Did I hear Abe correctly as he ditched his plane?
“I wish I tried reefer!”
That can’t be right, can it?
That’s what I heard, too.
It’s Fox! The same network where the kids smoke the reefer almost every week on That '70s Show.
This just irritated me, because the Hellfish ep is one of the best and this contradicted every single thing about it. Until I decided to rank this as the same sort of non-continuity as the ToH episodes.
Which doesn’t mean I like the ep any better. We’ve seen Biblical Simpsons before. We’ve seen Abe in WW2 before. We’ve seen bad musical segments before. What a waste of a half-hour of my life that I’ll never get back again.
The Bible part was pretty good(particulary the stooge thing). The WW2 part was merely okay, though the nutcracker thing was great.
Homer: “I need to find a store I can break into or run by a hindu!”
Like when Sideshow Bob was on a few years ago, and they gave him the death penalty, and had the guillotine right there next to the table where he was having his last meal and then he turns up in last week’s ep as mayor of a town in Italy.
Huh. Wouldn’t know about that. I haven’t been able to hold my gaze on that show for more than a few seconds at a time. It burns.
Anyone else wonder if Burns going all-over John Locke after the plane crashed onto a tropical island was just a straight gag or a meta-gag referring to a popular show on another network? I mean, John Locke uses two men stranded on an island as a specific example when talking about the impulses that lead to political societies, so it stands on its own well enough, but at the same time, I can’t think of another reference to Lockean philosophy involving a desert island in a popular TV show before last year. Coincidence? Probably.
In the first segment, I really liked the strangling of the baby Jesus.
“No! He has to survive until he’s thirty-three, to be betrayed by his friends and crucified!”
“Wuh?”
“Sorry, kid.”
Great gag.
I think this was just a completely mad senile delusion of Grandpa Simpson.
I don’t think we need to consider it factual. We can just keep Sgt Simpson of the fighting Hellfish as true.
Otherwise Santa would now be a living Canon member of the Simpson world.
Jim
Most of the good jokes were at the beginning - except for “I wish I tried reefer!” - but I thought this was pretty solid and beats some of their other Christmas stuff. The bit with Marge and Homer at the end actually managed to be sweet.
This was a decent episode, but probably the weakest of all the “three short story” episodes.
One funny part that got me was the sign on Moe’s neck (“No one gets my organs.”)
He tried the gas oven suicide before, in another Christmas show, and then the sign said “No funeral”.
Pretty good, although not the greatest. I think the Fighting Hellfish episode was “real”, since Burns, the other guys in the Tontine, the paintings, and the obnoxious Eurotrash heir were real.
Really really liked the Nutcracker thing, esp. Apu jacking up the prices.
I enjoyed it. I actually laughed harder at The Simpsons than at Family Guy for the first time in quite a while.
The middle (Grandpa) part was the weakest, but it was still fun in a surreal sort of way. I never for a moment thought of it as anything but the wild, unreliable ravings of a befoozled old man; the only question is whether Abe himself believed any of it as he was telling it.
Three good segments.
“Shalom Everybody”
[subtitles]Shalom, Dr. Nick![/subtitles]
Who knew the young Abe Simpson was so buff? Abe beating Monty with the tricycle was a sublime moment of comedy.
“Someone should’ve beat you with a tricycle a long time ago!”
What was on the sign before the nutcracker segment?“Most overperformed ballet” or something like that.
Brian
“Worst. Version. Ever.” 
“Possibly the worst version ever.” - Superintendent Chalmers
You know someone in another thread mentioned that Grandpa’s service record is one of the most inconsistant things about the show. Only his stories about the Flying Helfish seem to have any corroboration.
Excerpts from Wikipedia entry on Abe Simpson:
Abraham J. Simpson was born in Scotland…As a young boy, Abe enlisted in World War I by lying about his age.
…He admits to having “taken a shot at Teddy Roosevelt,” (October 27, 1858 - January 6, 1919). He is also known to be a decorated war hero, having paradoxically earned the German Iron Cross during his service in the United States Army – clearing mine-fields.
During the Second World War Sgt. Simpson was the leader of the Flying Hellfish squad. Among those in his command was Burns. After “liberating” a stash of priceless art from the Nazis, they formed a tontine, and buried the art in a trunk at sea. …Grampa Simpson has also been noted as saying “I haven’t felt this relaxed since I was watchman at Pearl Harbor”, implying that he had been stationed there.
He also claimed to have served on PT-109, where he and two other crewmen beat up John F. Kennedy, thinking he was a Nazi. It should be noted that the vast majority of his memories of the past are known to be wildly inaccurate and often physically or historically impossible and thus most likely to be symptoms of his senility. …Although his service in the Flying Hellfish squad has been confirmed as fact, most of the stories he tells about his early life appear to be the result of senility, outright lies to get attention, or both.