From:
mxg77@po.cwru.edu
It's Christmastime in May! Interesting and somewhat sad general plot, especially as I've become a dog parent in the last few years, but execution really not that great. Among other things, the amazing dog psychologist lady didn't ever once ask the family
if they knew any of SLH's history? I admit I didn't think of the Santa-hat connection at all myself, and I know the history, but even so, I'm not trained in diagnosing dog trauma. Also, it's funny that Dr. Wolff made such a point of the importance of
smell over sight, when one of his triggers was visual anyway! But it's mostly the awkward moment-to-moment writing that just didn't do it for me, really, combined with the rushed and convenient resolution. (And does his mom come to live with the Simpsons
now, or is she visiting from the dog breeder somehow?)
DYN:
...the opening cloud gag was actually appropriate for the episode, being a procession of dead pets?
...whatever Marge says after the eat-my-shorts bit definitely used to be something else?
...it's claimed the family doesn't have an HDTV? Is that not one?
Previous episode stuff
5F06: Mention of doing the right thing eventually
7G08: Long excerpt from the first-aired episode showing how the family got SLH
Meta
The vacuum eats Bart's shorts, etc.
Dedication
To Little Richard, who died last week, with a still from EABF02. Only tonight, I guess.
Another note
The scheduled 7:00 airing of YABF13 did not run here in the east, as the return
of NASCAR coverage ran till almost 7:40. Don't know if that means the rerun is skipped out west too.
And finally, more production code musings
Here on season finale night, I was going to reiterate some of my thoughts and predictions on what production code prefix will follow ZABF next year. And then
I reloaded Don Del Grande's episode list and found what might be the answer! (Is this official/
for certain? It's so weird it probably has to be!) As it happens, it's not even
one of the many things I guessed.
After ZABF... apparently comes QABF! I, O, Q, and U are the four letters that were skipped in this versatile sequence, presumably because of their error-prone similarity to other digits and letters (1, 0, 0/O, and V, I suppose) - in fact, Family Guy, the
only other show that seems to have gotten to a 16th production season in this scheme, didn't even use G, and I can only guess that between 2005 and 2018ish, G was deemed too close to 6.
But anyway, QABF, huh? This seems to imply either that I and O are definitely off the table, or that they're being held until they're really, REALLY needed. So the production season 32 = QABF and 33 = UABF, I suppose, and maybe the show
is over by then...
or if not, 34 and 35 are IABF and OABF or something new, and either way, then it's still something new soon if the show gets that far. Is it reading too much
into it to think someone expects the show to end by 33 by skipping I/O? Is it still a little
annoying that Q still breaks the genius late-90s system by not actually being in order?
--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: www.darkrealms.ca (1:229/2)