“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. With the exception of the animation (which they justifiably compliment in places), this one would’ve fit in seamlessly with Season 24. Whoa, eleven people in this one: Jean, Allen Glazier, Matt Selman, Michael Price, Tom Gammill, Max Pross, Matt Warburton, Nancy Cartwright, Lauren MacMullan, TV critic Alan Sepinwall, and a very late arriving Groening. 0:30 – And we begin with everyone jokingly wondering why Sepinwall is here. 0:45 – This was just a regular pitch, but apparently people thought it was based off of a Twilight Zone episode. This is what happens when people give Zombie Simpsons too much credit. 1:15 – Jean compliments MacMullan, who directed, on how good the episode looks. She says “thank you”. That’s it. 2:00 – Jean asks Sepinwall how they’re doing on the commentary. Sepinwall laughs and changes the subject to what’s actually going on in the episode. Clearly he has not listened to many Zombie Simpsons commentaries. Nobody wants to watch the episode. 2:30 – Jean asks MacMullan how much drawing the director actually has to do: some but not much. They had a new artist on this one who had to do a lot of the crying. 3:30 – Long discussion of how hard it is to get tears to look like real water. Also, Snowball II just got run over. 4:00 – Jean’s talking about how this was loosely based on his daughter, who had three cats die on her in quick succession. He jokes, “Like any writer I didn’t consider what her feelings might be, I just said we should do this”. It’s funny. 4:40 – Oh, fuck, Selman’s natural ass kissing reflex has kicked in and he’s buttering up Sepinwall. 5:00 – Apparently Selman and Sepinwall went to college together. There you go. 5:40 – Everyone’s cracking up as Bart crashes his bicycle. 6:20 – After a brief silence, Jean asks about the models for the fighting robots. Some of the guys on the show- were into fighting robots. 7:00 – Gammill, trying to fill a void, points out that MacMullan and a couple of the writers also went to college together. Meanwhile, nothing is happening in the episode. 7:40 – While Homer sets himself on fire a couple of times, MacMullan describes how they tried to make some of the uglier characters uglier in a more traditional way. This prompts Cartwright to do Nelson’s voice in protest. As…
An ongoing ramble by Charlie Sweatpants . .