Dave fled the country again (the man really doesn’t like Zombie Simpsons), and I don’t know how to do blood the way he does in Photoshop, but I’d say the image above speaks for itself. We are now literally swarming with magic robots:
Mr. Burns replaces all of Springfield Power Plant’s employees with robots but decides to keep Homer as the sole human worker. With unemployment at an all-time high and mechanical arms operating the workplace, Springfield becomes a dismal and humorless place. But when Homer’s machine-programmed peers start to turn on the community and his former real-life employees come to the rescue, they all realize that robots can’t replace human friends.
So, yeah. What was a throwaway gag in “Last Exit to Springfield” is now an entire episode. (Sorry for getting this up late. Slipped my mind.)
Dead Homer Society 
30 responses to “Sunday Preview: Them, Robot”
The plot hole in the climax aside (HOW THE HELL DID THE PEOPLE OF SPRINGFIELD KNOW THAT HOMER & BURNS WERE IN TROUBLE?!), I really liked this one! And I liked this one MUCH more than the other “robots go on a rampage” episode this season…which was aired earlier.
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I’m combing the episode guides, and I can find episodes as early as Season 7 that I like less than this one. Hey, Season 6 has a clip show, so that’s a freebie. Too easy? Ehhhh, I really remember Fear Of Flying being kind of weak, but it’s been a while since I’ve seen it. I’m not saying tonight’s episode won’t suffer on a rewatch, either.
This really could have been a lot worse.
Fear of Flying gave us “this lesbian bar doesn’t have a fire exit. Enjoy your death trap, ladies!” And also Krazy Klown Airlines, and the guy who won’t accept Homer as anything but a pilot. “And I keep telling you you flyboys crack me up.” Thank you, come again.
I forgot about those! Thanks! Great memories.
GUY INCOGNITO.
There ya go: http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/846/themzombies.jpg/
Wasn’t the show already swarming with magic robots earlier this season when Bart and Martin made those killer robot toy seals?
Boy, I really hope somebody got fired for that blunder!
(But seriously so many magic robots ughhhh)
Okay,
1) the couch gag… hahaha! “too big to fail” – THE Simpsons? Really? You guys failed years ago, epically.
2) Homer’s sound wave destruction montage: was all this supposed to be funny? Same for liquor transformation.
3) Burns cowering over a death of one employee. THE Burns? The guy for whom people are garbage, really? Moreover, where did he acquire robots? Was there some pun intent for “Burns Industries” or something?
4) App-related jokes really start to piss me off.
5) And for what reason exactly was Homer alone kept? Morphine-induced Burns delirium? Did not see it.
6) Homer’s first interaction with robots = another unnecessary jerkass screaming that requires volume lowering.
7) Burning robots pile sequence is not only weird, it feels like sketch comedy phrase after another.
8) As for the rest of the episode, as usual it doesn’t go anywhere or resolve anything, level of zombieness equal to or greater than “Bart becomes street artist” plot.
Verdict: meh.
Mmmmm. Morphine.
I’ll be honest…. this is the first episode I’ve turned completely off after the first 5 minutes or so. I have stuck with the show through thick and thin, sickness and health, real Simpsons and.. well.. this zombie shit. I’ve seen every episode. I’ve made excuses, exceptions… I’ve tried to see the good in the very very bad. I just couldn’t do it last night. Even as someone who thought last week’s episode had some decent laughs and gags, this episode was just too poor for me to even try to get through. I finally just gave up.
Granted, I’ll probably download it later to see what I missed but god. Something about last night just rubbed me the wrong way immediately. I listened to Lord Finesse and was a lot happier.
I gave up on this show years ago. I don’t even watch it on FOX for the sake of ratings. I just torrent it later the same day or another day. And I really hope they hit the 4 million bar this year, that’s fucking low, even lower than most of Family Guy.
What’s the aim of this blog?
Read the manifesto. That should give you the answers you seek. The link is under the banner at the top.
Short answer? To celebrate the good, to insult the bad.
Oh, ok.
It’s like killing a rockstar to make it a legend
Yeah, cept the fucking rockstar won’t die.
I believe it’s more like burying a dead rock legend so he quits literally stinking up the stage, all the while his roadies keep booking him on more tours and insisting, no, he’s still totally alive and shredding that axe right now.
That roadkill robot sketch was just drawn out and went on for far too long. Ditto for the part where Homer gradually escalates his question to screaming and yelling. God, I hate they keep dragging out that trope.
That being said, I kind of enjoyed this episode, but when the tropes were painful… oy, they were painful.
> “We are now literally swarming with magic robots”
Weren’t we literally swarming with magic robots in season 6’s Itchy and Scratchy Land?
This looks like a job for Compare and Contrast!
Chaos Theory aside, those robots were rooted in science/science-fiction.
I thought Brent Spiner as the voice for the androids was a clever cameo and the idea on its own (automated workforce leads to unemployment) is a decent sci-fi tale, but as usual Zombie Simpsons doesn’t get to the heart of the matter and ends up with jerkass tomfoolery.
And did Homer pass his drug test or not?
Huh? What drug test?.. Ummm whah? What Homer?
Pointless episode. This is the kind of episode that would have only worked if it was utterly hilarious – it wasn’t (there were a few moments I liked though).
Here, I did the honors of bloodifying the picture.
http://postimage.org/image/4vxuehxd1/
…I think the picture speaks for itself as is. No amount of blood can make it any worse.
I didn’t think this was an inherently terrible idea at least. If you replace the androids with more traditional robot machinary and instead focused on seeing Homer slowly go crazy trying to cope with his isolation and lonliness during work hours as the episode leads into the climax of him going full on nuts and trying to become all chummy with the factory machinary. Maybe the straw that breaks the camel’s back would be something really minor like the machines not reciprocating his water cooler, small talk ( I joke that I found SUPER funny until they ran it into the ground in typical ZS manner.) Then he could go nuts destroy the machinary and lie to Burns that it broke by itself, Burns with an inherent distrust of technology believes him hires back his slacker employees and the plant is back to being barely operational.
It’s base but it HAS to be better than what I just watched.
I actually thought it would go more Matrix-wise, as in Homer teaching robots how to be “bad” (Bender’s cameo would’ve been fantastic here!), then they realize they’re smarter than him and turn on him and Burns, which results in either a) Burns calling down some missile destroying them, and gets the damage blamed on Homer’s next paycheck or b) robots die due to some weird disease, like after seeing how Springfield is far away from the perfect city image, so their programming goes virulent, etc. Sure, under these conditions we’d forcibly go through another cyberdomination parody, but that would’ve at least gone somewhere and have a point. What we saw yesterday clearly had none.
You’re right, it would be better if Homer was surrounded by less anthropomorphic machinery and his attempt at conversing was after a long period of isolation. Having him gab with the robots immediately just makes him look like an idiotic child.
[…] swarming magic robots this season, “Replaceable You”. In case you also forgot (though not everyone did), that was the one where Bart and Martin build an army of robot seals who turn evil and then good […]