A little while ago it came out that some of the cast of Glee was going to do voices for an upcoming Zombie Simpsons episode. “Ho-hum and on to the next item”, I thought to myself. But eagle eyed reader Alice noticed something else: ‘Elementary School Musical’, which airs Sunday, September 26, sees Lisa attend performing arts camp, where the Glee stars are fellow campers. Where have I heard that title before? Oh, right. Calling something “Elementary School Musical” isn’t the world’s most cunning play on “High School Musical”, but at the same time, South Park did it two years ago. Either Zombie Simpsons didn’t notice, which means they’re disconnected from the culture they’re supposed to be parodying; or they did notice and don’t care, which means that they’re lazy and apathetic. It’s not like “Elementary School Musical” is the only play here. “Grade School Musical” is the same joke without making you look like a bunch of disconnected hacks. Thanks Alice!
Tag: South Park
Zombie Simpsons Misses the Point
“And sure, he’s probably so insane with rage that he’d butcher you horribly if he could.” – Homer Simpson Yesterday, it was noted in many, many different places that Zombie Simpsons mentioned the censoring of last week’s South Park in the chalkboard gag: There are two ways to look at this. The first (and this seems to be the dominant on-line opinion) is to see it as a nice gesture from Zombie Simpsons, a show of support for South Park in a tongue-in-cheek kind of way. The second (which I’m more inclined to take) is a lot less positive. First, set aside all the other issues at play here, from war and torture to religious extremism and censorship. What happened on South Park was a brave act (at least as brave as one can be making cartoons for a living), the point of which was to demonstrate that fear about showing Mohammed is overblown. The “death threats” that got such wide press came from an obscure website run by a nobody with no connection to anything (scroll down to point 2 in the update here to see what I mean). Everyone pitched a fit except Trey Parker and Matt Stone, who remained quite calm and basically said that they wouldn’t give in to hysteria. The fundamental point they were making (last week and in 2006) is that such fear is unfounded, and that the real problem is the absurd overreaction to empty threats. Yet there’s Zombie Simpsons, declaring themselves “so scared”. I understand that they’re trying to be supportive in a funny way. But what Zombie Simpsons actually did was reinforce and legitimize the overhyped fear that Parker and Stone were explicitly attacking. They could’ve said “South Park-We Support You And Wanted To Say [Bleeeeeeeeeeeep]”, or “South Park-We’d Stand By You If We Thought It Mattered”, or anything that didn’t say that they were afraid. Instead, they bought right into the hysterical framework that South Park was criticizing. Like all Zombie Simpsons, it was well meaning but brainless, and they’d have been better off not saying anything.
Crazy noises: O Brother Where Bart Thou?
“If you don’t watch the violence you’ll never get desensitized to it.” – Bart Simpson “Just tell me when the scary part’s over.” – Lisa Simpson “It’s over.” – Bart Simpson “Ahhhhhhhh!” – Lisa 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 “tased”). South Park once did an episode titled “Simpsons Already Did It” where, amongst other things, they made fun of the fact that The Simpsons had been on forever and was now resorting to ideas that were less than clever. That was seven years ago. This week Zombie Simpsons had its own little “South Park” sequence. It didn’t have much to do with anything (why Bart would ever take advice from Ralph is beyond me), but it did serve to highlight just how many jokes, scenes and sequences in this episode were either reminiscent, cribbed, or outright recycled from previous episodes. We discuss a number of those below but we forgot to mention the whole Kama Sutra thing which, like so many others in this episode, took way too long and made no sense. Mad Jon: Anyway. I just watched last night’s episode. Charlie Sweatpants: Ouch, wanna start with that one while the trauma is still fresh? Mad Jon: Works for me. Dave: I re-watched it That’s how much I liked it Mad Jon: Masochist eh? Dave: That’s me! Mad Jon: That’s cool. To each their own. Charlie Sweatpants: Was anything particularly worse on a second viewing? Dave: Nah, nothing jumped out. It was as unremarkable tonight as it was last night. Mad Jon: Unremarkable is pretty on the nose. Dave: The writers seem to be forgetting that the show’s supposed to be funny. Mad Jon: It didn’t make me cringe like the Zombies usually do, but I may just be desensitized. Charlie Sweatpants: Unremarkable is a good way to put it. With the exception of the completely unnecessary and pointless South Park thing I don’t think anyone’s going to remember this one a week from now. Mad Jon: On the other hand, I, per usual didn’t even crack a smile. Dave: I did, admittedly, when Chief Wiggum was tased Mad Jon: I almost did at the weather report, but then they took it too far. Always too far. Charlie Sweatpants: When they do come up with a kinda good idea they seem so surprised that they just feel the need to run it right into the ground. Mad Jon: I think the writers look at jokes the way I looked at chemistry experiments in high school. Charlie Sweatpants: I thought the horse thing at the beginning had some potential, but then it…
Spurlock Update: Enter Stan And Kyle
Via Spurlock’s Twitter feed we find that yesterday he interviewed Matt Stone and Trey Parker. There’s no specific word on whether or not this is for the Simpsons special, and if there’s one thing I’ve learned following Spurlock these last few months it’s that he’s involved in an enormous number of projects. But it seems unlikely that he’d be interviewing the creators of the most successful non-Simpsons animated show for something other than his upcoming Simpsons thing. So get ready for the obligatory quotes from Stone & Parker about how much The Simpsons meant for them, how it opened doors, how influential it’s been, etcetera.
Pointless Show Comparisons
When I was taking that quiz Dave put up yesterday I noticed that there were links to quizzes for Family Guy, South Park and Futurama as well. Rather than add to internet’s already vast archive of arguments over the relative merits of these shows, I’m simply going to point out a telling numerical discrepancy. In raw numbers The Simpsons quiz had 63 characters, the South Park and Family Guy quizzes had 42 each and the Futurama quiz had 30. But the Simpsons quiz doesn’t have more characters because it’s been on longer. In fact, all of the 63 characters were on the show by Season 9 (nary a Zombie Simpsons creation in the bunch). But that doesn’t tell the whole tale because there are, by my count, only six characters in the quiz that weren’t already on the show by Season 3. (Cletus didn’t show up until Season 5, Brandine, Disco Stu and Homer’s Mom appeared in Season 7, and Duffman and the Cat Lady showed up in Season 9.) In other words, it took The Simpsons less than sixty episodes to have 57 characters memorable enough to be on an internet quiz. Note: No Crazy Noises this week as Mad Jon is moving to Cypress Creek.
Simpsons Did It – The Eternal Cliche
College Humor created a Billy Joel parody video about the cliched stupidity of many comment threads. I found it on boing boing a couple of days ago and I’ll let them explain: College Humor made a hillarious [sic] (NSFW) music video about the deterioration of comment threads, to the tune of Billy Joel’s “We Didn’t Start The Fire.” As a wise man once said, “It’s funny cause it’s true.” We Didn’t Start The Flame War (Thanks, Vann Hall!) The “Simpsons did it” line comes at the 0:25 mark, followed immediately by the “southpark did it too” line (the entire 2:40 is worth your time if you’re bored). I bring it up to point out two things. First, it’s now been seven years since the South Park episode “Simpsons Already Did It”. And second, College Humor has a pretty keen sense of popular culture, the inclusion of the “Simpsons did it” line speaks volumes about just how worn the continuation of Zombie Simpsons really is. Also: Excellent usage by boing boing’s David Pescovitz.