Thirty-three episode long have I managed to avoid it, eight months have I put it off, but today I finally give in. Today I accept the inevitable. Today I talk about the Simpsons. This show has run for twenty-eight seasons by now and has, out of sheer necessity, dealt with almost everything. As a consequence, it works as a rather strange attractor for blogs dealing with popular culture. The episode we will talk about was first aired on February 19th 2017, making it the most recent subject of this blog. We see the Simpson family walk among a few chess board.
The two boards on the left are ignored by the protagonists, possibly because these games have only just started, but I have to point out that the board in the foreground has been set up wrong, with a1 being a white square. Even worse, black is playing the Russian defence, which explains White’s thoroughly bored look. And mine. A common opening on a rotated board, is that all you’ve got? Snore.
Fortunately, the board on the right in the picture above is a bit more interesting. The zombie-looking fellow on the left is playing some dude with a beard the likes of which haven’t been seen since Darwin succumbed to the curse we call death. The zombie seems quite confident and he’s not even looking at the board. This is understandable in view of the position, which is the following:1
Oy, that’s not going to end well for white. Indeed, he takes the bishop and there follows Reg2, prompting the following ejaculation:
Zombie: Checkmate! Hah! It’s the only mate I haven’t buried.
Sheesh, that took a dark turn.2 Then he leaves, Homer takes his place, trounces Darwin, and turns out to be a top player. Many more positions turn up in the course of the episode. Too many to discuss them all, in fact, so I will not try. Maybe at some point in the future I’ll revisit this episode, maybe I won’t.3 Who knows?
Realism: 2/5 There’s something off with this position, but it’s hard to put one’s finger on it. Part of it is that so many pieces are gone already, while white’s queenside is still undeveloped. A bigger problem is black’s last move. Either he missed a mate in one, or the bishop took a knight on e3, but then what did black play before that? It’s improbabilities all the way down.
Probable winner: The zombie has taken over.
1. [Made by the magic of this thing.]↩
2. [A golden turn, if you want.]↩
3. [Maybe at some point I’ll spout more tautologies, maybe I won’t.]↩