For the third summer in a row, we at the Dead Homer Society are looking to satisfy your off-season longing for substandard commentary on substandard Simpsons. This summer we’ll be looking at Season 10. Why Season 10? Because we’ve already done Seasons 8 and 9 and we can’t put it off any longer. Prior to Season 10, we watched as the show started falling over, this is when it fell over. And while the dust wouldn’t settle completely for another season or so, there is no bigger gap in quality than the one between Season 9 and Season 10. Since we prefer things to remain just as they were in 1995, we’re sticking with this chatroom thing instead of some newer means of communication that we all know just isn’t as good. This text has been edited for clarity and spelling (especially on “chaperone”).
Today’s episode is 1001 “Lard of the Dance”. Tomorrow will be 1002 “The Wizard of Evergreen Terrace”.
Charlie Sweatpants: Lard of the Dance?
Mad Jon: Indeed.
Dave: Sure.
Mad Jon: It had been quite awhile since I’ve seen this one.
Dave: Lisa Kudrow, what happened to her and who cares?
Charlie Sweatpants: I couldn’t say I care, but she was the best actress of the three chicks on Friends.
I thought she did well here, albeit in a less than subtle part.
Mad Jon: I’m not really sure either, but she was very much big time when this episode was made.
At least we knew where she stood.
Dave: That’s a tacit admission that you watch/watched Friends.
Shame on you.
Charlie Sweatpants: Disagree.
Dave: Okay, well that’s another conversation entirely.
Charlie Sweatpants: I doubt I’ve seen more than three episodes all the way through, but I do watch a lot of movies, and she’s been in more good ones than the other two.
Mad Jon: Hey man, I love me some Ace Ventura.
Charlie Sweatpants: I said "more".
Mad Jon: Very well.
Charlie Sweatpants: Back to the episode . . .
Dave: Yes. Sorry.
Charlie Sweatpants: Alex is a bit too over the top in places for my taste, but overall it’s not a bad concept.
Mad Jon: It was a good use of a guest voice. Much better than the two to three lines we get out of them nowadays.
Charlie Sweatpants: What bugs me, and we’ve seen this a lot in Zombie Simpsons, is the way they’ve whittled the school down to just a few students regardless of class. We’ve seen the other girls in Lisa’s class multiple times, but here Alex is hanging out with a mix of Lisa and Bart’s class.
Theoretically Sherri and Terri are fourth graders while Alex is a second grader (though we never see her in class), why would they hang out with her?
I know that’s a nitpick, but this episode does presage the way they just dropped all pretense at realism in a year or two.
Mad Jon: Good point, you wouldn’t ever see Lisa eating lunch with the twins, as far as I knew Janie was her ‘best’ friend.
But I guess the plot idea really needed a lot of familiar female voices. Which I kinda get.
It didn’t feel wrong, is what I guess I’m getting at. Although your point remains valid.
Charlie Sweatpants: Try this then, in "Dancin’ Homer", Lisa had to say goodbye to a bunch of girls we never see much. In "Lisa vs. Malibu Stacy" she gets ostracized for complaining about what the doll says. In "Summer of 4ft 2" she gets ignored, but in each case they weren’t afraid to put some new girls in there.
Here it’s like they know they’re coasting, just grabbing familiar characters because they either don’t want to, are afraid to, or are too lazy to create new ones. They brought back Allison from "Lisa’s Rival" for fuck’s sake.
Mad Jon: Excellent explanation.
Charlie Sweatpants: Thanks. While I’m on the subject of them detaching from realism, another thing that bugs me here is the way Lisa has become a fixture of the school such that Skinner leans on her to do everything.
Mad Jon: Yeah that was very ZS the way Skinner assumes Lisa Simpson is the only one raising her hand.
Dave: In what way? Hasn’t Lisa always been the taker of thankless jobs?
Charlie Sweatpants: She has, but here Skinner asks her to chaperone the dance.
Mad Jon: Yeah, but he really piled it on this time. "You’d be doing all the work" and such and such.
Charlie Sweatpants: Where once she was just a smart kid, here it’s like she’s part of the faculty.
Mad Jon: Before she was involved. Here she’s, yes Charlie, basically a teacher.
Dave: Ok, I’m on board.
Mad Jon: A subtle change I suppose, that I never really thought of when watching this episode in the past.
Charlie Sweatpants: This feels like so many of the Season 9 episodes (which makes sense since it’s a holdover from the previous year) in that the structure is starting to crumble but there are a lot of excellent jokes of the quick and funny variety.
Mad Jon: Before this week I was trying to think back to season 10 episodes I didn’t hate and was coming up blank, but I totally forgot about this one.
Charlie Sweatpants: Lisa talking about Malibu Stacy’s "achievable chest", the "Acne Grease" company, and Apu’s list of products that are made of grease spring to mind.
Mad Jon: I know what I hate, and I don’t hate this.
Dave: It’s not terrible in the same vein as much of ZS.
Charlie Sweatpants: Agreed.
This also contains one of the first ballot hall of fame signage jokes, "Donner’s Party Supplies" as a store, and then a sign in the window reading "Winter Madness Sale!".
Mad Jon: I also appreciated Milhouse in this episode. He was a little over the top, but I laughed at his shtick, especially the "plenty of Milhouse" bit. It reminds me of the episode where Lisa refers to him as a big sister.
Charlie Sweatpants: I’m a little more down on the Milhouse parts. They allude to him and Lisa getting together way back in "Lisa’s Wedding", and they make it explicit in "Lisa’s Date with Density", but here it kinda feels like they’re running it into the ground a bit in places.
Mad Jon: I can see that, but it was still in the mood for it I guess.
It was familiar.
Charlie Sweatpants: My discomfort with it goes back to what I was talking about earlier, the way they’re not even trying to ground the show, and how all the kids are basically in one big pot together now.
But we’ve covered that already. Thoughts on Homer’s grease plot?
Mad Jon: Well here we go, time for the crazy schemes to really pick up pace.
Charlie Sweatpants: No shit.
Mad Jon: It wasn’t as bad as nearly anything that comes in later seasons, and there were funny jokes mixed into the zaniness, but it was definitely a bad omen of episodes to come.
He pulls his kid out of school and quits his job to go collect grease?
Charlie Sweatpants: Yeah, Homer’s "go get ’em" attitude is definitely disconcerting.
Mad Jon: He trashes his wife’s car because she failed to hide the keys well enough?
Dave: It’s abrasive, nonsensical. But the plot writes itself!
Charlie Sweatpants: This was the man who couldn’t build a soapbox derby racer, and here he’s got grease traps built into his car.
Mad Jon: Which fall off because he ignored his own suspicion that he should tie them down somehow…
Charlie Sweatpants: Yeah, but then they work.
I will say, I do love two of his lines here: when he says "Not the way I quit", and his "No, through savings and wise investments".
Mad Jon: Was the "Not the way I quit" from this episode or the next?
Charlie Sweatpants: This one.
Oh shit, no you’re right, it wasn’t.
Damn, that’s what I get for watching things back to back.
Mad Jon: Well, I can see why you’d confuse them… The next one really ramps up the insanity.
But the transitions could be easily interchanged.
Charlie Sweatpants: I’ll reiterate my point though, in that he does get in some good lines. This is the episode with "My god, you’re greasy."
Mad Jon: That’s very funny. Especially the way the kid reacts.
Charlie Sweatpants: His prayer is also good, both initially and then when he says "screw it".
Dave: Delivery was spot on in both cases.
Charlie Sweatpants: It was, which goes a long way in my book. This episode clearly isn’t The Simpsons we came to love, but it’s got a lot of funny lines to keep me interested, and so, as Jon said, I don’t hate this.
Mad Jon: I also feel like the plot synchronization required almost no Deus Ex like we would normally need in a Zombie episode.
Charlie Sweatpants: Yeah, as much as I’m not fond of the whole "chase through the duct" thing, they did tie up nicely together.
And I’d be remiss if I didn’t point out that we had a couple of commenters (Ed note: here) mention how Lisa’s trepidation at getting sucked into the hassles of adulthood spoke to them when they were girls. Connecting with actual childhood experiences is one of the things that first endeared the show to me (not surprising as I was a child at the time), and it’s good that they were still doing that.
As the craziness ratcheted up and the kids became more adult like, that faded.
Mad Jon: Agreed. One last thing I am not so happy about is the clear links between the violence Homer used to face, and the violence he faces nowadays.
Homer gets hit with a shovel in this episode, and it hurts, and he falls down. That was ok, but as the episode goes on, he really starts to turn into invincible Zombie Homer.
Charlie Sweatpants: Yeah, they lost their sense of proportion. The hose that sucks in his whole face is lame for being too over the top cartoony, but when it’s stuck to his ass I smile.
Mad Jon: That would have worked even better if he hadn’t removed his eye from its socket a mere 20 seconds earlier.
But I also smile at that.
Charlie Sweatpants: Yup.
Okay, I jumped the gun a few minutes ago, but is there anything else here, or are we ready to head for Menlo Park, New Jersey?
Mad Jon: To the turnpike!
Dead Homer Society 
9 responses to “Crazy Noises: Lard of the Dance”
I have to say that I’m not a big fan of season 10, but it certainly has the appeal that current ZS doesn’t have. I actually enjoy this episode in particular even though it does show quite a few ZS qualities.
I disagree about seasons 9 to 10 being the biggest drop off in quality; while I am not big on either season, I don’t think true zombification occurs until season 11. Seasons 1-10 are like a completely different show than seasons 11 – present.
I can’t wait until you guys do a Crazy Noises for “Simpsons Bible Stories,” which is one of my most hated episodes of all time due to it taking the format of your traditional THOH without rhyme or reason and the weird-as-Hell (literally) ending.
Is it so unlike Homer
Sorry, accidentally posted there before I had chance to finish! Is it so unlike Homer to take up hair brained schemes like this? Tracing back to Lisa’s Rival for different reasons, he neglected his day job to try to make money from stolen sugar, so it stands to reason that he’d do the same for grease… maybe I’m missing something though.
I dunno that there is such a massive drop between 9 and 10 either… it’s mainly a decline in the number of watchable episodes per season (starting from 8), until 12, which is pure Zombie.
“I dunno that there is such a massive drop between 9 and 10 either… it’s mainly a decline in the number of watchable episodes per season (starting from 8), until 12, which is pure Zombie.”
That’s the same way I like to measure, and it’s precisely why I think the biggest gap is between 9 and 10. I’m sure we’ll get into this more as the summer moves along, but there’s one episode I basically never watch in 7, three or four in 8, and seven or eight in 9. In 10 there’s only five or so that I do watch.
“And I’d be remiss if I didn’t point out that we had a couple of commenters (Ed note: here) mention how Lisa’s trepidation at getting sucked into the hassles of adulthood spoke to them when they were girls. Connecting with actual childhood experiences is one of the things that first endeared the show to me (not surprising as I was a child at the time), and it’s good that they were still doing that.”
I think I was one of them (I didn’t say much) but anyway…
I’m still pretty fond of this episode. Granted, it does have all the flaws you pointed out (the mixture of girls, Homer’s grease plot), but I like it because I still think it has some relevance. Speaking here as a doll collector (yes, picture me as a female Smithers in that respect), I do see a lot of things aimed at girls and it does seem like they grow up too fast, especially nowadays. In fact, I tend to remember what Lisa said to Alex quite often.
Anyway… I don’t hate this, either.
Yeah, I agree that my most of my problems with this episode come from the grease plot. The A-plot I think might be the last episode Lisa episode where it felt like they actually had a decent idea of something that girls might care about and relate to, as opposed to thinking “We haven’t done a Lisa episode in a while so we need to think of something.”
It may lack the depth that earlier seasons had, but I don’t hate this episode.
As for upcoming episodes, I can’t wait for the Crazy Noises on “D’ohin’ In the Wind”–not that I hate it, or think it’s terrible, but quite the opposite. To me at least, it’s a strong candidate for the most solid (non-THoH) episode of Season 10.
Homer has a half-logical reason to become a hippie (that being his mom’s lifestyle), we see him at the plant, and later on it’s implied that he still works at the plant after going granola. When he screws up with the Frisbee in the Juicilator and then uses the “personal” vegetables, it’s by the more classic Homer approach–well meaning, but misguided. I also liked the whole hallucination bit, as it comes about naturally from the plot.
There’s good lines throughout, from Smithers’ response to Mr. Burns’ “We need new blood” to “You can’t, like, own a potato, man…it’s one of Mother Earth’s creatures” (see the Useful Legal Tidbit on the right-hand side) to Officer Eddie’s (in what is one of his best lines) “Damn longhairs never learn, Chief.” Let’s not forget the whole “Demon in the sack” thing, Krusty’s “Weirdos!”, or George Carlin’s guest-star appearance.
This episode does have its flaws, in getting Homer to hippiedom and back, as well as the gophers randomly attacking him twice, but compared to other Season 10 episodes, they’re virtually non-existant.
Just my $.02 …
I agree with you on that one, Doh-in the Wind cracks me up. I love Homer to the Max as well.
I’m glad you mentioned the “My god, you’re greasy” bit, which still gets me laughing when I see it. I did like the B-plot more than the main story. This episode is more tolerable than many others later on in the season.