When Duffman undergoes hip replacement surgery and retires, the company sets up a reality show competition to find his replacement. Homer wins the competition, and because the job requires him to stay sober, he learns that beer isn’t as necessary as he thought to have a good time.
Oh boy, temporarily sober Homer wins a reality show. Apparently the guest voice is Cat Deeley, who is the host of an actual FOX reality show, according to my wife.
I am not planning on watching this crap tonight, as watching the preview clips was awful enough, but I am going to go out on a limb and state that there is no way all of the humor in this entire episode will add up to the scene from “Duffless” where Homer gets kicked out of AA for eating the dirt under the bleachers. Neither will the combined visual comedy from this entire episode reach a level that will compare to seeing Homer shakily scratch off day 30 on his calendar during that same episode. By the way, I really like “Duffless”.
Dead Homer Society 
51 responses to “Sunday Preview: Waiting For Duffman”
Ugh, gawd!! F–k me with this goddam show! Someone at Fox please just put this f–king stale-ass show out of it’s goddam misery already!
Seriously? Homer, once again, lands yet a new job? Is he even still employed at the SNPP? GAWD!!!
Welcome to stage two: denial.
Nah, that’s stage three.
And stage five is self-pity.
Homer becomes Duffman….I don’t care.
Duffman is another one of those characters who should had been limited to his first or second appearance because of how one-note he is and how much the writers suck at handling characters of his ilk.
Sigh
So how many times has the idea of them going on a reality show been used?
The Lovely “Frying Game” comes to mind.
And there was that episode where they lived in that Victorian house while something or other was being done to their own house.
Will they even attempt to explain why a fat, bald man would be allowed to be Duffman, whose whole purpose was to the the male, beer-drinking ideal.
But yes, Duffman is a seriously over-used character. Should have been limited to one appearance per 2nd season, if that.
Why explain it? The show’s verisimilitude is dead. Homer can do anything, bar rags can talk, Kang and Kodos actually exist… Every episode of ZS is basically as detached from reality as THoH.
So what’s the point of having the THoH episodes?
Ratings and marketing.
Despite no real difference between regular ZS and THoH anymore, THoH episodes are still technically “specials” and can be sold in ways normal ZS episodes can’t.
They did attempt to explain it. Some other guy won the Duffman contest, but he was immediately disqualified for having a tattoo of a rival brewery, and the job was given to Homer because they had already declared him the runner-up.
Yeah, they actually put some effort there. Also they found research showed that beer drinkers are more likely to respond to a spokesman that looks worse than them. Of course it was undercut by a dragged out “yes man” bit….which seemed awfully similar to the the well known “Boo-urns” scene
Turning Homer into Duffman is like turning Barney Gumble into Marvin Monroe. Out of character, stupid and very one-dimensional.
If anything, Sideshow Bob should return and become Duffman. Even that would be interesting cartoon-wise.
I’d rather see a “Barney gets a new job” episode than a “Homer gets a new job” episode. Barney is a really underused character in Zombie Simpsons.
Did you even see what the Scully team did to Barney? It’s no wonder they don’t use Barney anymore, when his whole character and spirit has been mutilated like that.
I remember that, but was it a permanent change? He shows up rarely enough in the later seasons that I’m not sure.
I think sometime before the HD era they made Barney a drunker again.
Yeah, he was drinking beer in this episode.
Pffft and not only Barney…
But then as soon as Sideshow Bob gets out of jail (again), they’ll try to have him kill Bart every time. When, you know, he only tried to kill Bart one time in Real Simpsons (maybe even two if you sort of count “Last Gleaming”).
He ended up in jail? I though he became and genetic monstrosity and then it was curtains.
But seriously, they could’ve at least resurrected the Italian Bob story (god bless nobody remembers that far) and turn Bob into Duffman because of his own personal motivation.
Dreams, dreams, dreams…
That Italian Bob story is just one of the most confusingly illogical-chronologic episodes I’ve ever seen the more I think about it, and I’m counting the Eight Misbehavin’ one. So Bob managed to conceive a kid and raise him to toddler age in the meanwhile? All while Maggie doesn’t even age?
Jeezus, I only just realized how chronologically dumb that episode was.
Afterwards he goes to jail, becomes a guinea pig, mutates his DNA with several animals, and becomes a leading scientist in a research lab.
But yeah, having kids be conceived, born and age to that of a toddler while no one else ages.
In both Bob’s and Apu’s case it was a very desperate attempt to re-invent the characters no matter how little it makes sense chronologically.
Bob seemed to have gotten retconned out of his family, and it seems Apu’s family is slowly disappearing to where he almost never goes home and his wife & children are never seen.
You mean he didn’t appear anywhere in between ‘Italian Bob’ and that ‘Grew Too Much’ ep? Seriously?! There’s like 200 episodes between them.
Or did they just do “Simpsons family member does something” with 100 of them? Leaving 100 others for useless “Simpsons meet X” plotlines?
There was also Funeral For a Fiend in Season 19 (the one where Bob fakes his death and tries to make it look like Bart killed him) and The Bob Next Door in Season 21 (the one where Bob surgically swaps faces with his cellmate). Nothing important happened in either one.
lol didn’t even remember those two…
“Nothing important happened in either one.”
Truest thing said by anyone ever (in this comment section). ZS can’t even reach the Bart-named level of underachieving, “A Land of Contrast”.
“Bob seemed to have gotten retconned out of his family, and it seems Apu’s family is slowly disappearing to where he almost never goes home and his wife & children are never seen.”
Could that be because of “The Sweetest Apu” where Manjula discovers that Apu cheated on her and that pretty much made their marriage rocky, or could it be because the “Apu has a wife and kids” change was part of Mike Scully’s reign and Al Jean is doing everything he can to pretend it never happened (and you can also add the fact that they’re phasing out Manjula because Jan Hooks [her voice actress who, like Phil Hartman, was a popular mid-to-late 1980s SNL cast member] died, even though Hooks was replaced with Tress MacNeille long before her death)?
This looks like that special kind of awful.
What’s worse than a train wreck? Maybe a nuculear holocaust?
I was gonna say a world war, but yours is better.
And I wanted to add, “Why does anyone care about this week’s episode? Sam Simon died.”
They did give a Sam Simon tribute after the episode, including a live-action clip of him saying “It’s a triumph to work for something you purely enjoy”
Although the clip looked at least over a decade old, when it was far more likely he honestly felt that way about the show.
Also ended with the quote “One of the greatest comic minds ever” Godspeed Sam Simon
Did they honor him properly in-show?
Hell no.
If they did, they would have canceled this episode and stuck on an old rerun, like they did when Michael Jackson died.
Well, they could’ve done a chalkboard gag reminder, or have the characters wear black ribbons in the intro. That’s not hard to do.
They could have, but they felt tacking it on to the end of the episode was enough for their conscience.
wooo boy, i can’t wait for you to tear this episode apart, from the crass maude death joke to marge thinking marrying homer was a “big mistake”. terrible stuff.
But Charlie (or whoever runs this blog) said he wasn’t going to do it because it’s a slap in the face to season four’s “Duffless.” He might force himself to do it, but it will be half-hearted at best and he’ll probably go into detail about how this episode was chosen as a memorial to Sam Simon and that everyone working on this show should be so ashamed of themselves that they should commit seppuku (the Japanese suicide ritual where you slash your stomach open for dishonoring yourself or your ancestors. It’s also known as “hara-kiri”).
@ Laura Powers & Patty Cash:
Just wanted to say it’s nice to see women participating in this blog.
You’re 8 days late, brah.
Aw, thanks.
And turns out Charlie did do a Behind Us Forever for “Waiting for Duffman” (but not Sky Police, because of Sam Simon’s death and the fact that the episode was probably so horrible, it didn’t deserve one), so there’s that. On the plus side, it was half-hearted (the BUF review, not the episode, though both can apply) and Charlie did mention Sam Simon’s death.
I can’t tell if you’re drunk, or if you can’t even realize they’re just random people (of whom you don’t know either’s sex, I might add), taking random names from the show and using them as pseudonyms. Like me!
Excuse me, Mrs. Powers, where are the-
…Oh no. I’ve killed her! It’s all happening again!!
LOL!!
Not to mention that there are probably other posters who are actually women, but are using names that aren’t so obviously feminine (such as yours truly).
Tou-CHÉ, my good wo-MAN, tou-CHÉ! You and I should hang out together sometime- *BRAP*
I think he likes “Duffless”.