– By Gran2 The plethora of Season 22 guest stars filled me with rage. This show is bad enough already without Danica Patrick, Paul Rudd or Mark ‘Facebook’ Zuckerberg turning up to dig it even closer to Earth’s core. I dreaded hearing Al Jean rattle off next season’s list at Comic-Con (spoilers: It included Michael Cera). The point is: guest stars suck now. The really obscure ones suck because you have no idea who they are, or why they are there (pretty much every guest star from seasons 11 and 12 falls into to this category, or maybe that’s because I’m British). But the really famous ones suck as well. Whoever they are, whether they’re a sportsperson, a singer or even a professional actor their acting is always so awful, reading the awkward dialogue that normal people would never actually say, and appearing to have been recorded on their first take. They have no reason to be there, yet they either have the episode built around them rather than a plot, or they appear for one line only. But all get to enjoy their own little ego-massage courtesy of Lisa ("Look, it’s J.K. Rowling, author of the Harry Potter books. You’ve turned a generation of kids onto reading!"). They just throw them on because guest stars represent one of the very few times this show ever gets any press attention anymore. It was the only thing they discussed at Comic-Con last year. It’s literally all they have to say. Guest stars didn’t used to suck. They used to be great. They belonged in the episode; they had a purpose to the story or, you know, voiced a character. Whether as themselves or as a character they felt like they belonged in Springfield, just as the episodes they were in belonged on television. Their appearance first and foremost made sense: they were both relevant to the plot and their presence in Springfield wasn’t ridiculous. It makes sense for Springfield to have celebrities visiting. It’s home to Krusty the Clown, one of the most famous entertainers of all time. Why wouldn’t he be friends with Bette Middler and Johnny Carson? There’s a clear difference between that and people like James Caan just suddenly appearing there. Guest stars appear to present an award for outstanding achievement in the field of excellence or to open a monorail and when they were there, they were funny ("A solar eclipse. The cosmic ballet goes on"). And they didn’t just then vanish. Most of them appeared in more than one scene, so actually have some kind of character progression. Guest stars rarely, if ever, actually were the focus of the plot as themselves. Instead, their most substantial parts were when they were playing characters. Meryl Streep, Glenn Close, John Waters, Danny DeVito, Dustin Hoffman. All excellent performances and playing excellent characters. The philosophy of guest parts has clearly changed since the good old days. Bill Oakley and Josh Weinstein picked most of their guest stars because they…
Tag: Million Dollar Maybe
Crazy Noises: Million Dollar Maybe
Image used under Creative Commons license from Flickr user Lisa Brewster. “Bart, with $10,000 we’d be millionaires! We could buy all kinds of useful things like . . . love.” – Homer Simpson In our continuing mission to bring you only the finest in low class, low brow, and low tech internet Simpsons commentary we’re bringing back our “Crazy Noises” series and applying it to Season 21. Because doing a podcast smacks of effort we’re still using this “chatroom” thing that all the middle schoolers and undercover cops seem to think is so cool. This text has been edited for clarity and spelling (especially on “aggravating”). This installment of Zombie Simpsons was so lifeless, so barren of anything that could be called originality or humor that we really didn’t have much to say about it. (That our collective blood alcohol level was lower than usual didn’t help.) How many times can you point out that the characters are acting like comedy writers instead of themselves? How many times can you observe that the ratio of filler to content is sky high? How many nonsensical plot points can three men endure? Seriously, this episode is to comedy what the lunar surface is to life. Charlie Sweatpants: Shall we get down to it? Mad Jon: Ok then I just watched this today, and as usual I was unable to pay it full attention. Charlie Sweatpants: Full attention is not what this one deserves. Mad Jon: But if I remember correctly Homer wins 1 million dollars and can’t tell Marge right? Dave: Yep, exactly Charlie Sweatpants: It’s that rare trifecta of suck where they a) didn’t have remotely enough material, b) what they did have was crazy and boring and c) had a celebrity guest voice playing himself for no reason whatsoever. Mad Jon: So the man who told a classroom of people what turns Marge on, can’t tell her he was late to a wedding for a million dollars. Wait, wait, wait, Are you telling me the Man who skipped marriage counseling so he could go fishing, can’t tell his wife he won a million dollars. Dave: Yes in name and but not character, they are one and the same Charlie Sweatpants: And that’s only the beginning of its problems. We could be here a long time if you recite all of the more difficult things Homer has done in the past. Mad Jon: You know, I think there was one funny line. But it was followed by the second most aggravating thing that happened in this episode. Charlie Sweatpants: Do tell. Mad Jon: I laughed when Bart asked Homer why he wasn’t having fun or something, and Homer said that if he wanted to have fun he would have left when Bart was born. That was kinda funny. It was, of course, followed by Homer asking for advice from Bart about how to be more selfish. Which was the 2nd most aggravating thing I saw. Dave: What won…
Synergy Has a Nostalgia Hangover
“Duh, Homer, why are we down here?” – Bernie “Aw geez, I told you Bernie, to guard the bee.” – Homer Simpson “But why?” – Less Gifted Employee “Oh you guys are pathetic, no wonder Smithers made me head bee guy.” – Homer Simpson Having read more of these IGN Simpsons reviews than I care to think about it’s become clear that they just don’t put a lot of thought into them. Case in point is this week’s review which has only two main elements, 1) praising the show for being on the air a long time, and 2) retelling the various setups that made up the plot. Number 2 is pretty standard for these reviews, but I think the presence of number 1 is mostly a carryover from the last few weeks. IGN got locked into nostalgia mode over all the 20th anniversary stuff and just sort of mindlessly kept going with it. February 1, 2010 – After their 450th 451st episode focusing on Krusty and a celebratory special spreading the love and dissing Zombie Simpsons, it was nice to have things get got back to the familiar level of suck with "Million Dollar Maybe." And by familiar level of suck, I mean watching what’s left of Homer do what he can to make his family happy, while screwing it up as he tries random, crazy shit. Sunday night’s episode had Homer yet again letting down Marge, winning a million dollars for “plot” reasons, spending it all without her knowledge for some reason and still finishing the half-hour in the arms of the woman he loves. All this and laughs, too. Things started with Homer and Marge preparing a musical toast for a cousin’s wedding contrivance. But on the day of the wedding contrivance, Homer opened a fortune cookie stating this was his lucky day. At first, Homer blew off the fortune: "Any part of a cookie you can’t eat is just a waste of time." But his luck did indeed start to turn as crashing into a vending machine resulted in its contents raining down for Homer’s enjoyment for some reason. Instead of heading straight to the wedding contrivance, Homer stopped to buy a lottery ticket and got stuck a very long, very slow line for about three hours for one more unknown reason. It was a fun hacktacular set up, leaving Homer feeling plot guilty about missing the toast and unable to tell Marge that he was instead buying a winning lottery ticket. It was a nice touch ate some time to have Lenny and Carl help convince Homer that the fortune cookie may be right. I especially loved the headline from the Beijing Daily Worker: "New Fortune Cookies Vaguer, More Accurate." To further stretch things out Homer used Barney to pick up his winning check, a good majority of which went to Uncle Sam: "This money will go to partially cover the cost of a study to decide what to do with the money." Unable to…
Football-less Zombie Simpsons Crashes and Burns
“Where’s your messiah now, Flanders?” – Chief Wiggum With no lead in from the NFL, no anniversary special, no massive promotional effort Zombie Simpsons’ popularity has plummeted to earth like so much half chewed fish. Last night’s test of audience patience drew a puny 5.11 million viewers. Is that the lowest rating ever? Yes, yes it is. The only problem with it is that it’s just slightly higher than Family Guy Spinoff #1 which came in at 5.06 in the 9:30 slot. I think we can safely conclude that there will be no lasting bump from nostalgia related anniversary viewers.
It Could (But Won’t) Happen to You
“In fact, every copy of Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery” has been checked out from the Springfield Public Library. Of course the book does not contain any hints on how to win the lottery, it is rather a chilling tale of conformity gone mad.” – Kent Brockman We have an entire week to pick apart this pedestrian and lifeless Zombie Simpsons outing. There are plenty of recycled jokes, gaping plot contradictions, and labored set pieces with which to play. (When winning the lottery is the most relatable thing that happens there is little hope for anything but fail.) For right now though I’ll just say one thing. When The Simpsons was still on the air it treated the lottery as what it really is: a tax on the mathematically ignorant that taunts the poor into furthering their poverty. Zombie Simpsons treats the lottery the way the mathematically ignorant see it, as a plausibility upon which self important fantasies can be based. There is, I suppose, a certain populist charm to that fantastic notion, but naive hope and wanton stupidity did not make this show what it was.
Sunday Preview: Million Dollar Maybe
Dave usually writes these Sunday Preview posts but he’s on vacation. He did stop having fun long enough to e-mail in this much improved official preview image. Simpsons Channel wrote it up and as usual there’s nothing to suggest that this will be anything but a complete waste of thirty minutes of your irreplaceable time. I’m stupid, stubborn and honor bound by the Code of Internet Snark to watch it; you are not. Here are some suggestions for better uses of your time: Masturbation Knitting Watching anything else