Nothing says “pretty much the entire writing staff is on vacation” like a sitcom clip show. Even an ironic clip show is still a goddam clip show; when The Simpsons would do it, you’d sort of smile and laugh along as they skewered the corny, apologist mechanics of the genre, but it was still a damn clip show. It sucked, they knew it sucked, and it sucked in a particularly special way because they were winking at you the whole time.

And man, all this talk about flashbacks really makes you think, dunnit? Why, I remember, back in strip #21 …