Simpsons Math!

I'll present one of my favorite moments of Grandpa Simpsons nonsense, from the Critic Crossover Episode "A Star is Burns":



I'd never given the line much thought beyond what a perfect example of old-timey gibberish it is. Then, listening to the radio one day, I heard reference to a Hog's Head being a size of barrel used in liquor production. Naturally this meant it was time for some calculations!

I couldn't find an official exact conversion, but it seems that the hog's head is about 60 gallons, While a Rod is a little over 16 feet.

This means that, the way Grandpa likes it, his car uses up 60 gallons of gasoline to travel 640 feet. This works out to 480 gallons of gasoline per mile traveled, or 0.002 MPG.

Does Grandpa drive a cruise ship? Or some kind of rocket?

Game of Thrones Avoidance - Week 4

It was another rough week, as the public couldn't stop talking about a major character death! In this video, I address what that particular plot turn might mean for book-only fans!

See you back here next week, when, with any luck, I'll have heard that Ramsay Bolton is dead! Just kidding, that obviously can't happen until next year.

Oh, damn it, I just realized that the Hound is definitely coming back. Damn Ian McShane. Well, save that for the next video!

Things I Didn't Notice In The Simpsons Until Just Recently

Part of the wonder that is The Simpsons is its ability to keep surprising me year after year, as I notice new jokes in episodes I've watched literally hundreds of times. Here's an example that happ    ened to me last year, from 'Homer and Apu'.

Kent Brockman: Good Evening, here's an update from last week's nursing home expose: Geezers in Freezers. It turns out the rest home was adequately heated - the footage you saw was of a fur storage facility. We've also been told to apologize for using the term 'Geezers'.

"Now - coming up next: The case of the cantankerous old geezer!"

For years I thought the entirety of the joke was that Kent Brockman immediately went back to using the word 'Geezer' after apologizing for doing so, but during my six hundredth or so viewing, I finally realized that the joke was this - After finding out that they were going to have to apologize because an elderly viewer complained about his language, Kent Brockman (and the Bite Back team) decided that their next story should be an attack piece - on the complainer.

How did I not notice that for so long? Probably too busy laughing at Harry Shearer's reading of the word 'geezer', I'd expect.

Here's the new one!

And then, The Simpsons Gave Up

Remember cross-section jokes on The Simpsons? Fun little bonus gags whenever the show wanted to do an interesting camera move? Whether it was Shiva running the core of the planet-

Aliens buried next to a wishing well-

Or between the floors of the house-

No, that's not a plot hole-

To celebrate Valentine's day, let's take a look at the romance-themed episode of the Simpsons!

In the Season 6 episode 'Another Simpsons Clip Show', Lisa flashes back to 'I Love Lisa', and her hilarious misadventures with Ralph. As she narrates the opening scene of the flashback:

Lisa cheekily comments that "it was an unusually warm February 14th, so the children walked home without jackets". It seems the writers noticed a plot hole in the episode, and decided to call it out.

One problem, though - it's not actually a plot hole. You see, 'I Love Lisa' took place six episodes after 'Mr. Plow'. And how did that episode end?

That's right, with God intervening to end winter in Springfield that year, specifically to foil Homer and Barney's plans to go into business together. So of course there wasn't any snow come Valentine's Day. If nothing else, The Simpsons' God knows how to hold a grudge.

On the subject of inattention to detail-

As I do my best to investigate exactly when and how the Simpsons stopped being the vision of perfection that it was between its third and fifth seasons. There's the subtraction of heart from the proceedings, an increasing cruelty to the humour, the way shortened runtimes prevent the episodes from developing rich B-stories - all of these are decent avenues worth exploring. Today I'll be focusing on a minor scene from the seventh season, one that demonstrates another key flaw: The lack of attention to detail, coupled with underestimating the audience's intelligence.

While attempting to injuring himself in the episode 'King-Size Homer', something odd happens. After sliding on a patch of oil he dumped on the floor, Homer moves through a series of rooms without incident.

Finally he slides past Smithers' desk-

Through a doorway featuring one of the most bizarre uses of perspective I've ever seen-

The Lost Simpsons Characters - Nelson's Dad

Now for another part in this semi-irregular series documenting the way The Simpsons has shrunken and devalued its world by casting off characters and plotlines.

We met Nelson's dad way back in season 4's 'Brother from the Same Planet'.

There he was the soccer coach who showed favoritism to his unpleasant son. You may also remember him from Season 6's 'Bart's Girlfriend', in which he reined Nelson in with a leash.

So, what happened to Nelson's dad? He disappeared. In later seasons Nelson would be assigned a generic 'neglected child' background, in which his father abandoned him years earlier, offering him an excuse for his behavior, as well as a reason to feel sorry for him. The show would then take it a step further, bringing Nelson's father back, explaining that he hadn't actually run off, but rather been kidnapped by a circus. Happy endings all around!

What was lost with the exclusion of Nelson's original father? Accuracy! I don't know how many people reading this have actually met a bully's parents, but Nelson's father being a smug jock who encourages his son's bullying is incredibly well-observed. Nelson's father may be one of the most true-to-life things the show ever offered, and he was removed so that the show could be more generic and cliched.

Thanks, Simpsons.

One Last Thing about Bart's Girlfriend

Seriously now, on what planet do children get up super-early on Sunday so they can get some elaborate games of Cowboys and Indians in before church?

More from the Bart's Girlfriend episode!

While the idea of Skinner setting Bart up to misbehave is a funny one, I've got to ask something about Scotchtoberfest.

How can Bart misbehaving at an event off-campus on a Sunday be grounds for detention? You might as well give the kid detention for jumping over other kids with his skateboard back in Season 2.

Also, and this is one of the many reasons early Simpsons impresses me so thoroughly, check out the crowd for Scotchtoberfest.

The crowd has been given tams, capes, and bottles of whiskey. Now that's some excellent work, both by Skinner setting up the sting, and by the animators including little details to give the scene verisimilitude.

Another Simpsons Question!

When Bart got a girlfriend in Season 6, it went terribly for him. So, in hopes of breaking the hold she had over him, he decided to just avoid her entirely.

Naturally, the joke is that he hasn't really thought this whole 'avoiding' thing through, and though he'd like to keep away from her for three months, it doesn't occur to him that they both attend the same school and church. In fact, a moment after he's revealed the joke of the scene by circling the first day he'll avoid her, Marge walks in and announces that it's time to go to church!

Funny scene and all, but I've got a question - why are they going to church on Monday?

Is it a prank on Bart (and all the children of the town) because it's also April first? Inquiring minds want to know, Simpsons!

Adventures in Fake Journalism: The Simpsons 717

In the Season 7 episode 'Homer the Smithers', Burns is presented with a Junior Jumble-

Amazingly, it's a fully-constructed far-too-easy jumble. The clue involves a woman calling her husband a 'fat slob', while the riddle is 'What did the man need?' So let's solve it!

Dog
thE
iT
He

Which gives us the letters DETH. Which can't be turned into anything at all - so the Jumble is a failure. Strangely, though - it's simply a case of the circles being misplaced. If they were slightly rearranged, the selected letters would be DTIE.

This, of course, can be rearranged into what the fat man needs. A 'DIET'.

Something else I've noticed from The Simpsons

When the schoolkids get stranded on the deserted island in 'Das Bus', there's much comedy to be gleaned from their complete inability to handle life in the jungle. Just check out their attempt at a shelter:

Yet somehow when it comes time to imprison Milhouse they get a cage made out of bamboo and vines together quickly enough:

They also seem perfectly adept at constructing a spit and roasting a boar to perfection.

A vicious wild boar they killed with sharpened sticks.

What was the message of this episode again?

The Simpsons actually cares about continuity?

So, in the Simpsons season ender last year, Ned and Edna started dating. This led to a scene in which Ned, while hanging out with Homer at Moe's, runs into some of the men that Edna has slept with over the years, including Joey from Aerosmith. Remember their assignation?

First off, bravo for the callback 19 years later - that's quite the accomplishment. More importantly, though, I've got to say that the years have not treated the animated depiction of Joey very well-

That's what he's looking like these days! Which brings me to the eternal question - how, exactly, does time work in Springfield? Homer has aged five years over the course of the show (from 36 to 41), while his children remain the same age, but apparently this was just a narcissistic move by the writers, who didn't want to be older than Homer, at least for a relatively brief amount of time.

Strangely, the 20-year age jump of Joey's isn't the only reference to the extreme passage of time in the episode. Ned mentions in passing that his 'Leftorium' has been the anchor store of the 'sad mall' for ten years. Which means we're not only getting a reference to the Leftorium being built almost twenty years ago, but also to the fact that the 'Springfield Mall' that it resides in has essentially been made obsolete by the opening of the Heavenly Hills Mall back in season nine.

Of course, Lisa almost got married back in 2010, so what does time even mean any more?

The Lost Simpsons Characters: The Devolution to Ralph Wiggum

As the Simpsons began, both Bart and Lisa had lives outside of the home. They both had social circles - Bart hung out with kids that weren't Nelson, Martin, or Milhouse, Lisa had all her friends over for slumber parties. In addition to actual friends, there was a wide circle of other children who attended Springfield Elementary. Among them was this guy, part of a two-man chorus who wittily commented on the action in a variety of scenes:

You may think that this character is Ralph Wiggum, but that's not a wholly accurate assumption. First off, there's the obvious intellectual disparity - this kid says things like 'It's recess everywhere but in his heart', while Ralph says things like 'I bent my Wookie'.

That Happy Cat!

Oh, Snowball - you get disrespected quite a bit by this show, don't you? Lisa's cat has been dead for around four years when the show begins - the official number is given in a Halloween episode, so there's room for a little shakiness. Speaking of that Halloween Episode (Treehouse of Horror III, specifically), something puzzling occurs - while the characters discuss Snowball, the cat featured here:

The picture Lisa holds up is of Snowball II-

Even more puzzling, when we get to the pet cemetery, we find that the cat was buried under the name:

Snowball I? Wouldn't naming a cat that suggest it wasn't going to be long for this world? The same way that calling it the 'First Battle of Bull Run' ensured that there would be a second some years later?

What's that? More Simpsons Things I Noticed?

In the Simpsons episode 'Sunday Cruddy Sunday', better known as 'The Other Super Bowl Episode', Marge and Lisa have a subplot while the boys are off dealing with all that football mishegoss. They have some trouble with a Vincent Price-approved egg-decorating kit, and call a hotline, where a recording of Price leaves a very confusing message.

What's so odd about this? At the end of the sequence, Lisa asks Marge to clarify whether Price is alive or dead. Which is a good question to ask, based on the convolutions in the message. Except for one thing - Lisa didn't hear the message. The entire time Marge was on the phone she held the handset up to her ear, while Lisa stood nearby. So how did Lisa know what was being said?

On the subject of the Simpsons-

Okay, apparently Marge is really, really good at counting. In the episode "Homer Badman", while the family is decorating the set of the public access studio before Homer's speech, Grandpa Simpson elects to hang an American flag behind him.

Marge turns and announces that the flag has just 49 stars - this is followed by Grandpa's joke, but let's consider Marge's accomplishment for a moment. She noticed a missing star on a flag she'd never seen before in something like 1.5 seconds. Is that even possible?

Also, the flag has 38 stars.

Another Question About The Simpsons

In the episode '22 Short Films About Springfield', there's a short film about Cletus, the slack-jawed yokel, which features a theme song describing the fellow. Each of the verses establishes a fact about the titular character, seemingly one selected to highlight his status as a hillbilly. Which brings me to my question:

While I fully accept that eating a skunk (or 'polecat' as they're sometimes known) is a stereotypically hillbillyish action, it's the second one that concerns me.

On what planet is 'los(ing) a toe' yokelish? When offered a panoply of possibilities to reference, everything from moonshine to incest to poor hygiene to ignorance to racism, the writers went with losing a toe? A situation that Cletus may not even have had any responsibility for?

What the hell?

Still more questions about the Simpsons

So it turns out there's a lot of things that don't make sense to me about Season 7.

Take, for example, the episode 'Team Homer', in which Homer joins a bowling league and winds up saddled with Mr. Burns as a teammate. Hilarity ensues.

Their main competition in this league are a team called the 'Holy Rollers', who are really, really good at bowling.

So good that god himself intervenes to ensure that Ned gets a strike (and Homer is shocked by the ball return). Naturally the two teams square off against one another in the final match of the season (although I'm not sure how - Burns causes to them to lose at least one game in what should be the elimination rounds...) and it all comes down to Mr. Burns, who, with his last two balls must knock over at least two pins to win the game.

It's the only way the story could have wound up, naturally, but it raises an important question - what kind of a game were the Holy Rollers playing? Everything we hear about them suggests that they're the best players imaginable. In one key shot-

We see them bowl four strikes in the time it takes Burns to throw a single gutterball. In this kind of a game the combined scores of both teams (the maximum is 1200) are compared to decide the winner. But with Burns being completely useless, the de facto maximum score that the 'Pin Pals' could have had at the end of the game was 902 - and that would require the rest of the team to have bowled three perfect games, which is a statistical impossibility - and surely would have been mentioned had it happened. Even if that was the case, the Holy Rollers would have had to bowled an average score of 233 - a great score by most standards, but not what we're told to expect from them.

According to the show's logic, had Otto been on the team instead of Burns, the Pin Pals would have won the championship by a margin of at least 200 points - if the Holy Rollers could be thumped that badly, what threat were they supposed to have posed in the first place?

Also, where is this lane's ball return?

Yet another question about the Simpsons

In the episode 'King Sized Homer' there's a series of events I don't quite understand. After Homer has spent a few days as a fat guy on disability, doing his job by hitting a Y key over and over again on a remote terminal, everyone has become fed up with his girth.

Bart and Lisa come home from school to find Homer skipping work to catch a movie. After his negligence seems as if it's going to lead to a catastrophe, he has to rush back to work - hijacking an ice cream truck along the way. While driving the truck, he passes this school bus-

Which for some reason contains Lisa and Ralph-

Despite a scene set more than an hour previous taking place after school that day.