Mmm, OK. It's a story show. At least it was fairly funny, and the Macbeth one was amusingly self-referential without shoving it in your face. "What's armada with you" is a pretty good bad joke, even if I sort of saw it coming, and similarly the Beowulf gag was quite amusing - Moe got a number of good lines tonight. I suppose (as with so many others - Bart's fantasy in 7F07, James Earl Jones in 2F03 - others?) this cannot be counted as Maggie truly talking... probably this is a good thing, because Jodie Foster's voice along with Maggie's stature and cuteness reminds me way too much of the Tress MacNeille-voiced Nibblonian in Futurama. Distractingly so.
Other than that...
INTRO NOTES Crow: left to right (short, to driveway) TV falls off (usual music) (Don: I did not actually notice the alternating trends in both crow and TV! I might have eventually... interesting.)
DYN: ...another visualization of Selma starting to smoke (sort of) (see 7F21)? ...Lisa's Snow White makes turtle soup? ...Spider Pig shows up in story 2? ...not often do you see painted nails (or any fingernails) on The Simpsons? ...for Macbeth, Homer as a tree may not have been just scenery? (This wasn't noted though!) ...Maggie's "U"+suck is translated that way (not "thuck", har har)?
For reference, the 7 dwarves: Crabby (Moe) Drunky (Barney) Hungry (Homer) Greedy (Burns) Lenny Kearney Doc(-tor Hibbert) (What, no Surly?)
Previous episode references DABF08, FABF06: Previous historical stories (others?) BABF21: Snow White story reminiscent of "Scary Tales Can Come True", though oddly with a broader focus 5F02: Patty and Selma appear to be playing the weird sisters (witches), though my Macbeth is a little rusty - they could be someone else FABF12, KABF02: Cheesy conga line music (with Duffman all around!) JABF11: Marge as a nagging ghost 8F18: Not surprisingly, many similarities between 4th story and this ep. Also, the Springfield players putting on a show. GABF08: One of Maggie's buildings seems to be inspired by Frank Gehry
Goof Billboard spells it "MacBeth" (the B shouldn't be capital).
Meta Oh many things... -Duffman as Macduff, Lenny as Lennox, Eddie and Lou as people with no lines -It wasn't until Homer's well-done monologue that I was reminded of the one-man show "MacHomer"! -Marge starts act 4 by saying "three stories, that's what we always tell" (see also such meta lines as putting the weakest in the middle in HABF11). The 4-act format began only recently (KABF22, recall), and some things have been fitting in well - anthology episodes like this apparently are best served as 4. What Treehouse of Horror XX has in store remains to be seen. -Callback in story 4 to Homer as Macbeth in story 3. It's not often these recall each other (I am reminded of a moment in EABF21 when Homer wanted to be Death again).
Other -Between acts 3 and 4 a promo for the new Simpsons stamps ran, using slightly modified clips from GABF16. I guess almost anything can have a ready-made clip these days! -I notice that this episode (if swapped with last week's) and LABF11 are the only LABFs aired out of order so far. LABF11 was pushed so early for St. Patrick's Day - I wonder if this was designed for a bit of Mother's Day appeal (see also last year's KABF12). -There's an anthology Family Guy tonight! ("Three Kings," 6ACX15.) It is similarly way out of order, and I see on epguides.com that originally it was thought to be next week's episode. One of these might be explained by wanting to put it close to OFF tonight. -Finally, I see (Don's update) that KABF20, "Mypods and Boomsticks," is scheduled to repeat at last on 5/31 (after being scheduled a number of months ago and taken off). Maybe the offseason is acceptable timing to avoid controversy?