“It’s back to the basics, classic Itchy & Scratchy!” – Bart Simpson
“We should thank our lucky stars they’re still putting out a program of this caliber after so many years.” – Lisa Simpson
From time to time, people ask us what we would do if Zombie Simpsons ever broadcast a good episode. Would we kick it just because it’s Zombie Simpsons, or are we open minded enough to say that, yeah, even here in 2011 the show can still be good? Well, I’m here to tell you that last night’s episode on FOX was outstanding from end to end, with a great story, fantastic writing, and more quotable lines than we usually see in a whole season of Zombie Simpsons. Let it never be said that we at the Dead Homer Society doesn’t know quality television when we see it.
“Lisa’s First Word” was another flashback episode, in this case to the events surrounding Lisa’s birth during the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics. As you’d expect, there were a lot of jokes at the expense of the 80s and 80s culture, but it never felt like a “destination” episode where they go someplace and just make a string of unrelated gags about it. Instead we got delightfully silly period pieces, such as having the immigrant kids’ stickball game be played in a video arcade instead of the street, and quick, knowing laughs at everything from David Hasselhoff and Carl Lewis to Walter Mondale, Cyndi Lauper and M*A*S*H.
The story itself was just as great. Seeing how Lisa was born, how Homer met Flanders, and even how the Simpson family came to live on Evergreen Terrace is the kind of elegant, revealing and downright funny fan service that has been so sorely lacking in recent years. After Flanders introduces himself in a very Flanders-esque way (“The handle’s Flanders, but my friends call me Ned”), Homer dislikes him immediately without any overwrought histrionics or cliched backstory (“Hi, Flanders”). And when Homer has to ask Grampa for a loan to buy a house, the show never lets the bittersweet emotion of a family transitioning from one generation to another overwhelm the fun. Not only did Grampa win the house “on a crooked 50s game show”, but the touching moment when Homer invites Grampa to share their new home is used as the setup for a punchline about how quickly and callously Homer sent his father to the dreary Springfield Retirement Castle. The whole thing was fantastic from start to finish.
Anyway, the numbers are in and they are eye-poppingly awesome. “Lisa’s First Word” was watched by 15.5 million U.S. households, making it the most watched episode in six years, since that one that came on right after the Super Bowl. Curiously, this excellent new episode is not available yet on Hulu.com.
There’s no guarantee that they’ll be able to return consistently to this stratospheric level of quality. And the description of next week’s episode, in which Marge becomes obsessed with peaches, Lisa becomes a magician’s assistant, and a number of famous people guest voice themselves, isn’t encouraging. But if they can routinely put on something as beautifully animated (the spaghetti slurping scene was gorgeously drawn), fast paced (they covered a ton of topics in just twenty-two minutes), and laugh ’til you cry funny (“I think his name is Mother Shabubu now”) as they did last night, then we’ll have no choice but close up shop on this here blog because there will no longer be any need for it. Here’s hoping.
Dead Homer Society 
14 responses to “Still Got the Magic”
You guys are kidding right? You do realize it was a rerun from 1992?
In the words of McBain: “That’s The Joke!”
I’m very happy that this classic episode received the attention it deserves. It shows that people still care more about the Simpsons and much less for ZS
“HoJu!” alone is funnier than anything ZS has done in the last 15 or so years.
Fox really should just re-run Classic Simpsons more. Except it would, of course, make Zombie Simpsons look even more appallingly bad by comparison.
Hmmm. I don’t know why I mentioned “HoJu,” it’s not even from that episode. Well, I’m an idiot.
To be fair, the real number of people who saw the Lisa’s First Word rerun was only 4.5 mil.
http://tvbythenumbers.zap2it.com/2011/04/04/tv-ratings-desperate-housewives-body-of-proof-struggle-against-country-music-celebrity-apprentice-steady/88077
The sad thing is, the ZS audience probably has no idea of the significance of the episode or even who Elizabeth Taylor is; they probably mindlessly changed the channel when they realized it was a ‘super-old’ episode. Kids these days… *shakes fist*
This gem still beat the ZA airing an hour earlier, Bob’s Burgers, American Dad and only trailed FG by .3 of a point.
Though I’ll bet a few of the dumbass kids who watched this episode were shocked to see Conan’s name in the credits.
Like people said here – yes, you feast your eyes on an oldie, and yes it’s great episode from the yesteryear, yada yada. But the audience didn’t give a fuck. They don’t know who Liz Taylor was, they don’t care the slightest for those 80s references because his parents didn’t even meet back then, and certainly they wouldn’t gouge their eyes at anything that is hand-drawn today. So as the result, those morons didn’t get their dose of zombie this week, and you can be sure there will be more viewers for the upcoming magician shit now.
Who are you kidding, today’s society doesn’t want those things anymore. It’s too late. Video games, fucktard movies, internet… they’re all factors to whatever zombie audience we’re stuck with today. And you can’t seriously except from a show that now runs itself by the means of commercialization, guest stars and one-sided humor turn the whole thing around in fact of a few who still remember what it was 20 years ago and still have time to complain about it being not the same, instead of spending time working for their own families and raising kids, etc. etc. All that because of ONE re-run they did this week?
P.S. I take it from you this post is the April Fool’s joke, right?
“Who are you kidding, today’s society doesn’t want those things anymore. It’s too late. Video games, fucktard movies, internet… they’re all factors to whatever zombie audience we’re stuck with today.”
I disagree. For one thing, we get plenty of college age and younger readers here. (Hi everybody!) More broadly, I seriously doubt that today’s kids are any more vapid and dick joke prone than those that came before them, whether we’re talking about twenty years ago or a hundred years ago. There have always been audiences for high brow and low brow, for sophisticated and simple; age is less important than how well something ages. I love a lot of things that were made before I was born, I think most people do, but some things weather time and changing tastes better than others. What bugs me most about Zombie Simpsons is that it obscures the fact that “The Simpsons” is something that has aged unbelievably well and can still be watched by just about anyone.
I don’t blame the audience. While I’m sure there are a lot of Zombie Simpsons fans whose taste in entertainment hardly overlaps with mine, I’m also sure that there are a lot of people who watch it without knowing what it used to be. It isn’t their fault they were born too late to see the show go to hell, and if I were in their shoes I might wonder why this mediocre show deserves all the fuss it gets. The problem is Zombie Simpsons, nothing else.
Well everyone has their own opinion. You may think that social stupidification is not a factor. I may think otherwise.
If you want an example, you can take one from the earliest of The Simpsons episodes where parents could still scold and ground their kids (less the “go to your room” remark) and where there was this warm, a bit sad music with some character expressing his or her deepest feelings for something (“I always thought that…”), you didn’t expect a fart-burp-fuck joke to follow.
Today it’s different and not just on ZS. Family Guy, American Dad, Cleveland Show, even on Bob’s Burgers for god’s sake, you don’t have these traits anymore. Because they are lost, because today kids can fuck around with their parents and that’s okay (but hitting a child is not), because family ties have grown brittle, not to say non-existent at all because of civil statuses, orientation changes, etc. etc. Today’s society is dysfunctional in a certain way, family-wise, and sitcoms, since they are family-based shows, are the first catalysts to mirror that change within their characters’ emotions.
But like I said, this is general. My point of view does not explain why ZS sucks today. You can have 1001 reasons to make it better, even by today’s standards. What I’m saying is that you don’t fit something from 10 years ago (even more – 15, 20…) into today’s life-frame and say that look at how better it was back then. I mean, you did it. I wouldn’t compare in your stead, because for me it’s like comparing a retired world class champion with a pack of golden medals on his head to a newbie champion of today, who doesn’t even require to use the same technique anymore. See my point?
Anyway, I don’t want to start a debate on that. To everyone their own opinions, once again.
But you can’t use examples from Family Guy, American Dad, The Cleveland Show and Bob’s Burgers to demonstrate how values have changed. However much resemblance there may be between Zombie Simpsons and these shows, I think it is incidental to its declining quality; ideas are low and the characters have been reduced to resembling something that may sometimes be comparable to its Animated Cousins. This whole blog has pointed out numerous arguments as to why it is as bad as it is – you can’t just draw a link between this and other prime time animated shows and assume that its former glory wouldn’t work now because of today’s trends. Correlation always needs to be taken with a pinch of salt.
I haven’t seen Bob’s Burgers, but MacFarlane’s creations (let’s stick with Family Guy as the main example) were initially spawned in a way that deliberately mirrored the appearance and set-up of The Simpsons, and you don’t have to look much harder to establish that, at the time Family Guy was first made, what lay underneath the show was absolutely nothing like The Simpsons (which wasn’t great at the time but still above average, and hadn’t been on the decline for very long). It is only a family-based show in appearance; its target audience not actually being the whole family (who should be able to sit down with The Simpsons and see something of themselves in it), but purely a more mature audience (with the exception of children with no parental restriction on their viewing habits). You can’t take it as an example of what an audience wants to see in a show now, and that morals and values have no place any more – because Family Guy relies on their complete absence to work. It is also deliberately unrealistic (for the most part) – it’s no insight on today’s typical American family at all. It’s also just programme (or two or three or four of the same programme repackaged…). If Zombie Simpsons IS trying to keep up with Family Guy’s popularity at the expense of its family values, there is absolutely no need for it, because there is room in the schedule for two completely different shows.
As Charlie pointed out, he has seen enough anecdotal evidence of a younger audience being wowed by The Simpsons and recognise its distinction from Zombie Simpsons. This very post points out that the odd pop culture reference doesn’t obscure the episode’s timeless quality. People may not give a shit who Elizabeth Taylor was, but it’s irrelevant – the point of the scene was Maggie saying her first word. It doesn’t rely on people knowing who it is that’s doing the voice to work.
Sorry, I know you said no debate but I did it anyway.
I hope you do a Crazy Noises for this one as well.
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