“Whoa, I bet the 8-Ball didn’t see that one coming.” – Bart Simpson “Yeah.” – Milhouse van Houten With so many years of backstory hanging over its head, Zombie Simpsons often resorts to the inane and bizarre to keep believable and long established relationships fresh. Once upon a time, Moe was Homer’s bartender. Sure, they knew each other a bit better than the average rag and coaster jockeys, but they never strayed too far from the recognizable baseline of bartender-customer. Along the same line, Skinner and Chalmers used to be junior and senior in a dumb bureaucracy and Lenny and Carl used to be office buddies. All of those have been trashed under a half-clever veneer of self knowing television tropes. Homer and Moe are best buddies when they need to be; Skinner and Chalmers are attached at the hip, and Lenny and Carl are . . . whatever they are. In that same vein, Bart and Milhouse have gone from plausible boyhood friends to an overtly self-aware pair of co-dependent jokers. When The Simpsons still cared about its audience and characters, Bart was the dominant half of a realistic friendship and Milhouse was the forgiving and easily awed sidekick. That’s a pretty good basis for fiction, and it worked for a long time. But even an archetype that durable can only hold out for so many hundred episodes before it becomes a stereotypical hack job. At this point, their roles have gone beyond “well established” to “crap, how do we make this not a complete repeat?”, and that’s the real problem of their half told story in “Moe Goes from Rags to Riches”. Bart and Milhouse have fought before, many, many times. Sometimes it was a minor part of the episode, like “Bart After Dark” or “A Milhouse Divided”; sometimes it was a major part of the episode, like “Homer Defined” or “Bart Sells His Soul”. But for comparison to “Moe Goes from Rags to Riches”, nothing is closer than “Bart’s Friend Falls in Love”. In both episodes, Milhouse gets pissed at Bart for taking him for granted. And in both episodes, Milhouse eventually forgives Bart. The difference is in how those things happen, both the falling out and the rapprochement. In The Simpsons, Milhouse gets mad because of a serious betrayal; in Zombie Simpsons, Milhouse snaps with no warning for no real reason. On the other end, Milhouse in The Simpsons sees his beef with Bart resolved; Milhouse in Zombie Simpsons goes with the flow because he knows just as well as the audience that things have to get back to normal. Sadly, this is what passes for normal these days. In “Moe Goes from Rags to Riches”, the opening scene is a town meeting at Moe’s that becomes a dance party. (Of course it does.) In the course of said meeting, we see the two of them dancing together to Lionel Richie, and the following exchange happens: Bart: That’s even sadder than being friends with Milhouse. Milhouse:…
Tag: Moe Goes From Rags To Riches
Crazy Noises: Moe Goes from Rags to Riches
Image shamelessly yoinked from here as a result of search for “randomly determined”. “I’ll get the dictionary.” – Hugh Parkfield “Why?” – Lisa Simpson “You’ll see when you get there, the word ‘stochastic’.” – Hugh Parkfield “Pertaining to a process involving a randomly determined sequence of observations!” – Lisa 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 “Michelangelo”). This episode is such a patchwork of unrelated elements that it’s difficult to discern a structure or theme. Oh sure, there’s the rag, but the rag seems to move between kinda, sorta real history like Michelangelo and Vikings to fanciful tales like One Thousand and One Nights. (Speaking of which, and not that this episode needed more beheadings, but in the original tale the previous wives all get killed. Nice to know that’s where they draw the line.) Things made just as little sense back in Springfield, particularly when you remember that Milhouse produced Drederick Tatum from nowhere to punch Bart in the arm. I know things don’t tend to make sense these days, but this did seem like an especially “Fuck you, audience” effort on their part. Charlie Sweatpants: Since I imagine you are very busy, want to get right to it? Dave: Please let’s. Anagrams of "Jeremy Irons" are funnier than whatever the fuck it was that happened last night. Charlie Sweatpants: I’m at a loss for where to start with this episode. The A-plot wasn’t so much a plot as an excuse for whatever dumb historical situations they could come up with, and the B-plot was so undercooked and nonsensical that they would’ve been vastly better off just dropping it. Dave: In two words: just terrible. Charlie Sweatpants: Shit sandwich. Dave: Santorum rag. Charlie Sweatpants: Heh. The structure of the whole thing was a contradictory mess. If the rag was in the "real world" of Springfield, how did a Homer look alike climb Mount Everest, break down that wall, etc.? If the rag wasn’t in the real world, then what the hell was all that stuff with Bart and Milhouse doing happening at the same time? You can do a weird, historical sketch show, you can do a show about Bart and Milhouse having a fight. I don’t think you can do both at the same time, especially when the two stories have nothing to do with each…
Sensitive Moe Was the Least of Our Problems
“The Flaming Moe dates back to my forefathers who were bartenders to the Tsar.” – Moe Whatever else may be said about it, and we’ll likely be saying a lot this week, “Moe Goes from Rags to Riches” is further evidence of why there’s no hope whatsoever for Zombie Simpsons ever getting any better. It had a Halloween episode level of weirdness, gore, and insane things (Moe is apparently a yeti, for example), but still couldn’t manage to squeeze out anything satirical or intelligent despite not having any rules to play by. It had a celebrity playing someone other than himself, but didn’t have him do much of anything and didn’t give him any meaningful lines. It had a B-plot in which Bart and Milhouse could have been just regular kids, but instead had them acting in that same weird, knowing, painfully self aware manner that Lenny and Carl do nowadays. They gave themselves a completely blank canvas with no restrictions on story, character, believability, setting, or even time, and still fell back on things like Homer’s head being used to break down a stone wall, people beating Burns’ corpse with sticks, and multiple beheadings. Oh, and there was a talking sponge. This is the show now. The magical narration tapestry/rag/respected character actor was theoretically the common element, but it didn’t have anything to do with about half the things that happened. No explanation was given for how it got from place to place, it was hardly involved in a number of those sketches, and the entire thing with Nelson and his many wives didn’t involve it in any way. The rag may speak in the dignified tones of Jeremy’s Iron, but it didn’t have anything to say other than to complain. The entire “history already written on the tapestry” thing was dropped completely midway through the episode, as was the curse of the sheep or whatever that origin thing was. Confusingly, some segments had regular Springfield characters (Homer ended up as a peasant, a Viking, and a mountain climber) while others seemed to involve just random dudes. Making the entire thing even more bizarre was the way the Bart-Milhouse story apparently happened while the rag was narrating. It wrapped up at the same time that Moe got the rag back from Marge, which means that Bart freaked out about Milhouse (and had Lisa write him a poem or whatever) all in a single night. If that’s the case, then why did the two plots have nothing to do with one another? It’s one thing to abandon Springfield for an episode of historical sketches, but to keep yanking us back there every few minutes for some more creepy passive aggressive conversation between Bart and Milhouse just made it even more sloppy and scatterbrained than it already was. Anyway, the numbers are in and they are lower and grimier than the floor at Moe’s. Last night’s incoherent history essay was yawned through by a mere 5.12 million people. That’s just a…
Sunday Preview: Moe Goes From Rags To Riches
Image improved by Dave. There’s new Zombie Simpsons tonight, and it’s a doozy. Simpsons Channel: After Moe is heckled for not having any real companions, Moe’s best friend and beloved bar rag narrates his incredible thousand-year journey to Springfield. Beginning in the Middle Ages, the bar rag was loomed into a beautiful and ornate medieval tapestry and traveled around the globe through the hands of royalty before finding himself found himself at Moe’s Tavern. When the bar rag goes missing, Moe realizes that he has more friends than he thought. Meanwhile, Bart begs Milhouse for forgiveness after the two friends get into a tiff. Yeesh, a bunch of sensitive Moe plus Bart and Milhouse getting into a fight. The best thing I can say about that is that at least the B-plot is something they haven’t repeated recently. And maybe it’s just me, but doesn’t the rag kinda look like it’s flipping the bird?