YMMV / The Simpsons S8 E24 "The Simpsons Spin-Off Showcase"

• Aluminium Christmas Trees: The Lovematic Grampa is just an over-the-top mocking of silly high-concept TV shows, right? Nope! It's pretty much lifted straight from short-lived 1960s sitcom My Mother the Car; writing for that show was James L. Brooks' first gig in Hollywood.
• Angst? What Angst?: Betty, the woman Moe dates in The Love-Matic Grampa. She initially enters Moe's bar because she was in a car accident and needed to use his phone. After using the love-testing machine, she's not just willing to have dinner with Moe, but she implies that they "might have breakfast too". Apparently, Betty got over that car accident pretty quickly.
• Crosses the Line Twice: The Love-matic Grampa does this from start to finish. The premise: Abe is crushed to death by a falling can display, but his spirit winds up in Moe's love-testing machine. It’s sick and hilarious for the way it makes fun of Abe's plight.
  • There’s also this line when Homer unplugs the love tester.
    Abe: That's the second time he's pulled the plug on me.
  • Not to mention the line just before that.
    Abe: You buried me naked and sold my suit to buy a ping-pong table!
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • Troy McClure's prediction that season 9 would feature corny, outlandish plots turned out to be correct. Mike Scully took over as showrunner for season 9, and the show took a Denser and Wackier turn during his tenure. Specifically, the proposed plots included magic powers and wedding after wedding after wedding. No episode with long-lost triplets has come yet^note As a major plot element, anyway, "The Blue and the Gray" did have a joke about Sherri and Terri having a long-lost triplet out for revenge., but Ozmodiar did make a brief appearance, appearing to Homer as well as Bart and Lisa.
  • Regarding "Chief Wiggum, P.I.," there weren't, at the time this episode aired, any TV shows set in New Orleans, or notably crime dramas set in that city. Then came K-Ville and NCIS: New Orleans, which has been more successful enough to remain on the air. Since this Simpsons episode lampoons spinoffs, it should be noted that's the third series in the NCIS franchise, and both the original and NCIS: Los Angeles also remain on the air. Incidentally there also was Treme, although that Darker and Edgier series was on Showtime.
  • "Chief Wiggum, P.I." casts Skinner as Wiggum's streetwise inner-city partner, the joke being Skinner was the last character who would have such a background. In the very next season it was revealed that this is, in fact, his background. (However, that episode was later declared non-canonical, so the joke still works.)
  • Speaking of which, "Chief Wiggum, P.I." having Seymour Skinner move to New Orleans with Wiggum becomes all the funnier nowadays, considering his voice actor would later end up moving to New Orleans himself.
• Parody Displacement: My Mother the Car and The Brady Bunch Variety Hour both had short runs several decades before this episode aired (a single season in 1965-66 for the former, nine episodes in 1976-77 for the latter), and only hardcore TV buffs with a taste for So Bad, It's Good television even remembered them at the time.
• Values Dissonance: Kearney beating up the Love-Matic Grandpa for calling him gay.

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