“Father McGrath, I thought you were dead!” – Soap Opera Babe
“I was!” – Father McGrath
In addition to taking up an enormous amount of barren screen time, last night’s death and immediate resurrection of Fat Tony was so blisteringly stupid that I’m not even sure which TV Trope applies. There are a lot of them about death and hacktacular resurrection, but a quick search didn’t turn up one where a long lost relative shows up, does nothing, and then becomes the replacement. The closest similarity that came to mind was Beerfest (which is the only non-Super Troopers movie from the Super Troopers guys that wasn’t half bad). In Beerfest, one of the main characters dies, but is immediately replaced by his brother who, winking at the camera the whole time, also takes the deceased’s name and wife while he’s at it. It was deliberately stupid in a movie where drinking beer is a blood sport and death can be the penalty for failure, so in context it made sense.
The same cannot be said of “Donnie Fatso”, which is shot through with horns of suspense and a vaguely melancholy tune. It invests a great deal of time in trying to get us to care about . . . well, it’s never really clear, but somehow deep emotions are supposed to be involved. As with so many Zombie Simpsons episodes, the story is so poorly constructed that not only is there no resolution to what happens, but the main plot peters out with four minutes of screen time still to go. That led to the time killing resurrection . . . segment? I’m not even sure what to call that.
Anyway, the numbers are in and without football to protect it, Zombie Simpsons’ ratings plunged. Last night’s meandering mobster episode was used to sweat snitches by a mere 7.31 million people. That’s the third lowest number all season, and leaves the fall segment of Season 22 with an average viewership of just 8.11 million. That makes it the lowest rated fall half of the season ever, and keeps Season 22 on pace to be the least watched in the history of the show by a pretty big margin.
Dead Homer Society 
20 responses to “Original Replaced with Bloated and Dull Facsimile”
You do know you spelled “Deleting” wrong, right? Or is that part of a joke I’m not getting?
No, there’s nothing you’re not getting. I just screwed up. I can’t fix it right now, but I’ll get to it.
And it’s fixed. I have always been a lousy speller.
It’s okay. Just post “I will not abbrev.” on a chalkboard multiple times as punishment.
How DOES Bart do this every week?
That episode sure did suck last night. It just plain sucked! I’ve seen episodes suck before, but that was the suckiest bunch of suck that ever sucked.
You guys are usually a bit too harsh, but yeah, “Donnie Fatso” was horrible.
It sounds utterly foolish.
Coming up next season: Homer Simpson is replaced by his right-wing Army Doppleganger Gomer Simpson!
Ok, here are at lease five things why “Donnie Fatso” hit rock bottom:
1) Christmas picture montage too long for an opening. They should’ve just stuck with Santa couch gag opening. Plus, this whole Christmas thing was absolutely off-topic after a so-called Christmas episode played last week. Or they should’ve passed “Donnie Fatso” first.
2) After we’re through with lingering Christmas, the episode starts off after a New Year’s. How we got there we have no idea. The writers clearly opted for “once upon a time” storytelling, but it had to timeline to stick to. Even FG, yes FG again, even their episode when Peter hung out with OJ had a date put into it, to seemingly appear as a realistic event.
3) After Homer got sentenced to ten years in prison and Wiggum started helping the one he deliberately put into jail for no reason other than being a jerk on purpose, the episode lost me. How the hell whatever happened there actually happened, including the FBI bit, I have no clue. Pointless to try to answers questions such as why would FBI spy on a mafia network (they usually get busy with much more stupider issues like Moe stuff), why would they pick someone as imbecile as Homer for their operations, and why would a mastermind like Fat Tony actually not recognize Homer after all they’ve been through on several occasions, etc. etc.
4) Homer not using his gimmicks only until he is actually too awkward to use them is a strong blow in the storytelling of the whole episode. So strong it actually caused Fat Tony to have a heartstroke.
5) OH LOOK! IT”S MAGGIE SHOOTING SOME GUN! Not funny? Well, we’ve got no more of Perry’s boobs, so LAUGH, DAMMIT, LAUGH!!!
And a lot other crappy not mentionable stuff, as usual.
Actually, I sort of enjoyed the Advent calendar reveal, and I felt it moved a little too fast. The ones I chuckled at made me miss the subsequent ones. Given the quality of the rest of the episode, it couldn’t have hurt to have stretched it out even more. But yeah, it made no sense whatsoever to use that opening and then segue into a New Year’s celebration.
The show previously did the same thing with Snowball II in “I, (Annoyed Grunt)-bot”… so it’s not even a novelty anymore. By the end of the series, it’s possible every character will have been killed off and replaced by an identical doppelganger!
Regarding the trope that applies, there isn’t one yet, but this YKTTW was suggested shortly after the episode aired.
I think this is a good start but there should probably be a sub-trope specifically for this situation, now that it’s been done twice on Zombie Simpsons, or four times if you count each cat they killed separately. I wonder if it’s ever happened on any other show…
Don’t forget they even did this with the town of Springfield itself at one point.
The problem with episodes like these is that Homer is such a gigantic retard with such outrageously misplaced emotions and priorities that it’s impossible to see his point of view when he feels sorry for someone or their situation. He’s such a brain dead, bi-polar fuckwit that it’s impossible to sympathize with him.
It’s just like “The Trouble With Trillions”. Homer gets himself in trouble and in lieu of jail time is recruited by the FBI to bring down another character indulging in illegal activity. But then – since Homer is a highly suggestible, wishy-washy dumbass – he practically falls in love with the character he’s supposed to bring down and rebels.
How are we supposed to sympathize with him when he does bullshit like that?
Forget “Jerkass Homer” – I think “Brain Dead, Bi-polar Fuckwit Homer” sums up the patriarch of Zombie Simpsons even better.
I’d be up for that, but that describes more characters than just Zombie Homer.
I have been searching like crazy to see what word Lenny uses in the bar, then follows with something like “I am learning latin for my new years resolution”.
did ANYBODY catch that word? I couldn’t make it show up on my subtitles, and I replayed and replayed trying to hear what letters were being used, but with no luck.
Annus Horribilis: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annus_horribilis
I hear him say “urine ceribulus”, which probably means “smells like urine” or something. Wild guess. But that’s what I hear Lenny say in slowmo.
Ok correction: “urine cerebellus” would be urine-brained.
[…] is more than one Simpsons episode to which I can compare “Donnie Fatso”. As has been pointed out in comments, the similarity to “The Trouble with Trillions” is uncanny, and not in a good way. […]