Marcel Winatschek

The One Where Moe Explodes

The Minecraft couch gag Matt Groening made for the episode Luca$—the one with Zach Galifianakis—gets everything right about the crossover. Springfield rendered in pixelated cubes, every family member reduced to their essential colors and shapes, and Moe turned into a green Creeper, which is honestly a more accurate characterization of Moe than anything the regular writers have managed in years. The gag ends the way Creeper gags always end.

There’s something satisfying about watching one iconic visual language translate into another. Both The Simpsons and Minecraft run on a similar kind of abstraction—flat affect, primary colors, violence played for deadpan comedy. The logic is compatible. It works because it should.