“We now return to Two for Tunisia on Colorization Theater.” – TV Announcer
Tag: Bart the Lover
Quote of the Day
“I didn’t do it.” – Bart Simpson
Quote of the Day
“Bingo-bango sugar in the gas tank! Your ex-husband strikes again.” – Mechanic
Quote of the Day
“Now, for our next stunt, what do you say we get your principal up here?” – Mr. Amazing “Careful now. Oh, that one grazed my ear!” – Principal Skinner “Don’t move. You could really get hurt.” – Mr. Amazing
Quote of the Day
“You’re so lucky. When are you going to meet him?” – Miss Hoover “First, I ask him to send a photo. If he’s got everything where it should be, I’m reeling him in!” – Mrs. Krabappel Marcia Wallace would’ve been 74 today. Happy birthday!
Quote of the Day
“How was detention today, dear?” – Marge Simpson “Not bad. I’m starting to get the hang of the floor waxer.” – Bart Simpson
Quote of the Day
“Edna, happy hour in the teacher’s lounge!” – Miss Hoover “Just a sec!” – Mrs. Krabappel
Quote of the Day
“Mrs K, whoever this guy is, you don’t need him. There are plenty of good men around.” – Bart Simpson “Name one.” – Mrs. Krabappel “What’s wrong with Principal Skinner?” – Bart Simpson “Seymour? Let’s just say his Mommy won’t let him out to play.” – Mrs. Krabappel “What about Coach Fortner?” – Bart Simpson “Glug, glug, glug, glug, glug, glug, glug.” – Mrs. Krabappel “Wow. What about Groundskeeper Willie?” – Bart Simpson “I’m not even going to tell you what that guy’s into!” – Mrs. Krabappel
Quote of the Day
“I came to talk to you about your potty mouth.” – Ned Flanders “What the hell are you talking about?” – Homer Simpson “Look, Homer, all of us pull a few boners now and then, go off half-cocked, make asses of ourselves.” – Ned Flanders
Quote of the Day
“I bet we could buy a nice doghouse for fifty dollars.” – Marge Simpson “Marge, you’re a tool of the doghouse makers.” – Homer Simpson “I am not!” – Marge Simpson “Yes, you are. You’ve been brainwashed by all those doghouse commercials on TV.” – Homer Simpson
Sunday Preview: Bart The Lover
After Ms. Krabappel gives Bart a month of detention, Bart gets his revenge on her by responding to her newspaper singles ad. Homer begins a “swear jar” to keep him cursing. As by now I am sure you have all heard, Marcia Wallace died recently. So, in an action I consider highly respectful, FOX will air a Mrs. Krabappel centered episode from the actual Simpsons. This episode aired almost 22 years ago, and is one of my favorites. It ranks amongst those that cannot be separated by rankings, and I, for the first time in many, many years, will be watching The Simpsons as it is broadcast, while not under the threat of violence. Although it is under terrible circumstances that this is happening, please enjoy the episode as I am sure Mrs. Wallace would want it that way.
Quote of the Day
“Chef Lonelyheart’s Soup for One.” – Apu Nahasapeemapetilon “One scratch and win, Apu.” – Mrs. Krabappel “Mrs. Krabappel, I haven’t seen you since we doubled our prices. Still teaching?” – Apu Nahasapeemapetilon “Let’s see . . . one more day at least.” – Mrs. Krabappel Marcia Wallace would’ve been 71 today. Happy birthday!
RIP: Marcia Wallace and Mrs. Krabappel
“Bart, it’s such a nice day today, let’s have detention outside.” – Mrs. Krabappel Sad news, Marcia Wallace, Mrs. Krabappel herself, died yesterday. The cause was “complications from breast cancer”: She would also build a second career as a voice-over actress, giving life to Edna Krabappel, Bart Simpson’s cynical and chain-smoking fourth grade teacher on “The Simpsons.” The role, a sublime parody of disaffected instruction, earned her an Emmy Award for Outstanding Voice-Over Performance in 1992. The show’s executive producer Al Jean said Saturday that the character would be retired out of deference to Wallace’s death. Good on Jean. So long, Marcia. We’ll miss you. Left image shamelessly yoinked from The Wrap link above. Right image, one final “Ha”.
Quote of the Day
“Though I’ll be inoculating babies in Kampuchea, my heart will always be with you.” – Lisa Simpson “That sucks. How ’bout ‘Crocodiles bit off my face’?” – Bart Simpson “That’s disgusting. And besides, when a woman loves a man it doesn’t matter that a crocodile bit off his face.” – Marge Simpson “I may hold you to that, Marge.” – Homer Simpson
Quote of the Day
“Fella came into the store today, asked for change for a dollar. Well, sir, I gave him three quarters by mistake. Took me the whole afternoon to track him down.” – Ned Flanders
Underage Sex Shouldn’t Be This Boring
“Mom, this is a little ahead of schedule, but I need help with my love life.” – Bart Simpson “Oh, my special little guy has a sweetheart.” – Marge Simpson “I knew it! Alright Bart, who’s your girlfriend?” – Lisa Simpson “Mrs. Krabappel.” – Bart Simpson In what I assume was an unintentional irony, early in “Beware My Cheating Bart”, the writers had Bart say, “Doesn’t anyone realize I’m only ten years old?”. The episode certainly didn’t, and it managed to be worse than most “Bart gets a girlfriend” stories to boot. Bart seems to vacillate between being an experienced teenage dater and a little kid, sometimes within the same scene. One moment he’s happily going down a slide, and then next he’s getting hot and heavy with Shauna (who is herself of indeterminate teenage years). It would be creepy if it weren’t so dull. However, just one oft repeated story wasn’t enough for Zombie Simpsons this week, so they also had Marge and Homer go through a marital spat. That one got resolved in the most pointless way possible when Marge decorated herself and the bedroom in an island theme, but managed not to notice Bart and Jimbo out the clearly open window. Again, this would’ve been creepy if it hadn’t been so boring and nonsensical. As for the unimaginative Lost parody “Stranded”, I was reminded of their equally insipid Inception parody from a few weeks ago. Lost has been off the air for two years now, and everyone knew it was going to end in 2010 beforehand, which means that if you still want to parody it, you’d better come up with more than the same tired jokes (nothing makes sense, there’s no resolution, it’s all just empty plot twists) people stopped making two years ago. The Futurama alien language plug (it reads “watch futurama thursdays at 10”) was the only thing that was even kind of clever. The Bill Plympton couch gag was kind of interesting, though it could’ve been half as long and gotten through pretty much the same stuff. I suppose it’s true that this is better than the usual, but the novelty of having someone else do the opening is starting to wear off. And speaking of wearing off, Kavner is really having a hard time doing Marge now. She’s been kinda off for a couple of seasons, but the number of times I’ve thought to myself “wow, that really doesn’t sound like Marge” has been way up since the middle of this season. She just doesn’t have the same range she used to, which makes it really tough to put much feeling into anything. Anyway, the numbers are in and they are absolutely atrocious. Just 4.86 million viewers briefly lost all interest in sex last night. That’s the second lowest of all time, displacing “How I Wet Your Mother” in that spot. Four of the five least watched episodes ever are now from Season 23, and the average viewership this year is below…
Crazy Noises: Exit Through the Kwik-E-Mart
“Can you believe it? Pretty soon I’ll be able to quit my job and live off the boy.” – Homer Simpson “What? Name me one person who’s gotten rich by doing yo-yo tricks.” – Marge Simpson “Donald Trump? No. Arnold Palmer? No. Bill Cosby! No.” – Homer’s Brain “D’oh!” – Homer Simpson As part of our tireless efforts to demonstrate the many ways Zombie Simpsons fails to entertain, Season 23 will be subjected to the kind of rigorous examination that can only be produced by people typing short messages at one another. More dedicated or modern individuals might use Twitter for this, but that’s got graphics and short links and little windows that pop up when you put your cursor over things. The only kind of on-line communications we like are the kind that could once be done at 2400 baud. So disable your call waiting, plug in your modem, and join us for another year of Crazy Noises. This text has been edited for clarity and spelling (especially on “terminology”). Zombie Simpsons’ ongoing “instant professional” problem was brought up in comments yesterday, and it goes almost without saying that I agree. The show seems incapable of making fun of anything without having one of the Simpson clan become instantly good and insanely popular at it. Whether we’re talking about them faking a children’s book, Marge becoming a food blogger, Bart and Martin designing a robot toy, or Lisa’s social website, the people in Springfield frequently become widely recognized world class professionals at just about anything. If they were doing this every once and a while it wouldn’t be nearly as annoying. But this happens in almost every episode. All of the above examples are just from this season, and I didn’t even mention the time Homer turned into a prototypical “accounts man” or when he become a nationally syndicated talk show host overnight. I understand why they take this particular shortcut so often; it makes it really easy to insert a few mildly snide jokes about whatever profession a particular Simpson has taken up this week. But we’re long past the point of diminishing returns on these, and Bart’s street art from “Exit Through the Kwik-E-Mart” is unlikely to be the last one we see. When Bart goes on his graffiti tear, he doesn’t just pick up a few spray cans like we’ve seen him do before. Instead, he becomes an accomplished and very skilled artist in just a few seconds of screen time. From there he plasters the entire city with so many pictures of Homer that the sheer scale of what he’s done is so over the top that it detracts from the story and the humor. If he’d tagged a couple of buildings with his Homer “Dope” visage, he might have pissed off a few people and you’d have something at least mildly interesting to go on. Instead, Zombie Simpsons starts piling one flight of fancy on top of another. Not only is Bart super good…
Quote of the Day
“It was all a dream. Thank goodness I still live in a world of telephones, car batteries, hand guns, and many things made of zinc.” – Jimmy Happy 20th Anniversary to “Bart the Lover”! Original airdate 13 February 1992.
Quote of the Day
“Step aside everyone, sensitive love letters are my specialty. Dear baby, welcome to Dumpsville, population: you.” – Homer Simpson
Going Gray
“I guess I expected something different from your photo.” – Mrs. Krabappel “Don’t let my age fool you. Just ’cause there’s a little snow on the roof . . . I forget how the rest of that goes.” – Jasper Intentionally or not, there is an interesting undercurrent to “The Blue and the Gray”, Zombie Simpsons’ latest affront to quality television. Confronted with the unpleasant fact that she’s not quite what she used to be, Marge flips out and returns to the comforting fiction that cosmetic similarities mean she’s just the same as she always was. Remind you of anything’s writing staff? That’s not the world’s closest comparison. A person’s hair color is largely irrelevant to who they are, whereas the writing of a television show is vitally important to how good it is. But I do enjoy the idea that Zombie Simpsons can’t handle the truth about itself, and chooses to wallow in toxic, self deceiving hair dye instead. Anyway, in between rickety side plots with Moe and Bart, the episode is ostensibly about Marge trying to come to terms with the harsh reality that letting her natural hair color show will change the way other people react to her. Somewhere there’s probably a decent story to be told about that, one that provides plenty of opportunities for satire and comedy about double standards, about the impossible quest to remain young, about beauty lies we’ve all agreed upon. This was not that story, nor did it contain any of that comedy. That might have required some thought. The numbers are in, and they are terrible. Last night’s noxious goo was rinsed from the scalps of a mere 5.62 million people. That’s a new low for Season 22, as well as the fourth lowest rating of all time. To put it another way, “The Blue and the Gray” is the 477th episode of the show, and 473 of those episodes were viewed by more people.