“You took a new job in a strange town without discussing it with your family?” – Marge Simpson “Of course not. I wouldn’t do that! Why not?” – Homer Simpson “We have roots here, Homer. We have friends and family and library cards. Bart’s lawyer is here.” – Marge Simpson The most obvious option for doing a Compare & Contrast for “The Town” would be to a travel episode that’s actually coherent, say, “The City of New York vs. Homer Simpson” or “Bart vs. Australia”. These kinds of stories and jokes work better if the family has an actual reason…
Category: Compare & Contrast
Compare & Contrast: Marge Gets Jealous
“Lurleen, we’re gonna have to cut you off. We’re getting some kind of grinding noise on the track.” – Hicksville U.S.A. Recording Producer NOTE: I will be at Classic Simpsons Trivia in Brooklyn tonight. If you’re there, feel free to look for the tall, gumpy white guy in this t-shirt and say hello. “Friends and Family” provided an embarrassment of riches for Compare & Contrast material. This is a partial list of topics I considered: – The family going to live with Burns the same way Bart did in “Burns’ Heir” – In the original, Bart had to be convinced to…
Compare & Contrast: Burns’s Childhood Trauma
“Wait, you forgot your bear! A symbol of your lost youth and innocence!” – Papa Burns First, a brief update: I have been pedaling around the Midwest for a couple weeks now. After six days on the road, I departed my home state of Michigan on a ferry to Wisconsin, then went south through Chicago, across Indiana, and made it into Ohio last Saturday. For the last few days I’ve been staying with Mad Jon and his wife here in Cleveland. The most obvious mistake I made in planning this trip was to massively over-estimate how much free time I would…
Compare & Contrast: Making Flashback Episodes Worthwhile
“Can you say David Hasselhoff?” – Bart Simpson “David Hassahof.” – Lisa Simpson “Can you say Daddy?” – Homer Simpson “Homer.” – Lisa Simpson The Simpsons did its first flashback episode way (way) back in Season 2. “The Way We Was” introduced us to Homer and Marge as high school kids who had never even met; and along the way answered one of the fundamental questions of the show: why, exactly, is Marge with Homer? Over the next four seasons they flashed back three more times, each time showing the birth of one of the Simpson kids. “I Married Marge”…
Compare & Contrast: Lisa Goes to SNPP
“Lisa, you’ll have a fine time at the plant with Dad. You’ve been interested in nuclear power for years.” – Marge Simpson “I’ve signed numerous petitions to shut down that plant!” – Lisa Simpson “Well, there you go.” – Marge Simpson Per Wikipedia, Take Your Daughter to Work Day started in 1993, but: The program was officially expanded in 2003 to include boys; however, most companies that participated in the program had, since the beginning, allowed both boys and girls to participate, usually renaming it “Take Our Children to Work Day” or an equivalent.[5] In 1996, The Simpsons invoked it as…
Compare & Contrast: Surprise Nuclear Inspections
“The watchdog of public safety, is there any lower form of life?” – C.M. Burns It would be one thing if Zombie Simpsons merely repeated ideas and stories that had been done on The Simpsons. Given the enormous catalog of episodes, it’s certainly understandable that scenes and concepts would need to get recycled from time to time. Hell, that was understandable way back in the heyday of the show. For example, Season 2’s “Two Cars in Every Garage and Three Eyes on Every Fish” has a great nuclear plant inspection, where we see gum used to seal a crack in the cooling…
Compare & Contrast: Proudly Fat Homer
“I’m sick of all your stereotypes and cheap jokes! The overweight individuals in this country are just as smart and talented and hard working as everybody else! And they’re gonna make their voices heard! All they need is a leader!” – Homer Simpson Conventional wisdom has it that everyone is getting fatter these days and that’s a bad thing. Reality, as usual, is considerably more complicated. Moral panics over fat have been a recurring feature of American culture for over a century; the actual effects of obesity are deeply misunderstood at best; and the amount of societal and cultural abuse…
Compare & Contrast: Famously Smart Guest Stars
“I wanted to see your utopia, but now I see it is more of a Fruitopia.” – Stephen Hawking “I’m sure what Dr. Hawking means is-” – Principal Skinner “Silence! I don’t need anyone to talk for me, except this voice box.” – Stephen Hawking Celebrities voicing themselves has long been one of the most widely acknowledged hallmarks of Zombie Simpsons. In truth, of course, the show had been using self voiced celebrities almost since the beginning. What changed was the way those voices were used. In Season 2, Ringo Starr voices himself, but responding to decades old fan mail,…
Compare & Contrast: Hypnotic Personality Changess
“What about Clemens?” – C.M. Burns “Sir, he’s in no condition to play.” – Mr. Smithers A person suddenly changing their whole personality basically only happens in fiction. It can be the steel screw who becomes a softy, the wallflower gaining rock solid confidence, even the idiot who’s suddenly smart. The usual way to do this is with a bonk on the head, which generally comes complete with a second one near the end to put everything back the way it was. (NOTE: Brains don’t actually work that way, please do not attempt at home.) Sometime in the very early…
Compare & Contrast: Pranking the New Teacher
“Kids have been doing that one since my day.” – Marge Simpson Rather than get into the nonsensical pageant of the transmundane that was the last third of “Blazed and Confused”, I’d like to take a look at a small moment from the beginning that illustrates the general shallowness of this episode. Specifically, the way that Bart’s closet/skeleton “prank” fails as both a prank, a joke, and as a part of the rest of the episode, especially when compared with Bart’s similar actions in “The PTA Disbands”. While the backstories differ considerably, the immediate situation in both episodes is remarkably similar. In…
Compare & Contrast: Planet Express Goes Back in Time
“Choke on that, causality!” – Professor Farnsworth The Futurama gang has traveled back in time on several occasions and by several different methods, but usually when they do they manage to find something a lot more interesting than in Simpsorama. They’ve looted ancient treasures, gone back to the American Revolution, and been in and around December 31st, 1999 more times than I can count. But for an episode that goes and stays in (relatively) contemporary America, the best comparison is easily Roswell That Ends Well. Both episodes put Fry, Leela, Bender and the Professor in fish-out-of-water situations, but Roswell That Ends Well not only gives…
Reading Digest: Fan Made Treats Edition
“My only hope is this homemade Prozac . . . Hmm, needs more ice cream.” – Homer Simpson I’ve long been of the belief that the stuff ordinary fans come up with is far, far superior to all that crappy merchandise FOX allows to be pumped out. This week we have several kick ass examples, including two that you can eat, a cake and a chocolate Homer. In addition to that, we’ve got a couple of election related links, the original Monkey’s Paw, a couple of lists and a Lego Flanders. Enjoy. The Simpson’s Ralph Wiggum Cut-Out Cake – Pictures of…
Compare & Contrast: Burns Drills
“Oil, ho!” – Slant Drilling Worker “Huzzah!” – C.M. Burns “Opposites A-Frack” offers more than a few opportunities for comparing and contrasting. Burns falls in love again, Homer gets a new job again, Burns asks Homer for romantic advice again. I even briefly contemplated comparing it to those episodes on 30 Rock where hyper-capitalist Alec Baldwin has a secret affair with ultra-liberal Congresswoman Edie Falco, just for a change of pace. But Burns drilling for gas underneath Springfield is too on the nose from “Who Shot Mr. Burns? Part 1” to pass up. In both episodes, Burns is drilling into the Earth…
Compare & Contrast: Treehouses of Horror Ending in “V”
“This sandwich tastes so young and impudent. Seymour, what’s with the good grub?” – Mrs. Krabappel “Well, perhaps I ought to let you folks in on a secret. Do you remember me telling Jimbo Jones that I’d make something of him one day?” – Principal Skinner “Are you saying you killed Jimbo, processed his carcass, and served him for lunch? . . . Ha!” – Mrs. Krabappel This year’s Halloween special had three segments: one about a hellish version of Springfield Elementary, one about a Kubrick movie, and one about the Simpson family co-existing with different versions of itself. Twenty…
Compare & Contrast: Marge’s Competitors and Failure Generally
“I was wrong to have a dream. Wrong as usual. I mean, if you’re nothing special, why kid yourself?” – Marge Simpson The obvious choice for comparing and contrasting Marge’s sandwich shop in “Super Franchise Me” is her pretzel wagon in “The Twisted World of Marge Simpson”. In both episodes, we see Marge not only strike out on her own a bit, but into the food industry, and with eventually poor results. Of course, in Season 8, we get into the story right away, instead of wading through an unrelated opening (montage included); and it makes a lot more sense…
Compare & Contrast: Bonding at Sea
“Dad, I know I’ve been a little hard on you the last couple of days, but if I had the strength to lift my arms, I’d give you a hug.” – Bart Simpson As is often the case with Zombie Simpsons episodes, it’s easiest to understand the many, many horrible problems of “The Wreck of the Relationship” by looking at a single moment and pulling all the loose threads that dangle from it. And, since Zombie Simpsons literally always repeats The Simpsons, we can also see how the exact same thing was done vastly better many years ago. The screamingly obvious choice…
Compare & Contrast: Krusty’s Struggles
“Hi, kids. Today’s show is gonna be the funniest, side-splittinest, cavalcade of . . . ah, the hell with it. Roll the cartoon.” – Krusty the Klown There are a lot of big, flashing similarities between “Like Father, Like Clown” and “Clown in the Dumps”, most prominently that both are about Krusty and his father, and, even moreso, about Krusty missing his father. But there are also a lot of small, individual scenes and jokes that are very similar. So let’s consider one of the former and then one of the latter. For our overarching theme, just look at how…
Compare & Contrast: Homer and 4th of July Fireworks Disasters
“This baby’s sure to kill something!” – Homer Simpson There is little doubt that a man who famously likes his beer cold, his teevee loud, and his homosexuals flaming, is a big fan of the thundering light show that is Fourth of July fireworks. Of course, Homer is also the exact opposite person who should ever actually be involved with them. He is thoughtless, careless and impulsive, and those are not traits that mix well with gunpowder. In “The Yellow Badge of Cowardage”, Zombie Simpsons played with that combustible mixture and blew itself up. In “Summer of 4 Ft. 2”, The…
Compare & Contrast: Adult Game Night
“Oh, I hate having parties. The toilet always gets backed up.” – Homer Simpson “I don’t care if the sink shoots sludge, we’re having a party!” – Marge Simpson There’s an inescapable lameness to those adult games that get broken out after dinner parties. When kids get together, they can easily make up games on the fly (you’ve got to reach home base at the couch, the lava starts at the edge of the carpet, etcetera), but grown-ups tend to need a little more structure, especially if they’re playing against people they don’t know that well. Trivial Pursuit, Scattegories and…
Compare & Contrast: Comic Book Guy As Villain
“Tonight’s episode: Enter . . . The Collector.” – TV Announcer There are basically no characters on the show who haven’t undergone a serious dumbing down in the Zombie Simpsons era (Gil, maybe?). Some of them gradually devolved, others had sudden changes in a single episode; either way, there’s often a moment when you knew that the original version was never coming back. For Comic Book Guy, I’ve always thought that moment came in Season 11 when he materialized out of nowhere to complain about the Simpsons getting a horse again. Homer asks if anyone cares what “this guy” thinks, and the assembled…