“Hey, I remember you. Mayor Quimby, right?” – Lisa Simpson “I, uh, er, ah, no. Look at this license: Mohammed Jafar.” – Mohammed Jafar 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 “inconsequential”). There were a lot of pointless scenes in “Holidays of Future Passed” that were nothing more than Zombie Simpsons checking in on various characters to see how they were doing in the future. One in particular, Homer throwing a rock at Burns Manor, stands as a good example of why even the ones that were funny fall flat. First, think about what’s going on. Homer is watching Bart’s kids and decides, apropos of nothing, to take them “downtown”. In this case, “downtown” means the Kwik-E-Mart and walking by Burns Manor. That’s it. The entire trip is the flimsiest possible excuse for the episode to work in Apu, who gets into a giant gunfight, and Burns. What happens when Homer and the boys walk past Burns Manor? Homer chucks a rock through Burns’ window: That’s a hell of a throw. We’re two seconds into this scene and it’s already fallen apart. Remember, the whole premise of Homer in this episode is that he’s sober and responsible now. That’s the reason he’s watching Bart’s kids. So even if we set aside the fact that they just walked out of the Kwik-E-Mart and decided to stroll past the corner of Croesus and Mammon, what possible reason is there for Homer to hurl a rock through Burns’ window? Kicks? Anger? He never says a word, and neither do Bart’s usually stuck up and responsible kids. Right after that, Burns pops up in the broken window and tells someone, it’s not clear who, to release the hounds. That prompts Smithers, who must’ve just been waiting by the gate, to appear stage left: Being eight feet away, he naturally didn’t say anything before Homer threw the rock. Smithers, who hasn’t aged much in thirty years, dumps out a box of bones, Homer imitates the audience and shrugs, and the scene ends. No part of the setup, the action, or the punchline make any sense or fit in with each other. And while I understand that it’s just a cheap throwaway joke (dog bones, ha ha!), the episode is wall to wall with scenes like this one. Flanders appears unprompted at an open window…
Tag: Holidays of Future Passed
Compare & Contrast: Maggie’s Silence
“Will that girl ever shut up?” – Homer Simpson The more I think about it, the more “Holidays of Future Passed” feels like a flashy, stripped down remake of a classic movie. The effects are splashier, the budget higher, and the cast larger, but despite the occasionally entertaining scene or idea, the whole thing is a jumble. Too often you’re just marking time until the next segment begins, hoping it’s better than what you’re currently seeing. To illustrate that, I’d like to take a look at a running joke “Holidays of Future Passed” slavishly copied from “Lisa’s Wedding”: Maggie’s silence as an adult. Like the enduring mysteries of which state contains Springfield and why Mr. Burns can never remember Homer, Maggie’s silence is one of the show’s longstanding quirks. They did an entire episode around the idea with “Lisa’s First Word”. They also liked to occasionally drop it in as a little gag, like when Bart faked her voice in “Radio Bart” or Maggie babbled like Flanders in “Home Sweet Homediddly-Dum-Doodily”. But even in “Lisa’s First Word” it was never a big joke. Instead it cropped up from time to time in quick and unobtrusive ways, a playful wink from the show to the audience. It was fleeting and flirtatious, and that very scarcity was its charm. “Lisa’s Wedding” demonstrates an inherent understanding of the that fragility. They knew “Maggie talks” wasn’t important or deep enough to support whole chunks of the episode, so they slipped it into parts of the story where it could work without wilting under the spotlight. There are just three times Maggie almost talks in “Lisa’s Wedding”: 1) When Homer goes to use the phone, she’s already on the line, talking in her room. 2) At the dinner table, Lisa asks if she wants to go dress shopping but Marge yells at her to not talk with her mouth full. 3) As the ceremony is about to start, she’s interrupted just before singing “Amazing Grace” by Hugh announcing that the wedding is off. Compare that to a whopping eight in “Holidays of Future Passed”: 1) When getting an ultrasound (with her band just hanging out for no reason), the robot tells her that she can’t talk because baby. 2) As she goes to board the teleporter, she’s silently directed to the airplane instead. 3) Inside airplane, she sits impatiently. 4) Going into labor in a taxi cab, she doesn’t say a word. 5) In the hospital entrance, Kearney the cabbie somehow gets her checked in while she doesn’t do anything. 6) In the hospital delivery room, they actually give her a pacifier (see below). 7) Still in the delivery room, Marge walks in to her daughter about to give birth, no words are exchanged between the two of them. 8) Finally, back at home, Maggie presents the baby to her family but still doesn’t say a word. Marge declares it a girl and, since this is Zombie Simpsons, no one even asks what her name…
Didn’t Groening Already Make a Show About This Kind of Stuff?
“What’s normal to him, amazes us.” – Future Guy #1 “He will be our new god.” – Future Guy #2 “Yay!” – Future Crowd I’ll start right off by saying that this is easily the best Zombie Simpsons episode so far this season. That alone isn’t much of a compliment (if it is one at all), so let me clarify by stating unequivocally that the “First Church of Lard Lad” is the funniest thing I’ve seen on Zombie Simpsons in a long, long time. Even better, it was accompanied by a couple of other decent little set pieces that were more than a little reminiscent of some of the less boring new Futurama episodes. The show only really had one kind of joke (“look at how things in the future are exaggerated versions of things now”), but did wring a few entertaining iterations out of it. Sadly, all was not smiles and sunshine. Many of those same set pieces either didn’t work at all or were dragged on far longer than they should have been. The plots, three of them in one tangled mess, didn’t make any sense individually or as a whole. Half the ideas were directly or indirectly recycled from “Lisa’s Wedding”. And by the end it felt like they were ticking off a list of their most used characters just so we could check in with the future versions of all of them. The Ralph one was as painful and long as it was predictable, though, to my surprise, Comic Book Guy didn’t rate an appearance while Lenny and Carl did. Sadder still, this was basically a Futurama episode and they can’t do that every week, so it doesn’t bode well for the rest of the season. When they’re stuck back in present times in boring old Springfield we’re all but guaranteed to be back to getting the kind of undifferentiated garbage that we’re accustomed to on Sunday evenings. Anyway, the numbers are in, and, as expected without a late FOX football game, they have plummeted back to earth like an insane airliner with the cockpit windows boarded up (which was funny). Last night’s trip through time caused only 6.45 million viewers to wonder if Zombie Simpsons will be on Season 53 in 2041. That’s back to being well below the Season 22 average of 7.10 million viewers, and it’s lower than any fall episode in either Season 21 or Season 22. So while for one night I didn’t totally regret watching Zombie Simpsons, I’m still glad only a few people bothered to do the same.
Sunday Preview: Holidays of Future Passed
Image bloodied by Dave, as always. For the final new episode of 2011, Zombie Simpsons is trotting out two ideas that have been done multiple times before, Christmas episodes and future episodes. Get ready for bad cliches and potential spinoff characters galore: It’s the most wonderful time of the year, and the Simpsons flash-forward thirty years to find themselves in a tech-savvy, futuristic Springfield. Bart and Lisa have children of their own and decide to spend the holidays as one big family at Homer and Marge’s house. Lisa and Bart turn to Homer and Marge for parenting advice and begin to realize that the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. The episode is set in Christmas 30 years in the future, where Homer and Marge are empty nesters and Bart, Lisa and Maggie bring their own kids over to see Homer and Marge for Christmas. Bart is now a lousy, deadbeat dad who actually lives in the school, which is now condos, and Skinner is his landlord. Bart has had two kids and is divorced and Lisa is married to Milhouse. Adult Bart and Lisa get drunk in the Treehouse, talking about their family. Get drunk? What a good idea.