Difference between revisions of "Krusty Gets Cancelled"

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"Krusty Gets Cancelled" is the final episode of the fourth season. It originally aired on May 13, 1993. The episode involves the Krusty the Clown show being cancelled but Bart and Lisa try to help Krusty to win it back. It was written by John Swartzwelder and directed by David Silverman.

Plot

One afternoon while Homer and Bart are watching The Springfield Squares, a highly distracting commercial is aired for something named "Gabbo". The advertisement is the start of a viral marketing campaign around Springfield to build interest in whatever "Gabbo" is. At one point, a distressed Rev. Lovejoy expresses his concern that the term "Gabbo" has fallen into common usage, in lieu of religious terms such as "worship" and "Jericho".

Finally, "Gabbo" is unveiled with great fanfare — he is a Howdy Doody-type ventriloquist's dummy with a voice that sounds like Jerry Lewis. Ventriloquist Arthur Crandall announces that Gabbo's new program will air in direct competition with the established Krusty the Klown Show on each afternoon at 4 PM. Gabbo's catchphrase — "I'm a bad wittle boy" — instantly charms his intended audience, and this has a negative impact on Krusty and his show.

The clown vows to withstand the competition from the new program, but Gabbo's cutthroat tactics and fantastic reviews quickly attract Krusty's audience. Gabbo even steals away Krusty's signature cartoon, The Itchy & Scratchy Show, since it would be exposed to far-higher ratings than the fast-fading Krusty. Krusty tries to fight back with a dummy of his own, but due, to its gruesome appearance and poor condition, it falls apart on Krusty's lap, and scares off many of the child audience. Eventually, Krusty's ratings hit rock bottom, and after being left to air a poorly produced "Worker and Parasite" cartoon ("Eastern Europe's favorite cat and mouse team"), his show is cancelled.

Left without work, Krusty falls on hard times and begins suffering from depression. Meanwhile, Bart and Lisa — all along unimpressed with Gabbo — reveal to him a plan to get him back into the public eye: expose Gabbo as a profane flash-in-the-pan, and plan a huge prime-time special starring Krusty. Believing there still may be hope for himself yet, Krusty agrees.

After Bart begins derailing Gabbo's success, by secretly turning on a studio camera, which catches Gabbo bad-mouthing his audience on-air, he and Lisa begin recruiting major celebrities to appear on Krusty's special: Bette Midler, Johnny Carson, the Red Hot Chili Peppers, "Sideshow" Luke Perry (Krusty's "worthless half-brother") and Elizabeth Taylor. Taylor declines Bart and Lisa's invitation, much to her later regret.

Bart and Lisa return to Krusty to declare their success, only to find him morbidly obese from drinking several fatty milkshakes after believing them to be weight-losing shakes. Fortunately, the entire Simpson family helps get him back into shape before the special airs.

The show is a success, and later at Moe's tavern, Bart makes a toast; "To Krusty...the greatest entertainer in the world. (Except maybe that guy (Johnny Carson))"

Trivia

• Marge does not speak a word in this episode, but her voice actress (Julie Kavner) is still credited. This is the only time in the history of the series that one of the family members (excluding Maggie) does not have a single line. However, Lisa speaks only once in Two Bad Neighbors.^[1]
• According to DVD commentary for the episode, getting guest stars was extremely hard because many kept cancelling out. They also wrote parts for 4 different musical groups (including The Rolling Stones) before finally getting the Red Hot Chili Peppers. This is parodied in Elizabeth Taylor opting out of appearing on the reunion show.
• Barry White previously appeared in Whacking Day; Elizabeth Taylor was a guest star in Lisa's First Word voicing Maggie.
• In the Latin American dub of this episode, Luke Perry was renamed as fellow actor Robert Redford as producers in Latin America did not think the public would know who Luke Perry was, which added to the confusion when the Peephole magazine is shown, displaying Perry's name.^{[citation needed]}
• In the scene in which Bart makes a toast to Krusty, you can see Elizabeth Taylor looking through the window of Moe's Tavern.

Cultural references

• Rocky Balboa - The scene where Krusty punches the pork is a reference to the training style of Rocky Balboa portrayed by Sylvester Stallone in the Rocky films.
• Ed Sullivan and The Doors — The scene in which Krusty instructs the Red Hot Chili Peppers to change the lyrics to the song "Give It Away" is a reference to Sullivan instructing The Doors to change the lyrics to the song "Light My Fire". Unlike the Doors, the Chili Peppers happily accept the new lyric. The dressing room scenery is also very similar to the mise-en-scene in The Doors movie.
• Elvis Presley's '68 Comeback Special — The Krusty Komeback Special is styled exactly like The King's prime-time special, aimed at getting him back into the spotlight after a sabbatical.
• Gabbo's theme song

— Pinocchio — The lyric "You're gonna like me" — as well as the newspaper headline "Gabbo to have real boy operation" — are references to the 1940 Disney film.

— Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus — The final line in the song ("It's the greatest show in town") is a reference to the circus' tagline.

• Greta Garbo — Mr. Burns misreads a billboard, causing him to tell Smithers that "Garbo is coming" and lightly groom himself.
• The Great Gabbo — Gabbo gets his name from the title character (a ventriloquist who operates a dummy named Otto) of the 1929 film.
• The Hollywood Squares — The Springfield Squares is an obvious parody. The final moments of the segment, where a tidal wave knocks a stubborn Charley Weaver from his lower-left square (he had refused to leave, while the others fled), is a reference to an earthquake that shook up a 1971 taping of Squares and center square Paul Lynde remaining in his spot while everyone else ran off the stage. The Springfield Squares taping "on location" is much akin to the 1986 version frequently taping at outdoor locations in Florida.
• Howdy Doody — Gabbo's face looks just like the famous dummy (red hair, freckles), who hosted an afternoon children's program from 1947-1960.
• Jerry Lewis MDA Telethon — The reunion of Krusty and Sideshow Mel (during the clown's singing of "Send in the Clowns") is a reference to the 1976 on-air reunion between Jerry Lewis and Dean Martin on the former's annual telethon.
• Carmen - Johnny Carson balances a Buick Skylark car over his head while singing the famous aria Habanera
• "Peter and the Wolf" — The musical piece that Hugh Hefner plays on the wine glasses is from the children's story composed by Sergei Prokofiev.
• People magazine - imagined by Krusty as Peephole Magazine when trying to visualize Luke Perry's new look after he is shot out of a cannon.
• "That ought to hold the little bastards" urban legend – Gabbo's statement referring to his audience as "little SOBs" (which is caught on live air, thanks to Bart) — and later, Kent Brockman's comment when he thought the station had cut to a commercial break — is a reference to this broadcasting urban legend.^[2] The incident said to have inspired the urban legend had a children's radio (or television, depending on the source) host ending a program, then unaware the microphone was still live, uttered the infamous line, resulting in his near-immediate dismissal. It may also be a reference to a scene in the 1957 film A Face in the Crowd.
• The Tonight Show — Bette Midler's serenading Krusty is the way Bette sang to Johnny Carson on Carson's next-to-last show. Their duet, however, is likely a reference to Midler's 1977 duet with Tom Waits on "I Never Talk To Strangers," which appeared on Waits' album Foreign Affairs.

Reception

In 2007, Vanity Fair named "Krusty Gets Kancelled" as the ninth best episode of The Simpsons. John Orvet felt, "This is Krusty's best episode—better than the reunion with his father, or the Bar Mitzvah episode, which won an Emmy much later on. The incorporation of guest stars as themselves is top-notch, and we get to see the really dark side of Krusty's flailing showbiz career. Hollywood, television, celebrities, and fans are all beautifully skewered here."^[3]

Worker and Parasite (written "Сфир Ет. Ѕеqонж" on screen, but in Russian literally "Рабочий И Паразит") was a fictional cartoon in The Simpsons episode "Krusty Gets Kancelled." When the popular cartoon Itchy and Scratchy, featuring a very violent cat and mouse, leaves the Krusty the Clown Show for Krusty's new competitor, Gabbo, "Eastern Europe's favorite cat and mouse team, Worker and Parasite," was a cheap replacement. According to the title screen, it was made in 1959, while the Khrushchev regime was in power in the USSR. Simpsons creator Matt Groening maintains that their appearance on the show is one of the best parts of the series.

In reality, the short bears very little resemblance to the socialist realism style which History of Russian animation#Socialist Realism|was prevalent]] in Russian animation at the time. The idea bears more similarity to the rather unusual set of Tom and Jerry cartoons (on which Itchy and Scratchy is based) produced in Prague by animator Gene Deitch in the early 1960s. An even more likely possibility is the work of Estonian animation director Priit Pärn and his followers, which has been an important influence in Estonian animation since the 1980s.

The cartoon opened with some faux-Cyrillic credits, which are non-sensical in real Cyrillic. The cartoon itself was quite unintelligible, featuring a crudely drawn cat and mouse chattering incoherently and bouncing around to the tune of dissonant background music. Worker and Parasite are first seen in a factory (where a wrench and sickle are visible as well); they then move in front of a line of identical, miserable-looking peasants who are lining up for supplies of some sort, and then within a nest of squiggly lines, possibly meant to represent conflict between the two characters. The cartoon concludes with the screen reading "ENDUT! HOCH HECH!" Afterwards, Krusty's on-air response (before a vacant studio) was shocked silence, a limp cigarette hanging from his mouth, then promptly, "What the hell was that?!", just before the last member of the audience leaves.

Worker and Parasite has not appeared on the show since, but they have made a few appearances in Simpsons comic books, this time speaking somewhat intelligible English.