♫”Disco Duck and Fleetwood Mac…” – Homer Simpson “Coming out of my 8-track…” – Marge Simpson “Michael Jackson still was black! Those were the days!”♫ – Homer & Marge Simpson Zombie Simpsons has a longstanding pattern of running the few good jokes they come up with into the ground. Occasionally they will also get positive reviews (from less forgiving outlets than this one) for more non-traditional episodes (the Lego one comes to mind). This week these two long standing traits collided into the jumbled mess that is “Mr. Lisa’s Opus”. Back in Season 23, they did “Holidays of Future Passed”…
Category: Behind Us Forever
Behind Us Forever: Treehouse of Horror XXVIII (Oh, and Morgan Spurlock returns)
“Oh, dear!” – Marge Simpson “No, Mom, it counts as a hit. Dad just won the game.” – Lisa Simpson “Well, I guess he’ll be happy when he comes to.” – Marge Simpson A few quick breakdowns: I finally watched that “Springfield of Dreams” special that FOX Sports paid Morgan Spurlock to produce to commemorate Homer’s induction into the Baseball Hall of Fame. It’s fine. Not great. Not terrible. Maybe a little too long and uneven, but watchable.Spurlock put his rolodex to work and brought in a crapton of famous people, some of whom work out better than others. Joe…
Behind Us Forever: Whistler’s Father
“Look at those silk pillows! It’s like the set of some high class porno film.” – Marge Simpson “No, no, it’s just our basement” – Homer Simpson “Hold on, that’s our basement?” – Marge Simpson “Yes, so? Come on, more kissing.” – Homer Simpson “It looks so elegant! And all it takes are some lace curtains and a beaded lampshade. You’ve got to show me exactly what you did!” – Marge Simpson “But I was gonna score!” – Homer Simpson “No, you weren’t.” – Marge Simpson NOTE: Sorry this is so late. Been one of those weeks. (And I just…
Behind Us Forever: Springfield Splendor
“She doesn’t look sad. I don’t see any tears in her eyes.” – Homer Simpson “It’s not that kind of sad. I’m sorry, Dad, but you wouldn’t understand.” – Lisa After last week’s little experiment, it’s back to regular Zombie Simpsons this week, including plots that don’t make sense, two clock eating montages, several unnecessarily self-voiced celebrities, the standard hacktacular ending, and plenty of characters telling us exactly how they’re feeling. As a sort of bonus, some of this week’s exposition is written down rather than spoken. The story here is – and stop me if you’ve seen this one…
Behind Us Forever: The Serfsons
“I’ll go to the first aid tent and tell them to plug in ye olde stomach pump.” – Lisa Simpson NOTE: Sorry this took all week to post. I was traveling. I should start out by saying that I appreciate that they at least tried to get creative here. “The Serfsons” is basically an episode length Halloween segment that gets the tiresome antics of Zombie Simpsons out of Springfield without the family having to win another contest or something. The good news is that you can tell they actually put some effort into this one; there are a couple of…
Behind Us Forever: Dogtown
“The dog has had enough excitement.” – Marge Simpson “But Marge, dogs can never have enough excitement!” – Homer Simpson Two years ago, as part of their “use our reputation to farm out work we’d rather not do” policy, Zombie Simpsons let the Rick & Morty people do a couch gag. It was okay, and I’ve long said that the guest couch gags are one of the few parts of the show that’s still kinda creative. Well, this week Zombie Simpsons did an extremely poor take off on the Rick & Morty episode “Lawnmower Dog”. Emphasis on “extremely”. In “Dogtown”, Springfield passes a bunch of…
Briefly Behind Us Forever: Moho House
“Uh, you look pretty clean. You, uh, mind if I have this dance?” – Moe “It’s all yours.” – Disgusted Woman “Okay, I won’t lie to you. A lot of people saw that.” – Homer Simpson By this time Wednesday I’m going to be in a post-anesthetic fog following (what I hope will be successful) shoulder surgery. Since I’m only going to have one useful arm for eight weeks, I’ve got a ton of stuff to get done before that. Hence, the episode summary below is shorter than normal. If you haven’t watched “Moho House”, you will be unsurprised to…
Behind Us Forever: Looking for Mr. Goodbart
“Mr. Goodbar to the front desk. The front desk is looking for Mr. Goodbar.” – Candy Convention PA Season 28 has only a few episodes left, and the most distinct thing I can say about “Looking for Mr. Goodbart” is that it is one of them. They once again switched to a voiceover narration for (some of) the exposition, there was a subplot about Homer and Lisa playing a barely renamed Pokemon Go thing, and Bart spent much of the episode being nice to old ladies before he learned a lesson about it, or something. As usual, none of it…
Behind Us Forever: A Father’s Watch
“I have a watch with a minute hand.” – Bart Simpson “Alright, you can come. What time is it?” – Mr. Smithers “12:80. No, wait. Wait. What comes after twelve?” – Bart Simpson “One.” – Mr. Smithers “No, after twelve.” – Bart Simpson First off, sorry for there not being a Behind Us Forever for “22 for 30” last week. I was traveling Monday and Tuesday and by the time Wednesday rolled around I really didn’t feel like getting back into it. For those who haven’t seen it, Zombie Simpsons replaced character exposition with voiceover narrator exposition, Bart shaved points…
Behind Us Forever: Kamp Krustier
“Krusty, this camp was a nightmare. They fed us gruel. They forced us to make wallets for export. And one of the campers was eaten by a bear!” – Bart Simpson “Oh my God!” – Krusty the Klown “Well, actually, the bear just ate his hat.” – Bart Simpson “Was it a nice hat?” – Krusty the Klown “Oh yeah.” – Bart Simpson “Oh my God!” – Krusty the Klown It will come as no surprise to readers of this site that Zombie Simpsons is dumb and derivative. It’s been coasting off the legacy of The Simpsons for well over a…
Behind Us Forever: The Cad and the Hat
“Hey, that little boy is playing three games at once.” – Chess Bystander “Checkmate.” – Opponent #1 “Checkmate.” – Opponent #2 “Checkmate.” – Opponent #3 “Dang.” – Bart Simpson I try to forget these episodes as quickly as possible. (Given how bland and repetitive they are, this isn’t usually very difficult.) But just one week after I accused Zombie Simpsons of having Exposition Tourette’s, they put on an expository masterpiece, even by their wretched standards. It starts with Bart getting a temporary tattoo that says “Bad to the Bone”. He informs us of it, then repeats the phrase several times…
Behind Us Forever: Fatzcarraldo
“And I’ll be able to tackle all the hard hitting children’s news the grown-up controlled media won’t touch. Plus I get to be on TV!” – Lisa Simpson Zombie Simpsons long ago stopped astonishing me with how bad it can be, but every once and a while I can’t help but marvel at just how far the writing has devolved. These episodes mostly adhere to the loosest of structures: an A-plot, a supplemental B-plot, both wrapping up near the end. But the incredibly low bar they have for what counts as a story (or as a resolution) is remarkable when you…
Behind Us Forever: The Great Phatsby
“What can I say except thanks for the predictable champagne, pizza that’s hardly ‘numero uno’, and ice cream cake which reminds us why make thirty-one flavors when you can’t get vanilla right?” – Retiring Food Critic Every once and a while, Zombie Simpsons puts its nose to the grindstone and actually tries to make an interesting episode. The Lego episode wasn’t very good, but it was at least visually interesting and ambitious. That “Kang and Kodos are real” episode was maybe gonna be the second movie and actually had some ambition to it. “The Great Phatsby” was certainly promoted like…
Behind Us Forever: Pork & Burns
“They can’t take our house! My pot-bellied pig is in there! Oh, Mr. Porky, no!” – Homer Simpson It has long been true that just about the only thing anyone remembers from the bloated mess that was the movie (itself now almost ten years old) is Spider-Pig. In this episode, Spider-Pig comes back as a kind of Mojo-the-Helper-Monkey replacement. Wacky hijinks ensue. In the B-plot, Marge becomes obsessed with de-cluttering her house, which leads Lisa to get rid of her saxophone until it turns out Marge had it all along. No, it didn’t make any sense in the episode either.…
Behind Us Forever: The Nightmare After Krustmas
“Let’s just agree that the commercialization of Christmas is at best a mixed blessing.” – Lisa Simpson “Amen.” – Gary Coleman Annual or near annual Christmas episodes were never a hallmark of The Simpsons. The premier episode was a Christmas special, but that was the last time the show did a Christmas episode until Season 7’s “Marge Be Not Proud”. That five season gap has never been repeated. The show went back to the tinsel well in Seasons 9, 11, 12, 13, 15, 17, 18, 22, 23, 25, 26, and now again in Season 28. (And I might have missed one…
Behind Us Forever: Havana Wild Weekend
“Oh, you’re gonna love it in Cuba, Marge. There’s shredded pork everywhere.” – Homer Simpson In a world where up has become down and black has become white, I suppose there’s some comfort to be taken in the fact that Zombie Simpsons remains as incoherent and forgettable as ever. In this season’s second travel episode, the family goes to Cuba to get Grampa medical care, or something. That story line gets dropped very quickly in favor of a series of disconnected Cuban references and something about the CIA. This episode also features an unusual amount of “look a character just…
Behind Us Forever: Treehouse of Horror XXVII
“No! No, let me explain! Every Friday evening after work Mr. Burns undergoes a series of medical treatments designed to cheat death for another week.” – Mr. Smithers I’ve been staying with friends in Arlington, VA this week and doing the D.C. tourist thing in Our Nation’s Capital while a constant loop of “Mr. Lisa Goes to Washington” plays inside my head (with a side order of “Amendment to Be“). That left watching another lifeless Zombie Simpsons Halloween special pretty low on my priority list. But watch it I did, and it was, well, lifeless. At the risk of repeating…
Behind Us Forever: The Town
“Hey, ma, I’m on TV!” – Drunk #1 “Hey, where’s that weather chick?” – Drunk #2 “Ooh, this is some wicked party!” – Drunk #3 “Hey, have you seen Sully?” – Drunk #4 Zombie Simpsons has settled into its rut well enough that they have a “travel” episode pretty much every season. This year, they went to Boston, though in a break from tradition they also had the family move there for six minutes of screen time. Other than that weirdness, it was a very typical travel episode: a few real things and people got renamed, everything was pretty nice,…
Behind Us Forever: Friends and Family
“I want to go on the yard work simulator!” – Bart Simpson The official synopsis for this week’s episode of Zombie Simpsons: Mr. Burns’ search for a clan to play his virtual-reality family leads him to hire the Simpsons, except for Homer, since Burns intends to play the father. With nothing to do, Homer befriends the new next-door neighbor, a woman who eats, drinks, thinks and acts like him. A more honest synopsis: Burns goes to a therapist, who then dies for no apparent reason. At the funeral, which the Simpsons attend because reasons, Burns realizes no one loves him.…
Behind Us Forever: Teenage Mutant Milk-caused Hurdles
“Now, come on, you’re going to learn how to shave.” – Homer Simpson I completely didn’t realize there was a new episode last week. Ignorance is truly bliss. This week, Homer goes to the store to buy milk, and ends up getting a new kind that pushes both of his kids into early onset puberty, which basically means zits for Lisa and a mustache for Bart. Meanwhile, there’s a new, hot teacher at the school and Bart and Skinner compete with each other for her attention. If it was coherent in the least it’d be weird, instead it’s just the…