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 (embarrassingly enough, including on “Thunderdome”). When the splattered mishmash that passed for a plot in “At Long Last Leave” finally got the family to the “outlands” halfway through the episode, Zombie Simpsons came back from commercial with a derivative of the opening credits. We see clouds part, hear the familiar chorus saying “The Outlands” instead of “The Simpsons”, and spend the next thirty seconds panning over the bizarro community that will (sort of) be the setting for (some of) the rest of the episode. This is obviously a naked repeat of “The Thompsons” opening from “Cape Feare”, but if you take a closer look you can see how weak a repeat it really is. For starters, Zombie Simpsons calls its place “The Outlands”, which isn’t a joke and sounds like the rejected title of a World of Warcraft expansion. “Terror Lake”, by contrast, is both original and funny. Season 5 also set up the family’s move far in advance. We already know that the FBI has given them new identities, that this is their destination, and that Sideshow Bob is stowed away under the car. All of the main elements of the plot come with them in one neat little package. Season 23 has Homer pull the car over in a random spot that just happens to be next to a bizarre squatters camp, and then has an unnamed guy with a gun come out of the bushes for no reason and invite them to stay. For the openings themselves, not only does Zombie Simpsons take much longer, but they also drop in a ton of random crap. We pan over their new home town (which we know nothing about at the time), see Bart spray painting a wall (lotta destroyed buildings for a wilderness encampment), then follow him them to their (entirely built) shack where they park their rather impressive fleet of vehicles, including a helicopter. Huh? The last time we saw them they were in their station wagon with all their worldly possessions, now they live better than the Lord Humungus. The Simpsons doesn’t have to do anything that strange or unexpected because it has enough going on at that point that it makes sense for the family to pull up in car they got from the FBI and get on the…
Tag: Cape Feare
“The Dad Who Knew Too Little” Makes Baby Jesus Cry
“Now, don’t you fret. When I’m through, he won’t set foot in this town again. I can be very, very persuasive. . . . C’mon, leave town.” – Crappy Private Detective “No.” – Sideshow Bob “Aw, I’ll be your friend.” – Crappy Private Detective “No.” – Sideshow Bob “Oh, you’re mean!” – Crappy Private Detective They make a lot during this commentary of the fact that there’s an emotional core to this episode, namely Homer trying to connect with Lisa. But whenever they’re trying to push that you can’t help but notice that the stuff going on in the episode is batshit insane and unbelievably dumb. This includes, but is not limited to, Homer hiring a private detective to stalk his daughter, a phony break in at an animal testing lab, them running from the police after being framed by said private detective, and a chase/fight scene at a traveling circus. Homer working two jobs to get Lisa a pony this is not. Hell, this isn’t even Homer’s magical mystery sensory deprivation tour through the repo process. Nine people here, including Yeardley Smith and Weird Al Yankovic. 0:30 – Apparently Selman won a Writers Guild award for this, which he had to accept from the twelve year old from “Whale Rider”. Apparently he made a “Whale Rider” joke about Marge humping Homer that didn’t go over well. 2:00 – The story about the awards ceremony and the girl from “Whale Rider” is still going on. 2:15 – Jean brings things back by mentioning that among the things that already happened was a parody of MTV’s “Cribs” with Elliot Gould playing himself. Apparently Gould had written them a nice letter when he was mentioned in “The Way We Was”, though Jean misremembers it as Marge thinking he was attractive when it was that girl with the glasses Barney asked to the prom. 3:00 – Selman launches into a long story about where an idea for this episode came from, gets lost, and has to end it by again mentioning his awards show joke. 3:45 – Jean again brings things back by complimenting Smith on her Lisa and how much he likes doing Lisa episodes. Jean asks Smith how she’s most like Lisa and she says that they have a similar sense of humor. 4:45 – There’s an intentionally crappy animation of Rod Flanders as a spaceman here, and Mark Kirkland gets complimented on his ability to make crappy look authentically crappy. 5:15 – That leads to Jean saying that the one thing they have a hard time doing is getting their orchestra to sound like a crappy school band. 6:00 – Finally, some interesting trivia from Weird Al. He gave Tress MacNeille one of her first jobs after she got to Hollywood as a Lucille Ball look-alike/sound-alike for his video for “Rickey”. Sadly, I couldn’t find it on YouTube just now. 6:25 – David Silverman worked on the Dire Straits parody video in UHF. 6:50 – Selman just followed up the…
Quote of the Day
“I don’t think this is such a good idea.” – Marge Simpson “This isn’t just because of Sideshow Bob, it’s a chance to turn around all our stinkin’ lives.” – Homer Simpson
Quote of the Day
“I say we call Matlock, he’ll find the culprit. It’s probably that evil Gavin MacLeod or George ‘Goober’ Lindsey.” – Abe “Grampa” Simpson “Grampa, Matlock’s not real.” – Bart Simpson “Neither are my teeth, but I can still eat corn on the cob if someone cuts it off and smushes it into a fine paste. Now that’s good eating!” – Abe “Grampa” Simpson
“Cape Feare” Spews Truth
“Okay , it’s over! Get ’em out of here.” – Moe Aside from the way they don’t go off on random tangents and seem to be actually enjoying these episodes, the next biggest difference between these old commentaries and the ones on Zombie Simpsons is simply the number of people on them. On Season 12 or 13, six people would qualify as a very small contingent, here it’d be quite large. I don’t know if that’s the result of the age of the episodes or scheduling conflicts or what, but it makes things a bit more coherent (i.e. they can actually carry on a conversation) and it makes it a lot easier to tell who’s talking. Just three guys on this one, Groening, Vitti, and Jean. 1:00 – Jean recalls that Wallace Wolodarsky saw the De Niro Cape Fear remake and thought it would make a good show. 2:00 – Vitti thinks the episode was helped by the fact that it was the last one the original writing staff did, so people were very loose writing it, as in “What are you gonna do, fire us?”. 2:30 – This one has the extra long circus couch gag, which Jean mentions they use to fill time. Oh, how short it looks in retrospect. 4:00 – Groening gets all giddy, saying “Ooh, this is one of my favorite Itchy & Scratchys”. 4:45 – Talking about how this was a bit easier than earlier Sideshow Bob episodes because they didn’t have to write it as a mystery since he wasn’t pretending to be innocent at first. 5:15 – Praise for Kelsey Grammer. 5:45 – Jean’s cracking up about how simple Bob’s plan is, all he’s trying to do is stab a ten year old and yet he goes through all this unnecessary stuff. 6:20 – Laughing about how there’s no logical reason for Flanders to be scowling at Bart. Marge, Flanders and Krabappel potentially threatening Bart were inserted to fill in some time. I’ll just briefly note that when they needed to fill time here the added more stuff instead of stretching scenes with nothing extra. 7:30 – Laughing about Moe having the pandas in the back of the bar. They decide that Moe was smuggling them in sell to zoos at inflated prices. 8:25 – Vitti thinks they made things in this episode a little scarier than they otherwise would have if they weren’t all leaving the show. 8:45 – Jean notes that the picture of Clinton on the wall at the parole hearing is kind of a callback to Bob saying you can’t keep the Democrats out of the White House in “Black Widower”. 9:20 – Apparently, Conan O’Brien was really good at writing Sideshow Bob, including “The Bart, The”. He and “Mike” (Mendel?) were responsible for the “Mr. Thompson” scene, which they basically made up on the spot. 10:10 – Vitti wonders why they hated the Knoxville World’s Fair so much (it’s on Homer’s giant cigar). Jean deadpans: “That World’s…
Quote of the Day
“Take him away, boys.” – Bart Simpson “Hey, I’m the chief here. Bake him away, toys.” – Chief Wiggum “What’d you say, chief?” – Lou “Do what the kid says.” – Chief Wiggum
Compare & Contrast: Homer and the FBI
“We have places your family can hide in peace and security: Cape Fear, Terror Lake, New Horrorfield, Screamville.” – FBI Agent “Ohh, Ice Cream Ville!” – Homer Simpson “No, Screamville.” – FBI Agent Like a lot of Zombie Simpsons episodes this season, there is more than one Simpsons episode to which I can compare “Donnie Fatso”. As has been pointed out in comments, the similarity to “The Trouble with Trillions” is uncanny, and not in a good way. There’s also the epic fail of Homer’s catchphrase toupee camera, something that the hat from “Homer and Apu” would consider far beneath it. For my money though, the most damning comparison is Homer’s previous interaction with FBI agents in “Cape Feare”. “Donnie Fatso” has a ton of problems, and many of those have to do with the rather serious way it takes its idiotic premise. Agent Don Draper walks and talks like a straight ahead FBI agent, yet what he’s doing is unfathomably stupid. Worse, it works; his brain dead idea to use Homer as an undercover agent actually gets Fat Tony. Instead of using his foolishness for comedy, to show how bad he is at his job, he wins. Inspector Clouseau and Frank Drebin won too, but they won despite their foibles, not because of them. Of course, Clouseau and Drebin also had stories, which Agent Draper clearly does not. Contrast that with the Comedy 101 of the Witness Relocation Program agents in “Cape Feare”. They’re playing the straight men to Homer, whose stupidity – as sincere as it is unrelenting – manages to fluster even the the kind of FBI guys who are so clean cut that they never leave the house until their shoes shine like mirrors and every hair has been carefully put in its place. None of which means the agents themselves aren’t funny. The list of what surely must be the most horrifyingly named cities in America would be good on its own, but it’s honed into genius level comedy by the dry, perfectly even delivery of a man who not only isn’t in on the joke, but may not be aware of the existence of humor. Agent Draper is like that too, but he’s never given anything nearly as absurd to say. Instead, his investigation plods monotonously forward in spite of itself. Even this doesn’t really elicit a reaction, humorous or otherwise. Here he is when we first meet him: And here he is later, after Homer has infiltrated Fat Tony’s organization: Finally, here he is when we last see him: Notice a difference? I sure don’t. He certainly doesn’t look like a character who just went through any kind of story. Of course, that’s because he didn’t go through any kind of story. He was just a prop, a one dimensional set piece so that Zombie Simpsons could put its star attraction into a half assed mob plot. Compare that with the agents from “Cape Feare”: Here they are when we first meet them,…
Quote of the Day
“Dear Life in these United States, a funny thing happened to me… ugh… (head hits desk)” – Sideshow Bob “Use a pen, Sideshow Bob.” – Snake
Quote of the Day
“Say your prayers Simpson . . . because the schools can’t force you like they should!” – Ned Flanders
Idiocy Confirmed
“I can’t stand this any longer, somebody please pay attention to me!” – Bart Simpson Glyn Stott, he of the idiotic plan to watch all of The Simpsons and Zombie Simpsons in a row, was interviewed by a radio show in Britain. After listening to it any reservations I had about criticizing this guy evaporated. There are two important parts. The first is the hilarity at the 3:00 minute mark when Generic UK DJ Guy asks him about “Cape Feare” and neither of them can remember the title of the Robert de Niro movie (which was itself a remake). I find this amusing because the title of the episode is, with the exception of the silent “e”, identical to the title of the film. Stott gets it eventually, but the fact that he can’t remember the title of one of the most famous episodes does not speak well for his legitimacy as a superfan. After that Generic UK DJ Guy asks him some triflingly easy questions (“What musical instrument does Lisa play?”) and then discusses his stupid plan. The second important part starts at about the 5:45 mark when we learn some interesting things. He’s been planning this for more than a year and he’s been trying to schedule it with some Guinness affiliated television show. But it doesn’t reach the pinnacle of dumbassery until about the 6:45 mark when he says this: “And since then it’s been one poor man in America trying to convert the old video tapes, twenty years worth of video tapes, over to DVD for me. So my heart goes out to him at the moment but I know they’ve been working very very hard and trying to get this challenge done completely. And it’d be a good milestone as well for the 20th anniversary.” Face palmingly obvious problems here: 65% of the 20 completed seasons (1-12, 20) are already available on DVD. All other episodes are available to anyone with an internet connection via BitTorrent. Morgan Spurlock, very recently and very publicly, watched every episode. He didn’t do it in one sitting, but neither was he under the impression that for him to do so there had to be some tragic soul sitting in a dismal editing bay copying shit from VHS. Glyn Stott is either a) really dumb, b) a desperate publicity whore, or c) both. Commence all appropriate internet mockery.
Quote of the Day
“Take care, Snake. May the next time we meet be under more felicitous circumstances.” – Sideshow Bob “Guh?” – Snake “Take care.” – Sideshow Bob “Buh.” – Snake
Quote of the Day
“And once a man is in your home, anything you do to him is nice and legal.” – Chief Wiggum “Is that so? . . . Oh Flanders, won’t you join me in my kitchen? Heh, heh, heh, heh, heh, heh, heh, heh . . . ” – Homer Simpson “Uh, it doesn’t work if you invite him.” – Chief Wiggum “Hi-dily hey!” – Ned Flanders “Go home.” – Homer Simpson “Too-dily do!” – Ned Flanders
The Death of Fun
“This is horrible.” – Bart Simpson “The FOX Network has sunk to a new low.” – Lisa Simpson Season 12 came out on DVD today and we’ll be getting into it a little more in the coming weeks. After all, we’re almost done with our Season 8 series and we’ve got to do something between now and the ignominious debut of Season . . . ugh . . . 21. For now you’ll have to content yourself with crappy, rage inducing clips from some typically brainless Season 12 episodes. There’s a “deleted” scene here and three regular style ones here. I really don’t recommend any of them. Season 12 is terrible pretty much up and down the line. Some lowlights include a panda raping Homer, a crazed woman screaming about diamonds, and the infamous “Worst Episode Ever”. Lots of people have bitched about the panda rape before (we all know that bears are only funny when they masturbate), and the screaming diamond lady was the scene that finally broke me as a Simpsons fan. But “Worst Episode Ever” is a monument to the rise of Zombie Simpsons. The people behind the show began to believe their own bullshit and when that happened they lost the ability to make fun of themselves. They passed from knowingly ironic into unknowingly ironic and the rest is history.
Quote of the Day
“You have such a beautiful voice.” – Bart Simpson “Guilty, as charged.” – Sideshow Bob