Image bloodied by Dave.
After an exhaustive ten second search, I gave up on finding a preview image for tonight’s Krabappel-And-Flanders-Stayed-Together story. Instead I just grabbed the above from that delightfully clumsy social media campaign they flopped with last summer. Here’s the details:
When the town of Springfield discovers that Ned and Edna have secretly gotten engaged, Marge offers to throw them a congratulatory reception. However, bringing everyone together makes them all realize that no marriage is perfect. Meanwhile, Edna tries to help Ned’s children become more socially acceptable by changing some of the rules.
The most worrisome phrase in there is “makes them all realize”; we may be in for one of those one-story-per-segment episodes. Feh. On the plus side, in just 170 hours we’ll be done with Season 23.
Dead Homer Society 
29 responses to “Sunday Preview: Ned ‘N Edna’s Blend”
The only reason I voted yes was because it would give them something new to work with but now erm well of all the permanent changes they could make it had to be THIS!, I can’t believe it’s been a year :O
Am I the only one wondering what’s so “socially unacceptable” about Rod and Todd? They seemed more naive than anything else?
What could be more satirical than a respectful, almost jokeless passion play?
There’s not much I hate more than continuity creeps, but I gotta ask: Since the only previous time we’ve seen Flanders’s beatnik parents is the same episode where we learned Flanders’s speecherino is a direct result of the creepy behavior therapy only he himself went through, why are they talking like that?
BOTH of them talk like Flanders instead of freaky beatniks :/ but then again we’ve seen Flanders extended family talk like that too hmmm :/
Food for thought: if Flanders himself is 60 years old in the series, how old are his parent supposed to be? 80-85-90 at the least? They surely didn’t look like it in the episode (especially if we’re talking about late 50s beatniks who are probably in that very age range today).
Wow, way to piss all over the “Everyone else loves Ned Flanders” song…
I was going to write this one off as a big bag of nothing, until they HAD to ruin one of the best songs in the entire series. I now want to find whoever thought that was a good idea and just tear off some kinda limb and beat him with it.
What actually happened? :/
The song started out normally, but once they got up to what I expected to be the “Not me!” part, they stopped it and started this rap song that I don’t even remember because my rage drowned it out.
More shameless obsession with ‘keeping up the times’ then? and next week on ZS…. OH FUCKING GOD! that episode will make this one look halfway decent GRRR! and what is the production code for this ep?
Odd they should try to keep up with the times via hip hop. It was already popular when the show first came out.
Oh well, it can’t be worse than the Ke$ha opening in Season 21.
That ain’t no rap. It’s a shitty popsicle parody of what rap was thought to be like in the mid-90s, when it was emerging. Even the Mr. Plow rap was better.
“Even the Mr. Plow rap was better.”
I know. The song was so half assed it wouldn’t get any up votes if it were something a fan put on YouTube.
You know who actually made the rap version of the Mr. Plow song? Moby. Who only did it for fun, but that 20th anniversary special played it.
Speaking of continuity…didn’t Rod and Todd ALREADY go to Springfield Elementary?
Yeah, the main point of the episode was that nothing made sense. None of it.
I don’t understand how the writers go on making these episodes without learning anything about fundamental story telling.
The episode starts out simple enough, Homer and his family and Ned are in a religious play for no reason! Some generic play director makes Homer play as ‘jesus’ with Ned getting jealous, it’s a questionable start but the premise sounds good so far. An accident happens on the play where Homer falls on Ned which has him needing medical attention, he gets into the ambulance only to be stopped by Edna and telling everyone they secretly married.
The problem here is Edna was in no prior scene until the ambulance came, she wasn’t there during the castings, she wasn’t there to give support to Ned and not to let his pride get in the way, she was probably in the audience but it was all a blink-and-you-miss-it appearance.
‘Homer badman’ didn’t start with Homer and marge at the candy convention only to have homer accused of sexual harassment a scene later, it was all put together carefully with Homer explaining to the kids about the candy convention and why they can’t come, Marge getting a babysitter, and Homer peeling the gummie venus de milo off the babysitters butt.
‘ned’n’edna’ could of worked a lot better if it gave a reason why the family is in the play, why this play even exist and edna having an appearance before the accident, instead they wasted time doing a lousy avatar couch gag.
Other problems in this episode include but not limited too:
-Rod and Todd have always been at Springfield Elementary, not some random over designed church school.
-The pointless scene with Lisa and Marge at a clothing store
-The claymation nightmare
-the awkward scenes with Ned in the simpsons house and the tacked on part with bart being in trouble because of a dolphin in the tub (this was probably going to/is going to be a B plot some day)
-the completely random school assembly and Ned making up with Edna.
-The final scene with Homer as jesus.
Really wish I knew what exactly the writing process for this show is, because a lot of these jokes all flat, while others could be simply improved by a single word replaced in the script (instead of the kids cheering for Ned and Edna at the assembly they could of went ‘ew’ or boo’ed)
The gasps the children made didn’t sound sarcastic. And yeah, the kids were too cheerful, as were Lunchlady Doris and Mr. Largo when they gave their little “assembly.” It’s too weird seeing them smiling.
“I don’t understand how the writers go on making these episodes without learning anything about fundamental story telling.”
But Lisa, those are cartoons! They’re not supposed to make sense!
I was just thinking about the episode again and my mind’s drawing a blank at the moment, but I remember they already did a gag in an episode where they gave out all the test scores. Anyone remember the episode?
It was “How The Test Was Won,” was from last season or so. They were taught like a mnemonic device, but the kids were still bored with the “lesson.”
After all that, we don’t see Rod and Todd again. What happened after Ned and Edna reached a compromise?
Just as I was thinking “You know, why bother doing the whole Nedna thing if they aren’t going to do anything with it?” this comes out. I guess I don’t know what I want, except for them to have never done the Nedna thing in the first place.
Haven’t watched the episode yet, but I’m sure it will be painful.
To borrow some wrestling lingo here…. “Who booked this crap?”
Besides anything already covered here, I’d say the chalkboard gag “Call your mom during commercials” was ass-kickingly hurtful. I mean, not only is this hardly a joke (they’ve been passing messages like that since a couple of years now, only to show that the staff “cares” about holidays or something), it doesn’t make a pea of sense if you think why would Bart be punished to write such a phrase. I mean, what, he didn’t call Marge on Mother’s Day or something? Anyway, it looks like a commercial device there (just as much as anything else left in this show).
Also, every character having a smartphone is really REALLY pissing me off now. I get it guys, you want people to like you on Facebook and tweet about your jokes. But apple advertizing? Wow, with Homer’s IQ he should’ve definitely had Android instead lol
Hmm. Probably the best episode this season. Which isn’t saying much. But eh. Entertaining enough, what can I say?
I agree with most of the negative stuff posted above but it had more good lines (notice they made fun of themselves a few times). Probably the best episode this season besides the Inception parody (which had plenty of stupid shit but, again, actually had more than two funny lines).
I don’t really see how the the clumsy blograp parody after the “Everybody Loves Ned Flanders” really made a difference. Notice after the “rap”, it went into the Simpsons theme. Did it ruin the Simpson them too? No. It was just an end-credits medley and it wasn’t bad at all.
Anyway, I’m going to go ahead and guess next week’s episode will be the worst this season, if not the worst of all time.
Just want to add that I liked how they made fun of the show’s 4 act structure….
…BTW, unrelated sorta, but I just found out Zombie Simpsons writer Bill Odenkirk is Bob Odenkirk’s brother. How could someone who wrote for Mr. Show and is brothers with one of the greatest comedians — nay, PEOPLE — of all time write for a show that kinda has defined “worst. comedy. ever.” for so long now? Kinda sad.
Anyway..
One more thing, “Napoleon Dynamite” was officially cancelled… since it seemed to only exist to be so bad as to make Zombie Simpsons look good in comparison, I can’t say that was a bad move on FOX’s part. It was announced a few days ago and outside of imdb — where there are 2 posts on it (!) — no one on the internet has cared. Telling, eh?
Also, “Bob’s Burgers” was renewed for a season 3. It’s no “Home Movies” but it’s really the best animated show on TV at the moment.
…God, I miss “King of the Hill”. I really really miss “duckman” and early “Ren and stimpy” and “The Critic” and so on. But I miss “King of the Hill” most of all… sigh.
Anyway…