“See all that stuff in there, Homer? That’s why your robot never worked.” – Marge Simpson
The chalkboard gag for Zombie Simpsons this week read “It’s November 6th – – How come we’re not airing a Halloween Show?”. Unfortunately for us, I think they may have actually been confused about it. How else to explain having what passed for the main plot revolve around switching magic robots from good to evil and back again? That wouldn’t have been out of place in a Treehouse of Horror episode and it felt more than a little strange in a normal one.
What I think was the B-plot didn’t fare much better. It involved a lot of screaming, Burns getting punted like a football, and an emergency flashback to wind things up after they got lost halfway through the third act. As if to further highlight how empty the whole thing was, they animated Jane Lynch into a character that looks just like she does. Having done so many celebrities as themselves for so long, they may have done that purely out of habit.
As usual, the episode was packed with weird out of character moments, people appearing and disappearing at random, and all the other classic Zombie Simpsons problems. They even managed to screw up some of their fan service, including the nerds but having them sound nothing like themselves. Unusually, there were a couple of decent backgrounds and sign jokes, but not remotely enough to make it feel like the episode is anything other than boring. After all, when your episode contains clunkers like “A free movie screening? Of course I can go!” and “with none of the poop”, you’ve got problems that a sight gag or two cannot even begin to solve.
Anyway, the numbers are in and they are remarkably similar to last week’s failure. Just 7.97 million people were hard up enough for entertainment last night to watch this thing. Through four weeks Zombie Simpsons is averaging just 7.50 million viewers. Through four episodes last year (including the Halloween show) that number was 7.82. That’s partly the result of one really bad number, but last year at this time Zombie Simpsons was routinely going above eight million viewers and even punched into nine a couple of times. They’re significantly below that at the moment and showing no signs of improving.
Dead Homer Society 
15 responses to “Swarming with Magic Robots”
The only good thing I can say is that Jane Lynch had enough dynamic lines that I was able to notice her doing a good job. I didn’t like the writing of any of her lines, but I still laughed at a couple (including “That’s not very attractive, though”) because of her acting. That stood out to me because I feel like usually the female guest voices have such small parts that they don’t even have room to give a good performance, even when they get voiceover pros like Ellen Degeneres and Kristen Schaal. The episode wasn’t good, but since I expected Jane Lynch to have seven words and no jokes, it was kind of a pleasant surprise.
They did that halloween episode. It was called Clown without Pity
Excellent observation!
“Yup, here’s your problem. Someone set this thing to ‘Evil’.”
Something definitely felt different about this zombiesode to me; I think the “fan service” was it, actually, so I’m glad you mentioned that. It was like the writers saying “oh, we haven’t had Burns in a while. Haven’t had Homer AT HIS JOB in a while. Haven’t had Mrs. Glick in a while (so let’s kill her!).” It was weird, and it reminded me that the only interesting Zombie Simpsons moments nowadays are when they reference their old material.
Flanders and Milhouse got some good lines, and I’m glad you mentioned the sign jokes. This episode was more consistent than most ZS episodes, but it was still flat-out boring for the most part.
That Allen Gregory show is a lot worse though. They just don’t set the bar very high with “Animation Domination”.
Also, it’s pretty much to lame to talk about, but that whole “Nedna” hype machine was really REALLY pointless, wasn’t it? Talk about something they haven’t even bothered with at all. I figured that since there’s the 6 month-ish turnaround time, and (I’m too lazy to check) we’re probably still getting a few leftovers from last season’s production line. Also, the Nedna thing wasn’t anything that would really effect the show in any significant way, I just find it so ridiculous that they hyped it all summer and since the show came back almost 2 months ago, they’ve not mentioned it except for a 1 second scene. I’ve often thought the show would be more interesting if they introduced some continuity and character development, but they’ve already confined themselves to such a rigid structure, the only “changes” they make happen to be along the lines of “okay, Homer gets a new job this episode.” or “okay, the family travels in this episode.” The FEW episodes where they really take any kind of “leaps”, narratively (Trilogy of Error, Eternal Moonshine, whatever), are probably a bit more fondly remembered than actually enjoyed — “interesting” rather than “I want to watch this right now.”
I still think they could tell interesting stories with the characters they have — I mean, they have the best cast of any show, ever — and they could still do funny bits, but they need to hire new writers and producers (don’t believe me? Quite a few stories from The Simpsons comic books over the years are a thousand times funnier, more daring, and way more interesting than anything they’ve shown on the television show in a decade). As long as IAN MAXTONE GRAHAM and AL JEAN are around, the show is going to feel the same.
Ultimately, the mentality is probably just “eh, who gives a fuck? Let’s go through the motions some more.” I mean, I HIGHLY doubt Groening even watches the show at this point. I hope someone can ask him at some point about that, heh.
Anyway, this show is boring and hopeless. Fin.
And there was me thinking the simpsons comics would be a waste of money and there’s a lot of comic book adaptions of tv shows that would make perfect episodes for said tv show. and the whole continuity and character development part is the only reason i voted for nedna and for crying out loud in SEASON 11 they knew that nedna was a ridiculous combination and the episode it was featured in wasn’t even liked much by critcs :@
Weird! I JUST watched that season 11 episode last night. I’d forgotten totally about the Nedna thing!
I HIGHLY reccomend the Simpsons Treehouse of Horror issue from.. 2 years ago, I believe. Edited by sammy harkham, with stories like “Bootleg Slipsonz” by Ben Jones of Paper Rad. The stories are genuinely hilarious, mostly, with WEIRD art styles on many pages. It takes chances and is genuinely funny at times.
The first few issues of the regular Simpsons comic — which I’m sure has been collected — are GREAT, too.
I really wanna check out the Futurama/Simpsons Crossover comic, does anyone have thoughts on that?
I can actually remember Zombie Simpsons episodes using storylines from the comics. For instance, there was a comic about Homer running Moe’s Tavern, and a year later, there was an episode about just that. Despite the episode having R.E.M., I remember the comic being a lot better.
Animation Domination’s “S&M” is Simpsons and McFarlane.
Nice!
Except, to many people, S&M is interesting, entertaining, and can be fun.. and enjoyable…
…
…Simpsons and McFarlane doesn’t have any of that, BUT you definitely do feel punished and it IS painful.
And we’re along for the ride, dealing with the pain week in and week out but many us just won’t stop, like an addiction. Maybe we’re addicted to the pain, and our release is bitching online about the show? Hmm.
Remember when the chalkboard gags were written as something that Bart might plausibly be sentenced to write on the chalkboard as a punishment, rather than the writers’ horribly awkward attempt at meta-humor? I’ll remember “I will not get very far with this attitude” and “The Pledge of Allegiance does not end with ‘Hail Satan’” with much more fondness than shit like “The world may end in 2012, but this show won’t” and “The end of Lost: It was all the dog’s dream. Watch us.”
“Have a great summer, everyone!” was the worst.
Hah, actually “The world may end in 2012, but this show won’t” is more hilarious if it was imagined as a Dead Homer Society gag. Of course, the Simpsons were displaying it with a “hah, look at us, most successful show ever, suck on that” type mentality. But the same sentence as displayed on here would be hilarious, in a facepalming way…
Zombie Simpsons seems to date awfully quickly, but even I was surprised that the blackboard gag was outdated four hours after the episode aired.
Even Family Guy doesn’t date as fast as that and they had a song with the lyrics “tomorrow, october 31, 2011” hopefully if they have common sense they will cut out the date bit like south park did for that plug for the mormon broadway show (only found in the 1st airing) and 5 hours central and mountain ;)