“I never thought I’d win this easy.” – Bart Simpson
“This has nothing to do with you, Simpson. I have many, many issues with my beloved smother-, mother.” – Principal Skinner
The B-plot in this episode was a forced rehash of “Homie the Clown”. The A-plot was, almost impressively, even dumber, with Skinner pulling a giant combat knife out of his mother’s back and not noticing that she wasn’t actually dead before trusting himself to Homer and Bart(!). Before we got to that, however, we had plenty of Bart acting wildly out of character, more exposition than you can throw a screenwriting book at, and, oh what the hell, a nuclear submarine.
- Even the couch gag has to electrocute Homer. It’s like a nervous twitch.
- Skinner exposited his whole announcement to the school. This isn’t starting well.
- “No, Skinner said I had a clean slate, so right now I’m as good as any kid!” – Seriously, that was the previous scene
- Lisa actually asks Bart “What are you doing?” – Fry’s holophoner opera for Leela was less hacktacular.
- Homer farting with each step into the yard isn’t as bad as that time they did a whole Halloween segment about him farting, but it’s pretty bad.
- Lisa just biked up to Krusty, who helpfully told her everything that was going on in his life. I liked this scene better when it was in “Bart the Fink”.
- “You’re like egg salad at a picnic, Simpson” – They do know they don’t have a laughtrack to hoot and ooh and the appropriate times, don’t they? Sometimes I’m not sure.
- Bart’s little action sequence about trying not to be late was almost completely pointless. The only good thing about it is that now I can stash that dumb truck into my inventory on Tapped Out.
- “Time to celebrate with a fruit on the bottom yogurt” – Skinner telling us exactly what he’s about to do, I think that makes on for every major character in this episode.
- This b-plot about world Krustys (Krustii?) is atrocious, even before you get to the whole “Homie the Clown” thing.
- Okay, Irish Krusty is funny.
- So, the fake death thing is dumb, but it just keeps getting dumber with Skinner going along with it/falling for it. Scooby Doo had more well conceived plots.
- There’s the repeat of Irish Krusty, which isn’t as funny as the first one. When they do come up with something funny, they really can’t resist overusing it.
- And now Milhouse and Maggie are involved because . . . huh?
- Almost as an afterthought, they decided to wrap up the B-plot with a chase scene. I guess that was nice of them.
Anyway, the ratings are in and they are good by current Zombie Simpsons standards and wretched by the standards of Zombie Simpsons of a few years ago. Last night’s hapless remake made just 6.82 million people with they were watching Season 6. That’s a high for this year, yet well below the average for even Season 22.
Dead Homer Society 
11 responses to “Behind Us Forever: Yellow Subterfuge”
Very much in agreement on Irish Krusty. It was easily the funniest part of the episode, but they couldn’t help milking it dry in a later scene. Otherwise, it was one of the few bright spots in the episode.
Didn’t think about Skinner pulling the combat knife out. The plot got so stupid, that I pretty much forgot how bizarre that first scene was.
I laughed at the second appearance of Irish Krusty because I saw it as a metajoke. By virtue of being actually funny he quickly became more popular than ZS Krusty.
At least the couch gag was short..and Otto was actually in character for once!
I actually thought that the couch gag was good…until Inflatable Tube Bart whipped out scissors. I also liked most of the Itchem and Scratchem Blow.
But yea, exposition up the wazoo and a blatant recycling of Homie the Clown.
I should point out the lack of Ms. Krabappel’s presence perhaps contributing to the episode’s quality (or lack thereof).
I saw this with family, so we hadn’t been paying full attention to the screen.
Was there a reason why Skinner assumed he had been the murderer? I asked on another site, but the only answer I got was uncertainly pointing to the scene where he talks to her picture.
I realize this is an episode (show, really) filled to the brim with inexplicable motivations, character appearances, and other bizarre moments (remember that long close-up of Homer littering? What in the hell was that about?), this still stood out as completely baffling. Certainly there was a reason his first reaction was to assume guilt and hide the knife and body?
I guess maybe because the combat knife belonged to Skinner with that whole sketchy Vietnam vet backstory of his? Really, he just did it because the plot demanded him to and they didn’t want to waste any time depicting Skinner attempting to rationalize the situation.
I’m a little disappointed they didn’t subvert the prank by making Skinner elated that his abusive mother is finally dead and happily assist in covering it up, especially since he doesn’t (or rather shouldn’t) know that he killed her. Basically, something more interesting and funny than what we got.
I just saw an episode of American Dad with a nuclear submarine in it! Also a Classic Simpsons one as well.
I thought Homer went to Moe’s but then he was in the backyard?
What is it with ZS characters explaining everything they do? It was one of the things that bugged me before I stopped watching. Do the writers think it will be funnier if the characters explain it? Or do they assume the audience consists of really stupid toddlers who need everything explained to them? It got particularly annoying when the characters would do something that was actually funny, but then ruined by the characters stating what they’re doing.
I bet the minor boost in viewers was due to the Tapped Out update, just in case the game decided to ask another episode-related trivia question.