“Thank you, Fat Tony. However, in the future, I would prefer a nondescript briefcase to the sack with a dollar sign on it.” – Mayor Quimby
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 “harassing”).
Today’s episode is 1009, “Mayored to the Mob”. Tomorrow will be 1010, “Viva Ned Flanders”.
Charlie Sweatpants: Ready to get going?
Dave: Let’s.
Mad Jon: Let’s do it
So, starting with "Mayored to the Mob"?
Charlie Sweatpants: Yes.
And the start of the one we’re starting with is easily the best part of either of these two.
Dave: Easily.
Mad Jon: I agree. There were some Zombie issues, but it was definitely the most watchable part of either episode.
Dave: I suppose it’s up for debate where it starts to fall apart.
Mad Jon: The thing that bothered me was the way they end up at the Bi-Mon-Sci-Fi-Con
Charlie Sweatpants: How so, Jon?
Granted, making fun of sci-fi geeks isn’t the world’s most terribly inventive thing, but they didn’t screw it up.
Mad Jon: The "Beats work" "Beats school" kind of rings out to me as the first ‘we need a reason to be at this thing, and not at school and work.’ They didn’t do that for the candy trade show in "Homer Badman".
Charlie Sweatpants: Yeah, that didn’t quite sit well, but at least it was brief.
Mad Jon: Brief it was.
Charlie Sweatpants: But compared to the shit that doesn’t make sense later, it was small potatoes.
Mad Jon: Yes, agreed. Still, like we all agreed to start, it wasn’t bad, I just noticed that, among a few other things, that can be described as trending as far as I am concerned.
Charlie Sweatpants: Oh there were several things here that have gotten much worse over time, like why are Willie, Lenny and Carl all there?
Mad Jon: None of which are dressed up, neither is Frink.
Charlie Sweatpants: Frink and Skinner I get, and I can see Krabappel going (though a joke about how she got dragged there by her boyfriend wouldn’t have hurt).
Mad Jon: I always enjoy the CBG/CBG exchange.
Dave: Yeah, Lenny and Carl’s exchange is cringe inducing.
Charlie Sweatpants: But for the rest of them, it’s one of the earliest examples of how they just cram in characters.
Mad Jon: Agreed.
Charlie Sweatpants: The Comic Book Guy/Girl part is among the best things in the episode.
He goes right for it and flirts with her, but then dismisses it (with great contempt) when she wants him to just comb the sweet tarts out of his beard.
It’s so wonderfully in character for him, and that’s after he bitches about comic book organization and corrects her about the stain.
Mad Jon: It was the best use of CBG in a while, and is the last… forever…ish.
I guess I don’t remember enough about upcoming episodes to defend that contention.
Charlie Sweatpants: Me neither, but at the very least it’s close.
Dave: I mean, even without knowing what’s next I think we can all agree CBG was portrayed in top form here.
Charlie Sweatpants: Speaking of nice exchanges, I always get a crack out of the Neil Armstrong part. The whole thing, including his line about "This is one small step towards firing your ass" always gets me.
Mad Jon: You can actually feel the amazement/panic from his agent.
And, I say this as a complete assumption as I have never been to a comic-con, was probably reasonably accurate.
Charlie Sweatpants: Well, until the riot.
I’m normally very pro-riot in Springfield, but this was so damn canned.
Mad Jon: Of course, I was referring to the fact that the attendees were more interested in the comic book characters than actual space travelers.
Charlie Sweatpants: Oh, that part I very much like. But once Homer starts yelling at and beating the geeks, it’s all downhill.
Dave: Homer’s outrage comes incredibly quickly. And it feels so contrived.
Charlie Sweatpants: The episode doesn’t die fully, there are some good parts pretty much all the way up to the end, but they get fewer and farther between as things go along.
Mad Jon: The scream was reminiscent of the time he punched Mr. Burns in his 104 year-old face.
Charlie Sweatpants: When he punched Burns though, Burns kinda had it coming and Homer’d been simmering for a while. But this was just out of the blue.
Mad Jon: Completely agreed. Not defending the scream, merely stating what came to mind.
There are a few things over which I am torn. I think I like the Body guard school, I most definitely like that it was a division of Ray-Ban, but I think that it needed to be about half as long.
I generally liked Quimby in the episode, but again, he was used to such an extreme he more or less loses the flavor.
Charlie Sweatpants: Body guard school could’ve easily been half as long. Just cutting the damn song would’ve gotten you most of the way there.
Dave: I enjoyed the song. I could have done without the other crap.
Charlie Sweatpants: Quimby, like the episode, goes downhill as things go on. When he’s shamelessly collecting brides and harassing women, he’s pretty good. But when he’s trusting Homer with his life or jogging in front of an open window for some reason, not so much.
Mad Jon: Also, Homer used the sleeper hold 5 times. The first one is sudden and unexpected, and I like it. The other 4 times (over two scenes) didn’t need to happen, and in fact detracted from the first.
Charlie Sweatpants: Agreed.
Mad Jon: But that’s about all I got for things over which I am torn.
Charlie Sweatpants: Of course, they also had him bang his head on the table in case anyone didn’t get it.
Mad Jon: Oh yeah.
Charlie Sweatpants: I’m kinda torn about Mark Hamill. On the one hand, he’s clearly a good sport about everything, and he has quite a few good lines. (When he proudly exclaims that that’s his face next to the pepper steak, for example). On the other hand, there’s way too much fake suspense and "huh?" factor about why he’d even have Homer carry him around or protect him.
The give a shit level is plummeting right before our eyes, and it gives even the good jokes a rather spoiled aftertaste.
Mad Jon: Agreed. I thought I liked Hamill, then I didn’t, but I think he was an appropriate guest voice.
The wackiness quotient is rising for sure.
Charlie Sweatpants: Right when you’ve made peace with the whole insane premise of Homer being a bodyguard, a job for which he is demonstrably unqualified but which doesn’t seem to bother Quimby or anyone else, they ratchet up the fake tension and just keep making this wackier.
Fat Tony wants to kill Quimby? Fine. Fat Tony just happens to be at the dinner theater? Uh, okay. The mobster on stage while Fat Tony beats Quimby with a baseball bat in front of everyone? Fuck.
Mad Jon: He was quite the tap-dancer.
Charlie Sweatpants: At some point I just feel like, "How much more am I going to be asked to put up with before this finally ends?"
Mad Jon: And you were answered with a second helping of the theme to "The Bodyguard".
Dave: And some nonsense about forgetting a light saber to drag it on another 10 seconds.
Mad Jon: Electrifying.
Magnetic.
Dave: Incandescent.
Charlie Sweatpants: Anything else here? I just want this to be over as well.
Mad Jon: Let’s move on then.
I’m readier than ready.
Charlie Sweatpants: To Las Vegas! (Which is apparently a short drive from the Midwest now).
Dead Homer Society 
11 responses to “Crazy Noises: Mayored to the Mob”
“Rats? You promised me dog or higher!”
Good assessment on this one. There are a number of funny jokes here, but the story is pretty thin. An uneven episode, but it’s always been more on the postive side for me.
The ‘Guys and Dolls’ segments tickle me. A later episode would’ve killed time by simply including a segment ripped directly from the show, merely referencing it. The ‘Guys and Dolls’ song sounds very approrpriately cheesey and Broadway-y, and nicely hits the joke hard that Homer has clearly failed to take Quimby somewhere where he can forget about mobsters. On that note, it doesn’t seem all too inappropriate that Fat Tony would be there.
I don’t mind this one at all, though yeah, the plot does get a little tiresome, it’s generally fast paced compared to other ZS episodes.
I love Homer’s derisive comment regarding the theatre: “…RENT, or STOMP, or CLOMP, or some piece of crap…”
This episode would look like a 10/10 if it aired today. Nowadays I’d kill for a joke like “this is one small step towards firing your ass!” or Bi-Mon-Sci-Fi-Con or “Mark Hammill IS Nathan Detroit, pepper steak IS the entree.” Season 10 was trending downward, but it at least had a sense of humor. Seasons 11 and 12 were hideous, though, and the show has been a boring mess ever since.
The riot with Mark Hamil was based on an appearance at a Star Wars convention back in the 80’s when he had to leave (early?) and only had time to sign one autograph. When the crowd found out, a nerd-riot broke out.
Ha! I didn’t know that.
Just want to say I love your site and am in complete agreement with almost everything you say. I differ a bit in that I am much more willing to overlook some zombie qualities (ex. A character showing up out of place) in seasons 8, 9, and 10 because I love the jokes. And the quotability of these episodes.
Anyhoo..the reason I wanted to post is to make a suggestion. When you recap a show, I frequently can’t recall the specific scenes you refer to in your commentary, since while the episode is fresh to you, I may not have seen it in a while. So I’d like to suggest that if you could briefly describe the scene a bit more, it would help me remember it better and be better able to understand what you are talking about. And you don’t have to get in depth with it. I think I’m a big enough fan, as are probably most of your followers, that I’d get it with just a quick explanation.
Just my 2 cents. Thanks for listening.
Thanks for reading, and you’re right, we probably should be more descriptive, especially with these Season 10 episodes. I haven’t seen many of these in a long time, and there are a lot of scenes I’ve completely forgotten.
I like this episode, Mark Hammill actually has point of being on the show. Today I think an appearance would result in Homer beating Mark up while calling him Darth Spock.
By the standards of the rest of season 10 – to say nothing of the zombie seasons thereafter – this episode is gold. Yeah, there are signs of proto-zombieness in “Mayored to the Mob,” but nothing I think that ruins the episode. There are plenty of good moments/jokes, and Mark Hamill does good work both as himself and as the bodyguard instructor (of course, MH enjoyed a latter-day career revival as a voice-over actor, so he’s a lot better at the mic than most of the stiff-reading guest stars of Zombie Simpsons).
“(of course, MH enjoyed a latter-day career revival as a voice-over actor, so he’s a lot better at the mic than most of the stiff-reading guest stars of Zombie Simpsons)”
I forgot about that, and I beat Wing Commander’s III and IV.