“What’s that weird key for?” – Bart Simpson “That’s Daddy’s magic key. It opens every door in town.” – Ralph Wiggum In our ongoing mission to bring you only the shallowest and laziest analysis of Zombie Simpsons, we’re keeping up our Crazy Noises series for Season 22. Since a podcast is so 2004, and video would require a flag, a fern and some folding chairs from the garage, we’ve elected to use the technology that brought the word “emoticon” to the masses: the chatroom. Star Trek image macros are strictly forbidden, unless you have a really good reason why Captain Picard is better than Captain Kirk. This text has been edited for clarity and spelling (gag inducingly enough, not on “Pooter”). You could throw darts at the storyboards for this episode and pick out a scene that didn’t make sense, so it almost seems cruel to pick on one in particular. However, there is one that stands out. Generally speaking, even if what Zombie Simpsons is doing doesn’t make any sense, they’re usually competent enough to clearly convey what’s happening. When Bart, standing by the school, tossed away the key to the city, it didn’t make any sense for it to land in the presumably rural yard of Cletus, but you knew what was happening. Similarly, the meandering, city spanning path of “The Pooter Toot Express” had no regard for anything but the cheapest grope at a laugh, but when it moved along on screen you could see where it was headed and anticipate that it was going to escape once again. The same bargain basement level of competence cannot be attributed to the scene with the floating mannequins. Observe: Homer and Lisa talking with each other and floating easily with the mannequins. At first, Homer and Lisa float pleasantly; they even manage a conversation. But that’s instantly followed by the two of them, for no reason either on screen or implied, panicking and slipping under the surface. One second they’re holding on just fine, the next they’re not: Plenty of floatation aids usually help people float, on Zombie Simpsons though . . . Once they’ve gone under, things get even more confusing. They’re supposed to be trapped under the water, as though they had fallen through ice or something. But there’s a shitload of open water all around them: If they were supposed to be hiding from someone this might make sense. They could swim left or right or forward or backward just a few inches and get their heads above water. Their hands are on some of the only places where the mannequins are. Just looking at it is baffling. It’s equally glaring from above: There’s open water everywhere! The disconnect between what the story is trying to do and what the animation is displaying is so great that I was honestly befuddled while watching it. I kept expecting something else to change the situation. As discussed below, I know why this happened, they wanted a reason to…
Tag: 500 Keys
Compare & Contrast: Shortcuts & How Not to Ruin Jokes
“Alright, we’re here. Let us never speak of the shortcut again.” – Homer Simpson Of all the digressions and clock killing asides that make up “500 Keys”, the one that’s most out of place has to be the not quite Wages of Fear/Sorcerer drive back from the cake store (which made a lot more sense and was vastly funnier in “Mr. Plow”). This episode had four simultaneous plots going on, three of which managed to roughly collide near the end, and yet this wasn’t involved in any of them. It didn’t even have anything to do with the cake that was itself only barely related to the rest of this episode. Zombie Simpsons and decent jokes: a history of not leaving well enough alone. Like so much of Zombie Simpsons, the entire scene is an exercise is making less out of more instead of the other way around. Having sent Homer, the kids, and his cake down a road marked “Suicidal Moron Pass” could’ve been enough. You could’ve cut right from them heading up some mountain trail to them pulling into the driveway with cake splattered all over the interior of the car. Or you could go the other way, have the cake in pristine condition and a joke about how that was easier than expected. Either way it wouldn’t have altered the rest of the episode, as the survival of the cake, which was made to be important during the scene, is completely irrelevant to everything that follows. The last we ever see of the cake is a few bits of it on Maggie when she walks into the kitchen. Instead we’re treated to cliffs, vertical driving and lots of suspense. The least random thing that happens is when some goats fling rocks at them for no reason. It was pure filler from start to finish, and the goats weren’t even given subtitles to lighten things up. As it happens, in “Itchy & Scratchy Land” way back in Season 6, The Simpsons found itself with a similar situation. So, despite Homer’s admonishment, let us speak of . . . the shortcut. North, south, nuts to that! The shortcut is the last of several traveling gags in “Itchy & Scratchy Land”. The nice thing about these little vignettes (Five Corners, the fruits & vegetables) is that they make sense within the story without ever distracting from it. Together they serve to illustrate how long the trip is while giving the show an opportunity to poke fun at the little absurdities of American road trips. And while it’s true that not every one is strictly necessary, they’re quick enough that they never feel excessive or cheap. That’s especially true of the shortcut, which Homer enthusiastically bumbles into with a couple of joke rich lines. This is the very next shot after they drive off down that long, dusty road. Homer’s shortcut is such a disaster that it doesn’t even last for a full musical cue. The jaunty, enthusiastic horn music can’t…
Even Their Apologies Suck
Via springfieldx2 on Twitter I see that Zombie Simpsons made a halfhearted stab at apologizing to Kristen Schaal for misspelling her name last week. Schaal herself even posted a screen grab of it: At first I thought that was nice of them but, as with everything Zombie Simpsons, they have to make it more complicated than it otherwise should be. After thinking about it for a second, it dawned on me that I probably would remember seeing that, and I didn’t. Indeed, the version I saw didn’t have that on the chalkboard at all. As of this writing, neither does the copy on Hulu.com: I’m not sure where the other screen grab came from, though there’s a DirecTV logo in the watermark, but it wasn’t the one I saw, and it isn’t the one currently up on Hulu. Zombie Simpsons: good intentions, wretched implementation.
Blimps and Flashbacks Everywhere!
“Hey, can I drive?” – Barney Gumble “Well, I can’t see the harm.” – Duff Blimp Pilot There is one thing I completely enjoyed about “500 Keys”, the closing credits. Not just because it meant the episode was over, but for that violin rendition of the theme song. It was nicely done and will make a decent addition to the ever expanding catalog of different versions of the Simpsons theme. There were a couple of other things I didn’t completely loathe, but as is typical of such things, the episode promptly ran most of them into the ground. Skinner telling his mother that it was his birthday not their anniversary comes to mind, but then it dragged on. A quick joke about a “key party” was funny and made sense before getting stretched past the breaking point with a flashback. The cake store at the beginning was one of the better scenes they’ve done all season. Unfortunately, whatever little smile it put on my face was wiped out by the completely unnecessary and unbelievably stupid drive home. That’s one of those things that’s so obviously filler it’s genuinely hard to imagine anyone who isn’t heavily sedated laughing at it. Overall, the tiny sparks of life were crushed beneath the huge number of Family Guy style flashbacks and asides, pointless danger and suspense (why were the mannequins drowning them?), and a mystery that was as dull as it was long. The keys of the title served to give them a paper thin excuse to take a bunch of random sketches and throw them all together, and they ran with it, all the way up to the blimp. And we mustn’t forget the blimp, which Homer can learn to fly, forget to fly, and then learn to fly again all within the span of a single scene. Anyway, the numbers are in and they are bad, but not as bad as I was hoping. An even 6.00 million viewers wondered what was up with Otto’s voice last night. That’s lower than all but a handful of episodes this season, but it’s a bit higher than last week. If next week’s season finale comes in at 5.57 million viewers or less, Season 22 will displace Season 20 as the lowest watched ever. Slightly higher than that will tie it with Season 20.
Sunday Preview: 500 Keys
Two more episodes to go this year. Hold your nose because they aren’t going to get any better: When the Simpsons discover a collection of keys to every door in Springfield, Lisa stumbles upon an eerie hidden classroom beneath Springfield Elementary School. When she shares her discovery with Principal Skinner, the secret room mysteriously disappears and he takes the only key away. A determined Lisa uses her detective skills to lead her back to the room to solve an old school mystery. I do so enjoy the mystery episodes, all those opportunities for fake tension and string music. On the plus side we do have a properly bloodied promo image.