“My hair! You chopped off my hair! Oh, God, I’m ugly!” – Homer Simpson
- Well, it was certainly nice of the Robot Chicken guys to eat up ninety seconds of screentime with that opening.
- And it’s a good thing they did, because if this scene with Marge and Skinner is any indication, we’re mostly in for filler here. Skinner is now playing a guitar he pulled from behind his desk as surely as if it was a rabbit from a hat, and this goes on until well after Marge had left the building.
- Sideshow Mel is now giving Bart music lessons, why?
- And then Frink and Comic Book Guy because . . . oh, the hell with it.
- What’s with the licorice thing?
- “Let’s drink vodka” – Good advice for anyone watching this episode.
- The scene where Bart walks across the playground to deliberately run into the bullies made very little sense, then they topped themselves by having Marge and this Russian guy sitting in her car in her driveway. Impressive.
- I’m confused by the Russian Makin’ Whoopee montage, though I really shouldn’t be. It’s 30 seconds long, the entire episode (credits to credits) is only 18:30, so that ate almost 3% of the runtime right there. And it was only the first of two montages.
- Krusty and Captain McAllister sure had valid reasons for being at that recital we never learned anything about. Someone in comments pointed out that this one was heavy on people just showing up for no reason, and they were correct.
- Uh, is that going to be the whole Patrick Stewart thing? [End of episode note: Yes, yes it was.]
- Whoa, Helen Lovejoy really doesn’t sound like herself anymore.
- Hey the Russian guy is back to exposit the end for us. That was nice of him.
- “It was wrong of me to force my dreams on you”, where did that come from? Marge made Bart take up music because Skinner suggested it, not because she wanted to be a piano player. Is it possible that by the end of these they’re phoning it in so badly that no one remembers the beginning?
The incoherence of this episode cannot be overstated, and yet I also cannot use any extreme superlatives because, let’s face it, it’s no more or less incoherent than most episodes these days. Characters appear out of thin air, stories are dropped for no reason whatsoever, the plots (such as they are) get resolved with single scene twists instead of having anything to do with what came before.
To take but one example from this episode, here is the entirety of Homer’s plot:
1. Homer’s last two hairs fall out (note that this has happened before).
2. Homer goes to the Kwik-E-Mart where he gets atrocious jokes spat at him by Apu, Flanders’ Dad (for some reason), and the Rich Texan.
3. Homer goes to Moe’s where Moe rips off his own hair and gives some to Homer.
4. Homer goes to work where he talks to Patrick Stewart, who tells him being bald is okay.
5. Homer reveals his baldness to Marge, who doesn’t care, which in turn causes his hair to grow back.
That’s it. That’s the entire story. Homer doesn’t do anything, he isn’t in any way affected by his brief loss of hair, and then it’s over. And this was – by far – the most put together of the various goings on here. It certainly made more sense than the Russian guy learning to drive, or Bart’s story, which started with him wanting to impress his teacher and then abruptly switched gears mid-episode to him being afraid to disappoint Marge.
Anyway, the ratings are in and they are just as bad as the episode itself. On Sunday, just 4.05 million viewers wished they had bootleg Russian vodka to make the time go faster. That dismal total is good for second worst on the all time list. Next week is the two episode season finale, which appears to be just two random episodes crammed together and not an actual two-parter, though the descriptions FOX has released are so vague and pointless that I really can’t tell. Oh well, we’ll find out soon enough.
Dead Homer Society 
29 responses to “Behind Us Forever: Fabulous Faker Boy”
The whole characters appearing out of midair thing reminds me of the scene in “22 Short Films About Springfield” when Lisa gets in gum in her hair and practically the whole town shows up in the kitchen. Yet another example of them becoming the thing they once mocked.
By the way!
If you take that ep you mentioned and just remake it into the present time, and show it to the audience without ever indicating that it is actually a 22 short story film stitched together, it would pass as well with whatever they show us today.
I like this episode and many jokes made me laugh out loud. Russian guy and his douther where great new characters, Homers sublplot was funny and let’s not forget the Robot Chicken opening…
The old episodes had randome apperances of characters as well…
Are you guys still that 23rd anniversary thing for seeason 1?
*still doing that
I want to do something along those lines for summer, but I’m really not sure as to what exactly it’s going to be.
How about some sort of rank the top 10 seasons battle royale? I don’t think it’s entirely linear and the very question would surely rip all of us ZS haters apart. :)
I am surprised nobody mentioned the CD in the piano.
Yeah, that was bad. Honestly, I’ve got to find a better way to do these for Season 25. I try to type those as I watch because if I pause them to try and mention everything, it takes like an hour and a half to get through an episode.
Took me 40 minutes =)
But I omitted a lot simply because we saw it well before in previous episodes.
And at least Bieber’s cameo was only a few seconds long (he said one line of eight words).
In Family Guy he
a) said a lot more (2 minutes rough if I remember correctly)
b) sang a fucking song
c) got beaten up by Peter
hence, a worthy cameo.
Here, the only thing that distinguishes him from Stewart’s video was that they showed him being plain himself. No reason was given as to why he wanted to enter that contest, nor why he spent “another” 25 bucks. And now, let’s put that video on Youtube and start tweeting it to each other, and then let’s also buy more Bieber stuff while at it.
Another Grandpa written episode it seems like, eh?
File it under “W” for “wrinkly gibberish”
Was that really Bieber doing the voice in Family Guy or someone else? I don’t watch FG…I HATE it!
I think it was.
Much like Miley Cyrus in that android ep.
+1 FG has sucked since it returned in ’05.
I’d say it was still mildly watchable up to season 8-9 approximately.
Rare are the shows that manage to make it past season 10 and not suck simultaneously.
Of course, South Park having Bieber killed in the middle of a concert trumped ZS and FG very easily.
Isn’t the season finale supposed to have the winner of the couch gag contest? Maybe they can have another contest where people write entire episodes.
Oh yeah… there was a “contest”… right…
Next upcoming event: best episode script contest. The first prizer gets a typewriter and a monkey hat.
I am a sucker for action figures, so seeing Springfield made out of plastic and clay was a wet dream come true to me.
The rest was less memorable.
American Dad did a better baldness episode
Chimdale.
American Dad did a better Mother’s Day episode altogether.
Did you know that this episode was written by a 70 year old man?
Did you know that this joke is getting kinda lame as of now?
What was that warning for? Was it serious or a joke?
JOHN MADDEN- “Now that just doesn’t make a lick of sense!”
PAT SUMMERALL- “I know, I know, just get on the bus.”
Being mid-way in disliking the Simpsons, these are my comments;
The Flamenco gag went too far when he started jumping on the picture. It was just unnecessary.
Don’t know where Lisa happening to play the Sax came from, maybe a coincedence, but I have no idea what was going on with that “music theory”.
CBG’s instrument playing was the wrong choice, I can only see CBG sitting down all day charging extra for comics, not playing an instrument. Maybe they wanted some references. Frink made more sense with his crazy inventions.
Some of these things remind me of your post about event lengths. The goatee thing didn’t need those few more seconds.
Bart’s imagination was far too long. It should only have been a little part.
Definitely could’ve done the Wiggum jeans bit quicker.
Very bad cameo for Justin Bieber. I liked how they expressed many people hate him, but he had quite a bad part in it.
I didn’t expect Marge to get so mad at Bart. Then some crazy Russian guy says a few lines and everyone’s forgiven. I didn’t notice your last point, but that is a big problem.