Subject: Notes for 36ABF20/36ABF21 (Extreme Makeover: Homer Edition) and longer/uncensored 37ABF08

Well it's finally here, the tail end of production season 36, to make up
the tail end of a very short air season 37, 4 to 6 months after the
"real" air season ended, still adding up to only 19 episodes if you
count today's drop as 2 (which I do, because it is). Remember, over half
of production 37 is waiting for air season 38 (assuming it's not
shortened significantly from the usual 22-episode order). This pair also includes what would have been the 800th episode (part II) if it had
aired in sequence.

Anyway, how was it? Fine as an anthology fantasy episode (the streaming exclusives certainly seem to be leaning toward nonstandard episodes),
although I don't like Top Gun and never did see Joker. Curious that it
still has only three segments, so as a first they have much more time to
be explored. How the nominal halves are split (about 4/9 and 5/9 by
runtime, 1/3 + lots of framing and 2/3 + less framing by story segment?)
is a little unclear, but it's also a few minutes longer than it could
get away with on TV. Special animated sequence was nice. The moral, that
Homer is awful but still better than the best toxic/terrible fantasies
Marge can conjure up (or is it men she can fix?), may not hold up to a
lot of scrutiny, but the end was kind of sweet.

Oh and of course I don't "skip intro", Bart, but I think this is the
first one of these exclusives to have a substantial intro to skip (and I finally figured out how to watch it "clean")!

And guess what: with a mighty big asterisk even in today's TV landscape,
this means a Simpsons episode has now debuted in every month of the year (though June still has not seen a premiere *on air*).

Other thoughts:
-Who had to resurrect the LABF-era broken TV with spitzensparken in the
intro, after a decade and a half without?
-Is it that hard to put Helvetica (which was just starting to flourish)
in the 50s segment, instead of its cheap knockoff Arial that comes from
the 90s?
-If you're going to capitalize most of the words on something, like the calling card in the Joker parody, "My" is not one of the exceptions.
Word length is not a criterion.



In case you didn't hear
Shortly after the airing of the "800th" episode (it was the 800th on Fox
at any rate), Irrational Treasure (37ABF08), the version available on
Hulu and cable on-demand (once it fell back from whatever-was-on-TV, presumably, as mine does after a week) was new and different. The
originally broadcast version had only a cloud opening (with Boyz II
Men), but this has almost a full opening, with new blackboard and
extended couch gag. Note that the broadcast version was NOT particularly
short (the way some premieres are cut and then later reinstated). It
also actually showed SLH's pee stream on the old-town fire hydrant,
while the broadcast had a "dry" version of the same animation,
presumably under pressure from S&P. (Hey, I guess that's also a
"streaming exclusive"!) If the episode ever reairs on network, I
wouldn't expect to see either. And if anyone notices similar things on
other episodes, please let me know!


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