“I’m sorry, Homer. It’s just, it’s been four years since my last date with a whatchacallit . . . a woman.” – Moe
Another week, another Zombie Simpsons episode. This one starts with “Take Your Daughter to Work Day”, which means Lisa gets to go to the power plant again. That doesn’t last long, however, as Burns suddenly needs uranium and begins negotiating with a Nigerian king (yes, you read that correctly). In the meantime, the king’s daughter is going to be looked after by Homer. The daughter wants to go out and see the town, but ends up inexplicably hanging around with Moe before inexplicably not hanging out with Moe.
In other words, this episode combines Sad Sack Moe with Incompetent Burns. Also, Jon Lovitz had a line as some kind of paparazzi, and I think Bart’s only line was in the opening scene. It’s a mess.
– Well, the couch gag was short.
– Decent headline gag on “Hurricane Consuela Stopped At U.S. Border”.
– Pretty sure they got rid of take your daughter to work day two decades ago. Love the topical humor.
– Burns and Smithers just had a brief conversation while they were still on stage in front of everyone.
– Oh, good, a clone of Burns is being used as a background gag.
– Uh, Richard Branson is apparently Burns’ neighbor?
– We’re two minutes in and there have been about four cutaways. This is a Family Guy-esque pace.
– Montage of lunchroom trading.
– We’re getting a huge dose of weak, incompetent Burns this week. It’s not great.
– Now Burns is giving Homer instructions at the top of a hotel on baby sitting a Nigerian princess. We’re five minutes in with fifteen to go. This is gonna get weird.
– Marge is on the phone with Homer explaining what’s going on. Love when that happens.
– First the princess wanted to go out, then she and Homer watched TV for a while, then she asked to go out again and now they’re going out. This all happened sequentially.
– The princess is putting up with Moe.
– Moe grabbed Homer and dragged him into a back room to tell him about an e-mail scam leading to yet another cutaway, this one with bonus expository narration as Moe tells us what we’re seeing him do.
– And the princess is gone.
– Homer, Gil and Apu all ran up to Wiggum and got locked in his back seat in succession.
– The princess is back at Moe’s now. Whatever.
– Lenny and Carl apparently bailed Homer out, and now they’re all standing around the jail.
– Moe is still hitting on the princess, then he sent her off to the fridge, then he told us he wants to close. That was an act break. Ugh.
– Turns out she was asleep in the back room because . . . nevermind, Moe is doing a Goodnight Moon thing that the princess saw before going back to asleep.
– Smithers just fantasized about him and Burns in Tahiti for the third time.
– The princess just woke up after sleeping in Moe’s stockroom.
– Now they’re montaging across Springfield.
– Princess: “I have a confession to make, this is my first montage”. Oh, sweetie, it isn’t ours. Not by a long shot.
– Homer just appeared out of the tire fire to tell Moe that the princess has to go back to the hotel and watch TV. As a recap, at this point the princess was in the hotel, wanted to go out, got taken to Moe’s, left briefly for no reason, came back, flirted with Moe before voluntarily and unexpectedly sleeping in his stock room, then she woke up and has been in a montage. This episode has six minutes to go.
– Alright, I’m done. After a lengthy monologue from a pedicab guy so Moe and the princess could escape Homer, they peddled down the street and she said “Actually, I wanted to go back with him. I don’t want to get my father mad.” I’ll let you know if anything interesting happens the rest of the episode.
– 15:30 – Nope
– 16:00 – Still nope.
– 16:30 – Still nothing.
– 17:00 – Zilch, but lots of exposition.
– 17:30 – I’m switching to 1 minute intervals.
– 18:30 – Nothing, but the entire Simpson family teleported into Burns office for no reason.
– 19:30 – Still on.
– 20:30 – Richard Branson is back, nothing is interesting.
– 21:30 – The credits ended!
Anyway, the numbers are in and they remain terrible while not being quite as rock bottom bad as they’ve been. Last night, just 3.97 million people wondered why they got someone to voice that princess when a cardboard cutout would’ve done fine. That’s the 14th least watched of all time, but actually qualifies as success given that the previous two episodes were both fractions of a point away from taking the crown. On the plus side, we probably only have seven left in Season 26.
