“Hey, look, those frogs are eating all their crops!” – Homer Simpson
- Marge has to yell in church to get everyone to sit down, and meanwhile Lovejoy was just standing at the pulpit waiting patiently? I know they don’t care about this stuff, but it really destroys scenes.
- And the new guy is also just standing there before he starts describing Lovejoy for no reason.
- Color me surprised, they remembered the bed bug thing for one brief scene after the first segment. Usually they just drop it all together.
- And Homer electrocutes himself because of course he does.
- Why is Lovejoy playing the guitar?
- And why is Homer on stage without Lovejoy knowing?
- Montage!
- Is that it for the wedding dress subplot? That was thin even for them.
- Homer singing his deacon song was extremely pointless.
- Lovejoy’s got a new job that we didn’t see and we’re supposed to care about this?
- “First we got every dead bedbug in town” – Thanks exposition fairy!
- Was that drunk Barney in the Frogger game after sober Barney was in church? Video review says that yes it was.
- And the new reverend is back after disappearing for a while because he’s not a real character.
- And now Lovejoy back for no reason and has gained the ability to subdue amphibians.
- That was certainly a necessary Lunchlady Doris appearance.
Zombie Simpsons may have lost the capacity to surprise long ago, but having a bunch of frogs come streaming out of the swamp to humiliate a one-dimensional character for some reason is still pretty weird, even for them. (Not popped-eyeball weird, but pretty weird.) The rest of the episode was just as much of a mess, and I have no idea what was with that wedding dress subplot about Lisa not wanting to get married. Was that pasted in from another script? Homer and Marge’s wedding/past has been retconned a lot, but they usually don’t do so unless they’re going to spend more then forty-seconds of screen time on it.
It’s also worth noting the sheer number of things that were repeated from previous episodes: Lovejoy feeling displaced, froggie apocalypse, the Simpsons getting a new couch, taking prank inspiration from Biblical plagues, the list goes on. Zombie Simpsons may have run out of original ideas many years ago, but they’re usually more economical with their copying.
Anyway, the ratings are in and they are bad again. Just 4.48 million people wondered why there were suddenly all those frogs. That puts it sixth on the all time least watched list, which is now dominated by episodes from Season 23 and 24.
Sometime later this year FOX is going to have to make a call on renewing the show again, and while the numbers they’ll use will be a lot more involved than just the overnights that I track (and the 18-49 numbers continue to be more solid than the overall ones), there’s no getting around the fact that the ratings are down significantly, even from just two years ago.
