“Alright, are you willing to go undercover to nail this creep?” – Kent Brockman “No way, man! No way, man! Get yourself another patsy, man! No way am I wearing a freakin’ wire!” – Homer Simpson “Alright alright alright, would you be willing to wear a hidden camera and microphone?” – Kent Brockman “Oh, that I’ll wear.” – Homer Simpson 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 (especially on “electrocution”). To start “Donnie Fatso”, Zombie Simpsons once again had their FOX News helicopter spin by during the opening. After the initial joke at the beginning of “The Fool Monty” caused a little press stir, they’ve now put the helicopter in two subsequent openings, each time with a bland, five year old jab at FOX News on the side. This is beyond day late and dollar short territory, this is years late and millions short. Ohhh, milquetoast FOX News jokes, take that 2003! Note: Dave couldn’t make it this week, so it’s just Mad Jon and I. Charlie Sweatpants: Ready to go? Mad Jon: Yes Charlie Sweatpants: Let me start by saying that I thought there was some small redeeming value to the overly long couch gag this time. Mad Jon: What was that, the value? Charlie Sweatpants: Not much, mind you, but doing all that for Christmas and then having the episode pick up right after New Year’s at least kinda fit in. It was still far, far too long, with very little in the way of creative content, but if there’s going to continue to be super long couch gags at least they can tie directly into the episode. Mad Jon: Ok, I can see that. It was more boring that bad, and I can see the lead in. Charlie Sweatpants: Well, it didn’t help the rest of the episode. Mad Jon: No, it was downhill from the opening. A steep, steep hill at that. Charlie Sweatpants: It hit rock bottom pretty fast and stayed there, if that’s what you’re getting at. Mad Jon: I am. The scene where Moe started looking for privacy, ended up in the Wizard of Oz was probably the entire hill. Especially since it took me a few seconds to figure out that when Moe was explaining to Homer about how to get out of the tickets, it was actually supposed to be a continuation of the search for privacy scene. Charlie Sweatpants: Even the hangover stuff was lame. Was it supposed to be funny to…
Tag: Donnie Fatso
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,…
Original Replaced with Bloated and Dull Facsimile
“Father McGrath, I thought you were dead!” – Soap Opera Babe “I was!” – Father McGrath In addition to taking up an enormous amount of barren screen time, last night’s death and immediate resurrection of Fat Tony was so blisteringly stupid that I’m not even sure which TV Trope applies. There are a lot of them about death and hacktacular resurrection, but a quick search didn’t turn up one where a long lost relative shows up, does nothing, and then becomes the replacement. The closest similarity that came to mind was Beerfest (which is the only non-Super Troopers movie from the Super Troopers guys that wasn’t half bad). In Beerfest, one of the main characters dies, but is immediately replaced by his brother who, winking at the camera the whole time, also takes the deceased’s name and wife while he’s at it. It was deliberately stupid in a movie where drinking beer is a blood sport and death can be the penalty for failure, so in context it made sense. The same cannot be said of “Donnie Fatso”, which is shot through with horns of suspense and a vaguely melancholy tune. It invests a great deal of time in trying to get us to care about . . . well, it’s never really clear, but somehow deep emotions are supposed to be involved. As with so many Zombie Simpsons episodes, the story is so poorly constructed that not only is there no resolution to what happens, but the main plot peters out with four minutes of screen time still to go. That led to the time killing resurrection . . . segment? I’m not even sure what to call that. Anyway, the numbers are in and without football to protect it, Zombie Simpsons’ ratings plunged. Last night’s meandering mobster episode was used to sweat snitches by a mere 7.31 million people. That’s the third lowest number all season, and leaves the fall segment of Season 22 with an average viewership of just 8.11 million. That makes it the lowest rated fall half of the season ever, and keeps Season 22 on pace to be the least watched in the history of the show by a pretty big margin.
Sunday Preview: “Donnie Fatso”
You thought you could saunter off into the holiday season without another episode of Zombie Simpsons, didn’t you? Well guess again. As if last week’s Katy Perry nonsense weren’t enough, tonight we’ve got a gritty, guest star-filled crime drama called “Donnie Fatso.” Okay, maybe it won’t be gritty, but it definitely has Jon Hamm and Joe Mantegna. From Simspsons Channel: Donnie Fatso airs tonight in North America. Homer spends New Year’s Eve in the Springfield Penitentiary after getting caught bribing an official. An FBI investigator (Jon Hamm) offers to reduce his jail time if Homer agrees to go undercover as an informant to investigate Fat Tony. When Homer forges a special bond with Fat Tony and his family, he becomes conflicted between his obligation to the government and his loyalty to his new family. After an unexpected turn of events, Fat Tony’s cousin Fit Tony (Joe Mantegna) seeks to settle a score with Homer, but winds up teaching him an important lesson. Homer was previously a rat in “The Trouble with Trillions“, but I’m more perplexed by the notion that this could be an episode of Zombie Simpsons with one distinct plot, instead of a hodgepodge of tangents and perfunctory fan service bits cobbled together for the kiddies. I not optimistic it’s going to be a winner on that basis alone, but it does somehow make it seem intrinsically less shitty. There’s something unsettling about that…