Krusty Gets Kancelled

Following a mysterious viral marketing campaign, ventriloquist Arthur Crandall announces that a new program starring his puppet Gabbo will air in direct competition with the established Krusty the Clown Show. At first, Krusty is unimpressed by Gabbo and vows to fight back, but quickly pales to Gabbo's clever tactics and great reviews. Krusty tries to use a dummy of his own, but its grotesque appearance scares off many of the children in the audience. To make matters worse, Itchy and Scratchy move to Gabbo's show. The bizarre Soviet animation segment Krusty begins showing instead causes his ratings to hit rock-bottom; his show is consequently canceled. Out of work and penniless, Krusty becomes depressed, finding little motivation to do anything. Bart and Lisa, who had disliked Gabbo from the start, decide to try to help Krusty get his career back on track. Bart sneaks into the studio where Gabbo's show is filmed and secretly records Gabbo referring to children of Springfield as "SOBs", which damages his reputation. However, this backfires when Kent Brockman says the same insult at the end of his news program and is subsequently fired; the news of Brockman's firing becomes more widespread than Gabbo's remarks, and Gabbo's reputation remains stable. After visiting Krusty's home and seeing photos of him with multiple celebrities, including Johnny Carson and Bette Midler, Bart and Lisa suggest that Krusty host a live comeback special. They begin recruiting Krusty's celebrity friends to appear on the special and help Krusty get back into shape before the special airs. Bart and Lisa manage to hire all of Krusty's celebrity friends, except Elizabeth Taylor, whose agent rejects Bart and Lisa's offer; Taylor initially agrees with her agent, but upon seeing the show on TV, she remarks that she needs to fire him. During the special, Carson juggles a 1987 Buick Skylark while singing an opera number. Krusty's brother Luke Perry is blasted out of a cannon and is hurled through a sandpaper museum and jars of acid at the Kwik-E-Mart before landing in a pillow factory that is immediately demolished. It ends with Krusty and Midler singing Wind Beneath My Wings in a duet. The special is a great success and Krusty's career gets back on track. A party is held at Moe's Tavern to celebrate the special's success, and Bart toasts Krusty as "the greatest entertainer in the world, except maybe that guy"—referring to Carson, who is playing "Goodnight, Ladies" on an accordion while balancing a bench on his head that Grampa Simpson and Jasper Beardsley are sitting on. ==Production==

objected to his original role, which depicted him as a mooch, so the writers instead made him extremely versatile. The episode was written by John Swartzwelder and directed by David Silverman. The rest of the writers decided this would be an opportunity to include a group of celebrity guest stars. One of the goals for the episode was to have an ex-President of the United States. They wrote "very respectful but cute" parts for each then-living ex-president (Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, and Ronald Reagan) at the time, but they all turned them down. Bette Midler's condition for guest-starring was that the show promoted her anti-littering campaign. Elizabeth Taylor guest-starred as herself and also recorded a part as Maggie in "Lisa's First Word" on the same day. Luke Perry was one of the first guest stars to agree to their parts. The short cartoon "Worker and Parasite" is a reference to Soviet cartoons, and Soviet propaganda venerating the working class against those considered a drain on society. To produce the animation, Silverman xeroxed several drawings and made the animation very jerky. The scene where Krusty sings "Send in the Clowns" was very tricky for the animators because it involves two shots of the same scene from different angles. Parts of the scene were animated by Brad Bird. As of 2025, this episode is well-known for being the only one where Marge, despite her prominence, has no lines of dialogue. It is also the first episode where a Simpson family member, besides Maggie, does not speak. ==Cultural references==

an animation, is one of Matt Groening's favorite moments from The Simpsons.'' Mr. Burns misreads a billboard reading "Gabbo is coming", telling Smithers, "Garbo is coming!" Gabbo's name is from Erich von Stroheim's The Great Gabbo (1929). He was originally designed to be more square, but the second design was made to be "a demented Howdy Doody". His voice was based on Jerry Lewis. His musical number contains several references to "I've Got No Strings" from Pinocchio (1940) and a brief imitation of sports commentator Vin Scully. Krusty's riddle, "Why is a raven like a writing desk?", is from ''Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1865). He mentions that he beat Joey Bishop, whose The Joey Bishop Show ran opposite The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson. The scene where Krusty asks the Red Hot Chili Peppers to change the lyrics to "Give It Away" is a reference to Ed Sullivan asking The Doors to change the lyrics to "Light My Fire" for their performance on his show. The poses of the band members in the scene are based on the movie The Doors'' (1991). Flea, the band's bassist, is incongruously seen playing a guitar during the performance of "Give It Away". Several scenes in Krusty's special are based on ''Elvis Presley's '68 Comeback Special''. Hefner plays a theme from Sergei Prokofiev's Peter and the Wolf on wine glasses. Carson balances a Buick Skylark over his head while singing the Habanera aria from Georges Bizet's opera Carmen (1875). At the end of the episode, he plays "Goodnight, Ladies" on the accordion, which segues into The Simpsons theme. ==Reception==

In its original broadcast, "Krusty Gets Kancelled" finished 24th in ratings for the week of May 10–16, 1993, with a Nielsen rating of 12.3, equivalent to approximately 11.5 million viewing households. It was the highest-rated show on the Fox network that week, beating Married... with Children. In 1997, TV Guide named "Krusty Gets Kancelled" as the second greatest Simpsons episode and the 66th greatest TV episode. In 1998, TV Guide listed it in its list of top twelve episodes, stating "Simpsons fans get a star-packed keeper that in its own twisted way reflects the pure faith and goodness at the heart of every classic children's tale." In 2006, Bette Midler, Hugh Hefner, Johnny Carson, Luke Perry, and the Red Hot Chili Peppers were listed at number four on IGN's list of the best Simpsons guest stars. They all also appeared on AOL's list of their favorite 25 Simpsons guest stars. In 2007, Vanity Fair named "Krusty Gets Kancelled" as the ninth-best episode of The Simpsons. Brien Murphy of the Abilene Reporter-News classed "Krusty Gets Kancelled" as one of his three favorite episodes of The Simpsons, along with "Behind the Laughter" and "The Simpsons Spin-Off Showcase". Though Jim Schembri of The Age put the episode among his top 10 episodes of the series, he also noted "Unfortunately, this signaled the beginning of the show's obsession with star cameos." An article in the Herald Sun placed "Krusty Gets Kancelled" among the top 20 episodes of The Simpsons, and characterized "The sight of Krusty's feeble attempt to fight back with his own gruesome ventriloquist doll, which falls apart on his lap on air" as the highlight of the episode. In 2009, it was named the 24th Greatest TV Episode of All-Time. The episode is one of co-executive producer Tim Long's three favorites, including "The Itchy & Scratchy & Poochie Show" and "A Milhouse Divided". In an article about the 2003 DVD release in The Independent, "Krusty Gets Kancelled" was highlighted along with episodes "When You Dish Upon a Star", "Lisa the Iconoclast", "Dog of Death", "Homer Badman", and "Grampa vs. Sexual Inadequacy". In a 2004 review of the release of The Simpsons season four on DVD, Andrew Pulver of The Guardian highlighted episodes "Kamp Krusty" and "Krusty Gets Kancelled" as part of "TV art at its peak". Mike Clark of USA Today also highlighted "Kamp Krusty" and "Krusty Gets Kancelled" as among the better episodes of the season, along with "A Streetcar Named Marge" and "Lisa the Beauty Queen". Jen Chaney of The Washington Post described episodes "A Streetcar Named Marge", "Mr. Plow", "Marge vs. the Monorail", and "Krusty Gets Kancelled" as "gems" of The Simpsons' fourth season. Spence Kettlewell of The Toronto Star described season 4 episodes "Krusty Gets Kancelled", "Kamp Krusty", "Mr. Plow", and "I Love Lisa" as "some of the best episodes" of the series. Forrest Hartman of the Reno Gazette-Journal wrote that the large number of celebrity appearances detracted from the episode, commenting: "The result is a boring hodgepodge of scenes with Bette Midler, Johnny Carson, the Red Hot Chili Peppers and more where we're supposed to laugh simply because famous people are interacting with Krusty." Nathan Rabin writes that "At its weakest, 'Krusty Gets Kancelled' feels like a show tailored specifically for the massive egos of its guest stars. In that respect, it’s an unfortunate harbinger of the show’s celebrity and guest-star-fixated future... in its second half, 'Krusty Gets Kancelled' becomes more about celebrities than satire; the story sometimes seems to serve the celebrity cameos rather than the other way around." None the less, he praises the way Springfield's excitement over Gabbo, before they know who (or what) Gabbo is, showcases the town's mob mentality, as exemplified by Homer's line “He’ll tell us what to do!” Rabin writes that it "is still a worthy finale to a spectacular season. After all it accomplished in its fourth season, The Simpsons deserved a victory lap or two, so it can be forgiven for flattering some of the mega-stars it lured into its dazzling orbit." In 2000, the episode was released as part of a Twentieth Century Fox boxed set The Simpsons Go Hollywood, commemorating The Simpsons' 10th anniversary. The set included "some of the series' best spoofs of movies and TV", and also included episodes "Marge vs. the Monorail", "A Streetcar Named Marge", "Who Shot Mr. Burns?", parts one and two, and "Bart Gets Famous". The episode was included in a 2003 release of The Simpsons Classics on DVD by 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment. ==References==