The Simpsons (TV Series) Krusty Gets Kancelled (1993) User Reviews

A Star-Laden Finale!

[g-bodyl · 9/10 · 11 January 2015]

This is the final episode of the fourth season of the Simpsons and it's a very good episode, despite being an episode based off Krusty the Klown, a character who is only good when done in small bits. But what helps is not only the comedy, but the stars present in the episode. We have cameos by the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Bette Midler, Johnny Carson, Hugh Hefner, Barry White, Luke Perry, and Elizabeth Taylor. So there are quite a few stars here to enjoy.

In this episode, "Krusty Gets Kancelled," after a week of mass advertising, a ventriloquist named Gabbo becomes a direct competitor of Krusty the Klown, forcing the producers to cancel Krusty's show. With the help of Bart and Lisa, they organize a comeback show for Krusty with a lot of talent involved.

Overall, this is a very good final episode and I must say I was happy with the fourth season as there was hardly a disappointing episode. I am excited for the adventures of the Simpsons to continue for a fifth season. I rate this episode 9/10.

Predictable

[Hitchcoc · 8/10 · 6 May 2022]

Krusty has been displaced by a stupid ventriloquist's dummy who uses the Clown's material. He is miserable and Bart and Lisa take pity on him. They round up some celebrities to do his show. Of course, it's going to work. For me this was rather anticlimactic. It's fun to see some of the stars but they really have no skin in the game.

Marge is MIA

[safenoe · 8/10 · 16 January 2024]

I saw Krusty Get Kancelled when it debuted over three decades ago, yes that long ago, and I only learned today that Julie Kavner boycotted Krusty Gets Kancelled because she was appalled by the largesse of cameo voices for this episode. There were many, yes, and I guess it's a testament to the enormous success of The Simpsons, but still, one must be respectful of the main talent like Kavner.

Anyway, here we get Johnny Carson and Bette Midler being guest voices (coincidentally Midler appeared on Carson's farewell talk show episode). For me, it's the first 10 seasons that represent the golden years, with some episodes after that worth watching.

Season 4: Classic episode after classic episode

[bob the moo · 15 June 2013]

The third season took a few episodes to get me going when I watched it, like it was taking a few steps before it got into its stride but once it did it was away. It was great to see that this stride continued right into the fourth season and out the other side since this season seemed to be nothing but classic episode after classic episode. Just a glance back over the episode listing is enough to show you the quality here and as I watched through it I really enjoyed every single episode – I cannot think of a weak one in the pack.

The thing that struck me the most though was just how consistently daring and brazen the show was. In the previous season they had added some more adult material but here it seemed to really be a concerted and consistent effort to bring it in. The line from Smithers in the Halloween special is the one that really sticks in my mind "sea men and women don't mix" but there are lots of example, with Bart taunting Homer by suggesting their father/son moments on the swings was all faked being probably my favorite. This added layer to the show really added to it in the past and in this season it was as much a part of the show as anything else. The cultural references came thick and fast too but, importantly, they are smart and most very well done producing regular chuckles of appreciation.

The cast are excellent across the board. Supporting characters are given key roles and used very well to help strengthen the show. The guest voices are a little intrusive but mostly they are used like minor characters and they work well; the final episode could have been a little full of itself with star names, but again they are used with good humor and it feels like the stars were queueing up to get on the show rather than the show needing them in any shape or form. Overall then this is a classic season, just great episode after great episode and hardly putting a step wrong. I hope it can continue this into the fifth season because I really was pleasantly surprised by how strong this whole season was.

And now back to the wall

[snoozejonc · 8/10 · 26 August 2022]

Krusty loses his audience to a new show and ends up cancelled.

This is a strong episode with some memorable Krusty moments.

The celebrity guests dominate this episode and the novelty value of their appearances drive most of the entertainment.

I like the humour, especially how the guests stars play OTT caricatures of themselves in a similar way to 'Homer At The Bat'. Bette Midler is particularly good. Some of the visual gags, such as what happens to Luke Perry and Krusty's attempt at ventriloquism are excellent.

Hey oh

[romacjosip · 8/10 · 22 June 2022]

Interesting episode, lot of famous names appears it different moods to save Krusty's show. It was so funny to see names like RHCP, Hugh Hefner, Elz Talyor.

The cheap side of The Simpsons

[benm-41751 · 5/10 · 3 February 2020]

This episode epitomizes a side of The Simpsons that isn't often discussed, which is the use of its own notoriety to bring in celebrities and pander to the audience with shallow humor. I guess you could say that, at the time, it was part of the breaking of the fourth wall that made the show so unique and groundbreaking in the 90's. Yet watching the show from the beginning, episodes like this compare very poorly to episodes with more complex plot-lines and something to say.

Well, maybe the episode itself is a statement about the use of celebrity to create relevance? Considering the increased use of celebrities for gimmicky humor, I think The Simpsons wasn't in a position to satire something it was very guilty of.

The story is painfully simple: Krusty's show is being sidelined by a new variety show starring a deranged puppet, and Bart and Lisa find a bunch of celebrities to put together a comeback show for Krusty to regain his popularity. The competing star, Gabbo, is supposed to be annoying, but again the satire doesn't actually justify the truth-he's annoying and shallow. This is the kind of humour that hasn't held up over time, while many other episodes are so relevant they could have been made decades later.

The first Zombie Simpsons episode?

[moriya723 · 5/10 · 21 December 2020]

The first half of the episode is solid. Gabbo vs Krusty is an interesting enough premise. The ridiculous media hype over Gabbo is satirized well enough. Unfortunately everything is squandered in the second half by just spamming random celebrities who have nothing to do with the plot or each other, rather than advance the narrative. The episode features Beth Midler literally catching a truck on the motorway by foot, then throwing it barehands in a ravine, with no real context, which is everything you need to know about it. This is the kind of tired, over-the-top, self-referential gags that would make purists mad a decade later. Obviously celebrity cameos were nothing new, but writers in this era usually did a very good job at either writing a touching episode around said celebrity(the Michael Jackson episode), or inserting them as nice flavor of the week backdrop(Aerosmith in Flaming Moe's). Unfortunately Krusty Gets Kancelled tries to have its cake and eat it too. The celebrities involved are clearly supposed to be the highlight, yet only have a series of disjointed gags to their name, and overall serve as plot devices at best.

By comparing this episode to "Zombie Simpsons" I am in no way pretending that 1993 was the beginning of the end for Bart and co. Season 4 was extremely good, and the show had many years before its grizzly demise. However, it is the first time that the show acted as an antithesis to its very premise in a major way. The Simpsons' main goal, at heart, was to criticize and satirize American values, culture and consumerism, and in particular, TV. Krusty gets Kancelled, as an episode based on TV and Springfield's undying clown misses the mark. The answer to being outshined by another entertainer is not supposed to be having more random names and more production value to your own program, this is a very cynical message and it is surprising to see the Simpsons parroting it with no kind of self-awareness as soon as the early 90s. Especially in a season finale, where having the most guest starts in the show's history(at that point) was obviously used to get a few media mentions and a cheap emotional pay-off before a few months break.

Perhaps the writers saw the errors of their way, as the next episodes based on Krusty's rating woes went in a totally opposite direction, even though they were at the start of the show's supposed decline(Itchy and Scratchy and Poochie in season 8, the Last Temptation of Krust in season 9). But that's another story.

The pointless origin Zombie Simpsons spinoff before the actual Zombie Simpsons

[pdawgg-93468 · 4/10 · 17 February 2023]

This episode does have it's gems. The Krusty vs. Gabbo feud is an excellent parody of 90s-era cross-media phenomenas, and bits such as the citizens of Springfield turning to Gabbo for the sole reason that they can't think for themselves ("Let's listen to Gabbo, he'll tell us what to do!") or the fact that Krusty's show started out as a Dick Cavett-esque late night talkshow before peddling into kiddie fodder somewhere down the line, but this episode starts a widely mocked tradition Simpsonphiles like to rip into to this day, something that would be inevitable after Bartmania died down and the series went from early 90s flash in the pan kid fad to bonafide, consistently profitable television juggernaut, the tradition of guest stars showing up for the sole fact that they're celebrities.

Remember that one of the targets The Simpsons fired on oh so well in it's early years was the mass market media machine, from jokes about Paramount wheeling out the original Star Trek cast well into senior citizenhood even as The Next Generation crew solidified themselves into a generation of viewers, to Krusty's shameless preference of quantity over quality, slapping his name haphazardly, even if the product in question was a tad questionable and demographically inappropriate to tie in into a after-school kids' show, and of course, my personal favorite, poking fun at the guest star filled special episode by loading the list up with a load of popular MLB players at the time, and inflicting the most horrific circumstances on the guest starees, such as either being thrown off Burns' softball team, becoming hooked on and eventually overdosing on nerve tonic, thrown to the abyss, jailed for life by Wiggum's incompetence, or outright dying from radiation poisoning by the end of the episode.

Here, however, it can all be boiled down into this:

"Hey, Lis, look, it's Bette Midler. Hi, Bette Midler."

"Hey, is that Luke Perry?"

"Oh, you're Johnny Carson!"

It ends how you expect, the celebrities are all ganged up together and rescue Krusty's career, and Gabbo is thrown into the same abyss as countless other one note one time supporting characters. A weak ending to a solid season overall.