“Leave it to good old Mary Bailey to finally step in and do something about that hideous genetic mutation.” – Marge Simpson
This week on Zombie Simpsons, Burns does something we saw him do much funnier twenty years ago, but he also falls in love and becomes a softy for a while. In between, Patty and Selma live with the Simpsons for a while, Marge, Lisa and Smithers vanish for most of the episode, Homer gets another new job, and there’s a big explosion.
– No couch gag this week, so what they left in must be pure gold!
– Marge is buttering Homer up with pork chops because Patty & Selma need a place to stay. If you guessed that Patty & Selma weren’t in the house right up until they mysteriously appeared in the house as if by transporter, you win absolutely nothing.
– Homer is repeating the word “teensy” for some reason. I guess that got a big laugh at the table read?
– So the conflict here is that Patty & Selma aren’t supposed to smoke in the house. Homer has put smoke detectors all over the place to catch them. Then it starts raining instantly so they can’t go outside. The instant rain thing was funny in “Bart the Murderer” because it was a joke. Here it’s a plot crutch for an already nonsensically weak plot. It won’t be the last.
– Hey, a decent sign gag that didn’t get read out load “Once Your Lungs Go Black, They Never Go Back”.
– They put a new bathroom in the house for no discernible reason. It’s under the stairs because Patty & Selma were by the stairs. They want to smoke there because, for some other indiscernible reason, Homer didn’t put smoke detectors in the bathroom. This show cannot even maintain a joke, much less a story. It’d almost be impressive in its sloppiness if we hadn’t seen it so many times before.
– Hey, look, the main story has arrived! The water in the bathroom caught on fire.
– Lisa just scrolled over a bunch of movies titles on her tablet. They were supposed to be depressing documentaries, so most of them were just “noun of death”.
– Hey, it’s a joke free explanation of fracking. I love it when they pre-explain things.
– So, Lisa and Bart just teleported into the Rich Texan’s office where she exposited for a while, before he told us he was going to dance, then danced. I realize that sentence makes no sense to anyone who hasn’t seen this episode, but, trust me, you’re not missing anything.
– Lisa discovers there’s a fracking site in the neighborhood by looking at a satellite picture. Why? Because they’re keeping people away with a sign that says “Women’s Basketball Hall of Fame”. How did she never notice this building that is in her neighborhood? Don’t ask. But they compound it by having her praise women’s basketball, which makes the whole thing make even less sense.
– Also too, the kids just walked into the building. Then Burns and Smithers pull up in a cart and Burns begins explaining things to Lisa. Is there any reason for him to do this? No. Is it the opposite of something Burns would actually do? Yes.
– Lisa then exposits the existence of Maxine Lombard, a Nancy Pelosi type voiced by Jane Fonda. I miss Mary Bailey.
– After a really boring and repetitive hearing, Burns just barged into her office for a slow, cliche filled fall in love moment between Burns and Not Pelosi. They apparently slept on the floor under a flag for some reason.
– Hey, how about another non-sequitor? Now Burns needs to buy the mineral rights under Evergreen Terrace. How do we know this? Because he just told us. Does it have anything to do with his romance with whatshername? Of course not. Jebus this script is sloppy.
– And, right on cue, Burns picks Homer to be his salesman.
– We then get a series of quick cuts of Homer being good at his new job. It ate some time.
– Marge and Lisa are opposed to this, of course, with Marge reminding that “the water was on fire”. She will be saying this a lot.
– Homer wins some kind of debate with Frink (don’t ask) and now everyone has sold their mineral rights. Burns, being Zombie Burns, has second thoughts and asks Homer for relationship advice.
– Homer has the “signed gas leases”, which are all complete except for Marge’s signature not being on one. This somehow comes as a surprise during a ceremony to turn on the fracking. Then Burns and whatshername have a breakup as cliched and nonsensical as when they got together. Also, Smithers is back after a long and unexplained absence.
– Burns was going to fire Homer, but now they’re talking about relationships again. Then a wrecking ball breaks into Burns Manor because whatshername decided to . . . you know what? Screw this. It’s too weird and nonsensical even to recap.
– Hey, there’s an NPR guy who shows up, tells us his name, and then wanders off.
– Now Burns and Homer are turning the fracking machine back on out of revenge or something.
– Want to know what’s happening? The show will gladly tell you:
Marge: Is one of the side effects of fracking earthquakes?
Lisa: Yes.
Glad we cleared that up.
– Jane Fonda just showed back up out of nowhere
– And Marge just repeated the water thing for the sixth time or so. Oh, and now Homer’s burning down the fracking thingie and it explodes.
– Because the ending was apparently not explained enough already, Burns is helpfully expositing it some more.
– And it ends with Burns and whatshername in bed being boring to run out the clock. What a mess.
Anyway, the numbers are in and, sans football, they are expectedly terrible. Just 4.24 million people wished they were seeing Burns run his Slant Drilling Company again. That’s the lowest of the young season and good for #7 on the all time least watched list.
There’s a very clear dichotomy now between the weeks when FOX has a late NFL game and when they don’t. The three episodes this year with a football lead were watched by 8.50 million, 7.34 million, and 7.64 million viewers. The two episodes without a football lead in were watched by 4.32 and 4.24 million viewers. FOX does have a late national game next week for the Futurama crossover, so I fearlessly predict that episode will get somewhere in the 7 million viewers range. And while I’m still expecting the renewal notice any day, the show clearly can’t stand on its own anymore.
Dead Homer Society 
14 responses to “Behind Us Forever: Opposites A-frack”
“Burns is asking Homer for relationship advice”.
…
Charlie, this is a gag, ain’t it?
No. And he did it before on the season 13 episode “A Hunk-A-Hunk-A Burns in Love.”
Now how does a writer make an episode like this and not make a single reference to “The China Syndrome?” Are the writers even trying anymore.
The plot of this one was an absolute mess. The only redeemable aspects of this episode are (and this is very faint praise:
-The episode actually took a side on an issue for once. The the rest of the episode being poorly
-Homer saying “Killdozers!”
Everything else sucked. The jokes sucked as usual, but the plot was really really badly done. A book could be written on the things that made no sense in this episode.
“A book could be written on the things that made no sense in this episode.” Isn’t that what the guy who did this blog did?
“Now how does a writer make an episode like this and not make a single reference to “The China Syndrome?” I dunno. Either because the writers think their fans are idiots (they have to be if they’re still watching this show) or they couldn’t think of anything good. Besides, “Saturday Night Live” in the 1970s did a great “China Syndrome” parody called “The Pepsi Syndrome.”
“Are the writers even trying anymore?” No.
The rich texan joke could have been funny (he’s in the oil business for the dancing of joy during a gusher) if they didn’t pound it repeatedly into the ground until it was dead.
Also, wasn’t the first act break of Burns asking if his love fantasy was him having a stroke way too similar to Grampa’s classic act break “I’m in Love…no wait, I’m having a stroke! No wait it’s Loooove!” The cannibalization of this show is truly astounding, especially when it continues to pale in comparison.
Yep.
Patty and Selma staying with the Simpons on the condition they don’t smoke is a surprisingly good idea, something that hasn’t been done before (to my recollection) and could lead to some fun character interaction. Instead it involved exploding bathrooms to lead into the main storyline, another story making once interesting characters like Mr Burns, Moe or Flanders into soppy, lovelorn, romantics.
And I’ve noticed how spare the sound design is on these new episodes. Almost every scene is characters talking over dead silence. Where are the musical motifs? Mr Burns malevolent Imperial March when we see him scheming or the cheery, domestic, Simpsons theme when we establish a scene at the Simpson home?
It’s episodes like last Sundays that not only get me to remember dreck like “Hunka Hunka Burns in Love” but actually see them in a better light in comparison to what I just witnessed. That one also had a horrific Burn Begs Homer For Love Advice plot, as if Mr Burns never had a romance in his life let alone would turn to a lowly wage slave for advice, and a story that made no sense, and a preposterous unfunny romance but at least it had….
Scratch that, Hunka Hunka Burns in Love was still as terrible as I remember it.
The Simpsons comic book did a story in 1995 or so where Party and Selma become airline flight attendants and go nuts because they’re not allowed to smoke on the plane. They end up hijacking the plane and crash-landing it in the end.
Simpsons Comics were pretty damn stupid in the ’90s, now that I think about it.
They were silly, but in recollection they were still much better than the current ZS incarnations.
Yeah, the Patti & Selma sub-plot showed some promise but they totally got the byplay wrong. You know it’s wrong when you start to feel bad about how the sisters are treated by Homer. Plus the smoking commentary and dialog is just dreadful, their dialog waaay too scripted. Badly.
Charlie makes a pretty good point about that bathroom. Since when did they have a downstairs bathroom under the stairs? It definitely seems like the script didn’t take to Simpson house into account and by the time it was getting storyboarded, they just said “Fuck it, there’s now a downstairs bathroom next to the stairs”
Agreed, though I will note that the exact layout of the Simpsons house does change to suit the scene.
That door was a closet with Bart and Lisa hiding inside in ‘Treehouse of Horror VI’ but in ‘Bart the Mother ‘ it leads to the basement.
But one thing we can all agree on, that room has never been a second bathroom.
The writers have said time and again in DVD commentaries and elsewhere that when it comes to keeping the floor plan of the Simpsons house consistent (or even the layout of Springfield), they don’t care. If something needs to be changed for the sake of a joke, then so be it.
There’s a fine line you have to walk to pull something like that off, though. If the sudden change of location is the joke (like in “I Married Marge” when Homer looks out the window of the house and sees the power plant and gets inspired to apply for a job there), then that’s fine. If you’re screwing around with the established layout for the sake of other jokes, or because the plot won’t work unless you do, then that’s far less effective.
Charlie and company on here are equal to the Ghostbusters team but instead of battling ghosts they battle zombie Simpsons instead.