“I got a wife and kids.  Oh, that reminds me, they’re probably wondering where I went.” – Larry

With its phony kidnapping and pointless police chase, “Burns, Baby Burns” does not have what you’d call a great ending.  The story didn’t really have anywhere to go, so they had Larry explain that he had to go back to his home planet, turned up some music, and had Homer tell Marge (standing in for the audience), “It doesn’t have to make sense.”  In other words, the admittedly nonsensical dance party was the Season 8 writers at least having the courtesy to acknowledge that they had backed themselves into a corner.

No such admissions or winks are likely to be forthcoming from Zombie Simpsons.  But that didn’t stop them from using the same ending in an even more nonsensical way.  Not only does music start playing for some reason, it continues to play while we see the previously murderous funeral home directors dance along with the people they were just trying to kill.  Even that wasn’t enough weirdness however, as that head shaking scene pulls back to reveal Mrs. Glick and Jesus dancing as well.

On the one hand, it makes sense in a “whatever, no one is going to care or remember anyway” kind of way.  On the other hand, it’s pretty insulting to the audience.  It’s one thing to be apathetic toward your fans, it’s another to brag about it.

[Note: We had Dave only briefly before he mysteriously vanished on us.  A subsequent e-mail turned up a picture of a gaping hole in his ceiling.  Leaky pipes are a bitch.]

Charlie Sweatpants: Shall we get started?

Mad Jon: Let’s

Charlie Sweatpants: Like so much of Zombie Simpsons, this one gets worse and worse the more I think about it.

The first time I saw it, I thought it wasn’t too awful by their standards, more or less because it had a couple of decent background jokes.

Dave: I don’t remember much

  Robot bears

Mad Jon: I can see that. It was also my initial reaction

Charlie Sweatpants: But the more I think about even those, the less they seem to matter and the more it dawns on me just how awful both plots were, how wasted Jane Lynch was, how many many MANY times they had people appear and disappear.

Mad Jon: Again, agreed. The more I think about it, the more I can only picture Homer begging or having something physically affect him. Or Marge in a variety show type comic relief appearance, or replayed joke/ideas that were shadows of their formal selves.

Charlie Sweatpants: Yeah, what was with Marge in the shower?

Dave: It was post-modern humor, duh.

Charlie Sweatpants: It was post-something.

Mad Jon: And seriously, Jane Lynch is a funny individual, I will actually sit through occasional Glee episodes just to hear a few of her derogatory comments.

Dave: Kidding. I don’t know what the fuck was going on with that.

Mad Jon: I was waiting for Marge to say "Now here’s Roy!"

Charlie Sweatpants: The Jane Lynch thing was really frustrating, because she was nice, then she was evil, then she was incompetent.

And if getting hugged sets her into a murderous rampage, fine, whatever. But why wasn’t that what made her start hating Homer in the first place?

The whole "she goes nuts thing" just fell right the fuck out of the sky with about four minutes left.

Mad Jon: Yeah, that was convenient and out of place. But we had to get Homer back in the position that he rarely occupies. You know, as a SNPP employee.

Charlie Sweatpants: I thought of you when they actually showed him at the plant, but as they proceeded to make it nothing like him actually have a job there, even one he sucks at, I figured you’d sour on it quickly.

Mad Jon: It was moderately to severely frustrating.

Charlie Sweatpants: Burns appeared and disappeared a couple of times, they changed his office for no real reason, and the Homer was allowed to just show up on the stage.

Mad Jon: Also Homer got to do his Zombie speak-in-a-loud-whisper deally.

Charlie Sweatpants: Yeah, that’s never good, like he’s being sarcastic just for the audience’s benefit. "Stage whisper" isn’t something a guy like him should be doing much, if ever.

Mad Jon: And I guess no angry rant about this would be complete with out mentioning the paycheck scene.

Charlie Sweatpants:  Oh, that was painful.

Mad Jon: As much as I hated that plot, I am actually more upset with the robo seal / Bart and Martin reunion.

Charlie Sweatpants: By all means, proceed.

Mad Jon: Let’s start with the Bart/Martin combo.

  We’ve seen this before, and it was good.

This was a rehash of that with Martin forcing some extra nerdy phrases that weren’t believable.

  Next, and this may be my biggest issue, was Milhouse.

Charlie Sweatpants: It’s like they’ve decided him having a crush on Lisa is getting old, so they’re making him stalk Bart . . . or something.

Mad Jon: The t-shirt?

I am used to Milhouse embarrassing himself. In fact it used to be quite hilarious. Now it’s a complex, I think he may need professional help.

  But what rivals that for my biggest complaint is the simple plot foreshadowing they did with the crossed wires.

If this was an episode of Dora the Explorer, I could see that being subtle yet effective.

  But, having never seen an episode of Dora, I have to assume that even Zombie Simpsons is at least aiming for an audience with a higher intelligence level.

Charlie Sweatpants: The crossed wires thing was annoying, especially since it apparently gave them razor sharp teeth.

Mad Jon: This is, of course, overlooking the run on jokes, like Frink and Miss Wyoming, the fact that the one nerd’s voice was completely different, and Super Nintendo Chalmers still doesn’t care about any other school in his district.

Charlie Sweatpants: No need to overlook them completely. There was plenty to dislike here.

Mad Jon: Also that apparently there is a worm hole in the Nerd Bunker that allows them to automatically show up at the old folks home after remote-controlling the sealbots for their entire journey.

Charlie Sweatpants: Most of those run on jokes were just that lame and desperate fan service.

Mad Jon: Also Nambla.

Charlie Sweatpants: Characters appear and disappearing was happening so often I almost lost track. It was nice of the school to let Grampa and the Old Jewish Guy just walk onto the playground during recess.

Mad Jon: Very accommodating.

Charlie Sweatpants: Not to mention Burns going to the Simpson home, the aforementioned geek wormhole, and Nelson appearing in Bart’s bedroom.

Mad Jon: Fair enough, I was wrong to single out the one wormhole when apparently they were having a convention in this episode.

I apologize to everyone who had a hand in that poor excuse for plot development.

Charlie Sweatpants: The one at the end was the worst. It was almost enough to distract me from the cheap keyboard music that accompanied the roboseals to the old folks home.

Mad Jon: Excuse me, poor excuses.

Charlie Sweatpants: And let’s not forget the little dance party.

Mad Jon: And man, the ending. It couldn’t fall apart around itself fast enough.

My notes actually say, "So Nothing! Let’s Dance!"

Charlie Sweatpants: Somewhere Rodney Dangerfield weeps.

I would like to briefly mention the Paul Blart non-parody.

Mad Jon: Please

Charlie Sweatpants: I thought "Written in a Week" on the marquee was kinda funny, but it rapidly made me think of this entire episode. Compare that to, say, Earnest Goes Somewhere Cheap from "Cape Feare" or Earnest Needs a Kidney from "Bart the Lover".

  I’d submit that Paul Blart is a decent 2010s equivalent to the Earnest movies, and this gave it way more respect and screen time than it deserves.

Mad Jon: Agreed. Kevin James isn’t really Ernest, but somewhere some dude 20 years older than me is saying that Jim Varney isn’t really ‘so and so’.

Still, I didn’t find it funny. So there.

Charlie Sweatpants: I just meant it as a quick comparison. Where you can see the difference is that in the before time, in the long long ago, they just went through it real quickly. Now they think it’s okay to take a bunch of time and show scenes to make it clear to everyone that Paul Blart isn’t funny.

Mad Jon: I would say that maybe we can lump this kind of thing in with that whole foreshadowing thing I bitched about earlier. Someone in the group writing session probably said, "I dunno, maybe we should play this out more, I think people won’t understand that we are making fun of Paul Blart."

Charlie Sweatpants: Zombie Simpsons has never been big on trusting the audience to get things. If at all possible, they will bludgeon it into our faces.

  So you might be right there.

Mad Jon: They are like that friend that no one in the group really likes because he keeps feeling the need to explain his un-funny joke even more.

  Kind of like I just did there.

Charlie Sweatpants: Don’t be so hard on yourself. You’re working in ephemeral text only, they’ve got voice actors, animation, and (one assumes) an editing process.

  They shouldn’t have to explain the joke.

Mad Jon: Thanks for believing in me.

Anymore crime scenes worth investigating? Or for that matter, anything you feel like not un-praising?

Charlie Sweatpants: I dunno. This one was so all over the place. From Homer and Burns stretching and being physically kicked around, to the surprise villains in the funeral home industry, to the sudden appearance of – I cannot believe they did this – Dancing Jesus, I just don’t know what there is to say.

Mad Jon: Only because you hit it on the head, I would like to re-iterate how correct you were in your original statement.

  5 minutes after I first watched this, I was thinking "huh, I guess during our chat I will pull out the ‘more boring than bad’ defense."

  Then I started thinking about it.

Then I started chatting about it with you guys, and I couldn’t stop the hate from leaving my fingers.

  But yeah, I don’t really have much more to add either.

Charlie Sweatpants: Okay then, let’s hope Dave’s not somewhere dancing with Jebus.

Mad Jon: Still would be a better use of his time than this.

Edit: As requested in comments, here’s the picture Dave sent: