Notes for PABF14 (Lisa Goes Gaga)

Hmm. Recent celebrity-as-self appearances, and especially entire episodes featuring them, aren't supposed to be good; while this didn't blow me away, it was a pretty good use of the guest in the plot, and it helped that it was a meaningful connection, not random... and that it tapped into the Lisa's-torment well well. I'm reminded a bit of some Michael Jackson stuff in 7F24, that sort of thing, but much more by 7G06 (Moaning Lisa), which predates this by just over 500 episodes. (See below.) I am not a Lady Gaga expert, but it seemed accessible enough and fun. In addition to being fairly touching as far as Lisa's concerned, it was generally funny as well. (I enjoyed the blink-and- you-miss-them double entendres, "no buts" and "...slap some weiners on those".) On the other hand, Moe gets run over by a train??

DYN: ...another clouds-to-couch opening? (At least the episode was full length.) ...Lady Gaga's regular voice sounds a LOT like certain Nancy Cartwright one-off characters?

Previous episode stuff 9F21: CBG wipes away a tear with the first issue of Action comics MG05 (and others?): Maggie offers Lisa her pacifier and it's not bad 7G06: Lisa's being picked on, mopiness, lack of helpful family help, celebrity musician assistance, final song

Meta -Wiggum describes Ralph as a dumb kid but an above-average dog. Reminds me of early descriptions of Homer. -The main theme is played by an unpolished sounding school band when Bart gets his award.

Hashtags So, I noticed some Twitter hashtags popping up at the bottom "left" (inside the 4:3 area) at certain points: #GagaExpress near the start, #GagaKissesMarge later. (Did I miss any? At least they're not that visible.) There was a #TheSimpsons one above the Fox bug the whole time, too. So... I guess this is something several networks are doing, but I've seen it on a few Fox shows (e.g. New Girl), when the relevant moment comes up. It seems like it's trying too hard. Is this the first time it's happened on this show? Should we be logging them? Presumably they won't show up again, even on repeats. Speaking of which...

The Longest Daycare This teaser ran between acts 3 and 4, which was puzzling enough, but it also ran before the Executive Producer credits, and... is that part of the episode now? Probably not in syndication, but I wonder about summer/fall repeats on Fox. Anyway, so, there's a (3D!) Maggie short set to run before the new Ice Age movie in theaters? I... well gee, I want to see the short. I don't really want to see the movie. (I know that's the idea.) With any luck, it'll be out on home video in a complete season release, or something. (Or not? Some recent Disney examples had a Toy Story short before The Muppets, but not on its release; and a Tangled followup before 3D Beauty and the Beast, to be put for some reason on the Diamond Edition of Cinderella this fall.)

Finally PABF07 (At Long Last Leave, 500th episode) finally reran tonight. The couch gag was NOT fixed to correct the omissions. Honestly, I am surprised.

Matthew Garvey wrote in news:842ebc40-1013-406c- [email]:

Actually, he holds on to the front of the train, you can see his arm wrapped around the front of the train.

You're surprised they didn't edit an opening credit sequence they didn't do for the premiere of the episode? Really?

(Editor: Wow, we missed a couple of couch gags only 0.000003% of the audience would notice. Let's do some extra work for the rerun!!! We get paid enough to do this!!!)

On May 21, 12:32 am, Wiseguy wrote:

Yes, really. They've made plenty of little edits after the first airing to fix minor animation glitches or goofs, which very few people would notice. (Also several credits fixes, for misspelled or mis- ordered names, etc., but those might have more legal pressure.) Whether I'd want them to is a different matter (I'm split), but I did kind of feel it was likely.

Matthew Garvey wrote in news:c1513356-b76f-420f-9167- [email]:

They fixed things they thought were important enough to fix or things they didn't notice the first time. If the opening of At Long Last Leave was the way they wanted or was all the time to show the cough gags they did show they wouldn't fix it (there would be nothing to fix).

The point is that you were surprised they didn't fix it.

Well yeah, if the point was to include all the couch gags, it seems important enough to want to fix (and easy enough, shuffling a dozen frames around), since now anyone can say "well, it's not ALL of them". I assume it was not noticed/unintended, at least for some of them (5F07 and LABF13's especially - arguably 7G09/01's was uninteresting, and the postponing of 7G04's was to make room for better ones until the speedup, so those might be intentional - 9F21's is iffy). Obviously it's not a matter of episode timing, either.

So, with all these things considered, I come to my natural conclusion, which (besides recordkeeping) is indeed the point I stated simply before: I was surprised. What's yours, I shouldn't be?

On Sunday, May 20, 2012 9:11:40 PM UTC-4, Matthew Garvey wrote:

If you're referring to "Tangled Ever After," you can see it every other day on the Disney Channel.