“Well, this man doesn’t crawl, he stands tall! That rhymes, Marge, and you know it rhymes. Admit it!” – Homer Simpson
Another week, another structurally messy, weirdly lifeless, exposition heavy, joke lite episode of Zombie Simpsons. They open with a flashback to “30 years ago” when Hans Moleman was mayor and all the current adults were kids. They sing a crappy song, have a montage, sing it some more, then Bart and Lisa are commissioned to write a new song. After all that, Marge sends Homer to a support group for people to lose weight, but he ends up at a support group for people who don’t want to lose weight. Wacky hijinks ensue, each one more fully explained to the audience than the last. It ends with a montage of Homer gaining and losing weight. If you haven’t watched it, you’re not alone.
– The couch gag was, uh, kinda weird.
– So the gag here in the past is that everyone had more hair?
– Also, this song is really bad.
– And now we’re in multi-city song montage because this was supposed to be funny.
– Got to our pointless, nonsensical self-voice celebrity early this week. And they were nice enough to introduce him in their usually lazy manner: he appears from nowhere, then someone shouts his name to let us all know who he is. This time it was Otto, “Pharell Williams!”. Thanks, Otto.
– And he’s gone, riding backwards out of town on a horse. Well, at least that didn’t take too long.
– The weird reminiscence about “Stark Raving Dad” was kinda strange.
– Montage!
– But this montage got interrupted by Homer asking Bart what he was doing and Bart replying that he was writing a song. Well done, Zombie Simpsons, usually you don’t have explicit exposition in the middle of a dialogue free montage.
– And they ended it with more needless explaining: “We did it, we wrote an awesome song!”
– The new song is also bad, and they had Bart and Lisa’s instruments disappear for no reason.
– So the song ends, and everyone stands up and claps. Homer is stuck in his seat, tries to get out, and can’t. Just in case, though, Exposition Marge says “Homer, it’s a standing ovation, get up.” They really can’t help themselves.
– And now Homer is flinging a bench of seats around and tossing people across the room. Also, there is screaming and exposition as Homer yells, “Stop fearing me!”.
– It just keeps going! Homer: “Can’t you say something to help me feel better?”/Marge: “I’m sorry, but I can’t.”
– Marge just pulled a pamphlet from her hair.
– Homer is asking Comic Book Guy about the fat pride group. Nice of them to explain things before we see them. Otherwise we might be confused.
– “Now repeat after me”, there’s a phrase this episode could’ve done without.
– Guh, “I’ve always wanted to blindly follow somebody, and I think you just might be the guy”.
– Homer just got home and explained what we just heard him say. Now they’re expositing the exposition. If the universe collapses in on itself today, this may be why.
– Homer and Marge are “arguing” in the living room by restating what happened and telling us how they feel.
– Homer is listing fat insults at Moe’s. It goes on for a quite some time, and while there are a couple that are okay, it’s mostly the kind of list that a show that hasn’t been phoning things in for over a decade would prune a bit, you know? Here it’s just filler.
– Chief Wiggum is getting arrested and tased by Lou for some reason.
– Marge just bailed Homer out and restated the plot again. It’d been almost a minute since that happened, so it was getting hard to remember.
– After the commercial break, Bart and Lisa asked Marge what’s wrong, and she recounted what we just saw.
– And then Bart replies that he and Lisa have learned that they can solve any problem through song. They know that the script notes aren’t supposed to be recorded as dialogue, right?
– Bart and Lisa wrote a song again, so Marge introduced it by telling us about what we were about to see.
– And that got dropped like a rock, so Marge and Homer are now rehashing the story for the eleventh time or so.
– Homer’s giving a eulogy. Sadly, it’s not for the series.
– And we end on Homer and Marge walking home and, you guessed it, talking about what just happened again. Then there’s a montage of Homer’s body changing a bunch of times before we get to the future where Bart is Robocop. No, I am not making that up.
Anyway, the numbers are in, and they are smoking crater level bad. Last night, just 2.85 million people wondered whether Zombie Simpsons was trying to affirm or mock fat people. That is the lowest number at 8:00pm ever, and second lowest all time behind only last year’s “Diggs”, which was broadcast at 7:30 and had 2.65 million viewers.
Granted, the Grammys were apparently on last night (I was kinda surprised they still bother to broadcast those), but that is a seriously bad number. Just how bad is it? Well, 60 Minutes, which exists primarily to frighten old people, did better among 18-49 year-olds than Zombie Simpsons. That’s about as bad as it gets.
