“That does it! One of them has to go!” – Marge Simpson “Okay. Grampa.” – Homer Simpson “No.” – Marge Simpson
Tag: The Day the Violence Died
Quote of the Day
“As for the rest of it, I’m gonna buy the one thing I’ve been dreaming of all the years I spent in the gutter: a solid gold house.” – Chester J. Lampwick
Quote of the Day
“That drawing is worth exactly seven-hundred and fifty dollars American.” – Comic Book Guy “It’s valuable, huh?” – Bart Simpson “Ooh, your powers of deduction are exceptional! I simply can’t allow you to waste them here when there are so many crimes going unsolved at this very moment! Go! Go! For the good of the city!” – Comic Book Guy
Quote of the Day
“Alright, gentlemen, I’ll take your case. But I’m going to have to ask for a thousand dollar retainer.” – Lionel Hutz “A thousand dollars? But your ad says no money down!” – Bart Simpson “They got this all screwed up.” – Lionel Hutz “So you don’t work on a contingency basis?” – Bart Simpson “No, money down! . . . Oops, shouldn’t have this bar association logo here either.” – Lionel Hutz
Quote of the Day
“Now, Mr. Lampwick, when Roger Meyers stole your character-” – Lionel Hutz “Objection.” – Blue Haired Lawyer “Sustained.” – Judge Snyder “If I hear ‘objection’ and ‘sustained’ one more time today, I think I’m going to scream!” – Lionel Hutz “Objection.” – Blue Haired Lawyer “Sustained.” – Judge Snyder “Ahhhhhhhhh!” – Lionel Hutz
Quote of the Day
“Roger Meyer’s junior’s in charge of the studio now. He’s a good man. Every Christmas he goes down to the pound and rescues one cat and one mouse and gives them to a hungry family.” – Bart Simpson
Quote of the Day
“Itchy runs afoul of an Irishman.” – Bart Simpson Happy 20th Anniversary to “The Day the Violence Died”! Original airdate 17 March 1996.
Quote of the Day
“You invented Itchy? The Itchy & Scratchy Itchy?” – Bart Simpson “Sure. In fact, I invented the whole concept of cartoon violence. Before I came along, all cartoon animals did was play the ukulele. I changed all that.” – Chester J. Lampwick “Well, I’m not calling you a liar, but . . . but I can’t think of a way to finish that sentence.” – Bart Simpson
Quote of the Day
“And now the parade has entered Bumtown! Oh, it’s all just so exciting, Dave!” – Suzanne Somers “This certainly seems to be a poorly planned parade route.” – Not David Brinkley
Quote of the Daye
“I give up; there’s nothing we can do.” – Lisa Simpson “Yeah, I agree. You want to start on trying to get Apu out of jail?” – Bart Simpson “Okay.” – Lisa Simpson
Quote of the Day
“Save our seats!” – Bart Simpson “Will do!” – Homer Simpson “Hello.” – Strange Man “Oh.” – Homer Simpson
Quote of the Day
“I don’t have the money to produce the cartoons! I lost everything! I can’t even keep my Dad’s head in the freaking cryogenic center anymore. . . . You comfortable in there, daddy?” – Roger Meyers Jr.
Quote of the Day
“Mom, there’s a weird smell and a lot of cursing coming from the basement, and Dad’s upstairs.” – Lisa Simpson
Quote of the Day
“Keep the trial going, I’ll be right back.” – Bart Simpson “Your honor, I’d like to call all of my surprise witnesses again.” – Lionel Hutz
Quote of the Day
(Image sources: Honeymooners, Flintstones, Phil Silvers (Bilko), Top Cat, Huckleberry Hound, Yogi Bear, Andy Griffith, Edward G. Robinson, Art Carney) “Okay, maybe my dad did steal Itchy, but so what? Animation is built on plagiarism! If it weren’t for someone plagiarizing ‘The Honeymooners’, we wouldn’t have ‘The Flintstones’. If someone hadn’t ripped of ‘Sgt. Bilko’, there’d be no ‘Top Cat’! Huckleberry Hound, Chief Wiggum, Yogi Bear? Ha! Andy Griffith, Edward G. Robinson, Art Carney. Your honor, you take away our right to steal ideas, where are they gonna come from?” – Roger Meyers Jr. Happy (real) Birthday Alex Rocco!
Quote of the Day
“Studio’s closed until Tuesday, animators have AA on Monday.” – Chester J. Lampwick Happy 95th birthday Kirk Douglas! (Left column from top to bottom: “Ace in the Hole”, “Spartacus”, “Town Without Pity”, “The Day the Violence Died”, “The Vikings”. Right column from top to bottom: “20,000 Leagues Under the Sea”, “Paths of Glory”, “Gunfight at the O.K. Corral”, “Seven Days in May”, “The Villain”. Images for “The Vikings” and “The Villain” from IMDb, all other images are my screen grabs. Yes, that’s Ann-Margret and Arnold Schwarzenegger in the last picture.)
Quote of the Day
“I don’t need any more money. I’m not greedy. As long as I’ve got my health and my millions of dollars and my gold house and my rocket car, I don’t need anything else.” – Chester J. Lampwick
Quote of the Day
“Show some respect, man. That no talent created Itchy & Scratchy.” – Bart Simpson “He didn’t create Itchy, I did.” – Chester Lampwick “Huh?” – Bart Simpson “He stole the character from me in 1928. When I complained, his thugs kicked me out of his office and dropped an anvil on me. Luckily, I was carrying an umbrella at the time.” – Chester Lampwick
Crazy Noises: Loan-a-Lisa
Original concept art for Itchy & Scratchy “Up” parody in “Loan-a-Lisa”. The Itchy & Scratchy bit at the beginning of “Loan-a-Lisa” was, to put it mildly, creatively bankrupt. It starts by spending forty-five seconds re-enacting “Up” with nary a joke in sight; that would be bad enough, but Zombie Simpsons then makes things even worse. Instead of ending with some kind of “Up” inspired violence (a balloon house falling on them, a giant blimp attack, a pack of remotely controlled dogs tearing them to pieces) it ends by repeating not one, not two, but three (3) scenes from previous Itchy & Scratchy episodes. In other words, they faithfully recreated “Up” until they could no longer directly copy the source material, then they copied something else. They couldn’t be bothered to come up with their own ideas, even derivative ones. I know I said this last week, but it really does seem like they think developing new ideas is beneath them. Mad Jon: You guys ready? Charlie Sweatpants: Sure am, let’s get this over with so I can never think about this episode again. Dave: Word. Mad Jon: This was pretty bad. How many inheritances does Grandpa have to give out? Charlie Sweatpants: As many as need be between now and the time the show becomes unprofitable. Dave: Two so far and it was only funny the first time. Mad Jon: It pains me that we are now to the point they don’t even try to avoid re-doing premises. Dave: No they sort of revel in it. Faded glory and all that. Charlie Sweatpants: Pretty much. That joke way back in Season 11 where Comic Book Guy comes on and says they did this already is looking better and better in hindsight. Now we don’t even get that. Dave: They must think we’re stupid Mad Jon: It’s probably more that they don’t care what we think or if we are stupid. Dave: Well, that too. Charlie Sweatpants: While we’re on the opening though, there are two excellent examples of painful joke stretching here. The small one is Bart mentioning how that won’t pay his vig, and then, because that line was so hard to come up with and didn’t last long enough, they cut to a shot of Jimbo in a conveniently placed window. The second and much larger one was the whole deck of cards thing. That Grampa’s hands shake so bad he can’t play cards is kinda funny, but then they ruin it by having Marge extend the gag for another ten seconds of tortuous screen time. Mad Jon: I actually was physically embarrassed when that kept going. That’s pretty rare for me with Zombie episodes, I usually just boil in anger. Dave: You have a range of emotions as a human being. Mad Jon: So I’ve been told. Charlie Sweatpants: My "sympathy embarrassment" feelings for this show are pretty well numbed at this point. Dave: Perhaps you will experience love next. But it sure as…
How Long Has It Been Since This Show Invented a Character?
Image used under Creative Commons license from Flickr user JS North. (It was the first CC search result for “Ghost Mutt”.) “How ’bout . . . Ghost Mutt?” – Marge Simpson One of the things that set The Simpsons apart from everything else on television, and has since been imitated innumerable times, was the breadth of its supporting cast. Right from the very first episode, when it introduced characters like Barney, Moe, and Flanders, the show went out of its way to take the family sitcom template out of the living room. The depth and distinctiveness of the characters – and the basically unlimited vocal versatility of the cast – meant that it was easy to have a secondary character pop up in an episode for a single scene without worrying whether or not the audience remembered them (or having to pay market rates for another actor with a name and a face). Whether we’re talking about the staff of the school, the other workers at the nuclear plant, or just the general denizens of the town, it was very common for someone to show up just to utter a joke or two related to the main plot. Of course, most of the characters that are so iconic today were introduced in the first two seasons. That’s only natural. But even years after the basic template of the show had been established, The Simpsons was still churning out characters that have since become a regular part of the cast. Unsurprisingly, Wikipedia has a list of all of these recurring characters, from Agnes and Akira to Snake and the Squeaky Voiced Teen. (Note that these are minor recurring characters, so characters like Dr. Hibbert and Rev. Lovejoy aren’t here, but their wives are. Scroll to the bottom of the Wikipedia link to see how the other characters are categorized. Had most of the major ones been included, all it would’ve done is swell the Season 1 and Season 2 numbers. Where the Wikipedia article didn’t include a first appearance reference, I went with the Wiki Simpsons character page.) These numbers don’t tell us a whole lot more than we already knew: the show went off the cliff around Seasons 9/10, then became mega-zany and has been in a comfortable and uncreative rut ever since. There are sixty-eight characters on this list, of whom only six (8.9%) originated in double digit seasons, not a one after Season 14. And those later ones aren’t exactly setting the world on fire with their famous renown. Observe: Frankie the Squealer & Johnny Tightlips – These are, for lack of a better word, legit. They came from the same episode, but who cares? The two of them were one of the few bright points of that thing. Gloria – When I saw this entry, my first thought was, “That woman at the marriage retreat in Season 2?”. Turns out this is a different woman who showed up in Season 13 and is listed on Wikipedia as…