Image shamelessly yoinked from here. “This is worse than your song about Mr. T.” – Apu Nahasapeemapetilon “I pity the fool who doesn’t like . . . he.” – Homer Simpson This episode has a cavalcade of guest voices, several of whom are playing themselves, plus Homer gets a new job as a talk show host. Happily, they spend most of the commentary ignoring the episode and telling stories about Mr. T, who is apparently exactly like his public persona when he’s recording voices. It’s also worth pointing out that by this point in Zombie Simpsons, even the DVD…
Category: Lies Make Baby Jesus Cry
Diatribe of a Mad Housewife Makes Baby Jesus Cry
“This romance is so full of heartfelt passion. I can really identify with this corn fed heroine.” – Marge Simpson At this point, Zombie Simpsons commentaries are a known quantity: there will be compliments on the animation, lots of digressions and tangents, and Al Jean will swoop in to rescue the conversation every time the rest of them just give up and go silent. This one is no different. Marge writes a novel, Homer gets a new job, and there are a lot of guest stars, a couple of which Jean forgets about. An even ten guys on this one:…
Margical History Tour Makes Baby Jesus Cry
“Remember, Bart, I mean, Dances in Underwear, we take the white man alive.” – Lisa Simpson “Alright, Thinks Too Much, it shall be so.” – Bart Simpson As per usual with Zombie Simpsons commentaries, the actual episode is incidental to the conversation. In this case, it’s one of those three part story episodes, the first is about Henry VIII, the second is about Sacajawea, and the third about Mozart. They mostly discuss books and movies related to the actual historical figures rather than what’s going on here, but that’s to be expected since the actual episode is a parade of…
I, (Annoyed Grunt)-Bot Makes Baby Jesus Cry
“Why, why was I programmed to feel pain?” – Robot As far as Zombie Simpsons commentaries go this one is typically dull, right up until they do something actually worth listening to near the end. (Spoiler alert: Jean and Groening both hate “The Principal and the Pauper”. Cool.) Before that is the usual meandering conversation and basically ignoring the episode, which is a good thing because this episode is awful. It makes no sense, is full of fake drama and tension, tries to change something and then ignores it, and relies on Homer getting hurt in pretty much every scene. …
Alone Again Natura-Diddily Makes Baby Jesus Cry
“But I distinctly heard you say that Maude was with God.” – Bart Simpson “Oh, that’s right, I was at Bible camp. I was learning how to be more judgmental.” – Maude Flanders Much like the commentary for the Jockey Elves episode, the commentary for the death of Maude Flanders mostly dances around the actual events on screen and their larger implications for the overall history and health of the show. Also like the commentary for the Jockey Elves, George Meyer is here quietly commenting on things without doing any of the stammering defense/non-defense of the indefensible crap that’s occurring…
Saddlesore Galactica Makes Baby Jesus Cry
“Come on, get to the part where you steal his identity!” – Bart Simpson “I’m trying to explain how emotionally fragile I was.” – Armin Tamzarian “Oh, it’s one of those stories.” – Bart Simpson The collapse between Season 9 and Season 11 seemed long and painful while it was happening, but looking back over the (now very long) history of the show, it was almost the blink of an eye. Case in point is the commentary for this episode, which is stunning for how closely it tracks later Zombie Simpsons commentaries yet is totally unlike those from just a…
“The Dad Who Knew Too Little” Makes Baby Jesus Cry
“Now, don’t you fret. When I’m through, he won’t set foot in this town again. I can be very, very persuasive. . . . C’mon, leave town.” – Crappy Private Detective “No.” – Sideshow Bob “Aw, I’ll be your friend.” – Crappy Private Detective “No.” – Sideshow Bob “Oh, you’re mean!” – Crappy Private Detective They make a lot during this commentary of the fact that there’s an emotional core to this episode, namely Homer trying to connect with Lisa. But whenever they’re trying to push that you can’t help but notice that the stuff going on in the episode…
“The Great Louse Detective” Makes Baby Jesus Cry
“This is one more Emmy than you’ll ever win you bantering jack-in-the-box!” – Sideshow Bob “Just don’t drop that thing in the shower, Bob.” – Krusty the Klown “No talent shill!” – Sideshow Bob “Second banana!” – Krusty the Klown “Panderer!” – Sideshow Bob “Bore!” – Krusty the Klown This was a very above-average commentary by the standards of Season 14. In this case it actually helped that they had a lot more guys than usual because there’s only a few times when no one’s talking at all. It also helps that this is a Sideshow Bob episode, which gives…
“Pray Anything” Makes Baby Jesus Cry
It’s a pity that I don’t have a way to tabulate just how much time they spend off topic in these Zombie Simpsons commentaries, because this one might have set a record. Even by their standards there are several impressively long tangents about things that are only connected to the episode by the thinnest of threads. I think my favorite might be when they talk about how you can’t actually swim around in a flood. Speaking of floods, this episode ends with one. Homer has blasphemed the church such that the entire town floods up to roof level, at which…
“Strong Arms of the Ma” Makes Baby Jesus Cry
“Homer, there’s no reason for you to feel threatened. You’ll always be the man of this house.” – Marge Simpson “Aww, thanks honey.” – Homer Simpson These Season 14 commentary posts might be a little strange because I haven’t seen more than a handful of these episodes before. I gave up on the show in Season 12, but I saw about half of Season 13 when it was on the air, mostly out of habit and boredom. The only Season 14 episode I’m sure I’ve seen all the way through is the Halloween one, which I mistakenly gave a chance…
“The Blunder Years” Makes Baby Jesus Cry
“When are we going to get to my first word?” – Lisa Simpson “Your what what?” – Homer Simpson “My first word!” – Lisa Simpson “Ah, you don’t want to hear that story. I know, I’ll tell you about the time I got locked in the bank vault with Mr. Mooney. It was another one of my harebrained schemes.” – Homer Simpson “Dad!” – Lisa Simpson “Wait a minute, that was The Lucy Show!” – Homer Simpson I like to point out how they frequently ignore the episode during a lot of these Zombie Simpsons commentaries, but for the actual…
A Hunka Hunka Burns in Love Makes Baby Jesus Cry
“That woman, she’s so captivating! Smithers, my heart’s pounding like a jackhammer.” – C.M. Burns I occasionally see people make the argument that the show recovered somewhat once Al Jean took over as show runner from Mike Scully, but I’ve never agreed with that. This episode was one of the very last of the Scully era, and it’s wall-to-wall with things that have become tropes during Al Jean’s now decade long run with Zombie Simpsons. You have the totally unrelated Act 1, the complete wussification of Burns, Homer getting hurt worse than Daffy Duck ever did, and characters inexplicably appearing…
“Poppa’s Got a Brand New Badge” Makes Baby Jesus Cry
“Dad, don’t you see you’re abusing your power like all vigilantes? I mean, if you’re the police, who will police the police?” – Lisa Simpson “I dunno, Coast Guard?” – Homer Simpson Oh, Joe Mantegna, I wish you were on every commentary. In case you’ve forgotten, in this episode Homer becomes the police force for Springfield and then Fat Tony tries to assassinate him, and then Maggie shots Fat Tony, and then it ends. If that sounds like a weak mashup of “Homer the Vigilante” and “The Twisted World of Marge Simpson” with a dash of “Who Shot Mr. Burns,…
The Frying Game Makes Baby Jesus Cry
“Before I go I want to say something. Game shows aren’t about cruelty. They’re about greed, and wonderful prizes like poorly built catamarans. But somewhere along the line you lost your way. For shame.” – Homer Simpson This is the final sentence of the plot summary on the Wikipedia entry for “The Frying Game”: Carmen Electra tries to explain, but Homer is too busy looking at her chest. Nothing further need be said. There are nine people who felt the need to commiserate though, including Groening and token woman Deb Lacusta. 0:50 – The “Screamapillar” was Swartzwelder’s idea. And it…
I Am Furious (Yellow) Makes Baby Jesus Cry
Image used under Creative Commons license from Flickr user heath_bar. “How about if we tell you our problems with relationships?” – Principal Skinner “Yeah, yeah, that’ll eat up some time.” – Homer Simpson Stan Lee did a guest voice in this episode and they invited him back for the commentary. If you’ve read any of the previous installments in this series, or listened to any of these commentaries, you can probably guess what happens. This is basically twenty-two minutes of them shooting the shit with Stan Lee. The episode itself is about as lazy and uncreative as they come, though…
“The Sweetest Apu” Makes Baby Jesus Cry
“But first we have a special guest: Rainer Wolfcastle, star of the reprehensible McBain movies.” – Jay Sherman I have very little memory of this episode. Turns out that’s a good thing, because it’s bad. And since the commentators didn’t bother to comment on it much, I’m not going to either. I will say that, unlike most of the times they just completely ignore the episode, this one could have been very entertaining. Unfortunately, I’m not a big fan of Inside the Actors Studio. If I were, I would have found this fascinating. There’s a lot of information from Lipton…
“Little Girl in the Big Ten” Makes Baby Jesus Cry
“It was naive of you to think I would mistake this town’s most prominent one-hundred-four year old man for one of my elementary school students.” – Principal Skinner This is yet another of those Season 13 episodes that epitomizes the vapid hyperactivity of Zombie Simpsons. After becoming an accomplished gymnast in the span of about thirty seconds, Lisa accidentally befriends some college students who think she’s one of them. Yes, this is a massively stupid teevee trope (especially when it’s used seriously like this); no, the writers do not care. Don’t worry though, worse things are coming. You see, Bart…
“Half-Decent Proposal” Makes Baby Jesus Cry
“Oh my god, it’s my old boyfriend, Artie Ziff.” – Marge Simpson “Hello Marge, have you heard? I’m stinking rich. Jealous?” – Artie Ziff “I’ll bet you’d trade it all for one night with my wife.” – Homer Simpson “I would.” – Artie Ziff “Homer!” – Marge Simpson The crazy Act 3 plot swerve was one of the things that finally convinced me to give up on the show ever being good again. Once you get into the double digit seasons, crazier and crazier things began happening at the end of episodes. What had been a bizarre, albeit short and…
“Jaws Wired Shut” Makes Baby Jesus Cry
“Excuse me, you didn’t answer me. You just trailed off.” – Kirk van Houten “Yeah, yeah, I did kinda trail off there, didn’t I?” – Chief Wiggum I had such high hopes for this commentary. It has Joe Mantegna, a man with a proven ability to rescue Zombie Simpsons commentaries from their ordinary mediocrity. Sadly, although Mantegna was here, he barely spoke. The commentary was actually worse than normal, in no small part because the third act of this episode is so wretchedly bad that Al Jean and company basically admit it sucks and then talk about anything else that…
“Weekend at Burnsie’s” Makes Baby Jesus Cry
Bonus: crazy backwards Spanish version. I was sort of looking forward to watching this episode. I honestly had not seen it in seven years or so and I remembered not completely hating it. Turns out it sucks, and the few good weed jokes are stranded in Act 2. Act 1 is Homer gaining the ability to control crows; Act 3 is the lifeless body of Mr. Burns being used as a puppet in an homage to the cinematic and comedy genius of the “Weekend at Bernie’s” franchise. To my surprise, however, the commentary was pretty good. They actually talked about…