“Yeah, I might’ve seen her. It’s hard to tell from this old picture, you know?” – Cabbie
“Well, according to our computer aging program, she should look about twenty-five years older.” – Bill Gannon
“Yeah, I seen her! Uh, that is to say, I saw her.” – Cabbie
Dead Homer Society 
5 responses to “Quote of the Day”
Hah! I just realized the joke here. When I first watched it, I didn’t think much of them just showing the number and thought of it as standard procedure. But seeing it here has made me realize how silly it is for them to use a computer aging program just to spit out a number instead of an aged picture. And even better, the guy is able to use this information to confirm his sighting!
Whew, that was a mouthful…
There’s always something satisfying about getting a joke that didn’t make (as much) sense at first, huh? Even though it’s more a dry and sort of silly joke, I remember Mom and I cracking up at this the first time this episode was aired. It still never fails to make me laugh, and I think it’s an under-appreciated gag from the series.
Another funny thing I really like from this episode that I don’t hear many people mention is how Smithers tearfully remarks to Mr. Burns how Homer was, “One of the finest, bravest men ever to grace sector 7G,” after Homer fools the plant workers into thinking that he had just died. The ironic nature of this remark is what gets me. It seems that a lot of people focus more on the newspaper gag in the following scene.
And it’s surrounded by “Smithers, who was that corpse?” and Smithers instantly going from crying to a bureaucratic “I’ll cross him off the list.” That’s that classic Simpsons writing style at work – every single thing is funny in some way.
Heh, I was actually going to mention how Smithers sharply switches his tone in my last comment, but I guess I decided against it because I felt I was already getting long-winded. Something else I was going to remark is that scene highlights how the adage of not speaking illy of the dead is kind of goofy be it that this was or wasn’t an intention of the writers. It’s cool how nuanced a lot of the jokes were in during the classic era.
The old guy at the cemetery (is it the next scene?) flips it with “Yup, I saw her. That is to say I seen her.” He was the one who asked if anybody in the cemetery was dead, revealing that Moleman didn’t want to make a fuss, but now that he’d mentioned it… Look at that. A throwaway side character who not only is tied to the location the scene took place and stood out as a character, but was there later in the episode, actually remembering previous events! ZS fails to have the main cast that coherent these days. Sigh.