“Don’t make me tap the sign.” – Bus Driver
There are episodes of Zombie Simpsons that border on manic, where they just throw crazy shit at the screen and hope that some of the incoherent jumble produces a chuckle or two. But there are also episodes like “Super Franchise Me”, that feel like they were produced by people in the depths of an Eeyore level depression. This is Zombie Simpsons going through the motions: slowly, reluctantly, joylessly. The story, Marge opens a sandwich franchise, is paper napkin thin, and since there’s no B-plot, they had to tack on a slow motion fantasy chase sequence at the end to shuffle this one across the twenty-minute finish line.
(Sorry we forgot to put up a preview post. Guess we weren’t the only ones half-assing it this week.)
- And you can tell things are off to a bad start when they have a clock eating non-guest couch gag. It’s 45 seconds long. Just 19m:15s to go!
- Guh, Flanders is reading the sign gags. The sign gags are one of the few things they don’t completely suck at, so this is always annoying.
- And then they did it with Homer reading the name of the Japanese city.
- This is one of the dumber montages I’ve seen in a while. Marge is cooking meat, and Homer is worried for some reason. It takes almost forty seconds. Tick-tock, tick-tock.
- You want a good example of how filler-iffic this episode is? Bart and Lisa just watched Homer stuff food into Santa’s Little Helper for fifteen seconds before they objected. It wasn’t funny, but it did eat some time!
- On a printed, 8pt font list of this episode’s problems, this would be on about page three, but it makes no sense for Marge to make all these sandwiches after Flanders takes his freezer back. The premise is that the food is gonna go bad before anyone can eat it, and now she’s got a ton of sandwiches that would still need to go in the fridge.
- Similar to the above, why does Bart want sandwiches at night before he goes to bed?
- Oh, now they have a scene with Flanders explaining that he’s keeping them in his freezer. It’s nice that they tied up the loose end, I guess, but when your story is so week that you almost have to retcon it before the first commercial break, it’s not a good sign.
- Oh, look, the main story has arrived in the form of a woman showing up at the school, where Marge went for no apparent reason. Literally neither of them should be there. Well done, Zombie Simpsons.
- Gotta love sparkling dialogue like this: “Mom, you’re gonna open a sandwich store?”, “Uh-huh.”
- Homer’s flashback to a Pizza Hut certainly went on for a while.
- Marge being happy that everything here is hers could’ve been interesting if it had been developed beyond having her just say “my” over and over.
- Krusty and Mr. Teeny just showed up for some reason. And now the monkey is bathing in a giant salsa tray.
- Frink’s applying for a job. Marge sets it up by telling him not to make any weird noises. He then makes weird noises. I think this was diagrammed out in Chapter 3 of “Scriptwriting For the Terminally Boring”.
- Gil handing out the strip club card would’ve been much funnier if the “Tell You Their Real Name” Tuesday joke had either been on the card or spoken aloud. It’s both. Reading the sign gags really sucks.
- Remember what I said earlier about Marge being happy about things actually being hers? Well, that got dropped completely and now the Simpson family is working in the restaurant.
- “I was short staffed and your father volunteered.” – Thanks, exposition Marge! We only saw that one minute ago, how could we possibly remember it?
- Montage #2. This one is about making and selling sandwiches.
- The “We’re Closed and the Alarm Is On” sign with the skull and crossbones is kinda funny, but I’m just happy they didn’t have someone read it to us.
- There’s another sandwich place across the street now. Bart pointed it out. I like this scene, it’s a combination between their hatred of object permanence and their love of bizarre and abrupt plot twists.
- Cletus is reading ridiculous kids names. Haven’t seen that before.
- Burns and Smithers just showed up for some reason.
- It’s okay, they’re gone now.
- You can argue about whether or not this show is funny (I don’t think it is, but to each their own), but there’s no denying that it’s dumb. The premise here is that the sandwich franchise opened another location across the street and screwed Marge. That’s actually a real problem (Subway, for example, is notorious for screwing its franchisees like that), but it’s not used for any kind of comedy here whatsoever. Instead, they have Homer get scalded, stabbed and bashed in his crotch, and even then it doesn’t make sense.
- Just for good measure, we see Burns fall incompetently off of a rowboat. Remember evil Burns? He was fun.
- And now it’s over and they’ve got a caveman Homer very (very) slowly chasing some giant animal because this episode came in a solid minute short, even with all that filler.
- Nice of them to mention Jan Hooks, though.
Anyway, the ratings are in and they are way up, but only because of football overrun. Last night’s cripplingly stretched premise was seen by 7.34 million people, probably half of whom just left it on after the Dallas-Seattle game. That’s down from the also football lifted season premier, and it would’ve been an average number as recently as Season 22, but it counts as good for them these days. Next week, the late national game is Giants-Cowboys, so we’ll see if there’s another (relatively) big number.
