Pardon My Zinger
| Pardon My Zinger | ||
TV Show Information
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Pardon My Zinger is a British sitcom airing on weekdays at 3:00 p.m. on Comedy Central in Springfield.
At the town meeting, Smithers says that after being fired, he spends his days drinking cheap Scotch and watching Comedy Central. He adds that he never misses Pardon My Zinger. This detail ultimately clears Smithers as a suspect in the attempted murder of Mr. Burns.
After learning that Burns had been shot, Smithers had a drunken memory of shooting someone, figured that it must have been Burns, and went to the downtown cathedral to confess and get it off his chest. However, instead of a priest, Chief Wiggum was sitting on the other side of the confessional's screen, apparently waiting for someone to come in and admit to the shooting: "Boy, this thing works great."
When Smithers is taken to jail, Kent Brockman asks him how he feels, to which he replies "About as low as Madonna when she realized she missed Tailhook." Sideshow Mel sees Smithers on TV, hears him quoting the Madonna line, and realizes that the line was from the Pardon My Zinger episode that was on TV at the exact time that Mr. Burns was shot. This means that Smithers must have seen that episode and therefore couldn't have shot Burns.
Mel goes to the police with this information, and they talk to Smithers again. He memory now clearer, Smithers remembers he saw the entire show -- in fact, he left the town meeting early to hurry home and watch it, when an old man (not Burns) got in his way and Smithers shot him. The man Smithers shot turned out to be Jasper Beardley. Because Smithers hit him in his wooden left leg, he was unharmed -- much to Smithers' relief.
Because Mr. Burns was shot at 3 p.m., and it was solidly established that Smithers was at home watching Pardon My Zinger at the time, he was cleared as a suspect and was free to go. The police, however, remained baffled as to the identity of the shooter.
