“Sir, we’ll need a new dangerous emissions supervisor.” – Mr. Smithers “Yes, well, find someone cheap. It’s been a very lean year for us.” – C.M. Burns “Money fight!” – C.M. Burns & Mr. Smithers
Tag: The Last Temptation of Homer
Makeup Quote of the Day
“Alright, I’ll bring in a woman. But I still stand by my hiring policies. . . . Get back to work, Stewart!” – C.M. Burns
Quote of the Day
“Your appearance is comical to me.” – Martin Prince
Quote of the Day
“Throat looks a little red. I better spray it.” – Lady Doctor Hibbert “Oy, thanks nice lady! My voice is crazy with the spraying already! I feel so much better, mister medical science type person!” – Bart Simpson Rest in peace, Jerry Lewis.
Ad Hoc Beer Marathon
“Hey, Homer, you busy?” – Lenny “Yes.” – Homer Simpson I used to do these with more preparation, but it’s Saturday, I’m sick and tired of being responsible, and my fridge has a lot of beer in it. May the Lord bless and keep the VLC random play function… The Last Temptation of Homer – Bart’s parking line prank is one of his best. Especially since the punchline is the psychological frailty of the faculty. – Look how bored Burns is when Charlie describes the fake emergency exit. He’s not even mad yet, and he’s always kinda mad. – That plane crashed on his property! – “Your appearance is comical to me.” – “Hey, Joey Joe Joe!” Great throwaway joke. – There’s such wonderful layers to Homer’s “Foul temptress! I’ll bet she thinks Ziggy’s gotten too preachy too!” It’s eleven words, moves the plot, and there’s like three jokes. – God I miss Phil Hartman. He has one line in this whole episode, and it’s perfect. – Fucking Season 5, I could write a whole post about almost every scene. – Stewart callback! – There’s no way to do the porter’s many sex sounds in text. You can’t even really quote it well. But it’s awesome. – “Hey, kids, did anyone pray for giant shoes?” – Simpsons Did It – I love the immediate and unbridled hostility of the energy convention MC’s “No” when Homer asks if he can get out of dinner with Mindy. – The ending of this episode is a great example of how the show handled real conflict and emotion with speed and humor. We get right up to Homer thinking he might cheat on Marge with Minday (who’s in the room), which cuts immediately to the reveal that it’s actually Marge in his room, which cuts immediately to her noticing that there’s a turkey behind the bed. On Zombie Simpsons that would take a minute and a half and Homer would explain how he’d been thinking about cheating on her. Home Sweet Homediddly-Dum-Doodily – Love the 1960s Batman sound when Marge wraps the sandwiches. #RIPAdamWest – Count Homer’s test drive would be so much worse on Zombie Simpsons. They’d probably make it a montage instead of just using “gently massages your buttocks” as a punchline. – “See you in hell, you wingless bloodsuckers!” (Also more great sound effects with the lice squeaking pathetically as they’re incinerated.) – – Stupid baby – Now that’s a quick sign gag. – The “turn tape over” gag is a piece of history now. – “I don’t judge Homer and Marge. That’s for a vengeful God to do.” Maude Flanders was really an awful human being and it made her a great foil for Ned. – This isn’t the goriest Itchy & Scratchy, but it is one of the most straight up horrifying. “Why? Why? My only son.” – Homer in front of the judge is hilarious. He actually does love his kids, but way, way less than he’s annoyed by them.…
Quote of the Day
“Excellent, Zutroy. Work hard, and each day you’ll get a shiny penny.” – C.M. Burns
Quote of the Day
“Moe, I need your advice.” – Homer Simpson “Yeah.” – Moe “See I got this friend named . . . Joey Joe Joe . . . Junior . . . Shabadoo.” – Homer Simpson “That’s the worst name I ever heard.” – Moe “Oh, oh-oh!” – Joey Joe Joe “Hey, Joey Joe Joe!” – Barney Gumble
Quote of the Day
“Your son has a temporary condition called Lazy Eye where one eye is weaker than the other. You’ll have to wear these for two weeks. . . . Menachem Begin wore a pair just like them!” – Hibbert Moneymaking Organization Optometrist
Behind Us Forever: Lisa With an S
“Dad, why are you singing?” – Lisa Simpson “Tell a lie! Tell a lie!” – Homer’s Brain “Because I have a small roll in a Broadway musical. It’s not much, but it’s a start.” – Homer Simpson “Bravo.” – Homer’s Brain I gave up on this episode halfway through (read more and you’ll see why). The basic idea is that Lisa wants to go to band camp, but Homer loses money in a poker game to Moe’s elderly, ex-Broadway star girlfriend. (I am not making that up.) Said ex-Broadway star comes over to the house and then takes Lisa on tour, wacky hijinks ensue, etcetera etcetera, and then at some point the credits roll. The couch gag is a kind of Star Trek doodle that probably never should’ve left the upper right corner of some bored person’s script. We open with a West Side Story “Tonight, Tonight” song opening for poker night. Most of the lyrics are the word “tonight”. Lisa: “to save time, I’ll start describing the favor.” There’s an extra layer of laziness and audience contempt when they pre-exposit the exposition. Lenny just fell out a window. Poker montage! Now they’re doing an Inside Out thing in Homer’s head. Helpfully, it restates what’s going on (again). And Homer loses at poker. Barney is now driving a dart board like a steering wheel. Feh. Late at night, Bart pokes his head into Lisa’s room to re-exposit the plot. Thanks, Bart! I was confused as to whether or not Homer losing at poker would impact Lisa going to band camp. The old Broadway lady is at dinner with the family now. They’re recounting stories. Tell, don’t show! Here’s a typically boring and haplessly constructed series of events: Homer tries to flatter the old lady by saying “tell me you’re writing a book”. Then . . . Bart starts choking himself with his necktie, which causes the camera to pan away from her and over to him. Then . . . Homer grabs Bart and says, “sit down, boy, we’re trying to show this dame that we’re deserving of her pity”. That neatly restates the thing we’d just had explained to us twice. He continues: Homer: “Where’s that crutch I gave you?” Bart: “There’s nothing wrong with my leg.” Homer: “There will be!” Bart then bashes Homer’s leg with a crutch, so . . . Homer screams in pain, then . . . He pretends to hobble around on the crutch when the old lady, who’s been sitting there the whole time, is put back into frame. Homer then restates the plot once again. Pre-explained jokes, repeated exposition, no sense of object (or character) permanence; Lordy, this show is bad. Lisa is now playing saxophone for the old lady, then pulls out “Laney’s” albums and reads the covers to us while she shows them. This form of storytelling, reading out loud while showing us the accompanying picture, is usually reserved for librarians reading to kindergartners. It is also sadly typical of Zombie Simpsons. Marge…
Quote of the Day
“I’m attracted to another woman! What am I going to do?” – Homer Simpson “Your infatuation is based on a physical attraction. Talk to the woman, and you’ll realize you have nothing in common.” – Barney Gumble “Barney, that is so insightful. How’d you come up with that?” – Homer Simpson “It was on one of these bar napkins.” – Barney Gumble
Quote of the Day
“Agent Wesson, Department of Labor. This man’s an illegal alien.” – Agent Wesson “That’s preposterous! Zutroy here is as American as apple pie.” – C.M. Burns
Quote of the Day
“What the hell was that? Oh, I probably shouldn’t have eaten that packet of powdered gravy I found in the parking lot.” – Homer Simpson
Reading Digest: Letterman Retires Edition
So David Letterman announced that sometime next year he’s going to hang up his mic and ride off into the talk show sunset. Two years ago, he did a short guest voice for a couch gag on Zombie Simpsons. That video was freaking everywhere this week, so it’s another shorter than usual Reading Digest. (It’s worth pointing out, of course, that the family seeing Letterman on the couch was a repeat of the one above from Season 5, but I digress. Bonus Critic points here.) Beyond that we’ve got some cool fan art of the amateur and professional varieties, some news about the new FXX syndication deal, some excellent usage, an old Chinese bootleg t-shirt, and a bunch of fake beer. Enjoy. Joshua Budich Has The Munchies For Gallery 1988′s Exhibit: “The Subtle Art Of Pop Culture” – Cool drawings of stuff from movie and TV. There are twelve of them, three are from the show. Nobody else got more than one. Just saying. Tuesday Top 5 – Simpsons Songs – Excellent list, lots of YouTube, and no Zombie Simpsons. Do You Know These Cartoon Cats? – Snowball II and Scratchy are on here, plus several I know and several more I do not know. ‘The Simpsons’ Paid Tribute To David Letterman By Taking Their Couch Gag Inside The Ed Sullivan Theater – One of those really long filler couch gags from Season 23 was making the rounds this week because David Letterman did a guest voice on it. I would simply like to point to this couch gag’s entry in Wikipedia: Similar to the couch gag from the season five’s “The Last Temptation of Homer,” the Simpsons find themselves on the set of The Late Show With David Letterman. Simpsonize Yourself – Fan made self portrait, including tattoos and a Donnas t-shirt. Bravo. I GUESS EVERYBODY REALLY IS PLAYING MAH JONGG! – Cool bootleg t-shirt from the dawn of the show with the family playing mahjong and yelling at each other in what I assume is Chinese. Your Guide To The 20 Best Fake Beer Brands From Movies And Television – Duff comes in shockingly low at #6. Bartolo Colon Jiggling His Belly Fat is Frontrunner for MLB GIF of the Year – It’s like a lava lamp. Mimi Pond sketches an alter ego’s youthful days in ‘Over Easy’ – Pond, who wrote “Simpsons Roasting On an Open Fire”, gas a new book out. 14 Simpsons Look Alike People – Some of those are pretty good. Nish Kumar plays life like it is as a comedian and confidence trickster – British comedian knows what’s up: His guiding model in this, he says, is The Simpsons. ”The Simpsons is my favourite-ever show,” he says. ”It never speaks down to the audience; It always assumes the audience is going to catch up but it never [does] in a way that would make you feel stupid if you didn’t. I watch some of those episodes now and wonder: what was I watching when I was 10? But that’s the trick.” The Simpsons’ Take on Standardized…
Quote of the Day
“You will find happiness with a new love.” – Homer’s Brain “Oh, even the Chinese are against me. What’s the point? I can’t fight fate.” – Homer Simpson “Hey, we’re out of these New Love cookies.” – Madam Chao’s Waiter #1 “Well, open up the Stick With Your Wife barrel.” – Madam Chao’s Waiter #2 Happy 20th Anniversary to “The Last Temptation of Homer”! Original airdate 9 December 1993.
Reading Digest: Thanks Chicago Edition
Image shamelessly yoinked from Wikipedia “Wow, Capital City, the Windy Apple!” – Mindy Simmons Before we get to this week’s links, I’d like to say thank you to everyone at classic Simpsons trivia in Chicago on Monday at Pizzeria Serio. There was Neil Arsenty and his two man cadre of fanatics, who ran the show and graded our poorly scrawled answers while the rest of us laughed at “Bart’s Friend Falls in Love” and “The PTA Disbands”. There was the nice bartender dude who gave us the list of cheap bottle beer they were trying to get rid of. There was the cool but semi-bewildered manager guy who couldn’t quite believe that there were more than enough Simpsons fans to pack his place on an off night and wolf down pizza and drinks like it was the weekend. There were the fine members of the upstairs staff who gave me a free shot of whisky and toasted it with me. And, of course, there were all the other Simpsons fans, that shushed conversation when the episodes were on, answered some very tricky questions, and laughed and laughed and laughed. Best of all, “L’il Bandits”, the team that came in dead last (32nd out of 32), answered every question and stayed for the whole thing. A team had to be 90% correct or better to place in the top five, so competition was fierce, but whether people had the answers or not, everyone had a good time: watching episodes (“Homer at the Bat” started the evening), quoting lines, and laughing at answers, questions and quotes. So, thanks again to all involved, participants, organizers and hosts; let’s do it again sometime. In terms of actual Simpsons news, we’ve got quite a few links to video games old a new this week, including some great suggestions for making Tapped Out less crappy and exploitative than it is. There’s still no word on what the FXX cable syndication deal will actually mean for us lowly fans, but someone got’s a great suggestion, plus there’s some usage, a couple of great fan made items, an interesting tidbit about Bono, and all the Krusty Brand Seal of Approval merchandise you can shake an upscale clothing store at. Enjoy. “Distroy” by PEZ Λrtwork – Smooth Charlie’s link of the week is this collection of awesomely elaborate drawings of famous cartoon characters, including Homer and a very creepy Bart. Excellent. So It’s Come To This: The Case for the Simpsons Clip Database – Harrumph: So here’s my pitch to FX and FXX: Work with 20th Century Fox to create the Simpsons Clip Database. Launch it in Summer 2014. At the end of every clip created through the database, append a brief reminder that all episodes of The Simpsons will be available streaming on FXNow, and on the FXX linear channel starting in August. Rather than having to promote the launch yourself, let the show itself do the work for you, and weaponize the series’ cultural capital to let…
Quote of the Day
“Hey, he’s learning on his own.” – Jimbo Jones “Get him!” – Kearney
Quote of the Day
“Homer, what’s with you? You’re talking during a coffee break.” – Lenny “Yeah, usually you just take the box of donuts into the bathroom.” – Carl
Quote of the Day
“If they hire a woman we won’t be able to spit on the floor.” – Lenny “And we can’t take off our pants when it gets real hot.” – Carl “And we won’t be able to pee in the drinking fountain. . . . I mean, not, you know, if we wanted to, not that I ever did.” – Homer Simpson
Reading Digest: Mindy and Marge Edition
“My job is to show you how miserable life would be if you married Mindy instead of Marge.” – Colonel Klink I’m not sure if the tag feature on WordPress was on the fritz again or what, but there weren’t many Simpsons links this week. There were a hell of a lot of links to a promotional stunt Mindy Kaling did where she dressed up as Marge and got herself photographed on the Simpsons couch to flog her new sitcom. There really isn’t much to the story beyond that so there’s only one link to it below, but that one picture was linked in a hell of a lot of other places. On top of that we’ve got several excellent reader submissions, our old pal Philip applying the Compare & Contrast template to another show, a Pareidolia tree, and a real life Homer Simpson who was executed for murder. No shit. Enjoy. Check Out Mindy Kaling As Marge Simpson! – This was enough of an on-line hit this week that I lost count of the number of times I saw it linked. It’s a decent enough picture, but that wig is way too short. Compare & Contrast: Funny Restaurants – Our old friend Philip J. Reed takes a look at two different episodes of The IT Crowd with a little bit of Simpsons sprinkled in for good measure. A Manic Remembrance of The Ren & Stimpy Show – Want to see what Mike Reiss has to say about Ren & Stimpy? Of course you do. Unfortunately, there is some misquoting in here: Reiss was, by the way, not only the guy who wrote the episode with the first Ren & Stimpy/John K. barb in it (you remember: Grandpa wins an award for best screenplay in animation, and they show a clip of the Ren & Stimpy season premiere, but it says, “Episode not yet released”). He’s also immortalized as one of the animators in the crowd after Grandpa makes his acerbic speech chastising everyone for being involved in cartoons in the first place. Reiss: “The hell with cartoons! I’m going to go write that show about the sassy robot!” The clip actually says “Clip Not Done Yet”, and the Reiss stand in actually says, “The hell with cartoons! I’m gonna do what I’ve always dreamed of, I’m gonna write that sitcom about the sassy robot.” Still an interesting read. Thanks to reader Chase for sending this in. Siskel and Ebert: Film Criticism’s Most Underrated Comedy Duo – Some history of the bald guy and the fat guy, with plenty of references to The Critic, The Simpsons, and Jean and Reiss. Thanks to reader Nick for sending this in! The case of Homer Simpson Former Cleveland Police Chief executed for murder 83 years ago still fascinates public – A True Murder Story. (No, seriously.) Biff Bam Pop’s Favourite TV Teachers – Krabappel is on here; sadly the example is from Zombie Simpsons. Mitt: Palestinians Are the 47 Percent – Heh: Mother…
Compare & Contrast: Homer’s Imaginary Friends
“Colonel Klink! Why have you forsaken me?” – Homer Simpson The hallucinatory Stradivarius Cain in “The Spy Who Learned Me” isn’t quite as bad an idea as a tiny green space alien that only Homer can see, but it’s not far off. Even if we set aside some of the more glaring incongruities about Homer’s imaginary friend (what’s with the other imaginary characters interacting with him? were there any reasons besides killing time and cross promotional masturbation for him to pop out of FOX’s stupid football robot?), we’re still left with a number of problems that illustrate not only how bad an idea this was, but how poorly they executed it as well. First, consider why Cain is in the episode. He appears when Homer is sitting in Moe’s watching television, bluntly declares that he’s the result of the concussion Homer has suffered, and that he’s there to help Homer get back into Marge’s good graces. Right here at the start, strange things are happening even if we set aside the oddity that apparently some part of Homer’s brain knows how to be suave, confident and charming. By the time he appears, Homer’s concussion is pretty far in the past. Thanks to Zombie Simpsons’ relentless insistence on terrible pacing, the concussion happens just before the five minute mark but Cain doesn’t show up for six more minutes after that, past the halfway point. On its own this wouldn’t be too terrible, except that at the end, after Homer gets clonked on the head with that guy’s gun, the other characters and Cain show up instantly as Homer pounds on his own skull with a rock. I didn’t know that rock could do that. Even more than the usual problems that arise from plot holes and weird leaps of logic, this kind of inconsistency is extremely shitty storytelling. Cain showed up at Moe’s long after the initial injury with only his say so linking his presence to Homer’s getting hit in the head (and even that was done in passing). Then when the unnamed guy bashes Homer with the gun, there’s no indication whatsoever that the blow made Cain disappear, so having Homer start hitting himself to get Cain back is doubly strange. I know I usually complain that Zombie Simpsons over-explains things, but in this case they did the opposite. Compare that undercooked justification to the simple efficiency of Homer’s guardian angel in “The Last Temptation of Homer”. Homer’s in a panic because his home life is a mess, he thinks teevee is telling him to cheat on his wife, and the marriage counselor to whom he just confessed his secret desires ended up being Ned Flanders. When Flanders tries to get Marge on the line, Homer freaks, hits his head on the side of the phone booth, and poof, Sir Isaac Newton. See, Zombie Simpsons? This isn’t that hard. There’s no doubt in the audience’s mind as to who this semi-transparent guy is or why he’s there. He doesn’t…