“Once in a great while we are privileged to experience a television event so extraordinary it becomes part of our shared heritage . . . 1969, man walks on the Moon . . . 1971, man walks on the Moon, again. Then for a long time nothing happened.” – Krusty the Klown
Tag: The Itchy and Scratchy and Poochie Show
Quote of the Day
“You folks ready to begin?” – Roger Meyers Jr. “Uh, I guess. Is this episode going on the air live?” – Homer Simpson “No, Homer. Very few cartoons are broadcast live. It’s a terrible strain on the animators’ wrists.” – June Bellamy
Quote of the Day
“I’m not gonna let ’em treat Poochie like dirt anymore just because he’s the new guy!” – Homer Simpson “Right on, Mr. S.” – Roy “Put a sock in it, Roy.” – Homer Simpson
Double Secret Probation Makeup Quote of the Day
“Ruff, ruff! I’m Poochie the rockin’ dog! Hi, I’m Troy McClure, you may remember me from such cartoons as Christmas Ape, and Christmas Ape Goes to Summer Camp.” – Troy McClure
Quote of the Day
“You each have a knob in front of you. When you like what you see, turn the knob to the right. When you don’t like what you see, turn it left.” – Focus Group Guy “My knob tastes funny.” – Ralph Wiggum “Please refrain from tasting the knob.” – Focus Group Guy
Quote of the Day
“When are they gonna get to the fireworks factory?” – Milhouse van Houten
Quote of the Day
“Adding a new character is often a desperate attempt to boost low ratings.” – Lisa Simpson “Yo yo, how’s it hanging, everybody?” – Roy “Morning, Roy.” – Marge Simpson “Yeah, hi, Roy.” – Homer Simpson Happy birthday to David S/X Cohen!
Quote of the Day
“The animal chain of command goes mouse, cat, dog. D-O-G.” – Roger Meyers Jr. “A dog? Isn’t that a tad predictable?” – Not Josh Weinstein “In your dreams! We’re talking the original dog from Hell!” – Executive “You mean Cerberus?” – Not Bill Oakley Happy 20th Anniversary to “The Itchy and Scratchy and Poochie Show”! Original airdate 9 February, 1997. (Sorry for the late post. I apparently cannot count.)
Quote of the Day
“I need to purchase a brassiere. You kids wait over here in the credit department.” – Marge Simpson
Reading Digest: Hardcore Fans Edition
“I’ll field this one. Let me ask you a question: Why would a man whose shirt says ‘Genius at Work’ spend all of his time watching a children’s cartoon show?” “I withdraw my question.” – Fat Nerd Mark Kirkland had the above experience more or less exactly on Reddit this week. It’s funny, but probably not for the reasons the Redditors think. In other news, we have a grotesque Bart mask, cheese eating, transparent Zombie Simpsons agitprop, and more. Enjoy. How Homer Simpson, 64 slices of American cheese and a stomach of steel led to #Cheesefest – Smooth Charlie’s Link of the Week is this epic account of a contest to see if anyone really could eat sixty-four slices of American cheese. Bravo, gentlemen. Hi Reddit! It’s Simpsons Director and filmmaker Mark Kirkland – here for my first AMA. – Via @StoryOfAhQ on Twitter, Kirkland is not as up on his Simpsons references as the Reddit horde. Things start bad with the “Genius At Work” quote and get worse: Reddit being Reddit, some of them even get pissed when he tells them something interesting. Heh. The Simpsons: The GIF That Keeps GIFfing – Apparently Giphy is creating a back catalog of Simpsons .gifs. Will this make me the John Henry of Simpsons .gifs, driven out by superior machines? 5 Important Life Lessons ‘The Simpsons’ Taught Us – This is a great list, including “Sometimes life rewards people who do not deserve it” and “You can try your hardest at something and still fail”. Needless to say, it includes no Zombie Simpsons. How the Simpsons Won Our Hearts, Made Billions and Stayed on the Air for 27 Years – Zombie Simpsons has a new publicity stunt this week, some part of the episode is going to be “live” or some such nonsense, which is why articles like this get written. But even Ad Week, a publication that is literally dedicated to selling out and hawking shit no matter how dumb or worthless, has to include this: It begs the question: Is there such a thing as too much Simpsons? Most fans will say no—though there are some who grouse that the show’s best days blew past in the mid-1990s. “For the love of god, they’ve told every conceivable story these people could have gone through. It’s all been beaten to death,” said TV expert Ray Richmond, co-author with Groening of The Simpsons: A Complete Guide to Our Favorite Family. And yet, he added, “The Simpsons is still better than 90 percent of the shows on TV—27 years on.” Everyone knows Zombie Simpsons sucks. We just have to pretend otherwise when promoting it. Bingeing is bad and Apu wasn’t meant to be Indian: ‘The Simpsons’ co-creator Mike Reiss – Hadn’t hear this before: Apu, who is voiced by Hank Azaria, became an Indian quite by accident, Reiss revealed. “The first time he (Apu) appeared in the script, he was just called ‘clerk’,” Resis said. “I actually wrote in the script in capital letters ‘He is not an Indian’ and…
Quote of the Day
“Hey, Krusty, you look great! You get your teeth bleached?” – Roger Meyers Jr. “Yeah, it’s a new kind of polymer treatment-hey, shut up!” – Krusty the Klown
Some Examples of Jerkass Homer From More Recent Seasons
“Hey, kids? Always recycle . . . to the extreme!” – Poochie Johnny Sugar, who once wrote a guest post for us titled “Where Al Jean Went Wrong”, has made it to what passes for the big time if you’re a blogger, Uproxx. There, he’s been the driving force behind their expanded number of Simpsons posts (you know, the ones that keep showing up in Reading Digest). On Sunday, he put up another one: Homer Simpson’s Changing Ways On ‘The Simpsons’ It’s a rundown of things which will be sadly familiar. In order, they are: He’s More Of A Jerk Zany Homer Is Now The Norm There Are Way Fewer Consequences for His Actions Now He’s Good At Everything Now Shortly after the article was published, Al Jean took to Twitter to belittle it: “Article how Homer is “now” w eps from seasons 9,11.12.15. All 10+ years old. Is Homer the researcher?” Jean is, of course, correct. All of the examples are from episodes that are now themselves more than a decade old. But his implication, that these traits are not present in more “now” episodes, is demonstrably incorrect. Here are examples of each from just the last three seasons: He’s More of a Jerk: Season 24 – “Moonshine River” – The family goes back to New York City (Bart is investigating his many, many past loves). Homer doesn’t do well in the “not being a jerk” department: Season 25 – “Yellow Subterfuge” – Homer helps Bart get revenge on Skinner by pretending to murder Skinner’s mother: Season 24 – “A Test Before Trying” – Homer scams the entire town with a broken parking meter: Zany Homer Is Now the Norm: Season 25 – “The Winter of His Content” – Homer becomes a zany old person: Season 26 – “Bart’s New Friend” – Having done him as an old person, they went the other way and had Homer spend an entire episode thinking he’s 10-years-old. Here he is playing tag with children on the school playground: Season 25 – “Steal This Episode” – Homer opens a bootleg movie theater, gets arrested, breaks out of prison, hides in an embassy, then goes on trial, all in one episode: This is the lame Fugitive scene, and, yes, they did it a million times better back in Season 7. Season 24 – “The Day the Earth Stood Cool” – Homer changes his whole life around and becomes a hipster, so it’s zany, but in an ironically un-ironic way: There Are Way Fewer Consequences for His Actions Now: Season 24 – “Homer Goes to Prep School” – Homer gets obsessed with the apocalypse, becomes a doomsday prepper, then releases an “EMP” that wipes out the town, whereupon the Simpsons flee, only to return and find out that everything is fine: In this scene, Marge and the kids think Springfield has just been destroyed. Of course, it wasn’t. Season 26 – “Waiting for Duffman” – Homer becomes Duffman, feels bad about being a corporate shill, then everything…
Quote of the Day
“Whoa, a talking dog! What were you guys smoking when you came up with that?” – Otto “We were eating rotisserie chicken. Can you just read the line, please?” – Not David S. Cohen Happy birthday David S/X Cohen!
Quote of the Day
“Is this seat taken, little girl?” – Jasper “I’m not a girl! Are you blind?” – Bart Simpson “Yes.” – Jasper
Quote of the Day
“Excuse me, Mr. Simpson, on the Itchy & Scratchy CD-ROM, is there a way to get out of the dungeon without using the wizard key?” – Database “What the hell are you talking about?” – Homer Simpson
Reading Digest: YouTube Voice Over Edition
“It really is you! How’d you get to be so good?” – Homer Simpson “Oh, just experience I suppose. I started out as Road Runner. Meep!” – June Bellamy “You mean, “meep-meep”?” – Homer Simpson “No, they only paid me to say it once, then they doubled it up on the soundtrack. Cheap bastards.” – June Bellamy With the Fourth of July sitting right smack dab in the middle of the week, the Simpson pickings on the internet were slimmer than usual. However, we do have several links from places that don’t celebrate the Fourth, as well as two links to videos that feature guest voices, one directly Simpsons related, the other indirectly related. There’s also the usual array of excellent usage, sweet fan made stuff (the life size Homer cutout in particular), and a soccer related reason to agree with us. Enjoy. I Know That Voice or That’s What Spongebob Looks Like? – Smooth Charlie’s Link of the Week comes from our old friend ilmozart, who found a trailer for an upcoming documentary about voice actors. There isn’t anyone specifically from The Simpsons in the trailer, but there are a lot of recognizable voices and names, including several from Futurama. Nice find. Canterbury township unveils new donut – A Springfield in New Zealand that had its giant Simpsons donut put to the torch by some asshole has rebuilt it out of steel and concrete. Awesome. The video is great, including an old tire (painted pink and with a bite missing) that was used as a temporary replacement. They even found someone named “Simpson” to comment during the report. The Simpsons visit the NFL on FOX 1995 Week 1 Pregame Opening – I’m pretty sure I’ve linked this before, but I couldn’t find it just now and the opening (“A Married with Children Easter”) is actually kinda funny. Note that all the supplementary voices are provided by Castellaneta and Cartwright, that way they only had to pay two members of the voice cast: Thanks to reader Toad for sending this in! (If you watch to the end you can see Jimmy Johnson laugh at Howie Long after James Brown calls Long a “big movie star”. I thought he was talking about Long’s only star turn, in the catastrophically bad Firestorm, but IMDb tells me that movie came out in 1998 and this was 1995, so I have no idea was Brown is talking about.) The Sketchpad: Homer Simpson – Awesome: We produced this life-size Homer Simpson for non-profit purposes. You’ll have to speak up, he’s wearing a towel. All Right, I’m Pretty Sure it’s Not Just Me – Apparently there’s some debate over Ralph’s “I’m a Viking” line: Perhaps needless to say, my coworker’s suggestion that Ralph simply meant that he was literally a viking in his dreams was deeply troubling to me.It was like at the end of Sixth Sense where all of Bruce Willis’s memories instantly metamorph as he realizes he was (spoiler) dead the entire time. Had…
Reading Digest: Forgotten Stuff Edition
“Look Scratchy, it’s our new friend, Poochie.” – Itchy “What’s that name again? I forgot.” – Scratchy Thanks to its relentless insistence on being both bland and repetitive, Zombie Simpsons manages to be incredibly forgettable despite its long run on television. Earlier in the week, I joked about “Them, Robot” swarming with magic robots, but I’d completely forgotten that they already did an episode swarming magic robots this season, “Replaceable You”. In case you also forgot (though not everyone did), that was the one where Bart and Martin build an army of robot seals who turn evil and then good again. If Zombie Simpsons has a virtue, it is that it is easy to forget most of it, and this week we’ve got two links about exactly that, one with great imagery. In addition to that, we’ve got an excellent variety of fan made stuff in mediums as diverse as sand and yarn, an interview with Alf Clausen, some Lego ads, a YouTube video that makes me want to sit down, and several people who agree with us. Enjoy. Noiseless Chatter Spotlight: “AWESOM-O,” South Park season 8, episode 5 (2004) – Smooth Charlie’s Link of the Week is this thorough look at the “AWESOM-O” episode of South Park, the process that created it, and how that stacks up against The Simpsons and Zombie Simpsons. He makes one point in particular that I want to agree with: If you think I’m going to bring up The Simpsons again as a point of comparison, you’re right. After all, there’s no better reference point for either of the two shows than each other, and whereas The Simpsons has been recycling plots and echoing itself in gradually deteriorating whispers for the sake of remaining familiar to whatever small audience still chooses to follow it, South Park has been ditching characters and ideas since season two, scrambling up core dynamics and introducing new regular characters in order to explore avenues that they previously couldn’t reach without stretching characters beyond their scope of believability. South Park has benefitted tremendously from its ability to shift its format and focus between different characters. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t, but they aren’t stuck repeating things because they’re wedded to a specific template. The only thing I’d add is that they can do that because Parker and Stone have all the leverage vis-a-vis them and Comedy Central. That show is the two of them, including the bulk of the voices. On Zombie Simpsons, no one person has the ability to say “That sucked, we’ve got to try something new”. Even if Brooks, Jean and Groening all walked off the show, you know what would happen? FOX would keep making episodes with whoever stayed. On South Park, Parker and Stone have the kill switch; on Zombie Simpsons, FOX has it. I highly recommend the whole thing. Drinks’ On Simpsons – A nicely photo-documented project to create customized, homemade Simpsons coasters. If I had any furniture that needed coasters used,…
Crazy Noises: The Book Job
“It’s not your fault, Homer, it’s those lousy writers. They make me madder than a, um. . . yak in heat.” – Marge 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 (shockingly enough, not on “pastiche”). In comments and on Twitter there have been more generous appraisals of “The Book Job” than is usual for Zombie Simpsons, as well as some eye rolling at my typically harsh appraisal of it. And while I don’t want to speak for anyone else, I do think I understand that. “The Book Job” had a bit more life to it than most Zombie Simpsons episodes, but I’m also of the opinion that most of that was the same kind of cheap pandering that we got last week, the only difference is that it was fiction books in place of video games and celebrity chefs. In other words, the package here is a little shinier than usual, but there’s still a turd under the wrapper. Consider this exchange near the end between the gang and Neil Gaiman (who, let us not forget, is voicing himself and just showed up out of thin air): Patty: How could they do this to our book? Skinner: It was the singular vision of seven people. Moe: No way! Gaiman: What you’re feeling is called ‘pride of authorship’. You thought you only cared about money, but you actually care more about what you’ve created together. Homer: British Fonzie is right, our story is actually more important than money. This is them literally restating the plot and telling us (not showing us, but telling us) how they’re feeling and why they’re feeling it. This is exactly the kind of hacktacular crap they were mocking in “The Itchy & Scratchy & Poochie Show” when Marge says that those lousy writers make her feel madder than “a yak in heat”. Or, to grab from another show for a moment, this is what the Robot Devil was talking about when he told Fry his opera sucked because “You can’t just have your characters announce how they feel!”. And that is far from the only example. Here’s the scene where they plot out their book: Patty: The heroes are all orphans. Skinner: And they’re set in a place kids relate to, say, a school, but it’s actually magic. Frink: And, the protagonist always discovers that he…
If a Show Falls in the Woods and Nobody Watches It, Does It make a Sound?
“That crater is where your lousy cartoon crash landed. It’s ratings poison!” – Krusty the Klown You’ve got to give Zombie Simpsons one thing, when they want to really put on a tour de force of crappiness, they can still do it. They had Bart and Homer acting manic and inserting themselves into other people’s lives just because. They had plenty of pointless filler, including two different scenes with characters clambering over obstacles for no discernable purpose. (And the second one wasn’t even a call back!) They took characters appearing and disappearing from scenes to new heights. And the story managed to be overwrought and nonsensical while still being tedious and needing tons of exposition. On the absolute scale of dull and boring this is worthy of being their season finale, and I haven’t even mentioned the gimmick at the end. I’m not sure if the conclusion, with Homer and Marge addressing the camera, actually qualifies as breaking the fourth wall; it’s more like shrugging at the fourth wall. Breaking the fourth wall is when you address the fact that you’re in a teevee show, preferably with something clever. This was the show saying, “Meh”. Happily, the numbers are in and the audience replied with equal apathy. Last night’s petty excuse for a bad date movie was not called back by just 5.29 million viewers. That is the fifth lowest number in history, and pushed Season 22 below Season 20 for the title of least watched season ever. As recently as March, Season 22 looked like it would avoid this fate; but where Season 20 averaged 7.12 million viewers per episode, Season 22 only made it to 7.10 million. As much fun as that is to type, it’s worth mentioning that those numbers aren’t the kind of thing that can doom the show. I use the quick and dirty overnights from TV By the Numbers, but advertising rates are calculated using not only live viewers, but anyone who watches it on DVR within three days. Nor do my numbers account for demographics, and Zombie Simpsons does better among the impressionable youth that advertisers lust after. So while it’s certainly embarrassing when your highly promoted, internet gimmick season finale loses in the ratings to a Family Guy special that was released on DVD last December, it isn’t fatal. However, that doesn’t mean the low numbers aren’t fun to laugh at. Season 22 managed only one episode with more than ten million viewers, and that was thanks to a generous lead in from the NFL playoffs. Of the ten lowest rated episodes in the show’s twenty-two year history, one is from Season 20, four are from Season 21, and five are from Season 22. Of the fifty lowest, all but one of them came in the last four seasons; and compared to just five years ago, when Season 17 averaged 9.46 million viewers, the show has lost a quarter of its audience. So whenever you see someone talk about how the show’s…
Still Got the Magic
“It’s back to the basics, classic Itchy & Scratchy!” – Bart Simpson “We should thank our lucky stars they’re still putting out a program of this caliber after so many years.” – Lisa Simpson From time to time, people ask us what we would do if Zombie Simpsons ever broadcast a good episode. Would we kick it just because it’s Zombie Simpsons, or are we open minded enough to say that, yeah, even here in 2011 the show can still be good? Well, I’m here to tell you that last night’s episode on FOX was outstanding from end to end, with a great story, fantastic writing, and more quotable lines than we usually see in a whole season of Zombie Simpsons. Let it never be said that we at the Dead Homer Society doesn’t know quality television when we see it. “Lisa’s First Word” was another flashback episode, in this case to the events surrounding Lisa’s birth during the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics. As you’d expect, there were a lot of jokes at the expense of the 80s and 80s culture, but it never felt like a “destination” episode where they go someplace and just make a string of unrelated gags about it. Instead we got delightfully silly period pieces, such as having the immigrant kids’ stickball game be played in a video arcade instead of the street, and quick, knowing laughs at everything from David Hasselhoff and Carl Lewis to Walter Mondale, Cyndi Lauper and M*A*S*H. The story itself was just as great. Seeing how Lisa was born, how Homer met Flanders, and even how the Simpson family came to live on Evergreen Terrace is the kind of elegant, revealing and downright funny fan service that has been so sorely lacking in recent years. After Flanders introduces himself in a very Flanders-esque way (“The handle’s Flanders, but my friends call me Ned”), Homer dislikes him immediately without any overwrought histrionics or cliched backstory (“Hi, Flanders”). And when Homer has to ask Grampa for a loan to buy a house, the show never lets the bittersweet emotion of a family transitioning from one generation to another overwhelm the fun. Not only did Grampa win the house “on a crooked 50s game show”, but the touching moment when Homer invites Grampa to share their new home is used as the setup for a punchline about how quickly and callously Homer sent his father to the dreary Springfield Retirement Castle. The whole thing was fantastic from start to finish. Anyway, the numbers are in and they are eye-poppingly awesome. “Lisa’s First Word” was watched by 15.5 million U.S. households, making it the most watched episode in six years, since that one that came on right after the Super Bowl. Curiously, this excellent new episode is not available yet on Hulu.com. There’s no guarantee that they’ll be able to return consistently to this stratospheric level of quality. And the description of next week’s episode, in which Marge becomes obsessed with peaches, Lisa becomes…