“Now, let’s look in the rulebook and see if horses can play in the NFL . . . D’oh.” – Homer Simpson
Tag: Saddlesore Galactica
Quote of the Day
“You gotta stop being so trusting, Chief.” – Lou “I’d rather let a thousand guilty men go free than chase after them.” – Chief Wiggum
Quote of the Day
“See, Marge, I told you they could deep fry my shirt.” – Marge Simpson “I didn’t say they couldn’t, I said you shouldn’t.” – Marge Simpson
Zombie Simpsons Should Go and Die With a Heated Coathanger In Its Bum
By Connor Dunphy Yo, it’s Dead Homer Society. You know how it is, you ain’t here if you don’t. Let’s get straight to it, because I got something to rant about. Charlie and his accomplices have done a real fine job of utterly deconstructing Zombie Simpsons. And it deserves every single bit of it, because watching it is like seeing your beloved Grandma contract dementia and then proceed to start being really mean and horrible for no reason. Everything they’ve mentioned: the dialogue, the storylines, the characterization, lack thereof of all three, it’s all grade A, 100%, farmer’s dream bullshit. Today, though, I’m here to properly shed some light on something else. I’m gonna scoop some of that bullshit from a corner of the bottom of the barrel which I don’t think has been properly examined: the animation of Zombie Simpsons. Ever since I started thinking about how this show has declined other than “eh it’s not as good, I guess”, since I read the very first word of this site’s manifesto, what’s pissed me off the most, got me to pause whatever platform I’m watching the show from, made me draw characters on my toilet paper to properly represent where their shenanigans can go, was the way the animation has gone. Think back to all the classic Simpsons episodes that you know. You got your “You are Lisa Simpson”s, your “Do it for her”s, just all the amazing seasons you see people on Tumblr, Twitter, anything quote. They had amazing animation. Everything felt human. If I could refer to a specific example, it would be the scene where you can pinpoint the exact moment Ralph’s heart breaks in half. You can sense, just from how this specific frame is drawn, what the characters are feeling. Lisa feels regret, sorrow, sadness of some kind, and Bart, in his amused indifference, is rubbing it in. You don’t need to watch the entire episode to sense that. You don’t need overwhelming [SOMBER TRUMPET NOISES] to know that they’re feeling that, because you know who the characters are, what their personalities are. If someone came up to me and said “hey dude, I never seen the Simpsons can you show me a quick sum up of the characters”, then I’d take pity on them for being denied a right as entitled to him/her as freedom of speech, and show them this picture. Everyone knows the barest thing about the Simpsons. Hell, I used to listen to this square-ass radio station where middle-aged people would get asked “who is the mischievous person in the Simpsons” and they’d just instantly say Bart. You look at this picture, and you have the 0.003333333% of Simpsons knowledge that everyone who’s never watched it does, you know what’s going on. This is the beauty of old Simpsons animation, it fit the characters and the storyline. A truly great producer has their music fit the vocalist, whether it’s a rapper or a folk singer, they use the right…
Quote of the Day
“Very well, Lisa, what rousing Sousa march would you have us play?” – Mr. Largo “Well, I thought maybe for once we could play a song that wasn’t written by Sousa.” – Lisa Simpson “You mean something just arranged by Sousa?” – Mr. Largo Happy birthday Danny Elfman!
Saddlesore Galactica Makes Baby Jesus Cry
“Come on, get to the part where you steal his identity!” – Bart Simpson “I’m trying to explain how emotionally fragile I was.” – Armin Tamzarian “Oh, it’s one of those stories.” – Bart Simpson The collapse between Season 9 and Season 11 seemed long and painful while it was happening, but looking back over the (now very long) history of the show, it was almost the blink of an eye. Case in point is the commentary for this episode, which is stunning for how closely it tracks later Zombie Simpsons commentaries yet is totally unlike those from just a few seasons before. They know that this episode is reviled by fans, but instead of opting for the Oakley-Weinstein-Keeler approach and taking the criticism in stride while attempting to explain what they were doing, they just sit there and endure it, offering nervous laughter, empty self deprecation, and “well, I like it” type statements all the way through. Having listened to both commentaries, I can only think that it’s because while “The Principal and the Pauper” was really dumb and boring, it also had a great deal of thought put into it. Keeler and company state repeatedly that they had a lot of stuff that got cut for time, and Keeler clearly had some bigger ideas he was trying to get across. But “Saddlesore Galactica” is just dumb filler that happened to cross lines of audience tolerance that the writers weren’t even aware existed. Keeler was consciously challenging the audience and fell short; by contrast, they not only thought they were going to disappoint their audience and didn’t care, they couldn’t even correctly identify the audience’s main problem with it. This episode isn’t any more watchable than “The Principal and the Pauper”, but that episode at least had enough thought put into it that the commentary could be interesting and relevant. This commentary is just the standard Zombie Simpsons evasions, half-hearted defenses, and general boredom. Here’s another similarity with Zombie Simpsons commentaries, way too many guys. Eight, in this case: Tim Long, Tom Martin, Mike Scully, George Meyer, Matt Groening, Matt Selman, Ian Maxtone-Graham, and Lance Kramer. 1:00 – They’re giggling about the title, and this already feels far more like Season 13 or 14 than it does 8 or 9. 1:25 – Mentioning “fan reaction”, goes with “it seems to be divided” and Long goes on to joke that the third act was based on an experience of his. This is not getting off to a good start. 1:50 – That leads to them saying how funny they thought it was when they rewatched it for the commentary. 2:20 – Defending the Jockey Elves by saying it’s the kind of thing a lot of other shows do now. That is, uh, not an actual defense. 2:50 – Meyer breaks in and says that since the crazy twist happens so close to the end, “it’s kind of an odd place for it”. Indeed, it is. 3:00 – And Groening, the…
Compare & Contrast: The Simpsons Get a Horse
“Homer, just where were you planning to keep this horse?” – Marge Simpson “I’ve got it all figured out. By day it’ll roam free around the neighborhood, and at night it’ll nestle snugly between the cars in our garage.” – Homer Simpson “Dad, no!” – Lisa Simpson “That’s illegal!” – Marge Simpson “That’s for the courts to decide.” – Homer Simpson As is typical in Season 11, the first act of “Saddlesore Galactica” has basically nothing to do with the rest of the episode. The twist here is that as the show makes the turn to its main story, the writers have Comic Book Guy show up in a childishly passive aggressive prebuttal to their critics and fans: Marge: Should the Simpsons get a horse? Comic Book Guy: Excuse me, but I believe this family already had a horse, and the expense forced Homer to work at the Kwik-E-Mart, with hilarious consequences. Homer: Anybody care what this guy thinks? Crowd: No! This scene is funny on two levels, though I strongly suspect that the second was unintentional. It’s funny on the surface because, let’s face it, if there is one thing on which the entertainment industry and the public at large agree, it is that the geeks are best ignored. Below that, however, it’s also funny because it demonstrates how narrow minded and out of touch the writers had become by Season 11. This, after all, is the Jockey Elves episode, one of the most iconic moments in the fall of the show, something that has spawned an uncountable number of disappointed and angry conversations on-line and off. By comparison, the repeat of the horse gimmick barely rates a mention. In other words, the show had become so untethered from what made it great in the first place that the people making it couldn’t even correctly identify the worst failing of their own self-admittedly shoddy work. For a show that once operated with precision and ease at the beating heart of American culture, that misguided defense bespeaks a terrible fall. Does anyone care what this show thinks? But since it was a repeat, and since there isn’t much more that can be said about the magical elves, let’s set aside the underground kingdom and take a look at what made one of these horse plots a disaster while the other is a beloved classic. For starters, “Saddlesore Galactica” suffers from a slew of typical Zombie Simpsons problems: it makes no sense, it relies on Homer concocting multiple zany schemes, and Bart and the rest of the family act as Homer’s enthusiastic accomplices instead of even remotely like real people. More fundamentally, however, is the way that “Lisa’s Pony” is about the Simpsons, while “Saddlesore Galactica” is just a bunch of stuff that happens to involve a horse. In “Lisa’s Pony”, the horse comes into the Simpsons’ lives because Homer has once again failed rather miserably as a father. He inadvertently humiliated Lisa in front of her entire school, and then…
Crazy Noises: Saddlesore Galactica
“Okay, we’ll do a different song. Who cares? They all end up sounding the same anyway.” – Mr. Largo For the fourth summer in a row, we here at the Dead Homer Society will be spending some time discussing twelve year old Simpsons episodes. This year we’re doing Season 11. Why Season 11? Because we’ve done Seasons 8, 9 and 10 already, and it’s time to take an unflinching look at the end of the show. Since Skype and podcasts didn’t exist in 1999, and we want to discuss these episodes the way the internet intended, we’re sticking with the UTF-8 world of chat rooms and instant messaging. This text has been edited for clarity and spelling (especially on “hemorrhagic”). Today’s episode is 1113, “Saddlesore Galactica”. Tomorrow will be 1114, “Alone Again Natura-Diddily”. [Note: Dave couldn’t make it again this week. I’m beginning to think this “job” of his is just an excuse not to watch Season 11.] Charlie Sweatpants: Ready to begin? Mad Jon: I am Saddlesore? Charlie Sweatpants: Very sore. The best part of this episode is the beginning, and even then it’s all things that have been done better in earlier episodes. Mad Jon: Agreed. This is a straight downhill episode. Shaun White would love it. Charlie Sweatpants: That’s Winter Olympics, man. Mad Jon: Yeah I know, but I don’t know any summer athletes who would enjoy a downhill… That being said, Homer started at the bottom. Charlie Sweatpants: Even the best parts at the beginning are retreads. Largo only wanting to play the same old standbys, the Simpsons at a fair, Homer making 1970s rock references. They were all things that had been done by the show not that long before. Mad Jon: The Vietnam vet crap was a prelude to a Jerkass-ness that just, wouldn’t, stop. Charlie Sweatpants: Case in point, the OmniGogs, which are one of the better jokes in the episode, feel like leftovers from "Twisted World of Marge Simpson". Mad Jon: Agreed again, that would have been a great franchise in that episode. Charlie Sweatpants: The Jerkass levels here are head splitting, almost literally when Homer imagines himself eating pearls. Mad Jon: This man deep fries his shirt within minutes of the beginning. Charlie Sweatpants: And screams at the band, which naturally makes them do whatever he says. Mad Jon: Of course. Charlie Sweatpants: And that’s before things really get going once they get the horse. Homer’s various money making schemes are all dumb, then it gets ratcheted up even higher with them racing against professional jockeys, and then it gets even worse with the jockey elves, and then it gets even worst with the jockey elves firing a cannon and chasing Homer through the fucking streets. Mad Jon: Disclaimer that I should have probably given before we started: Once they went to Jockyland, I quit. Charlie Sweatpants: Really? Mad Jon: I left the episode on in the background, so that I wouldn’t be lost, but I left to clean the…
On the Jockey Elves and the Land of Chocolate
“Well, uh, I wish the candy machine wasn’t so picky about taking beat up dollar bills . . . because a lot of workers really like candy.” – Homer Simpson “We understand, Homer. After all, we are from the land of chocolate.” – Horst “Mmm, the Land of Chocolate.” – Homer Simpson There’s little doubt that “The Principal and the Pauper” is the most infamous episode in the history of the show, in no small part because it was one of the first episodes that was basically 100% boring. Prior to Armin Tamzarian blazing his way into the history of the decline and fall of The Simpsons, even episodes that hadn’t been up to the show’s all but impossibly lofty standards still contained plenty of excellent material. “The Principal and the Pauper” was so demented, however, that everything that might have resembled humor got squeezed out in favor of trying to make that painfully ditzy plot move along. “Saddlesore Galactica”, coming two and a half worsening seasons later, had many more bad episodes to hide amongst than “The Principal and the Pauper”, but manages to make a strong case for second place on the infamy list by doing essentially the same thing: having a main premise that is elementally, painfully and incomprehensibly bad. At it’s most basic, having horse jockeys be subterranean elves is a decently Simpson-y idea. Jockeys really are small, sometimes frightfully skinny people, and if one dressed as an elf for Halloween he’d be a shoe in for best costume at most parties. Taking that stereotypical and mildly offensive similarity and making it funny is exactly the kind of thing The Simpsons did. The difference is that when The Simpsons put up impossible flights of fancy, it kept them fantastical and it kept them short. When Snowball II and Santa’s Little Helper are watching the news late at night in “Bart’s Comet” and feign sleep as Bart walks by, it’s something that you know isn’t serious. When Homer flings himself out of the power plant and crashes the car while singing the Flintstones’ theme in “Marge vs. the Monorail”, it doesn’t affect the story, it’s just a funny way to open the episode. When they show Vishnu working switches at the center of the Earth in “Bart vs. Australia”, it doesn’t change any other scene, it’s just a background gag to keep things lighthearted. As a concept, “all jockeys are really elves” fits in well with those. But instead of being tucked safely into a real story like it should’ve been, the jockey elves were put on center stage and left out to dry. This is the crucial failing of this episode, the one bad rivet that sends the whole bridge crashing down the ravine. It’s so unexpected and plainly stupid that, like Skinner being an imposter and then everything going back to normal, you have to wonder how anyone, let alone professional comedy writers, could ever have thought it was a good idea. To illustrate just…