29 on 4 2

So, Channel 4's terrestrial debut of Season 29 of The Simpsons began slightly later than it normally does on the 22nd November, and wrapped up on 17th December. Here, then, are several thousand words examining the various episodes they censored, as well as other notes of interest mostly concerning cases where there are alternate versions of certain episodes, compared to my earlier notes on potentially problematic/interesting-for-other-reasons episodes made before the run started.

General notice: If there was something apart from the usual theme going on during the end credits then cases with both alternate video and audio were always left alone by the continuity announcer (different audio with still frames was not squeezed or talked over, which is an improvement on Season 28 where it needed to be moving video, and viewers were also able to read the spooky credits for "Treehouse of Horror XXVIII" unimpaired). If it was just alternate music then things were hit-or-miss -- sometimes it was left alone, but usually it was talked over. Some cases of the former were possibly related to the recent C4 technical problems they still seem to be suffering from in places.

WABF17 The Serfsons

Interestingly, this episode -- shown at 6pm and not relegated to a late-night slot like I thought it might be -- had a warning about being "stronger than usual" as part of the continuity announcement, which is not something I've ever heard before an episode on C4. Not that that stopped them from making cuts, obviously.

When the Serfsons go to see the new severed heads on the city wall:

BART: They didn't skimp on the tar! That's the secret to long-lasting heads.

MARGE: Ooh, there's Ned Flanders! [Who is indeed one of the severed heads.] It's always nice when you know someone. Those are the kind of sideburns I was saying you should grow.

HOMER: Hmm... pretty sharp. Pretty, pretty sharp.

LISA: See how the heads of the rich people get the tallest pikes with the best view? It's so unfair.

The net result of this cut is that all the close-up shots of the heads are removed; in Channel 4's edit, they are only ever seen from afar. At the end of the scene, when Marge realises her mother is ill:

MARGE: Homer, she needs medical attention.

[She turns and sees that HOMER has retrieved Flanders' head from the pike and is inspecting it closely.]

HOMER: Pretty, pretty sharp!

[Establishing shot of Barber Hibbert's Surgery. Cut to inside, where HIBBERT is advising KRUSTY the Court Jester.]

HIBBERT: It's never easy to say this. You've got... genital Snerfs.

SNERFS [from inside Krusty's pants]: La la la la la, we love our new home!

KRUSTY: Doc, is there any way to control occasional flare-ups?

HIBBERT: Nope!

[The SNERFS celebrate. KRUSTY leaves with a groan. MARGE and her mother enter.]

HIBBERT: Now, what have we here?

After Marge's mother is cured:

[In town, KRUSTY is being chased out of a building by LINDSAY NAEGLE, who is beating him with a brush.]

KRUSTY: Ow, ooh, hey! How do you know you got them from me?

KRUSTY'S SNERFS: We miss you!

LINDSAY'S SNERFS: We miss you too!

KRUSTY'S SNERFS: Love you!

LINDSAY'S SNERFS: Love you more!

[Pan over to the city square, where SNAKE is being pelted with rocks as punishment for being caught reading.]

After the dragon has been defeated:

GROUNDSKEEPER WILLIE: The afterlife is snakes chewing your eyes, but it feels good!

KRUSTY'S SNERFS: This is our heaven! [KRUSTY groans.]

LISA: Or, as long as Grandma lives on in our hearts, then she's never truly gone.

These are all excellently done technically, and you'd have to have seen the untampered version to know there was anything missing. This is also a more liberal edit than you might think; the use of the word "harlot", blatant jokes about incest, visible blood and onscreen decapitations (perhaps helped out by the fantasy nature of the episode), and the phrase "the golden age of cleavage" were allowed to survive. C4's copy also features the Gracie Films logo and not the Puerto Rico appeal that replaced it on the original US broadcast, which raises the unfortunate possibility that Sky's copy did have the appeal and they chose to remove it.

WABF16 Whistler's Father

Another episode I thought might be put in a late-night slot, but instead premiered at 6pm with cuts. When Marge begins to realise that she's unwittingly decorated a brothel for Fat Tony:

MARGE: You must be expecting a lot of sleepover guests.

[MAYOR QUIMBY exits one of the bedrooms.]

MAYOR QUIMBY: Is she, er, uh, one of the, uh...?

FAT TONY: No, no, she's the decorator.  But I can get one like her.

QUIMBY: Add it to my customer profile. Er, uh, yes.

[QUIMBY retreats back into the bedroom. MARGE lowers her sunglasses slightly.]

MARGE: Dim lighting, honky-tonk piano... Anthony D'Amico, what is the repute of this house?

When Helen, Bernice and Luanne arrive to see the brothel (the line in purple was not cut but will be explained in a moment):

HELEN: Marge Simpson, are the rumours true? Did you corncob a cathouse?

MARGE: It's not that!

[A group of PROSTITUTES pass by, including Nelson Muntz's mother.]

MRS MUNTZ: I sure love that new whorehouse smell!

HELEN: Marge, I never thought someone could sink this town lower, but you have!

[MARGE walks up to FAT TONY.]

MARGE: You lied to me!

During the "corncob a cathouse" line, a shot of the interior of the brothel, lifted from earlier in the episode, has been pasted in to try and hide the edit. This doesn't quite do justice to how clunkingly obvious C4's edit looks; it was a still image taken from an establishing shot that appeared a few minutes earlier, but they tried to turn it into a panning shot by zooming it in. It just looked awful (and all the worse once you see the uncut version, since the Quimby edit from earlier is seamless). It's also interesting that the word "whorehouse" and Marge being mistaken for a prostitute were the censor's red lines given what they left in...

WABF18 Treehouse of Horror XXVIII

To my considerable surprise, this became the first Treehouse of Horror to premiere in the 6pm slot since XXIV four years ago, and with a total of five (arguably six) small but interesting cuts.

The first is from "The Exor-Sis" (thanks to @CITVPLUS for flagging this one up); when the possessed Homer is singing the Pazuzu song to Maggie, blood pours from the eyes of the Happy Little Elves mural on her wall, her toy animals and farmer run into their barn and slam the doors behind them, the books in her book box burn up (and the word "BOOKS" written on it changes to "BOO"), a cowboy toy on a shelf shoots itself in the head with its gun, and her Sketch 'N' Etch writes the words "SO LONG SUCKERS" on its screen and then scoots out of the room. This is about three or four seconds of video cut overall, and Homer is singing during it. The full song, to the tune of "When Irish Eyes Are Smiling", goes:

When Pazuzu's eyes are glaring, it's time to go to bed

You'll see demon shadows fighting, but it's just inside your head

When Pazuzu's eyes are staring, the moonlight will turn red

'Cause Pazuzu's in your nightmares, until we all are dead

When the shot of the Sketch 'N' Etch starts, in the original Homer is still on the word "nightmares"; the shot of the book box is held slightly longer in C4's version whilst the song continues, so Homer is singing "...will turn red" over the Sketch 'N' Etch (which was originally over part of the cowboy toy bit; the missing half-line was at the same time as the gunshot, and presumably there was no way to separate the two).

Unfortunately there is a terrible double standard here, since the toy is clearly just blowing its own stuffing out and there were plenty of examples of reckless use of guns left alone in other episodes in this season (not to mention stronger content in this very episode, just moments later).

Second, when the poker goes through Helen Lovejoy's head, the visuals are exactly the same (including a large amount of blood), but the sound of the impact has been removed on Channel 4's version. It's hard to see exactly what they were trying to achieve here, but maybe both the blood and the sound made it too much, since Hibbert and Flanders' deaths moments later, both of which don't feature blood, survive intact.

The third is from when the priest arrives to exorcise Maggie -- thanks again to @CITVPLUS for spotting:

PRIEST: Well, there's only one answer here. Cut her loose!

HOMER: Are you sure?

PRIEST: If you can't trust a Catholic priest with a child, who can you trust?

[HOMER and MARGE look worried. The PRIEST cuts the bonds tying MAGGIE to the crib with a pair of scissors.]

The other cuts are from "Mmm... Homer". It starts when Homer is eating with the Flanderseses, and continues into the next scene (for the squeamish, a description of a montage of someone committing self-cannibalism follows):

FLANDERS: Homer Simpson, you don't like steak any more?

HOMER: Actually, I've become a bit of a me-gan. Do you have any spaghetti with my-balls? Uh, meatballs?

FLANDERS: "Me-gan"? "My-balls"? Are you eating forbidden fruit?

HOMER: Fruit? Ugh!

[HOMER looks across the table to the turkey; in his imagination, it turns into himself on a platter, with an apple in his mouth.]

HOMER: Sorry, Flanders, but I've got more delicious meat in my little finger than you have on this whole picnic table. Speaking of which...

[A montage of HOMER cannibalising himself follows, set to "Bustin' Loose" by Rebirth Brass Band. He prepares his knives, then slices off several of his toes (note the angle used means his foot isn't seen -- C4's edit cuts away just before he starts slicing, but leaves the clear implication of what he's going to do), lights a gas hob then chops up onions for a soup, then grates some of his hair into the mixture. He tastes the concoction and sprinkles in some of his eyelashes. He twists a corkscrew into his ear and pulls out some of his brains, which he pours over his casserole like a sauce. He uses a wrench to pull out one of his teeth and adds it to a cupcake. He kneads his own belly fat. Finally, he is cooking up a mixture that contains several of his own fingers; he gives it a chef's kiss, then adds the remaining fingers on his right hand to the saucepan.]

All of these cuts are technically excellent; in particular, on the last two they appear to have retimed the music so there's no jump in it, so points for that. Everything else -- the deaths in "The Exor-Sis", Homer sawing his own arm off, Mario Batali's guest appearance -- stayed in. I'm not sure what it says about whoever edited this episode for content that a "balls" joke crossed the line, but Dr. Hibbert getting stabbed in the throat with a thermometer didn't. This definitely suggests a relaxing in standards at some point in the last year, because this episode as a whole feels at least as worthy of being banned from pre-watershed airings as the previous three THOHs.

WABF19 Grampy Can Ya Hear Me

Thanks to @CITVPLUS for pointing this one out (they didn't catch it until Wednesday 22nd December, so earlier versions of this post missed it out). When Skinner is doing his tour of Ohio State University, after the line "that's how we say 'excuse me' around here", he hears the following choir-like voice in his head:

Loser, loser / Loser, loser / Missed opportunity / All over now / You poor bastard.

"Bastard" is replaced with another "loser", taken from moments earlier (presumably pretty seamless if I didn't notice).

WABF20 The Old Blue Mayor She Ain't What She Used To Be

This episode should have been shown on Monday 29th November, but the following episode, "Singin' in the Lane", was aired instead. The continuity announcer acknowledged the last-minute change, but I can't see exactly why the switch was made; my only theory is that the monorail accident in the opening scene might have been considered insensitive in such close proximity to Storm Arwen, but even that seems like a stretch. In any event, "Old Blue Mayor" was shown the following day instead (and was already available on catch-up before it actually aired on C4 as a result of the last-minute switch!) Anyway, it was cut as well, so this section does have a point to it:

[On the Skypark-Line.]

LISA: I love this space! Planters, benches, solar-powered talking trash cans!

[KIRK VAN HOUTEN deposits a large bag into one of the trash cans.]

TRASH CAN [buzzing twice]: Thank you for the used porn.

XABF01 Mr. Lisa's Opus

Brace yourself for one massive 50-second cut, because as I thought they might, they cut Leon Kompowsky out entirely...

LISA [in the present day, i.e. the future, writing her Harvard application]: No, they are a man and a woman trapped in a fragile marriage that nearly fell apart when I turned 14.

[Flashback to LISA's 14th birthday; MARGE enters her bedroom and wakes her up.]

MARGE: Happy birthday! Happy birthday! I remembered! Don't tell your therapist!

[BART enters, turning a wastepaper bin upside-down to use as a drum; as he reaches the second line, LEON KOMPOWSKY enters and hands her a lyric sheet.]

BART [singing]: Lisa, it's your birthday / Here's five brand new verses / Soon you'll be a woman / Soon you'll be in love...

LEON KOMPOWSKY [moonwalking whilst singing]: Who'd be better to take advice from / Than a man who wears one glove? [He laughs, Jackson-style.]

BART and KOMPOWSKY [the latter holding a monkey by the last line]: Lisa, it's your birthday / Happy birthday, Lisa / Lisa, it's your birthday / Happy birthday, Lisa!

BART: Yeah!

[HOMER enters, with a cake with the words "HAPPY TWELFH TWELVTH 12TH BIRTHDAY" iced onto it.]

LISA: Thank you! It's a wonderful cake, Dad... but I'm 14.

HOMER: D'oh!

[Later, LISA gets off the school bus.]

RALPH: Happy birthday, Lisa! We miss you in second grade.

On the positive side, the first line appears to have been moved to make the edit look better. On the downside, Kipp Lennon is still credited on C4's version despite his role being removed entirely, although admittedly there's moving video during the end credits so this would have been pretty much impossible to edit around. (That does at least prove that this is something C4 did themselves, and not an edit made by the producers at the same time "Stark Raving Dad" was pulled from circulation.)

XABF02 Gone Boy

During the Christmas version of the opening sequence:

When Homer throws the candy cane out of his car window, C4's edit cuts away from Otto right after he grabs it and says "mm?", to Bart on his skateboard, removing Otto using the cane like a drug. (The version of this post on the day it went up lacked this cut since I'd missed it, and it was pointed out by @CITVPLUS; I think I missed it because there's a shortened version of this intro on other episodes which doesn't have that bit anyway.)

XABF03 Haw-Haw Land

Right at the beginning of the episode, when the Simpsons arrive at the STEM conference after the "Another Day of Sun" parody:

HOMER: Bring it home, boy!

BART [singing]: My sister sucks!

[LISA pulls the hood of his hoodie tight so his vision is obscured; he pokes his tongue out at her, so she attaches a binder clip to it.]

LISA [singing]: It's another perfect day!

[BART sucks his clipped tongue, Maggie-style.]

[OTTO approaches the entrance to the conference. He opens his coat to reveal a bag of weed.]

OTTO: I brought my stems!

DOORMAN: Sir, this is a conference of Science, Teaching, Engineering and Math.

[OTTO walks over to a sign by another door, which reads DOPE.]

OTTO: What about this one?

[DR. HIBBERT walks out.]

HIBBERT: Dialogue on Paediatric Education.

[Establishing shot of the inside of the STEM conference.]

Since this is right at the start, producer credits appear over it, two of which are thus missing on C4's edit (consulting producer Carolyn Omine and producers Tom Gammill and Max Pross). There also seems to be some sound remaining from the cut section (described by my notes as "anomalous stabbing sound") over the establishing shot of the conference as a result of the edit.

Later in the playground scene, an edit that harkens back to the late 90s:

LISA'S ANNOYING LATEST CRUSH, PLAYED DREADFULLY BY ED SHEERAN: Then I saw you and flipped...

JIMBO: He used "flipped" with a double meaning!

KEARNEY: Bastard!

L.A.L.C.P.D.B.E.S.: Now I'm skippin' and trippin' for you...

Later still, when Homer investigates Bart's newfound interest in chemistry:

HOMER: So, how do I put this... are you breaking bad up here?

BART: No, I'm not. And if you're looking for meth, go see Cletus.

HOMER: Wha?

[BART holds up his phone, and dials Cletus, who answers.]

CLETUS: Meth Life, proud sponsor of the 2020 Opioid Olympics! [A meth-tasting pig squeals.] Ooh, that's street-ready!

BART: Dad, I'm just trying to follow in your footsteps.

XABF05 Homer is Where the Art Isn't

MANACEK: Yes, but you insured a $15 million painting for $30 million. For a woman with a head for numbers, it doesn't add up.

MATHESON: You smug son of a bitch. [She laughs suddenly.] I like you, Manacek.

This is reasonably well-done; if you know what's missing, then it's impossible not to see the jump, but whoever edited this for compliance does a reasonably good job of making it look like Matheson stops herself from saying the b-word at the last moment.

XABF06 3 Scenes Plus a Tag From a Marriage

For whatever reason (apparently another symptom of C4's recent technical problems) this episode was not available on All4 (which, yes, does have C4's censored versions rather than the uncut ones), so the edits for this particular episode are entirely from memory (I am perhaps 95% sure I got everything -- thanks again to @CITVPLUS for comparing notes).

At the top of the second scene in Homer and Marge's old apartment, directly after the scene where Marge reads about pacifiers being a choking risk and tries to confiscate Maggie's:

MILES: So, can I get you anything? [He produces a tray full of drugs.] Weed? Edibles? Pudding with a joint in the centre?

MILES' WIFE: But we need you out by 7. We Airbnb this place every night while we stay at a cheaper Airbnb.

HOMER: Mmm, disruptive.

MARGE: Before Homer and I got married, we had amazing times here.

The tray of drugs is still visible during the "Airbnb" line, but that would probably have had to go anyway to avoid a non-sequitur.

Next, directly before the flashback of baby Bart at the supermarket, the b-word hits the cutting room floor for the second day running:

HOMER: But before you kids, I used to know the names of people in bands! And not just the singer, but the guitar guy! And baby Bart was the worst son of a bitch you can imagine.

[BART gives a salute.]

I think they get lucky with the way Dan Castellaneta delivers this line, as it edits together quite nicely.

Finally, during the video on the dangers of raising a single child:

NARRATOR: Jane was an only child. And science has proven that only children are lonely children. And lonely children are evil children.

[JANE uses her skipping rope to knock over a postman. She repeatedly kicks him in the face, then grabs an envelope from his mailbag, opens up the top flap and uses it to slash his throat.]

Given C4's increasingly liberal attitude to blood on the show, I can only presume it's specifically the throat-slashing they take issue with here.

XABF08 Fears of a Clown

In a shocking turn of events, this was indeed cut:

BART: And I'm sorry I used your baseball chalker to write "Skinner sucks".

GROUNDSKEEPER WILLIE: I'll show you who su -- wait, you can do that?

BART: Please don't encourage me.

[Smash cut to WILLIE and BART laughing, having just written "SKINNER IS A WANKER A TWIT AND A TOSSPOT" on the playground with the chalker.]

BART: Thank you for encouraging me.

WILLIE: Ugh, we're out of chalk.

[BART laughs.]

BART: You know, I had just completed rehab.

WILLIE: Well, me too.

This unfortunately does a bit of damage to the plot; it's still comprehensible, we just lose Bart expressly going back to pranking.

XABF07 No Good Read Goes Unpunished

This episode was originally scheduled to air in the 6pm slot, albeit a few positions later in the running order than it should have been, but was later pulled. I singled it out as a possibility for cuts, but I'm struggling to see why it would be deemed unsuitable to show altogether, although it seems most likely to do with the plot regarding Marge discovering some of her favourite childhood books are culturally offensive. This creates a minor scheduling problem -- "Fears of a Clown" (shown on Thursday 9th) has a couch gag about being the 632nd episode, and then the first two episodes of the following week have multiple references to being the 635th and 636th (since they respectively matched and broke the record for longest-running scripted US primetime series by number of episodes held by Gunsmoke).

(I would note that Season 29's unusual 21-episode length means it conveniently fits into exactly four weeks provided you skip a single episode, but then they could have either held back the Treehouse of Horror or shown "Gone Boy" -- tenuously related to Christmas, perhaps, but related nonetheless -- in a different slot over Christmas instead.)

XABF10 King Leer

When Moe's father gives his children their inheritance:

MOE: Well, good dinner, everyone. I'll see yous at the funeral of whoever dies first.

MORTY [producing a third key]: And to my oldest son, I give a store.

MOE [gasping]: Wha?!

[The key gleams. He walks over to his father and takes the key whilst giving the next line:]

MOE: I buried this dream so deep, no amount of self-harm could ever carve it out.

[MOE, his father and his siblings embrace each other.]

Since Moe actually accepts the key during the cut line, this looks a bit awkward -- we cut from the close-up shot of the key gleaming to the embrace, with Moe already holding the key. It looks about as good as it could (and I'm hard-pressed not to say that the episode is improved by the absence of this line), but as with the "Homer Is Where the Art Isn't" cut, if you know something's missing it's impossible not to see it.

XABF11 Lisa Gets the Blues

Another damn drugs-related cut...

LOUIS ARMSTRONG: Lisa, darling, you just keep searching. You can find anything you want in New Orleans. Except, apparently, statue polish and pigeon poison.

LISA: Thank you. And may I ask you, how are things in heaven?

ARMSTRONG: You know that thing we used to call reefer and you people now call medicine?

LISA: I do.

ARMSTRONG: Well, they have it up in heaven, and it is mighty fine. Mighty fine! [He laughs.]

LISA: So, any last advice?

XABF12 Left Behind

The correct order of the final three episodes of the season is "Left Behind", "Throw Grampa From the Dane" and "Flanders' Ladder", and that is how they were originally scheduled to air on C4 on Wednesday 15th through Friday 17th, and how they are presented here. But at the very last minute, the running order on C4 changed to show them in reverse order, so we got "Ladder" on the 15th and so on, with "Left Behind" becoming the season finale in C4's order.

All this came too late to tell the continuity announcer, who read out the synopsis for "Left Behind" a few minutes before "Ladder" started. Stellar work there, guys. (Note that this also causes a minor continuity problem: Flanders becomes a teacher at Springfield Elementary in "Left Behind", and has a 4th grade lesson planner on his desk in "Flanders' Ladder"!)

Anyway, all this plainly wasn't enough, because there's a cut as well. In the first scene at Moe's, where Moe protests Homer's date night with Marge can't be on Saturday because that's when they spray nitrous into his ant farm and watch them go nuts:

CARL: You know, Moe, a lot of what you think you're saying, you're not really saying.

MOE: Well, I got to admit, I've been doing a little of this nitrous myself. [He inhales from the canister of nitrous, causing his face to momentarily turn blue.] Heh, heh, heh... stupid ants. Ha, ha, ha.

[Cut back to 742 Evergreen Terrace.]

This edit feels a little inconsistent with the other drugs cuts in this season and last -- so showing the nitrous canister, Moe spraying it into the ant farm and its effects, and admitting he's been using it himself is OK, but actually showing him inhaling is only what crosses the line?

XABF14 Flanders' Ladder

Oh boy.

First of all, when the Internet goes out at the start of the episode (another tip of the hat to @CITVPLUS for pointing out this one):

HOMER [staring at the TV's blinking "CONNECTION LOST" screen]: I don't know the score! I don't even know who's playing!

[In the living room, Grampa stares at his myPad, making a series of incoherent noises which an on-screen subtitle translates to "MY PORN!" Back in the TV room:]

MARGE: Okay, no Internet. We can do what we did in the olden days!

(This is a fairly odd scene anyway, since Grampa never appears or is even referenced in the episode before or afterwards.)

Second, when Bart goes to see Milhouse's therapist:

BART: So you don't think I'm crazy?

DR. ELKINS: No. Take a look behind the couch.

[BART does so, and discovers Elkins' body, clutching a bottle with "RAT POISON" written on it. He gasps.]

BART: You're dead, too?

DR. ELKINS: Yeah, I killed myself five minutes before you got here.

BART: Why would you kill yourself?

DR. ELKINS: Oh, I want my patients to think it's all their fault. [He laughs.] Oh, if you'd been on time, you might have saved my life, but you know, whatever.

The words "RAT POISON" are digitally painted out on C4's version, leaving just a skull-and-crossbones symbol on the bottle's label (a tactic last employed in Season 25's "Yellow Subterfuge", to remove the name 'Dick Fiddler' from Skinner's fake passport).

Next, in the montage of Bart helping the dead to move on, after he gets revenge on Nelson on behalf of all the insects he's burnt with a magnifying glass, an entire scene is cut, amounting to about 20 seconds removed overall:

[The insects arrange themselves to spell out the words "THANK YOU".]

BART: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Next.

[The ghost of a HOBO who has been cut in half gestures to a train track. BART places a penny on the tracks and stands well back; a train comes along and is totally derailed. The HOBO smiles at Bart and ascends, followed by the spirits of the dozens of people who were killed in the trainwreck. BART turns around and sees a long line of the spirits he hasn't yet helped to move on, with MAUDE FLANDERS at the top of the queue.]

MAUDE: You can't keep ignoring me!

[Cut to BART in his coma in the real world, moaning and groaning.]

When Bart is trying to persuade Homer not to ascend to the afterlife:

BART: And someone else will ride your mower!

HOMER: That bastard! [He is briefly angry.] Still, it's time for me to move on.

And finally, the montage of how everyone is going to die at the end of the episode. Here's the uncut version, since describing C4's edit after you've watched it is probably going to be more coherent than providing a transcription:

Homer's death scene is edited to remove all of the gunfire; after he turns around coming out of the bank, there is an obvious freeze-frame of the policemen with guns pointed at him, right before they start shooting, which is held for the same length of time as the excised material (to avoid any jump in the music), then it cuts to the "HOMER SIMPSON / DEAD AT 59" caption. Everything else survives. (I would just like to point out that this sequence clearly works perfectly as the capper to a season finale, and it loses something if you randomly meddle with the broadcast order so it's not shown last.)

Incidentally, since the above video is from the original Canadian broadcast, it includes the dedication to Tom Wolfe; none of these dedications are on C4's versions (the other affected episodes from this season are "Springfield Splendor", originally dedicated to Tom Petty, "Homer is Where the Art Isn't" (Stephen Hawking) and "Lisa Gets the Blues" (R. Lee Ermey)). This appears to be a policy at the US end that only the original broadcast carried the dedication, so they were never on the copies serviced to C4 anyway.

* * *

When I started chronicling the cuts from the show's most recent seasons as they made their terrestrial debut, it was in part because C4 were really not doing a good job with them at all -- many episodes from seasons in the mid-twenties were very obviously edited, in a way that gave the impression the censor didn't care how much sense what was left made, or how obviously they'd been edited, so long as the offending material was gone, and C4 were often quite conservative as to what was allowed through, such as their previous distaste for blood of any kind no matter the circumstances. It just looked a bit like they didn't really care overall.

However, Seasons 27 & 28 seemed to coincide with some changes. Fewer episodes seemed to be edited overall, and if it was cut then for the most part I could at least see why. The technical quality of the cuts improved, and standards seemed to relax, especially where blood was concerned; someone was taking the time to make sure the edits were as invisible as possible. If an episode was deemed unsuitable for the 6pm slot, then last year it at least turned up promptly in a late-night slot that was as high-profile as possible. I still had issues, but things were definitely improving.

So unfortunately I have to find their treatment of Season 29 wanting -- only five episodes were left alone, there were sometimes very obvious double standards within the same episode, the overall number of cuts seems to be creeping back up again, an episode was dropped altogether for reasons that are not clear, and the running order was repeatedly shuffled around at the last minute for no apparent reason. Most of these cuts are still at least technically pretty good, but then you get one like that pasted-in shot from "Whistler's Father"; I'm struggling to think of a piece of censorship that looked worse. Maybe whoever did it thought they were being pretty clever, but if so they absolutely weren't. If there's going to be cuts, then surely they can do better than this. At the very least they could show the episodes in the right order, because I can see no reason whatsoever for their repeated screwing about with that particular aspect of the season.

Thanks again to Wesley Mead for scheduling information, @CITVPLUS for comparing notes and pointing out several cuts I'd missed, and John Hoare for checking I'd transcribed one of the Treehouse of Horror cuts in a way that made sense after I'd watched the cut and uncut versions ten times in a row trying to work out exactly what C4 had done and gone momentarily insane