Who cares who died on â€˜The Simpsonsâ€™ season premiere?

It should come as no surprise that the much-ballyhooed decision to kill off an important character in Springfield on the first episode of the 26th season turned out to be a lame play for attention by a show desperate to stay relevant. Because the person who died was not Homer, Sideshow Bob, Grandpa or Krusty the Clown as some had guessed but … Rabbi Hyman Krustofsky. Who?

Rabbi Hyman KrustofskyPhoto: Facebook

It's Krusty's father, voiced by comedian Jackie Mason. You may or may not remember him, since he made nine, mostly minor, appearances on the show. Only four of those were voiced by Mason and only one of which was in the show's golden era in the 90s.

His death isn't exactly an "Itchy and Scratchy" bloodbath either: after Krusty suffers through a brutal Comedy Central-style roast (featuring real-life roasters Jeff Ross and Sarah Silverman), he visits his father to get parental approval for his comedy. After telling Krusty he finds his humor very "eh," the rabbi dies, sitting at his desk. And, boom, that's it, he's off to yellow heaven with Bleeding Gums Murphy and Maude Flanders.

The episode tries desperately to milk this moment for some kind of emotional resonance with viewers, but the pathos udders are painfully dry. After the rabbi's death, Lisa becomes fraught with paranoia that her own father, with his non-stop donut and Duff consumption, is in danger of dying. But instead of pulling out a humorously poignant moment (remember when Homer's mother had to run away in Season 7?) the writers went slapstick, having her encase Homer in bubblewrap in the case he should get hit by a bus or something.

Krusty spends most of the episode trying to reconcile with his father's disappointment and the climax — where Krusty discovers a rabbi his father admired maybe stole some of Krusty's lame jokes, I guess? — leaves you feeling kind of "eh" yourself.

It does lead to one of the episode's actually funny moments, when he hallucinates Jewish heaven, with a Joe Lieberman presidential library and "free egg cream" day at Ebbets Field, where the Brooklyn Dodgers and New York Giants are still playing. But compare this to the mortality gut check that Lisa got when Bleeding Gums Murphy died in Season 6, and Krustofsky's death seems like a pointless plea for attention.

The show's writers opened with an oh-we're-so-clever moment by having Bart write on the chalkboard "Spoiler alert: unfortunately my dad doesn't die." Then it goes into a couch gag scene by Oscar-nominated artist Don Hertzfeldt that is both overly long and perhaps one of the strangest in the show's history, reimagining the Simpson family as distorted microbial blobs from the future.

Kelsey Grammer makes a brief cameo as the murderous Sideshow Bob but strangely, David Hyde Pierce, Grammer's co-star from "Frasier" who played Sideshow Bob's brother in a classic episode from Season 7, also appears, though he's playing himself.

No one expects much of a creativity payoff from this long-running sitcom, but even the 1999 death of Maude Flanders — a frequent but largely unremarkable presence on the show — felt like it was worth the build up, as we watched Ned Flanders deal with life when it's not so okely dokely.
So next time "The Simpsons" tries to get your attention by killing off a major character, you can simply shake your head and say "eh."