When the retirement home closes, Marge invites Grampa and two other elderly folks to stay at the Simpsons’ house. Nelson becomes Bart’s friend, after Bart defends him for wearing used underwear.
This is going up a little late, but since I haven’t seen the episode, it’s still a preview to me. For those who did choose to watch it, feel free to let the rest of us know how it went. Or not. I don’t care.
Dead Homer Society 
36 responses to “Sunday Preview: The Winter Of His Content”
I’m trying to figure out what’s more important: watch this episode or vote for the independence of Crimea somehow.
Stan, what do you think about missing flight MH 307, with all due respect to those missing?
I think the pilots are responsible. Next time teach your personnel to maneuver properly instead of buying expensive airplane equipment.
I think so too. It’s a political statement and sadly, suicide as well. I had a dream about it…. 3 skeletons on the edge of an island, the western edge that looks like Australia… I posted it on Amazon discussions regarding the crash.
Are you on dope?
Nope. Thinking too much about this story. REM, sleep, dreams, nightmares, etc.
Read about the Night Witches. Not the real ones, but WWII Orchestra Soviet women fighters. The same feeling when you hold a dandelion in your hand and know that you might die if you blow on it.
(Ok yes I’m fucking drunk but who cares).
Yeaaaahhh, this one sucked pretty hard. Not sure if it tops mutant Bob from the last episode, but it’s pretty damn close
-Reused plots galore. Bart & Nelson become friends? Check. Bart tries to be accepted by the bullies? Check. Grampa lives with the Simpsons? Check… Homer pretends to be an old man and enjoys the perks of being pampered (“The Two Mrs. Nahasapeemapetilons”) Check…
-So wait…the retirement castle gets closed down and is still closed by the end of the episode and Grampa, Japser and Old Jewish Man are still living with the Simpsons when the credits roll. This would mean something is the show still gave a crap about tying up the plot.
-Why is Nelson willing to wear his Mom’s undies? Wouldn’t he at least have the sense to not wear underwear altogether? And with Bart….why are they still trying to play “the Simpsons are poor” card here when they’re taking care of three geriatrics out of their own pockets in the same episode?
-Why do the kids stop laughing when Bart shows his humiliating underwear, even after pointlessly expositing wear Homer got the underwear? I guess Bart is popular and respected at school now even after being branded an absolute loser last week for eating a frog. What an idiotic way to make Bart and Nelson pals.
-Homer line about knowing he won’t live long enough to be and old man (complete with painfully drawn out body language) is pretty dark, especially since he says it in front of his wife and kids. What, is he Peter Griffin now?
-Now Homer pulls a 180 later on in the episode being worried about how he’ll be treated as an old man, without even acknowledging what he said earlier that day.
Homer randomly becoming an old man (mentally and physically) because he wanted to understand the old geezers is way too stupid to be real, like the show suddenly became Ren and Stimpy. How the hell are we suppose to take this transformation seriously?
-Bart’s subplot turns into a very long ripoff/reference of The Warriors (ya know, that 70s movie about punk kids). The episode is even further off the rails at this point, where stuff just happens because it happened in the movie and the bullies & Bart are little more than composites of the movie characters, Family Guy style.
-Theres a big buildup of Marge no longer being attracted to Homer….which leads to absolutely nothing! She just says so, cut to Warriors ripoff, then suddenly everything is okay again almost as if nothing happened or nothing important occurred in the lives of these characters.
-The B-plot and A-plot converge about as gracefully as a blind elephant on fire. It’s nearly as bad as the ending of last weeks’ Sideshow Bob episode with all the characters (the old men, the bullies, the psycho bullies) just walking away silently when the climax is hastily resolved.
-The stupid Warriors subplot had one interesting thing of note happen–we got an entire subway map of Springfield that included several very obscure locales in the Simpsons universe. Too bad I can’t be arsed to care at this point in the series.
This week, all of the Fox animated shows absolutely trounced the Simpsons in terms of actually having interesting plots and funny situations (Bob’s Burgers especially). There was a scene in the Family Guy episode where Death shows up and responds to Cleveland’s curiosity as to why he’s there, saying “Actually, I’m here for your show.” A shame Homer wasn’t sitting there.
“So wait…the retirement castle gets closed down and is still closed by the end of the episode and Grampa, Japser and Old Jewish Man are still living with the Simpsons when the credits roll. This would mean something is the show still gave a crap about tying up the plot.”
It was said to be closed until it fixed all of its violations, not closed permanently. I won’t count it as a continuity error if we see it again. I thought it was much stranger that they never wrapped up what happened to Nelson after the other boys basically left him for dead in a dangerous situation. RIP Nelson Muntz, I guess.
Oh yeah, Nelson’s “death” was entirely unresolved considering he was left in the hands of a pretty bloodthirsty crowd. Definitely more more bizarre plot thread left open.
So now Nelson died too?
That is actually amazing, because the more of them die – the soon we get the show killed.
Nah, he’s probably fine. The episode just chose to abandon him in a situation where he could have been seriously hurt if he was a real person (fighting another kid while rolling down the middle of a very steep road, if I recall the scene correctly).
Reminds me of Uter…
Funny kid. Too bad they turned him into sausages before the Zombie era…
Sausages they did… Ugh.
Wasn’t he in this episode, in the locker room scene?
I dunno. I’m part of that religion which forbids watching the Simpsons.
Yes, Uter was in this episode. He’s just one of those characters that hardly says or does anything memorable in the show anymore, so I can’t blame people thinking he was dead.
Pretty well summed up.
Also: The Warriors were also made into a game for the PS2 and Xbox I think, it got great reviews from EGM and other gaming mags.
I remember when all the children were afraid of Nelson. Now they just laugh at him because he’s so pathetic.
They didn’t even try and parody The Warriors, and instead just put Simpsons characters into the movie’s plot and remade the film. And no attempt to try and subvert or spoof the famous bottle scene at the end; they just recreated it shot-for-shot. I did get a brief chuckle out of the “Baseball Furries” intro, though.
Why did Moe take his date to a closed amusement park?
“I remember when all the children were afraid of Nelson. Now they just laugh at him because he’s so pathetic.”
That’s what he gets for signing a non-aggression treaty. It’s difficult to intimidate others when you can no longer raise your fists in anger.
Jimbo and the gang were also pretty wussy in this one too for no apparent reason. Why didn’t they just throw Bart to the wolves and save themselves? They honestly couldn’t have believed he was one of them (save Nelson’s dumb reason)
Nelson was a much better character before he became a wimp. They really need to end this show.
And what about that whole thing about Homer’s grandfather still being alive.
Ugh and Lisa’s character sounds like she’s a 40-year old trapped in an 8-year old’s body
Not sure, but I think it was just a play on Homer’s childlike intellect and his awkward relationship with Abe. Abe never bothered telling Homer that his grandfather died decades ago, so he makes up excuses like the stereotype of a parent hiding the death of a pet from a young child, and Homer accepts it.
Huh, possibly – that would have been an interesting episode though – either Homer finds out that his grampa is dead, or Homer meets his grandpa and Abe and Bart get jealous or something like that.
Modern fiction has got to upgrade from this standard ‘bully/nerd’ old meme. I mean, c’mon! It’s friggin’ 2014 already. Get with the program! Aside from a lack of realistic relevance, there’s also an astonishing deficiency in subtlety prevalent & rampant in this trope used in much tv shows & movies. It’s embarrassing.
There are several ways to cover these. From cyberbullying you could go to as far as portray LGBT bullies and nerds today. But on The Simp… Zombie Simpsons, they don’t know any better.
Yeah, South Park can do that really good, even though the show itself can lead towards preachiness at times, which, coupled with its signature vulgar humor, is quite grating if not thought out well. Family Guy OTOH, although the old episodes could honestly make me throw a conniption fit of laughter, is often a repeat offender of the trope. Why, SMcF, why? I think he’s much more annoying himself than the show itself. His face at least, especially when he does his impressions, ESPECIALLY Stewie.
Oh, ESPECIALLY especially Quagmire, since that character has an annoying face to begin with.
Seth’s talented, but like any talent out there, once he hit the sky he’s bathing in his own ego.
Also, he seems to have a kick on Mila Kunis for ‘some’ reason.
I once had a case of nerd denial myself, Steamed Hams.
Isn’t the term ‘nerd’ a broad term with a conveniently flexible definition anyways? I mean, doesn’t it cover a wide base of separate spheres of knowledge and deficiencies? For instance, I certainly have some ‘nerd’ interests, but I’m not narrowly focused on only one thing. I have many talents, abilities and interests. I may be observant and critical at times, but I’m not super rigid or personal about obscure, ‘alternative’ principles. I also was never bullied in school, believe it or not, but certainly had verbal conflicts with certain family members which I didn’t start, but hate to call myself a victim of ‘parental/sibling abuse’. Of my two older brothers, the oldest is computer tech savvy & a fan of some ‘cult classic’/superhero films and a few comics, and the other is a bit of a TV/Videogame geek. I also feel like an outsider to much modern ‘nerd culture’, perhaps due to being raised with a Protestant upbringing with a minister father from a Roman Catholic background. Yadda, yadda…
Whatever though; I suppose I’m just on the defensive anyways, the threat that some ‘quality control’ is in order. (“YOU MUST BE JUDGED, SHAMED AND FACE THE CONSEQUENCES!”)
Btw, have you heard about the fight over the right to use the word ‘bossy’?
The obsoleteness of the “bully” trope was practically addressed in the speech by the top bully in this episode. But it sure does seem like the Zombie Simpsons writers have been overusing the bully clique lately.
So most of this episode was referencing some movie I’ve never seen. (After reading the comments here I now know what movie it is but apparently seeing that movie wouldn’t have actually made it funny.) A good parody should be funny even if you haven’t seen the thing that is being referenced.
Bob’s Burgers has referenced The Warriors in the past but you didn’t need to have seen the movie to get the jokes.