End The Simpsons #1 - The Less Than Seamless Opening

"Wow, it must be expensive to produce all these cartoons." – Lisa Simpson  
"Well, we cut corners; sometimes to save money our animators will reuse the same backgrounds over and over and over again." – Roger Myers Jr.

There are often jarring incongruities in Zombie Simpsons.  Stories twist and turn, characters jump in and out of scenes, exposition and repetition destroy anything that could be called flow.  You never know what you're going to get, you just know that it's probably going to be shitty.  However, there is one jarring incongruity that is as reliable and neverending as the renewal of the show.    

The opening sequence, panning over the nuclear plant, into the school, and then all over town, hasn't changed since about 1990.  Unfortunately, the couch gag has to be produced anew all the time and it looks nothing like rest of the opening.  (Bart's chalkboard message is a little out of place as well, but it's not nearly as bad.)  The opening is old school from "The Simpsons" chorus through Homer's scream as he escapes the car hole and then – bang – it's semi-CGI time for the latest couch gag.  As if that weren't off putting enough, it goes back to being old school during the television credits for Groening, Brooks and Simon (praise be their names).

I've seen that opening sequence (and heard that song) many thousands of times by now; I'm conditioned like one of Pavlov's dogs to expect excellence when it ends.  Then the couch gag pops up and I'm ripped back into the harsh, clumsy reality of Zombie Simpsons.  It's like being the Memento guy; right when I wake up I don't remember that my wife is gone, but the cost of those precious seconds of hopeful naivete is having the pain always be as sharp as if it were still fresh.