“And with the score at the half Buffalo 14, Washington 7, it’s time for the never tedious Super Bowl halftime show!” – Brent Gunsilman
“People of Earth, we’ve come ten billion light years to bring you this halftime message of peace!” – Guy in Terrible Alien Costume
Dead Homer Society 
5 responses to “Quote of the Day”
“Oh, this sucks. Come on snipers, where are you?” – Bart Simpson
I just love how the show in its best moments would make such very dark and grim jokes like this (and also never miss a beat). It’s just like in the Hollywood Squares joke, where they say “He’s DEAD now!” instead of the more-obvious “He’s left that spot now!” like other sitcoms might’ve used.
Also thanks for reminding me, I’ll make sure to rewatch this episode later today (haven’t done so in a long time), instead of the other crummy Superbowl episodes the show did much, much later on.
Five o’clock, six o’clock, sev’n o’clock, rock!
Yeah, I really miss how subtly grotesque and filthy the show once was. (And while I agree with your examples, for some reason, the man jumping off of the building during the “COPS: In Springfield” theme song at the start of “Homer’s Triple Bypass” is THE example that comes to my mind at the moment.) It’s amazing how some fans gloss over this when they criticize certain jokes in the Zombie era. It’s not a matter of perverse and dark content being non-existent in Classic Simpsons vs. it being present in Zombie Simpsons; it’s that Classic Simpsons was typically good at showcasing this content’s absurdity as well being clever, subversive, and earnest with it whereas Zombie Simpsons is in-your-face, stereotypical, and dimensionless with this sort stuff.
During the FXX marathon, I had a couple of friends who aren’t big Simpsons fans be surprised at how dark the show was in its early years. It’s an aspect of it that gets easily forgotten because they did it so well.
It’s a really great aspect, and part of the reason why it stood out so well from the other surrounding family sitcoms that were just happy-go-lucky places where nothing ever went wrong. FWIW I also get the same vibe from some segments of the early seasons of Robot Chicken, though there the darkness comes from seeing all of your childhood icons get desecrated in such messed up (and funny) ways.
One prime example, Inspector Gadget+Terminator. I always love how he says “Must… terminate!”