This episode is actually funny. I mean season 6 funny.
Many good quotes already.
Jim
Did Bart’s horror story animation make anyone else think of France for some reason?
Surreal, but I liked it.
The therapist was Meg Ryan’s voice, right??
No, why did it?
A few weeks back there was a Jack Benny joke and tonight finishes on a Honeymooners note.
Meg Ryan … Dr. Swanson (voice)
Peter Bogdanovich … Psychologist (voice)
Jim
I thought the ending was a Sopranos joke.
Also starring Andy Dick, James Patterson, and Stephen Sondheim as themselves.
Was the Dark Stanley scene inspired by Edward Gorey’s art? I felt a little opening-credits-of-Mystery! vibe.
I was expecting them to go all-out Sound of Music parody, but I’m glad they didn’t.
Two character revelations:
Superintendent Chalmers’s name is Gary (is this the first time we discovered this?)
Cletus’s full name is Cletus Delroy Spuckler- a bit of retconning to explain why his last name was given as “Delroy” in one episode and “Spuckler” in another.
Cletus’s new kids, the Spuckler family singers:
Whitney
Jitney
Dubya
Incest
Crystal Meth
International Harvester
Birthday
Members of Krusty’s No-Collar Comedy Tour:
Buttcrack Barry
Merle Values
Reverend Racist
Andy Dick
And remember…“President or ayatollah, everyone loves new Buzz Cola…with lemon!”
(written by Stephen Sondheim and Michael Price)
I liked it. I loved the animation during Bart’s story, although if it was a reference to something I didn’t get it. (When it ended, I said to my brother “somebody on the Straight Dope probably got it three minutes ago,” so imagine my surprise.) I also loved Bart’s line “Maybe I tell people ‘don’t have a cow,’ because I really want them to have a cow.”
This was kind of a rare episode: both plots were reasonably believable, and didn’t get started with 10 minutes left in the episode. So that’s another plus.
Also - Chalmers finally has a first name! I was wondering what his first name was a couple of weeks ago. I had myself almost convinced it was Arnold, and then I realized I was thinking of Arnold Palmer. 
The thing with the psychiatrist and her psychiatrist may have been inspired by the Sopranos, but Cletus kissing his wife and saying “Baby, you’re the greatest!” comes from The Honeymooners, as does “How sweet it is!” and Cletus’s caricature on the moon.
“You’re one of those funny fellers with the big nose!”
“A clown?”
“No, a J-”
“Joker! That’s right! Luckily, I’m not a practicing joker, so I’m not offended.”
“Sometimes I have a dream that I’m just a cartoon character and my popularity led to a propaganda network called Fox News.”
“You have destroyed all human life. Level one complete!”
It was Gorey-esque and it was good. The music (for Dark Stanley) sounds familiar, but I can’t place it. It must have been in a movie.
It reminded me of Edward Gorey, especially when the killer was stalking the kids. Same black and white line drawings. Think of the opening to PBS’s Mystery.
Not a bad episode; Bart and the psychologist was a real highlight, as were the Sound of Music parodies.
I loved the Sondheim cameo & the Gorey-esque animation.
It was definitely a Gorey reference.
My favorite bit was when the school psychologist came running out of the school a little after the kids.
I didn’t think this episode was all that, but it had its moments.
Maybe my Offend-ometer was set too sensitive last night (Family Guy shocked me too), but I was rather :dubious: when the show’s upshot seemed to be how horrible it was to stereotype the hillbilly kids and trade on the offensive prejudices against them, when the show had named them Incest, Crystal Meth, etc.
But I did love Bart’s horror story. When we saw the animation, I said, “Someone’s been reading the Gashlycrumb Tinies.”
I didn’t write CATS.
A good reference because Sondheim & Lloyd Webber were born on the 22nd of this month.
Yep. For some reason I associate that style of animation with France. I also associate accordion music with France.
I was really hoping that someone here would know where the music came from. If Alf Clausen wrote it, then my hat is off to him. It was brilliant. I think I watched the Dark Stanley bit about 6 times.
The music reminded me of the main title music in Twelve Monkeys. A lot.
According to the captioning, the music was, indeed, the theme from 12 monkeys.
Really? Wow. I remember thinking that it sounded very much like 12 Monkeys, but was far from identical. If it was from that movie, it was not from the main title. Maybe it was from some variation later on in the movie.
It might have said something like “Music from 12 Monkeys” but it definitley identified it with the movie. Good call, btw.
My wife who was in the other room said “why is there French music playing?”
The “french music”/12 Monkeys theme is by the tango legend Astor Piazzolla.
Also, the western music was Elmer Bernstein’s theme to **The Hallelujah Trail**.
I think they need to stop with the musical parodies. The Mary Poppins one years ago was brilliant, but since then, we’ve had sub-par efforts at Evita & My Fair Lady, and last night’s Rodgers & Hammerstein was simply half-assed (sadly, all 3 are Lisa-centric, so there may be a connection).
I think it’s in Yeardley Smith’s contract that she gets to do one musical episode a year, or something like that. This episode was better than the other two recent ones you mentioned, I think, because they didn’t rely completely on the SoM story - but you can tell sometimes that they substitute parody for a plot, and with musicals especially, that’s never funny enough.
Incidentally, if you ever watch Supercalifragilisticexpiali(annoyed grunt)scious on DVD, with commentary, you hear the writers go on and on about how they finished the plot in the second act and had to put a ton of filler into the show. So it’s very funny, but maybe not that successful either.