“Ah, and my dear, dear Smithers, you’re no longer needed at all. You’re fired. Ta.” – C.M. Burns We’re now two episodes into Season 22, and there has been nary a synergistic peep from FOX owned subsidiary IGN. Last year, they “reviewed” the premier before it was even broadcast and had one of their puff pieces up each Monday after a new Zombie Simpsons aired. This year, all they’ve got is the generic description text that FOX puts out, and the episode pages for both new ones do not have a link to a review. This means that the “Synergy”…
Category: Synergy
Synergy Can’t Go Along With This
“He crossed that line between everyday villainy, and cartoonish super-villainy.” – Waylon Smithers Up until this week, IGN had been doing a bang up job of sucking up to its paymaster. But the reeking desperation and overwhelming obviousness of making the season finale an American Idol commercial was too much, even for them. FOX let IGN down, man, now they don’t believe in nothin’ no more. IGN’s going to law school! As always, I’ve edited out the synergy. As a conclusion to one of the best worst seasons of The Simpsons Zombie Simpsons in the last few years, the series…
Sunday Preview: “Judge Me Tender”
Synergy, synergy, synergy! At long last, we’re at the end of Season 21 with “Judge Me Tender,” which for all intents and purposes seems to be a tacky commercial celebrating the Fox Network. My memory’s a bit hazy – I seem to recall Zombie Simpsons spoofing – by which I mean not ridiculing and using wholesale – an “American Idol”-like concept before, but I can’t be bothered to look it up. Anyway, the show’s saved its big guns for the finale with guest stars aplenty, including Rupert Murdoch. Here’s Simpsons Channel with the description: Moe discovers a talent for judging contests…
Synergy Develops Stockholm Syndrome
“Ahh, the boy is fine, so far. I taught him to play the spoons.” – Charles “Big” Daddy I think IGN is beginning to yearn for the freedom of summer. This week’s corporate fanboy rant is really a stunner, even by their standards. It’s not just high praise, it’s a justification, a plea that yes, Zombie Simpsons is indeed good. Most of these reviews eagerly lap up whatever Zombie Simpsons left on the rug, but this wants to argue that it’s a good thing to shit on said rug: A lot of the best moments from "The Bob Next Door"…
Synergy Has a Small Suggestion
“There’s some candy right here, sir. Why don’t we eat this instead of stealing?” – Mr. Smithers IGN is finishing the season strong. Not only does this week’s agitprop praise transparently hackneyed story shortcuts (see: Moe’s interactions with the Lovejoys and the Nahasapeemapetilons), but goes so far as to offer a suggestion about how it could’ve been even better! IGN couldn’t ignore the stupidity of using an elopement with Moe as the plot fulcrum, but rather than ignore the awful fake tension it put on the rest of the episode, they offered up a little change and called it a…
Synergy Salivates on Command
Image from Wikimedia Commons. “And now boys and girls, here he is, the boy that says the words you’ve been longing to hear, like the salivating dogs that you are: Bart Simpson!” – Krusty the Klown No two secondary characters are more associated with stereotypical Zombie Simpsons fandom than Ralph Wiggum and Comic Book Guy. They went from uproarious diversions to main attractions, the one part of any episode the writers can be confident will cause well conditioned people to slap their fins together. Synergy, being the corporate-fanboy id of Zombie Simpsons mentality, wallows in them: We also got to…
Synergy Confuses Fiction and Reality
“Oh no, Willie didn’t make it, and he crushed our boy.” – Movie Mom “Ugh, what a mess.” – Movie Dad “Oh, I don’t like this new director’s cut.” – Homer Simpson IGN did two things I appreciate with this week’s corporate fanboy ode to Zombie Simpsons: 1) Kept things ridiculously positive – It’s a lot easier to edit out the synergy when I can replace words like “best” with “worst” and leave the underlying sentence structure untouched. 2) Exposed the shallowness of its sycophancy – This is a little more subtle, but I like how the comedy free tear-jerker…
Synergy Wears Down
Image used under Creative Commons license from Flickr user marwho. “Homey, why don’t you lie down and relax.” – Marge Simpson “No time, Marge, I think Mr. Burns wants me to do some long division.” – Homer Simpson I think all those staff cuts at IGN are finally having an effect. Last week I noticed that their fluff piece on “American History X-Cellent” was unusually short. Now comes this week’s entry, and it’s even shorter. Out of curiosity, I grabbed all the reviews from calendar 2010 and ran a word count. Starting with “Thursdays with Abie” and running through “The…
Synergy Sees What It Wants to See
One of these is not like the others. “Wait, I’m confused about the movie. So the cops knew that internal affairs was setting them up?” – Homer Simpson “What are you talking about? There’s nothing like that in there.” – Movementarian Guy “Oh, you see when I get bored I make up my own movie. I have a very short attention span.” – Homer Simpson This week, IGN pulled its usual stunt of disparaging Zombie Simpsons while still giving it a ridiculously high numerical score (6.9). I had to make a surprisingly small number of changes to edit out the…
Synergy Doesn’t Learn From Its Mistakes
Image used under Creative Commons license from Flickr user iotae. “You gotta give her up.” – Lisa Simpson “No, no, wait, hear my plan: put up with her for seven more years. Then we’ll get married, once the first baby comes along she’s bound to settle down and start treating me right. After all, I deserve it.” – Bart Simpson This week’s edition of IGN’s “corporate fanboy” writing was a mixed bag of praise and criticism. (It still scored a 7.3, of course.) The most direct criticism is of Sacha Baron Cohen and the way this episode didn’t live up…
Synergy Feasts on Crumbs
When it comes to “reviewing” Zombie Simpsons, IGN basically has two tools at its disposal: low standards and positive spin. This week’s sycophantic drivel is heavy on the latter. These aren’t recycled ideas that have been done much better in the past, they’re “variations of themes”. Sarah Silverman’s character (hereafter referred to as “Girlfriend #8”) isn’t a one dimensional character who exists only to kiss and longboard, she’s a “female version of Bart”. Skinner and Willy kissing for hours isn’t wholly unnecessary filler, it “was probably funnier on paper”. It can’t be easy to suck stale crumbs off the floor…
Synergy Agrees With Me About One Thing
Image taken from Wikimedia commons. “It’s true, and we’ll all live in cities on the moon!” – Marge Simpson IGN was in mid-season form this week, slobbering all over lame jokes and unabashedly praising the repetitive nature of the plot. But let’s set aside the fussin’ and the feudin’ and talk about something we can agree upon. The opening of the Zombie Simpsons episode was a reference to old Tex Avery cartoons and IGN thinks that if you’re a young whippersnapper you ought to look them up on your fancy YouTube machine. But IGN doesn’t provide a link, I’ll provide…
Synergy Wasn’t All That
“Alright family, I want the truth. Don’t pull any punches. Am I just a little bit overweight? . . . Well, am I?” – Homer Simpson “Forgive us Dad, but it takes time to properly sugarcoat a response.” – Lisa Simpson This was one of those rare weeks where the Zombie Simpsons episode was so bereft of humor, or even just attempts at humor, that even wholly owned News Corporation subsidiary IGN couldn’t gin up too much praise. It concludes by saying: “The Color Yellow” just wasn’t all that worth it.” Of course the numerical score is still a 6.4,…
Synergy Skips to the End
Image used under Creative Commons license from Flickr user Rose Robinson. “I’m sorry, but my mother always said if you can’t say anything nice don’t say anything at all.” – Marge Simpson “Will that hold up in court?” – Homer Simpson “No, I’ve tried it before.” – Lionel Hutz On previous occasions I have described IGN’s Simpsons reviews as being written in a style known as “corporate fanboy”. It has the same willful blindness to mediocrity that characterizes fanboy screeds, but there’s an air of discomfort about it that its formality cannot fully conceal. Case in point, this week’s review…
Synergy Has a Nostalgia Hangover
“Duh, Homer, why are we down here?” – Bernie “Aw geez, I told you Bernie, to guard the bee.” – Homer Simpson “But why?” – Less Gifted Employee “Oh you guys are pathetic, no wonder Smithers made me head bee guy.” – Homer Simpson Having read more of these IGN Simpsons reviews than I care to think about it’s become clear that they just don’t put a lot of thought into them. Case in point is this week’s review which has only two main elements, 1) praising the show for being on the air a long time, and 2) retelling…
Synergy Contradicts Itself
“Smithers I’ve been thinking, is it wrong to cheat in order to win a million dollar bet?” – C.M. Burns “Yes, sir.” – Mr. Smithers “Let me rephrase that. Is it wrong if I cheat in order to win a million dollar bet?” – C.M. Burns “No, sir. Who would you like killed?” – Mr. Smithers In its never ending mission to praise Zombie Simpsons in the most obsequious of ways IGN will sometimes slip up. Like all paid sycophants, IGN doesn’t have a coherent, well thought out world view. It simply finds ways to praise and doesn’t concern itself…
Synergy Enjoys the Banality
“Dear advertisers, I am disgusted with the way old people are depicted on television. We are not all vibrant, fun loving sex maniacs. Many of us are bitter, resentful individuals who remember the good old days when entertainment was bland and inoffensive.” – Abe “Grandpa” Simpson When last we left IGN’s Zombie Simpsons reviews they were swooning and drawing little hearts on their notebooks because the writers dragged the Plow King out of retirement for a joke free cameo. This week there’s some danger they’re just going to straight up overdose on nostalgia. Yes, Grampa Simpson has told some enjoyably…
Synergy Enjoys the Nostalgia Firehose
“What’s the matter boy? Don’t you know me? I’m your buddy! I love you boy.” – Bart Simpson It’s always heartwarming to see a lapdog and its owner reconciled, especially when the rekindled love comes about because they remembered the good times. This week’s IGN review was a fawning love letter, not so much for any of this episode’s original content but just because Zombie Simpsons opened the nostalgia valve all the way. As Dave said in our chat, the Plow King was “fan service” and, lo and behold, the mere appearance of the Plow King, however jokeless it may…
Synergy Lashes Out
Image used under Creative Commons license from Flickr user Robotskirts. “Let’s come to our senses everyone, this witch hunt is turning into a circus.” – Goody Simpson Once again setting aside the ridiculously high number (6.1), this is now the third week in a row that IGN’s Simpsons review has been downright harsh. Not only did they think Cletus was overused, but they hated on the Wiccan storyline almost without exception. There’s no doubt in my mind that this isn’t going to be a permanent trend, but it still makes my job easier and as a profoundly lazy person I…
Synergy Pines for Its Lost Youth and Innocence
“There has been a shocking decline in the quality and quantity of your toadying, Waylon!” – C.M. Burns Much like last week, this week’s IGN Simpsons “review” was surprisingly long on criticism within the text before giving it a good number anyway. I don’t want to repeat myself too much, but this episode scored a 6.9 when the actual review was mostly negative even before I edited out the synergy. What would it have needed to do to score less than that? True, the tone is still that of a gently cowed subordinate, but the substance of this review is…