the Milhouse poodle was very lame. He should’ve transformed himself into a scary werevolf, and then the camera would’ve zoomed out to show him 10 times smaller the natural self. And when Homer transformed into a chubby fatso bat, he should’ve just fallen on Milhouse and killed him.
Or something like that.
It was sad, because I actually had some hope for the Twilight segment. If it were handled correctly, which we all know is not possible under the current direction, it would have been a classic.
Lisa and Bella are so incredibly opposite it’s incredible, and seeing Twilight done where Bella had a realistic personality would have been hilarious. But no, Zombie Simpsons writers know what the audience wants, and that’s the caricaturization of a beloved strong female character into a boring one and dragging their go to man Homer along for some poorly executed slapstick.
Treehouse of Horror has been the only episode that I have consistently watched of the current incarnation, and I think that will probably end soon. I mean, I have perfectly good box sets laying around, and then there’s Conan’s new show…
Also, I can’t be the only one that thinks that that all of the characters could have been replaced with their Family Guy counterparts for this one. I for one would not have seen any difference. This was sad, even for Zombie Simpsons. I thought even they had standards.
“All of the characters could have been replaced with their Family Guy counterparts for this one”, that’s a correct (and sad) assumption.
There’s only one scene that made me laugh in the whole episode: it was Krusty’s clown car being stopped by the kid vampire. Even that “Vampires Suck” pseudo-parody-movie was funnier than THoH XXI – and that’s not a compliment to “Vampires Suck”.
Actually, replacing them with FG characters would’ve been even funnier, as they’re more adapted to today’s comedy genre. I mean, you don’t have to search hard to find it out: every character in FG has his or her own weird, but funny personality traits, which are being involved simply by switching patterns of humor throughout the show’s episodes. For example, if Joe is a cripple, they would have him always turn up in a situation where a handicapped person would appear funny, and so on.
In the original Simpsons, comedy was never based on that. It was more of a wordplay satire seen in everyday situations of a typical American family. That was back in the 1990s. Today it sucks. But instead of going with a fresh, new conception (or killing off the show completely), ZS producers watched a lot of FG and decided that since FG achieves funniness in a particular way, they absolutely have to integrate that way into their own show.
In a certain way, it looks as if King of the Hill (I don’t know if that show’s still in production though, never watched it) would all of a sudden start integrating South Park physical violent comedy into their scenes. That is possible, but… to what extent?
You’re actually right. The first and third bit would have been way better as a Family Guy cartoon. The board game Jumanji one was just terribly below Family Guy’s standards.
Not sure for the first bit, but the third one would’ve absolutely been funnier with Meg instead of Lisa, Neil instead of Milhouse, and instead of eating stupid sexy Flanders (Alzheimer, please kick in for this part…) they could’ve roasted Brian and have Peter give his meat to an adopted family of Korean children.
Maybe you people are just too old to like the Simpsons anymore.
Age isn’t the issue.
Maybe it is, as the show is still in the top ten among 18-34.
No, age certainly isn’t the issue.
The show was funny years ago. It no longer is. This opinion is held by people of varying ages.
If age is the determining factor here, then you should be able to guess correctly the age bracket I am in or at the very least the age bracket I am not in.
So? Jersey Shore is insanely popular with the first half of that age demographic which makes me think that age demographic has no taste.
Milhouse saying “maybe I’m just tired of living” made me laugh…
But let me tell you this was the most EXCRUCIATING THOH ever. They’ve reached levels of unfunny I didn’t think were possible. The Twilight parody had no jokes in it. It did not have one thing that could be mistaken for a joke. It was just things happening or not happening, which seems to be what The Simpsons is all about now.