“It was all a dream.” – Mr. Smithers “That’s right, the year is 1965 and you and I are undercover detectives on the hot rod circuit. Now, let’s burn rubber, baby!” – C.M. Burns “Speedway Squad! In color!!” – Dream TV Announcer
Tag: Who Shot Mr. Burns? (Part Two)
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“Wait, that was all a dream. Hey, then maybe I haven’t become a hideous drunken wreck . . . oh.” – Mr. Smithers
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“Officer, arrest the baby.” – C.M. Burns “Yeah, right, pops, no jury in the world’s gonna convict a baby. . . . maybe Texas.” – Chief Wiggum Happy Birthday Greg Daniels!
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“Slow down! Sidewalk’s for regular walkin’. Not for fancy walkin’.” – Jasper
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“Mr. Burns! What have I done?” – Mr. Smithers
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“I had an idea, Chief. Why don’t we check out that suit Burns was wearing when he got shot?” – Eddie “Did you have the same backwards talking dream with the flaming cards?” – Chief Wiggum “I’ll drive.” – Eddie
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“Burns was rushed to a nearby hospital where he was pronounced dead. He was then transferred to a better hospital where doctors upgraded his condition to alive.” – Kent Brockman Happy 20th Anniversary to “Who Shot Mr. Burns? (Part Two)”! Original airdate: 17 September 1995.
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“At the town meeting he mentioned that he watched Comedy Central. I made sure to note that, as it seemed quite unusual.” – Melvin van Horn Have fun replacing Jon Stewart, Viacom.
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“And with the prime suspect cleared and found completely innocent, we must now ask ourselves: who could possibly be as bloodthirsty as Waylon Smithers?” – Kent Brockman Happy birthday Bill Oakley!
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“Pull, Duchess, pull!” – Groundskeeper Willie “Um, what town did we just crush?” – Krusty the Klown “Shelbyville.” – Principal Skinner “Yay!” – Hotheads
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“Officer, you have arrested an innocent man!” – Sideshow Mel “Really? Aw, jeez, alright, Colossus, you’re free to go. But stay away from Death Mountain.” – Chief Wiggum “But all my stuff is there!” – Dr. Colossus
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“You accuse me of everything around here! Who put slippers in the dishwasher? Who threw a cane at the TV? Who fell into the china hutch?” – Abe “Grampa” Simpson
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“Now where’s my hat? I’m going to the outhouse.” – Abe “Grampa” Simpson “We don’t have an outhouse.” – Lisa Simpson “My tool shed!” – Homer Simpson
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“Dozens of people are gunned down each day in Springfield, but until now none of them was important.” – Kent Brockman
Even the Pet Sematary Couldn’t Bring Back Zombie Simpsons
“The cafeteria staff is complaining about the mice in the kitchen. I want to hire a new staff.” – Lunchlady Doris The first sad news out of Comic-Con was that there was going to be a Christmas 2011 episode, which implied a full Season 23. This was made official in a link e-mailed to us by reader Landry H: The cast are signed through season 23, the creators see no end in sight as long as people keep watching. Drag. (And nevermind that “people” is a fairly loose term given the unstoppable slide in the show’s ratings.) On the plus side, they only signed for one more season, so we might finally see the rusty machinery of Zombie Simpsons grind to a halt in the spring of 2012. Since we’re dealing in sadness today, I might as well undermine any remaining hope even some of the most jaded fans of the show still maintain. What hope, you ask? Specifically, the hope that if they just got some fresh blood in there, then things might in some way improve. John Ortved neatly expressed this while he was promoting his book (emphasis added): There’s really two rooms working on the show: One room is [executive producer] Al Jean and his yes men, and the other room has the younger, hipper comedians. [The second room] sends jokes to the first room, and all their good stuff gets written out of it. I think if they were to save the show, they would need to get rid of the show runner and really shake up the writing room. I don’t know if they’ll ever get it back to the level they had, but they could start making great episodes again. This is just another way for Simpsons fans to torment themselves with the cruel notion that a show about Homer, Marge, Bart, Lisa and Maggie could someday be watchable again. (This is similar to, but distinct from, the “But It’s Getting Better” self-delusion, this one is anticipatory.) All it really does is allow heavily invested fans a moment to fantasize about a future for the show that doesn’t resemble the last decade. And it’s made all the crueler by the fact that Zombie Simpsons shows no sign of stopping despite its universally acknowledge slide into senility. Ortved’s not the only one, either. Here’s our sometime co-conspirator bobservo (in about the third time I’ve linked to this post of his): I’d be happier if The Simpsons was completely restaffed with cranky, childless Harvard grads instead of these frightened old men that we have today. There’s a certain mentality you need to write for The Simpsons, and these guys lost it a long time ago. And here’s all around on-line Simpsons all-star Jake from comments earlier this week: I used to think Al Jean (along with Mike Reiss) were awesome and now when I see Mr. Jean’s face, I just think: “man, just leave and let someone else try, at least!”, but that won’t be happening.…
Synergy Can’t Go Along With This
“He crossed that line between everyday villainy, and cartoonish super-villainy.” – Waylon Smithers Up until this week, IGN had been doing a bang up job of sucking up to its paymaster. But the reeking desperation and overwhelming obviousness of making the season finale an American Idol commercial was too much, even for them. FOX let IGN down, man, now they don’t believe in nothin’ no more. IGN’s going to law school! As always, I’ve edited out the synergy. As a conclusion to one of the best worst seasons of The Simpsons Zombie Simpsons in the last few years, the series delivered another clunker. There was little to get excited about in "Judge Me Tender," an episode whose main storyline product placement focused on Moe and fellow Fox series American Idol. Had this been a half-hour stuck in the middle of the season, I it might not have been so disappointed passed relatively unnoticed, but choosing to end the year with it, especially after last week’s great Sideshow Bob episode, one can’t help but feel robbed that this embarrassment will be long remembered. Besides, Lost was on. [Ed note: No it wasn’t. Lost didn’t start until 9:00pm] The Simpsons didn’t hide the fact they were airing opposite an event night on ABC, specifically going up against the Lost retrospective. Bart’s chalkboard tried to spoil the whole thing for you: "End of Lost: It was all the dog’s dream. Watch us." But the episode they were trying to win you over with was less than compelling. If there were any bright spots, there weren’t, but if there were, it was would have been the first act. The Springfield Pet Fair offered up a number of great visual mildly clever gags and one-off bits. Drederick Tatum shopping for monkey diapers that wouldn’t upset his tiger’s stomach if the tiger ate the monkey was hilarious not one of them, instead dragging on much too long. "It’s a great time to be a tiger." Moe trying to find a seat at the Ugly Dog Contest was also a highlight took too long and wasn’t that funny to begin with. The contest turned out to be the catalyst hackneyed set up for the remainder of the episode. Krusty’s unfunny commentary was outdone by no worse than Moe’s heckling, and but the “plot” demanded otherwise, and so Moe quickly became an in-demand local judge. This all worked up to this point, took quite some time and led to and I enjoyed the montage of different contests that Moe was asked to judge. But the moment Once Moe was approached by a Hollywood agent and offered a stint as guest judge on American Idol, the episode lost me went from run of the mill Zombie Simpsons crappiness to turbo-charged, unfunny network shill. The Simpsons are used to be great at taking swipes at Hollywood and parent company Fox, but the majority of “bits” fell very flat in "Judge Me Tender." The series has made (better) tepid jokes about…
Crazy Noises: Stealing First Base
“Now, let’s discuss the, um, moe-tive” – Chief Wiggum 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 “gripe”). Sometimes a Zombie Simpsons episode is so sloppy and meandering, so devoid of humor, that it’s nigh impossible to have a coherent discussion of it. We started off talking about the montages, but there’s so many little things in this episode that just flat out suck that we ended up jumping around randomly, just like the episode did. And I’m sure we didn’t get to everything. The B-plot was three scenes, the finale of which was a helicopter landing at the school and three minutes of exposition. The A-plot dropped its reason for existing halfway through. The opening scene has literally nothing to do with the rest of the episode. Homer just gets into a little adventure driving the kids to school, it’s never referenced again and has no bearing on what happens once they get to school. And what few stabs at humor were contained within were, to put it mildly, clumsy. I could go on, but we did that last night. Mad Jon: Ok then Shall we? Dave: Only if we start with the first of several pointless montages Mad Jon: Fair enough Charlie Sweatpants: Yeah, that was about the worst of it. Mad Jon: Was it Charlie who was pissing on the Itchy and Scratchy episode from last week? Charlie Sweatpants: Oh yeah. Mad Jon: Should have kept your mouth shut Look what wrath you brought on us this week Charlie Sweatpants: I’d hesitate to call this “worse” since the last one was already approaching absolute zero, but this was awful. Mad Jon: Hesitate not fair gentleman Dave: Quite. Charlie Sweatpants: Fine, you saw an artsy movie from the late eighties, I’m impressed. Did it really need to go on for, wait, let me check . . . Mad Jon: We’ll wait here Dave: I enjoy the “Qatsi” trilogy, but recognize that it’s fair game for a ton of ridicule. The I&S bit did none of that Charlie Sweatpants: One minute and ten seconds, give or take. Wow. That’s more than 5% of the episode. I’m not familiar enough with all of Zombie Simpsons, but that’s got to be up there for all time champion montage time waster. Mad Jon: I&S is not for that kind of parody. I&S is supposed to be the 15-20 seconds of pure violent humor that reminds me that I am still not completely desensitized Charlie Sweatpants: Which one next, the kiss montage or the skateboarding montage? Mad Jon: The Kiss one Dave: Skateboarding Charlie Sweatpants: Jon…
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“Smithers had thwarted my earlier attempt to take candy from a baby, but with him out of the picture, I was free to wallow in my own crapulence.” – C. Montgomery Burns
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“Oh, you’re the bee’s knees baby. I missed you bad.” – Abraham Simpson “Were you talking to me, Grampa?” – Marge Simpson “Umm… yes?” – Abraham Simpson “Eww…” – Marge Simpson
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Image used under CreativeCommons license from Flicker user jmiguel.rodriguez. “You never know what you’re capable of. I never thought I could shoot down a German plane, but last year I proved myself wrong.” – Abe “Grandpa” Simpson