Welcome to your bonus entry. There are a few of these on the list for various reasons. This one is on here just because I originally picked this episode for number 93, but then decided to replace it with “Homer’s Enemy.” Since I wrote it already, it seems a waste not to post it, so here you go:
The main characters of the Simpsons are the fat, lazy, idiot father Homer (Dan Castellaneta); his wife who definitely could have done better Marge (Julie Kavner); his prankster (and later sociopath) son Bart (Nancy Cartwright); brainy daughter Lisa (Yeardley Smith); baby Maggie; and the city of Springfield (hundreds of characters at this point). It would take me days to explain all of the characters, but, this episode focuses mostly on beloved kids’ show host, Krusty the Klown.
Television is a fickle mistress. Some TV shows fail because they just don’t have the quality, but, occasionally, a hit TV show can fall off the radar just because something more popular comes on in the same time slot. This episode features the latter.
When Krusty the Clown is run off the air by the creepy puppet show Gabbo, Krusty falls into depression. He is taken in by the Simpsons, who convince him to fight to get his show back. He calls in every connection he can in order to create a star-studded comeback special. Bette Midler, Johnny Carson, The Red Hot Chili Peppers, and Hugh Hefner all guest star, along with Sideshow Luke Perry, Krusty’s “Worthless Half-brother.” This episode was only possible because the Simpsons were red hot at the time, and the reason why they’d become so popular is that they had some of the best writers available. Every line of this episode is funny, and it’s not just one style of humor. It comes at you from every direction, from “Worker and Parasite,” Eastern Europe’s favorite cat and mouse team, to the Red Hot Chili Peppers changing their indecent lyrics to “what I’d like is, I’d like to hug and kiss you.”
Krusty Gets Kancelled showed that an episode full of cameos could use their presence to focus on more than just the fact that they had a guest star. It simultaneously embraced and satirized the exact thing depicted in the show: Relying on celebrities to draw in a crowd to get the audience to remember a show that was losing out to the flavor of the month. Since then, we’ve seen many more celeb-mob TV episodes, but I can’t think of any that were better.
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For your clip, here’s the Red Hot Chili Peppers, and then Johnny Carson lifting a Buick Skylark over his head while singing opera.
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