“Here’s my address book, go get those stars!” – Krusty the Klown
According to the schedule on FOX’s website, there’s no new Zombie Simpsons this Sunday (rerun) or next Sunday (rerunning the movie). And while no new Zombie Simpsons is always good news, it also means we’re going to lack for fresh meat around here. (This week’s Crazy Noises should be along in a day or two.) Fortunately, Splitsider stepped into the content gap this morning with an excellent piece by Chris Morgan titled “The Changing Role of Guest Stars on The Simpsons”.
The conclusion is a little soft, but for the most part the article is enjoyably harsh on Zombie Simpsons. It takes the time to dredge up some of their more pandering and desperate moments, from Britney Spears to that reprehensibly boring boy band episode. In particular, I’d like to highlight this, which comes right after a paragraph that is laced with terms like “wasn’t funny”, “gimmicky”, “poorly executed”, and “groan”:
Things haven’t really changed much since seasons 11 and 12.
That is precisely the problem. Zombie Simpsons is nothing if not stale, and it’s stale because all it does is go through the motions, including the way it handles celebrity voices. The roll call from “The Great Simpsina” is a perfect case in point.
The story concludes with Lisa and Raymondo backstage at the magic competition watching the milk can trick go wrong. It’s going wrong because it’s been sabotaged, and it was sabotaged by four (4) celebrity magicians. Not one, four. They could’ve ended their story the exact same way with a single celebrity guest, but instead they crammed in as many as they could.
This isn’t a recent Zombie Simpsons innovation, they’ve been doing things like this since the show permanently decomposed around Seasons 11 and 12. There have been episodes overflowing with sports stars, journalists and authors. They’ve even larded up on cross promotion with other FOX programs on at least three separate occasions.
As both “Homer at the Bat” and “Krusty Gets Kancelled” make clear, it isn’t about the number of celebrity guests, it’s about why they’re all there. In “Homer at the Bat”, there are nine baseball players because that’s how many guys are on a team. In “Krusty Gets Kancelled”, the avalanche of guests is integral to a story about Krusty making a big, star studded comeback. In “The Great Simpsina” and similar drudgeries it’s more for the sake of more.
Morgan’s article, once again:
Sometimes they play actual characters, but more often than not they play themselves, and usually in a small cameo. In other words, stunt casting. If the writers have a good joke for it, that’s fine, but far too often these guest appearances feel gratuitous. Through 18 episodes this season, there have been 44 guest stars.
That’s a rate of nearly two and a half per. Stunt casting indeed.
Dead Homer Society 
5 responses to “Faded Stars, Failed Stunts”
Remember the days when we’d get new episodes week after week throughout the late winter and through the Spring? Now FOX loves to fuck with everyone with a new episode here and a new episode there in between weeks and weeks of repeats.
Not that I want more Zombie Simpsons, but on principle it’s a bunch of bullshit. As a Family Guy fan – where this is even worse – this pisses the FUCK out of me.
It’s as erratic as Family Guy’s schedule has been the a year or so ago, and just like Family Guy, I’m left here saying, “Does it really take you this long to come up with the idea of throwing another Cleveland-falling-out-of-the-house-in-a-bathtub, someone-falls-to-the-ground-dead, or Homer-getting-hurt-for-no-friggin-reason gag?”
Maybe there’s more to it than that, but maybe I’m giving Zombie Simpsons and Post-Cancellation Family Guy to much credit here.
“Clearly, in the early days of the show, guest stars weren’t about the voice actors themselves, but the characters.” Sums it all up.
Guys, you taking on FG is simply absurd. Yes, that show had its ups and downs, there might be a little too much stupidity in the jokes (which has nothing of the abominating clumsy retardness of ZS), but there is a huge gap between these two shows. And I am pretty much sure that FG will go for at least another 4-5 years without going stale, and even there, it won’t so pathetically linger into oblivion – they’ll just cancel the show, possibly in a funny way like they always do.
ZS had gone canyonero-merchandizing, face it. It became a show that would give out a blowjob only so that you appear in it. The characters aren’t even relevant anymore – there’s fucking props! It’s been at least two years I didn’t hear Homer d’oh, and I’m sure I won’t in any near future. This is atrocious, incredibly pathetic, and somewhat deserving to die.
One different between Simpsons/ZS and FG: Family Guy has never been good. They will hit on something clever, but most episodes are plotless, composed of unfunny vignettes referencing pop culture, to make you go ‘HA! I KNOW WHAT THEY’RE REFERENCING! FUNNY!’ There are no actual characters on the show, just caricactures. Think about it: Simpsons at their prime, they could’ve made an episode revolve around just about any of the 2nd-tier characters. On Family Guy, they struggle to make episodes about the main characters — probably because they’re all so damn unlikeable (I’d say Bryan was somewhat likeable post-cancellation, but is just as annoying as the rest now).