From: mxg77@po.cwru.edu

Reasonably good episode, Marge episode in particular. Not much to say in general, I guess, except it handled the plot and conflicts well and no one was an utter buffoon. A few too-silly gags but not enough to ruin it. Why was Russi
Taylor not credited
posthumously, if Sherri and Terri had lines?


Previous episode stuff
YABF19: The angry sportscaster/web-show guy is back for the lumbersports AABF01: Maggie's "baby head fell out" remark slightly reminiscent of "baby legs" bit

Meta
Two broad categories. Lisa's play in the first act was full of catchphrases and
general Simpsons observations. The Portland intro sequence showed many street names that Simpsons characters and so on are named after, and later, a nod to Springfield's
namesake itself (and the what-state-is-Springfield-in debate) comes up.

Football.....
The 4:30 game ran late, again, to everyone's utter shock. Here in Cleveland, the episode started about 4 minutes late.


Z end is near!
This is the first episode of production season 31 to air, and with it comes the
new production code prefix: ZABF! But what happens next?? If not for the usual running news of multi-season renewals, I wouldn't have otherwise ruled out the idea of this
being the last season, under some sort of Mayan calendar premise. But... I think we can dismiss that idea.
I doubt anyone thought, in 1998 or so, that the new 20th Century Fox Television
production code system would fail to support all new episodes for generations to come. What show would have over 31 seasons?? (Or 30, if my hunch that Family
Guy skipped over
FACX to HACX because it was decided that G was too close to 6.) The Simpsons came this close to breaking the 90s system (after 5F would come 6F and then what, 7F again?), and this is the third system it's been on, too!
If we are to consider the first character as some sort of crazy single base system (base 32?), then perhaps season 32 would be 10ABF, but that would probably just be as confusing to the uninitiated as it would be cutely logical otherwise. Another
character? Greek letters like delta and lambda? Skip the encoding and just use 32ABF?
Or change the ABF? I mean, that means Simpsons in this scheme. 7ABI is used, I hear, for the 3Gs in retrofitting old episodes to the current scheme. But 1ABI would still essentially denote sesason 1 of some given show, and that would be the same issue
for any new code letters. (And I'm still confused why the first letter jumped to L instead of B when AZZ was passed.)
Well, I'm sure we'll find out soon enough, when new episodes are announced through official channels. I still can't help but wonder, especially since I wonder how well the scheme is understood overall!

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: www.darkrealms.ca (1:229/2)