Not content this week to slurp at the company slop bucket merely by pretending to review Zombie Simpsons, IGN has run a series of quotes from Moe. There are eight quotes in total, of which only one is from Zombie Simpsons (it’s from Season 18). Of the seven that are not in Zombie Simpsons (although there’s one from Season 11’s “Pygmoelion” which is right on the line) only three of them are correctly quoted. The others are either missing important words or outright mangled. A cursory check of SNPP – SNPP! – would’ve gotten the correct quote in several cases,…
Category: Synergy
Synergy Hides in the Bureaucracy
“We need to talk about the, marital difficulties, we’ve been having lately.” – Marge Simpson “Marge, there’s just too much pressure. What with my job, the kids, traffic snarls, political strife at home and abroad! But I promise you, the second all those things go away, we’ll have sex.” – Homer Simpson Sometimes even your in-house fanboys don’t like an episode, it doesn’t happen very often, but it does happen. So while the IGN review below has some entire sentences I didn’t need to edit, the numerical score is still a 6.2. 6.2! Even setting aside the goofiness of rating…
Synergy Resorts to Rote Retellings
Image grabbed from here. “Oh . . . a little sterile, no real insight. What do you think Miss Hoover?” – Principal Skinner “Enh.” – Miss Hoover IGN really phoned it in this week. There are six paragraphs in their review of that reprehensibly dull Halloween episode. There’s an opening full of generic praise, there’s a closing full of generic praise. The four middle paragraphs are dedicated, in order, to simply retelling the story of each of the four segments from the episode, including that tepid little opening. In addition to that, each contains the full title of the segment…
Synergy Sweats the Details
“Springfield doesn’t want places like this!” – Marge Simpson “I think I know what Springfield wants, sugar.” – Belle “Oh? I’ve lived in this town for thirty-seven years.” – Marge Simpson “I’ve lived here fifty-two years.” – Belle “I’m third generation.” – Marge Simpson “Sixth.” – Belle “Get out of my town!” – Marge Simpson What do you do if you’re tasked with writing a glowing review of a Zombie Simpsons episode in which the main plot is so transparently awful and pointless that even the most bought out of reviewers would have a hard time making it seem otherwise? …
Synergy Has Low Standards
“Listen to your mother kids, aim low; aim so low no one will even care if you succeed.” – Marge Simpson If there is such a writing style as “corporate fanboy”, IGN has perfected it in their Zombie Simpsons “reviews”. Even by the pitifully low standards of Zombie Simpsons “Bart Gets a Z” is an undeniable mess comprised of unfinished ideas, jokeless dialogue, and random outbursts. I mentioned this briefly in the Crazy Noises conversation, but even individual scenes are so ill defined that it was actually a surprise when they cut to commercial. It was self evidently terrible enough…
Synergy Jumps the Gun
“All these new superheroes suck. None of them can hold a candle to Radioactive Man.” – Bart Simpson We’ve seen a pretty hefty increase in traffic around here since Season 20 finally went off the air, so I’m going to explain just what these “synergy” posts are all about. IGN is a wholly owned subsidiary of FOX that publishes “reviews” of each new Zombie Simpsons episode, usually on the Monday after it’s broadcast. (They published early this week because they got an advance copy from their paymasters and wanted to add whatever little they could to the promotional momentum.) To…
Synergy Tips Its Hand
Our old friends at IGN are filling the summer months with content the same way we are: by talking about old episodes. So far I’ve ignored these, I don’t need anyone to tell me that Marge vs. the Monorail is awesome, nor do I have much use for a review that docks a point from “Homer’s Barbershop Quartet” because people don’t praise it often enough. It’s all drivel; though if they ever get around to positively reviewing some piece of shit from a later season I’ll probably be forced to weigh in with a flurry of pointless but cathartic ranting.…
Synergy Aces the Final
“It’s the last day of school, Milhouse. Try to show some dignity.” – Bart Simpson After a couple of weeks of poorly feigned enthusiasm and mild, mathematically illiterate criticisms, IGN got back on the horse for the season finale. This is exactly the kind of mindless raving I expect from wholly owned subsidiaries. As always, I’ve edited out the synergy. Enjoy: May 18, 2009 – “Coming to Homerica” was a great an appropriate way to end season 20 because it was everything The Zombie Simpsons should be is: smart dumb and funny boring. The series has often taken used to…
Synergy Flunks Math
The IGN review for this week’s four part Zombie Simpsons clusterfuck is the first one they’ve put up since I’ve been doing these synergy posts that isn’t a rave. To be sure, it’s pretty gentle criticism, but it’s not a glowing review and that’s a first. What puzzles me, however, is the fact that the episode still garners a rating of 6.2. 6.2! When the review considers only one of four segments to be good, shouldn’t that be more like a 2.5, or, if you’re rounding up, a 3? What, precisely, is the point of having a scale go from…
Synergy Fakes an Orgasm
“Hey everybody, I’m gonna haul ass to Lollapalooza!” – Abe “Grandpa” Simpson This week’s IGN Zombie Simpsons fellatio is an exercise in sloppily faked enthusiasm. Lisa’s teacher is Miss Hoover, not Mrs. Hoover (part of the fun of Ms. Hoover is that she very much wants to be Mrs. Somebody and isn’t). Then there’s “science water”, which very pointedly isn’t capitalized in the episode but is in the review. There are also a couple of basic editing errors. If you’re going to pretend to enjoy something you’ve got to pay attention to the details or else your paramour/meal ticket might become…
Synergy Outdoes Itself
“It’s times like this that I’m thankful Dad has little to no interest in almost everything I do.” – Lisa Simpson Compared with the Fox Network, IGN is a tiny dingleberry on Rupert Murdoch’s ass, so I expect some sycophancy. But this week’s IGN Simpsons review is truly a stunner. Not only does it ignore the B plot completely (again), but it uses the word “wretchedly” in reference to something other than the show. Bravo. As per usual, I’ve edited the synergy right out of it. Enjoy: April 27, 2009 – It’s surprising that The Simpsons has never used the…
Synergy Admits Past Relationships
“Must . . . fight . . . Satan, make it . . . up to him . . . later.” – Bart Simpson When even your own corporate internet shill has to mention no fewer than five previous episodes in reviewing your latest installment, it might be time to re-evaluate things. And he went easy, I added a sixth amongst my usual corrections for accuracy and honesty. Enjoy. April 20, 2009 – A lot of the basic ideas found in “The Good, the Sad and the Drugly” have been mined before done better in previous episodes of The Simpsons.…
Oh look, they weren’t lying
“I’d be mortified if someone ever made a lousy product with the ‘Simpson’ name on it.” – Lisa Simpson Lo and behold! The United States Postal Service and Fox have unveiled the stamps they hinted at not one week ago, featuring oddly stylized artwork of America’s favorite funny family. You’re encouraged to vote “early and often” for your favorite stamp online, though curiously “none of the above” is not an option. Oh well. These sticky little fuckers and related ephemera go on sale May 7th. We won’t be buying any, because we can’t condone anything related to celebrating 20 years…
Synergy Has a Glaring Omission
“I was just thinking about Homer Simpson.” – Not Shelley Long “That’s okay, I was just thinking about Sybil Danning.” – Moe One has to admire IGN’s synergistically hacktacular efforts to glowingly review Zombie Simpsons. Faced with such a daunting task as trying to put a positive spin on Maggie’s bizarre subplot, they elected to simply ignore it altogether. The word “Maggie” doesn’t appear once and there isn’t a single reference to her big part in the episode. Can’t say something nice? Don’t say anything at all. That is top notch synergy. Happily for us, they did delve, deeply, into…
Simpsons stamps to make life worthwhile
“The airplane’s upside down.” – Homer Simpson Downtrodden philatelists rejoice – the United States Postal Service has heard your desperate, needy pleas and in an act of noblesse oblige, will finally loose a series of Simpsons-themed stamps for public comsumption. In conjunction with the Fox marketing machine, these stamps are obviously intended to be another salvo in what is sure to be a clusterfuck of a Simpsons 20th anniversary media onslaught later this year. The 44-cent first class stamps will be previewed on April 9th; no word yet as to when they’ll be released into nerds’ greedy, greasy mitts. If…
Grammatically Incoherent Synergy
“I didn’t want a hokey second wedding like those ones on TV. This one is for real.” – Homer Simpson I highly recommend clicking over to IGN for this week’s edition of Network Synergy and You. Not so much for the “review” itself, as it has been significantly improved below, but for the instantly recognizable image of Marge, which has been labeled with a caption that reads (and I am not making this up): “This is the character Marge Simpson from the animated television series The Simpsons.” Well, holy shit, I would not have been able to figure that one out…
Synergy: May I Get Out from Under Your Desk Now?
“A solar eclipse, the cosmic ballet goes on.” – Leonard Nimoy Editing this review so that it no longer reeks of Fox Executive ball sweat and dick smell was far more fun than the episode itself. I even remembered things I’d blocked out, like the solar powered train that stopped in an eclipse. Where the hell have I seen that before? Ah well, I’m sure it’ll come to me. Enjoy: March 16, 2009 – The story can often make all the difference in an episode of The Simpsons. Watching Principal Skinner lead the riffraff students out of the inner city…
Mmmmm, That’s Good Synergy
“You looken sharpen todayen mein Herr.” – Mr. Smithers There isn’t much point in posting a review of a television show that’s already been broadcast, but that didn’t stop the good people over at IGN from sucking up to their superiors. Their disturbingly obsequious review was written by one Robert Canning. To give you an idea of where he’s coming from, the only post on his “blog” at IGN is an about statement that has the following two sentences right next to each other: The Simpsons should never die. (Well, not never, but not for a while)I’m strangely attracted to Bonnie Hunt. I…