Notes for 37ABF04 (Guess Who's Coming to Dinner) - 800th episode!
From
Matt Garvey@3:633/10 to
All on Sun Dec 7 21:40:00 2025
Not too bad secondary-character episode and one that felt a little
grounded and classic. (The only thing that really seemed ridiculous to
me was the ball pit "drowning" but I guess there was worse even in the
golden years.) Amusing, at least if you accept my claim since it
certainly wasn't hyped as this, that a milestone episode like this also focuses on Skinner, when the 100th episode did too.
Previous episode stuff
1F18: See above
CABF04 (or was there an earlier ep?): Lenny has an eye trauma wing
35ABF02: Willie is still married
A real tangent
That music at the halfway point while Skinner and Hub are bonding
sounded very familiar (although I did have to cheat by looking it up in
the closed captions). It's the theme from Room 222, which is pertinent
because of the school and teacher-student connection. But I know it from
last year's research into updating my production code history document,
and I have some trivia worth sharing. First, it was a James L. Brooks
show. But also, back on the subject of production codes, its second
season was part of the original wave of alphanumeric production codes
when, in 1970, 20th Century Fox Television changed from using cryptic all-numeric codes to using cryptic numbers AND letters, which it's still
using 55 years later after several iterations. (In fact, season 1
Simpsons codes starting in 7G come from the tail end of only the second
such pattern.)
Speaking of JLB...
I guess I spoke too soon about the last 2 episodes' new Co-EP credit.
This episode has a Co-EP of Michael Price, between Selman and the big
three. Perhaps this means that particular showrunner job is not meant to
be "co" to Selman, but a single job split between two (or more) people
from episode to episode. TBD.
And now for my hot take
Tonight is the 800th episode of The Simpsons screened to the viewing
public. Fight me. There was no publicity for it, and Fox seems to be
saving that designation for (half of) a double episode in February that
is also, inexplicably, suggested as the end of the season... but I say
that's Hollywood hogwash, a fudge for sweeps justified by a handful of factors.
First, I count double episodes as two. The Great Phatsby, O C'mon...,
and the upcoming Extreme Makeover. They all have two production codes,
they all run for an hour with commercials...
I'm also counting the 4 (or some would say 3) streaming exclusive
episodes, which I have a feeling Fox may be ignoring to get to their
count in February, and why shouldn't I? They have normal production
codes, they're of normal length, and even though they've never aired on network TV (etc.)... if streaming shows can win Emmys, these can count
as episodes of the show.
And I'm going in air order. Tonight's episode is actually the 805th in production order (801st if you leave out the streaming episodes; if you
really want, consider next week's the 800th in production order minus
them or 800th in air order if you won't count C'mon as two, but I don't
see the fanfares starting up for that one either!), but the 800th in production order is 36ABF21, which is to be the 2nd half of the Extreme Makeover episode that is being treated as the milestone. And I have a
feeling it was planned that way (with a normal air schedule and not
holding the last 4 36ABFs way back), based on earlier reports of how it
was labeled. But guess what... if you count C'mon as one episode, you
don't get to 800 until 36ABF22, and if you count even more as one single episode you get even farther off. So it seems even the producers did the
math with hourlong two-parters counting as two each! But there's
basically no good reason to go in production order apart from a little
bit of wiggle room, and five episodes is not a little bit.
The fact is that this is the 800th half-hour chunk of The Simpsons as a
TV series (not shorts, not films) that a viewer has seen, and that's
good enough for me. I'm... kind of hoping 900 is not in the cards. But
happy 800 to all, and the rest of you chumps celebrating in February are
too late!
--- PyGate Linux v1.5.1
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)
From
Bice@3:633/10 to
All on Thu Dec 11 11:55:20 2025
On Sun, 07 Dec 2025 21:40:00 -0500, Matt Garvey <
mxg77@po.cwru.edu>
wrote:
Not too bad secondary-character episode and one that felt a little
grounded and classic. (The only thing that really seemed ridiculous to
me was the ball pit "drowning" but I guess there was worse even in the >golden years.)
This show had one of the most obscure references I ever remember
seeing on a Simpsons episode. Just after Skinner pulled Hub out of
the ball pit, there was a really brief shot of the arcade games behind
them, and one of them was Polybius.
It's claimed by some people that Polybius was an early 80s arcade game
that caused hallucinations and even insanity in people who played it,
and all Polybius machines mysteriously vanished from arcades overnight
and were never seen again.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polybius_(urban_legend)
-- Bob
--- PyGate Linux v1.5.2
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)