'The Simpsons' Lego Trailer

The Lego Movie hit big, and The Simpsons just had the show's lowest-rated episode ever. (Though low ratings for The Simpsons are still better than good ratings for many other shows.) So what better time (for the Simpsons, at least) to bring them together? This weekend's episode, Brick Like Me, finds the familiar family rendered in minifig form, and living in their own world of blocks. Below, you can see the full-length The Simpsons Lego trailer.

If nothing else, this trailer is good for showing how integral the small bits of animation are when it comes to making a character like Homer Simpson feel like, well, Homer Simpson. Without the traditional animated form, some of these characters barely feel like themselves.

This episode was actually in the works before the show's producers knew The Lego Movie would explore similar territory. Producer Matt Selman recently explained:

We didn't know about the movie [when this episode started developing]. For the record, we still don't know about the movie. [Laughs] Brian and I had been dreaming of doing a Simpsons Lego episode for as long as we could remember, and in early 2012 we started seriously talking about making it happen. Then we found out that Lego was into doing a Simpsons couch gag. So it was a magical coming-together of pretend yellow people.

Here's the official description of the episode.

 THE SIMPSONS: Homer wakes up in a world where his family and everyone in Springfield are made of Legos and must"put together" how he got there to get home in the milestone 550th "Brick Like Me"; episode of THE SIMPSONS airing Sunday, May 4 (8:00-8:30 PM ET/PT) on FOX.