Notes for 35ABF16 (Shoddy Heat)

[Matt Garvey]

Middle of the road episode, slightly interesting mystery story but not
great addition to the corpus of "new" character history revelations of
recent years. A little annoying at times, yet some decent gags too. Not
sure why it got a full TV-14-DLSV. Also, only 21:20 (compared to typical
21:30 these days).

Goof
Lisa's detective kit spells it "l'il" (which doesn't make sense as an
abbreviation of little), though the pocketknife says the more typical
"li'l" (arguably it ought to be "li'l'" but at least the apostrophe that
does exist makes sense).

Meta
Another example of abridged production code as a number, now that the
letter+ABF codes are done: 3516 is the street address of Abe's old office.
Wiggum ponders whether Lou's Hamlet quote about the state of Denmark is
a reveal of the state Springfield is in.
Burns makes a reference to 742 times Homer's screwed up at work, which
is maddeningly close to the episode number (772) as if to suggest it
happens roughly once per episode (obviously not) but not actually just
being the episode number; this same thing happened in 35ABF03 (#761 to
air), when Smithers says Homer's left SNPP 691 times, so is this just
trolling?

Non-descript previous episode stuff
Interesting return, after maybe decades, of the VHS Village (formerly
Beta Barn) in a flashback, and the "Li'l Bastard" product line.
Many old (and cropped) episode clips as Homer ponders his many troubles
at work.

[Ant]

I enjoyed it. FOX should had shown its annual Halloween episode instead!

Post by Matt Garvey
Middle of the road episode, slightly interesting mystery story but not
great addition to the corpus of "new" character history revelations of
recent years. A little annoying at times, yet some decent gags too. Not
sure why it got a full TV-14-DLSV. Also, only 21:20 (compared to typical
21:30 these days).
Goof
Lisa's detective kit spells it "l'il" (which doesn't make sense as an
abbreviation of little), though the pocketknife says the more typical
"li'l" (arguably it ought to be "li'l'" but at least the apostrophe that
does exist makes sense).
Meta
Another example of abridged production code as a number, now that the
letter+ABF codes are done: 3516 is the street address of Abe's old office.
Wiggum ponders whether Lou's Hamlet quote about the state of Denmark is
a reveal of the state Springfield is in.
Burns makes a reference to 742 times Homer's screwed up at work, which
is maddeningly close to the episode number (772) as if to suggest it
happens roughly once per episode (obviously not) but not actually just
being the episode number; this same thing happened in 35ABF03 (#761 to
air), when Smithers says Homer's left SNPP 691 times, so is this just
trolling?
Non-descript previous episode stuff
Interesting return, after maybe decades, of the VHS Village (formerly
Beta Barn) in a flashback, and the "Li'l Bastard" product line.
Many old (and cropped) episode clips as Homer ponders his many troubles
at work.