5/22 - PRE-EMPTED for "Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones"
(what a surprise - it's three days after Episode III
premieres)5/29 - PRE-EMPTED for the Coca-Cola 600 NASCAR auto race (which should
end by 8:00 Pacific, but Fox stations out west will air local
programming after the race)STUFF for "Home Away from Homer" (GABF15) ----------------------------------------- Written by Directed by Blackboard: A BOOGER IS NOT A BOOKMARK Couch: The couch is attached to a giant fish, which eats everybody (repeat of FABF21) Special Guest Voice: Jason Bateman Also Starring: Pamela Hayden, Tress MacNeille, Karl Wiedergott Overseas Animation: Rough Draft TV Rating: TV-PG-DLV
REVIEW: B - there didn't really go anywhere with any of the three
storylines; the girls were just "watch Bart and Milhouse (and
Homer, and whoever else he tells) watch the website before the
whole thing collapses", Humbleton was just "get rid of the
damn mustache", and Coach was "watch Coach make Homer's life
hell until somebody does something about it" (if I wanted
that, I'd watch "King of the Hill" reruns).REFERENCES Hummel figurines (Humble figures) "Love Story" (the theme plays whenever Humble is mentioned) "The Seven-Year Itch" (Ned on a grate is similar to Marilyn Monroe standing on a subway grate) FABF07 (Starving Teachers moving company)
DYN ...presumably, Lisa speaks Albanian? (Maybe Adil taught it to her?) ...Coach sounds like Snake? ...the (Christian) church is giving away bobble-headed Moses dolls? ...the "real" www.sexyslumberparty.com actually has something to do with the show?
GOOFS / FREEZE FRAME / WHATNOT Why would Ned freak out over his mustache? He didn't have a problem shaving it off before.
STUFF for "The Father, the Son, and the Holy Guest Star" (GABF09)
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Written by Matt Warburton
Directed by Michael Polcino
Blackboard: none
Couch: everybody is a balloon that floats to the couch, except for
Homer, who gets popped by Snowball II
Special Guest Voice: Liam Neeson, Marcia Wallace
Also Starring: Pamela Hayden, Tress MacNeille, Maggie Roswell,
Russi Taylor, Karl Wiedergott
Overseas Animation: Rough Draft
TV Rating: TV-14-DLVREVIEW: B-minus - what was this episode supposed to be about? A slap
in the face of the Roman Catholic Church? Twenty-two minutes
on how to solve Christianity's problems? (Refresh my memory:
for all the claims about how other Christian churches were
created because they had problems with the Roman Catholic
Church, wasn't that one created because somebody had a problem
with the Jewish religion?) Whatever it was, it wasn't
particularly funny.REFERENCES "Scooby-Doo, Where Are You?" (the "Ministry Machine") "Red Dwarf" (two feuding religions fight to the death, the way the "red hats" and "blue hats" of the Cat race did)
DYNs ...Homer calls whoever the current President is "Commander Cuckoo-Bananas"? ...they never do explain how, or even if, Bart gets taken back into Springfield Elementary? ...the Church of Springfield's religion has a name?
GOOFS / FREEZE FRAME / WHATNOT This episode was originally scheduled to air April 10, 2005. However, Pope John Paul II died eight days earlier, and Fox decided not to have an episode dealing with the Roman Catholic Church so soon after his death. (The originally planned Season 16 finale was "The Girl Who Slept Too Little".)
A number of TV listings combined this episode with GABF09 as a single hour-long block when they first aired. The most likely explanation is, a number of people who have the show on their TiVo Season Pass list with "padding" (i.e. add a minute or more to the start and/or the end, especially as a number of episodes ran to 8:32) missed the second episodes of the May 1 and May 8 double features (because TiVo has two programs scheduled for between 8:29 and 8:31 - never mind that they are on the same channel - and will record only the first one), so the TV listings had to claim it was an hour-long show in order to fool TiVo into recording both episodes.
Catholics get to eat meat on Fridays if it's not Lent. (However, contrary to some public belief, if St. Patrick's Day is on a Friday, the Pope does not make an exception for corned beef.)
-- Don S1.1 MAG+++ LIS++ BAR+ SKI+ MrsK+ MissH+ P&S# FLA- (heresy!) f+++ n+++ Ilps(w) $+++ M43 Boy, it's a good thing of the Department of Defense's top programming types is a die-hard Simpsons fan, or Washington might take offense to that "commander cuckoo-bananas" crack