“Don’t make me tap the sign.” – Bus Driver
There are episodes of Zombie Simpsons that border on manic, where they just throw crazy shit at the screen and hope that some of the incoherent jumble produces a chuckle or two. But there are also episodes like “Super Franchise Me”, that feel like they were produced by people in the depths of an Eeyore level depression. This is Zombie Simpsons going through the motions: slowly, reluctantly, joylessly. The story, Marge opens a sandwich franchise, is paper napkin thin, and since there’s no B-plot, they had to tack on a slow motion fantasy chase sequence at the end to shuffle this one across the twenty-minute finish line.
(Sorry we forgot to put up a preview post. Guess we weren’t the only ones half-assing it this week.)
– And you can tell things are off to a bad start when they have a clock eating non-guest couch gag. It’s 45 seconds long. Just 19m:15s to go!
– Guh, Flanders is reading the sign gags. The sign gags are one of the few things they don’t completely suck at, so this is always annoying.
– And then they did it with Homer reading the name of the Japanese city.
– This is one of the dumber montages I’ve seen in a while. Marge is cooking meat, and Homer is worried for some reason. It takes almost forty seconds. Tick-tock, tick-tock.
– You want a good example of how filler-iffic this episode is? Bart and Lisa just watched Homer stuff food into Santa’s Little Helper for fifteen seconds before they objected. It wasn’t funny, but it did eat some time!
– On a printed, 8pt font list of this episode’s problems, this would be on about page three, but it makes no sense for Marge to make all these sandwiches after Flanders takes his freezer back. The premise is that the food is gonna go bad before anyone can eat it, and now she’s got a ton of sandwiches that would still need to go in the fridge.
– Similar to the above, why does Bart want sandwiches at night before he goes to bed?
– Oh, now they have a scene with Flanders explaining that he’s keeping them in his freezer. It’s nice that they tied up the loose end, I guess, but when your story is so week that you almost have to retcon it before the first commercial break, it’s not a good sign.
– Oh, look, the main story has arrived in the form of a woman showing up at the school, where Marge went for no apparent reason. Literally neither of them should be there. Well done, Zombie Simpsons.
– Gotta love sparkling dialogue like this: “Mom, you’re gonna open a sandwich store?”, “Uh-huh.”
– Homer’s flashback to a Pizza Hut certainly went on for a while.
– Marge being happy that everything here is hers could’ve been interesting if it had been developed beyond having her just say “my” over and over.
– Krusty and Mr. Teeny just showed up for some reason. And now the monkey is bathing in a giant salsa tray.
– Frink’s applying for a job. Marge sets it up by telling him not to make any weird noises. He then makes weird noises. I think this was diagrammed out in Chapter 3 of “Scriptwriting For the Terminally Boring”.
– Gil handing out the strip club card would’ve been much funnier if the “Tell You Their Real Name” Tuesday joke had either been on the card or spoken aloud. It’s both. Reading the sign gags really sucks.
– Remember what I said earlier about Marge being happy about things actually being hers? Well, that got dropped completely and now the Simpson family is working in the restaurant.
– “I was short staffed and your father volunteered.” – Thanks, exposition Marge! We only saw that one minute ago, how could we possibly remember it?
– Montage #2. This one is about making and selling sandwiches.
– The “We’re Closed and the Alarm Is On” sign with the skull and crossbones is kinda funny, but I’m just happy they didn’t have someone read it to us.
– There’s another sandwich place across the street now. Bart pointed it out. I like this scene, it’s a combination between their hatred of object permanence and their love of bizarre and abrupt plot twists.
– Cletus is reading ridiculous kids names. Haven’t seen that before.
– Burns and Smithers just showed up for some reason.
– It’s okay, they’re gone now.
– You can argue about whether or not this show is funny (I don’t think it is, but to each their own), but there’s no denying that it’s dumb. The premise here is that the sandwich franchise opened another location across the street and screwed Marge. That’s actually a real problem (Subway, for example, is notorious for screwing its franchisees like that), but it’s not used for any kind of comedy here whatsoever. Instead, they have Homer get scalded, stabbed and bashed in his crotch, and even then it doesn’t make sense.
– Just for good measure, we see Burns fall incompetently off of a rowboat. Remember evil Burns? He was fun.
– And now it’s over and they’ve got a caveman Homer very (very) slowly chasing some giant animal because this episode came in a solid minute short, even with all that filler.
– Nice of them to mention Jan Hooks, though.
Anyway, the ratings are in and they are way up, but only because of football overrun. Last night’s cripplingly stretched premise was seen by 7.34 million people, probably half of whom just left it on after the Dallas-Seattle game. That’s down from the also football lifted season premier, and it would’ve been an average number as recently as Season 22, but it counts as good for them these days. Next week, the late national game is Giants-Cowboys, so we’ll see if there’s another (relatively) big number.
Dead Homer Society 
37 responses to “Behind Us Forever: Super Franchise Me”
So it’s the pretzel episode without the fun? wow. And that episode is not even one of their best.
not bad, but knot bread
Get it? Huh?
I just said that…somewhere. And FXX did have a mini-marathon of Simpsons episodes centered on Marge working, which does include some ZS episodes, but started off with the classic ones, like The Springfield Connection, Marge Gets a Job, and Realty Bites. The last one might not be all that great, but the Mike Scully episodes feel like classics compared to today’s.
Yeah, Realty bites has its flaws but it at least made me laugh.
Not anymore.
That episode (the pretzel one) certainly was no classic, but it is a comic masterpiece compared to last Sunday’s.
I know, right? The show is bordering on the pathetic.
It’s already there.
I am so glad you watch the episodes so I don’t have to see that crap. Thanks!
Agreed! I don’t know how you [the blog contributors] and so many of the commenters here stomach watching this stuff.
I don’t know how you all stomach commenting on that pile of garbage. It’s dead. Deal with it.
You do it, too.
Just doing our job.
“And now it’s over and they’ve got a caveman Homer very (very) slowly chasing some giant animal”
That’s Renaissance Homer.
Lots of obvious padding here. That caveman bit was the most obvious. That one also begged the question…if Homer could only barely keep up with a sloth, how was he able to catch two squirrels?
So their plan was to actually physically torture Homer and stab him in the crotch to bluff a lawsuit? I mean they didn’t fake it, Homer and the rest of the family apparently agreed to subject Homer to actual injury as if he was in an Itchy & Scratchy cartoon.
The writer(s) really must have went with the first idea that popped into their head. Certainly explains a lot.
They showed his pants briefly slip down and all the pointy and stabby things went along with them. I guess he had padding in there?
I can’t believe I watched the whole thing.
Have a sandwich.
The ending was nonsensical as it wouldn’t be up to marge “to take full responsibility” as its up to the injured party to drop the suit not one of the many potential defendants.
The writers just don’t care. I wish the timeslot and resources could go to some show with staff members who are actually trying to make something good.
Yeah, like Bob’s Burgers. Or the test of the emergency broadcasting system. Or a rerun of Princess Diana’s funeral. Anything.
Surely this is a straightforward “Simpsons already did it” for the Twisted World of Marge Simpson?
OMG!! REALLY??? NO WAI!
Sometimes the Compare & Contrast posts write themselves. (Not really, but kinda.)
Marge opens another foodstuff franchise? No, thank you.
The idea of doing an episode where a main character opens up a Subway-like franchise and gets screwed over by their corporate practices would have made a really good episode of King of the Hill or South Park.
I wish Bob’s Burgers would get that sweet 8 o’clock time slot instead of the Futurama killing 7:30 slot. Also Brooklyn Nine Nine is pretty good show.
Mulaney is awful, though. It’s like a bad sitcom that characters in another show would be watching.
Bob’s Burgers got a lot of mileage out of having a rival restaurant next door. Pretty sad that ZS couldn’t scrape up one decent episode.
The rival enterprise plot twist was used well in the classic Mr Plow episode. Last Sunday’s episode isn’t even on the same planet.
Great BUF and that reminds me: I live right by Bridgeview IL and they have a Subway in the Wal Mart there… And another Subway only one block away.
You’re fantastic man. You thank everything. You must be so fantastic.
I did enjoy some of Homer’s quips in the opening setup. “Hey, I was listening to that!” “I keep this frozen meat in case society collapses but we still have power.”
You’d think that if Homer had a huge pile of meat thawing, he might want to have another big BBQ, rather than immediately go with Marge’s suggestion of converting it into sandwiches. But here’s how it should have gone, if they’re doing the sandwich shop franchise thing: Marge makes a huge pile of sandwiches to save the thawing meat, and Homer takes them to work to share or sell to his co-workers. The Mother Hubbard’s chain starts losing business at their new location at the power plant, so they send their representative to trick Homer into buying his own franchise in another part of town, thinking it will keep him distracted enough to stay out of their way. Homer sees this as a great opportunity because he’s impulsive and stupid, and doesn’t realize how much work it will be. From there we can watch the new franchise begin to fail due to Homer’s clueless management as well as the terrible staff he has hired, until the whole Simpson family ends up working at the franchise to keep it afloat until they can come up with some scheme to get rid of it.
Ah, but that would require the writers to know how to write a coherent story.
I didn’t mention it before but why was there salsa at a Subway style restaurant? Another thing that bugged me was Marge made those sandwiches from scratch so how does that translate into owning a sandwich shop with already prepared ingredients?
well, technically it doesn’t. if i wanted to defend the writers I would say that the lady was just taking advantage of Marge’s excitement of making sandwiches that people love to trick her into purchasing a franchise.
I think your apology is a tad overrated because I for one was actually glad DHS didn’t even mention another ZS episode coming up. It felt good.
I’m back, and the need the Simpsosn to remain relevant to me, because that’s how I function. So I bring you my mini-review:
How Marge F’s up this week:
-Rudely keeping Homer up at night, just for attention. Slapping him on the back of the head.
-Forcing Bart and Lisa to work for her.
-hiring Shauna, character who is just a shameless replacement for Laura Powers. A rude punk expy of Laura Powers. Doesn’t Tress MacNeille do enough for this series. A bulk of her characters on this show are so damn divisive!
-Firing the people she hired just the sake of nepotism.
Bonuses from others:
-Zegler’s whole character. So the “Pagent System” is why characters like her and Linsay Naegle are such corporate bitches?