Talking Simpsons - Bonus Episode - Talking Futurama "Lrrreconcilable Ndndifferences" With Chris Wade

Episode Date: July 16, 2025

The Talking Simpsons Network is taking a week off, so to fill the content gap, we've decided to post an episode of our Patreon-exclusive Talking Futurama podcast miniseries! If you like this episode and want to hear the rest (with more to come every month), head over to Patreon.com/TalkingSimpsons and sign up at the $5 level. Once you do, you'll have immediate access to all of our limited miniseries, covering animated shows like King of the Hill, Mission Hill, The Critic, and Batman: The Animated Series. That's over 200 bonus episodes to date! So visit Patreon.com/TalkingSimpsons and sign up today! Episode originally posted on April 13, 2025.

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That's Talkspace.com slash military. Once again, television has given me a reason to live. Good news everyone, it's Talking Futurama, the podcast that caves like a house of souffle cards. I'm one of your hosts, your bossy friend Bob Mackie, and this is the Talking Substance Patreon's chronological exploration of Futurama. Who is here with me today as always? NittpICKING NERD, HENRY GILBERT! And who is our special guest on the line. GOOD NEWS, IT'S CHRIS WAID!

And this month's episode is LURR RECONCILEBUL NDIFFERENCES. Orns are a sign of virility. Also, they house my testes. This week's episode originally aired on August 26, 2010, and as always, Henry will tell us what happened on this mythical day in real world history. Welcome to the world of tomorrow! Good news, Bobby. Katy Perry's album Teenage Dream is released, Takers tops the film box office,

and Mad Men and Modern Family win big at the primetime Emmys. Teenage Dream is not the Katy Perry song I'm familiar with. Is this one of her... I guess it was I Kissed a Girl maybe a few years before this. I mean, Teenage Dream was a blockbuster album. This is a good time to be in the Katy Perry business. Unfortunately, it had not yet become a woman's world, but... We're still living in the fall.

Oh, sorry. I'm going to say I'm catching up to the music of the youth from 15 years ago. Teenage Dream was the album and also the hit single. Okay. Yes. Yes. Yeah. It was, and it also had the other hit singles, California Girl and Firework, singular Firework. Yes. Yeah. So this was her big big big hit but and I think those those singles were out first but this is the album release week of it so

it's it's probably the hottest time ever to be Katy Perry though I can't recall now if this is before or after her appearance on The Simpsons in the Treehouse of Horror where Moe Syslack performs oral sex upon her. I have not seen that. I am not familiar with that. That sounds bad. It's Mo in the form of a puppet. Did we mention that yet?

Oh, no. Okay. Yes, that's right. That's right. That's not my belly button. I didn't say stop to quote Katy Perry. So what is Takers? That was my question as well because I always wanted to check the box office.

I was like, okay, well, it was number one this week. Surely a movie I've heard of. And no, this is, I mean, August in 2010 is, you know, it's the end of the summer. And if a big thing from July isn't still number one, then it often is a thing that is a new movie that's not as popular, but ends up at number one. So is a heist movie that has a new movie that's not as popular but ends up at number one. So it's a heist movie that has a pretty full cast. You got Matt Dillon, Paul Walker, Idris Elba, T.I., Chris Brown, Hayden Christensen, and Zoe Saldana.

They're all in this movie, but I have never heard of it. It looks like a wannabe heat of those many he you know heist films I who with a cast like that maybe it's even all right but yeah I had literally never heard of it before takers but it was number one at the box office and we also have the 2010 Emmys I'm looking at the stats here outstanding comedy series modern family outstanding drama series mad men the win I cared about though was Bryan Cranston for Breaking Bad in 2010 yes yes this yes. This is like really peak Breaking Bad popping in popular culture. Yeah, wasn't it at the time like Mad Men would usually win it, but that I think,

I feel like Jon Hamm was always like nominated and never won for best lead actor and dramatic in the Emmys, right? I don't fully remember, but yeah, I think it was something like that. I also remember in this era of the Emmys, if, you know, if I cared at all, it was frustrating that, um, year after year after year, modern family racks up everything while like 30 rock is still rolling and community and parks and rec and all those other like actually good network TV comedies, uh, that, you know, had a bit more of a, like curb was on at the same time but no every year going back for more modern family well we can thank our

lucky stars that glee didn't win I don't know think about glee except for watching community radicalized me against anyone who liked glee in the program glee itself that is for sure I I watched two episodes of it because it felt like gay homework and I was like, all right, I probably should know. But it, and songs are fine, but it is like a laborious show to watch. It probably, well, has aged poorly for, I think, a lot of complicated reasons with Glee. But I always held a grudge against Glee for repopularizing Don't Stop Believing, or reinserting it into the pop culture, one of my least favorite songs of all time. But that's what happened the week this episode aired.

And joining us this week is Chris Wade from Chapo Trap House and the Aunt Introducing Podcast. Welcome to the show, Chris. As I said, good news. It is a great time to talk about Futurama. I'm excited to be joining you for this unfortunately deeply mid-episode of the show. But I love Futurama and I'm glad to be here. There's a few good things to salvage. I will say we've been doing the Comedy Central seasons now. We're about, we're towards the end of the first season of 13 in quotes and things are picking up. This is a little mid, but I'm here for Maurice Lamarche as we talked about in the pre-show chat but Chris actually reached out to be on Talking Futurama and Chris I want to know it seems like

you have a strong connection to the series if you want to be on our show. Yeah well I mean here's my almost blasphemous secret giving the the context and fandom of the pod that I do, Chappo, which is a deeply avowed, Simpsons loving show, is that I, at the time, was much, like in the early 2000s, my high school era, was much more into Futurama than I was The Simpsons. The Simpsons peak era kind of passed me. I was not like, hip to what was good on TV

when Simpsons was really peak. I was born in 88. So like, and I, you know, I wasn't really allowed to watch like adult TV until like the late nineties. Uh, so I kind of missed those, those real hot seasons of the Simpsons, but Futurama dropped in 1999, right as I was discovering adult TV. So I got to watch along with that in its original run. And at that time I was way, way more into into it. I've seen every episode of the first five seasons, a few drama, dozens of times probably. And I do still think even though I've since gone back and been consumed every episode of The Simpsons from the first 12 seasons or

so at least. Like, I think when it is rocking, like, the best episodes of Futurama go toe to toe with the best episodes of The Simpsons in just like pure jokes per minute, solid plot constructions, you know, character beats. Like, like I do think that the best Futurama episodes are the, are some of the best of the graining bursts, you know character beats like like I do think that The best few drama episodes are the are some of the best of the graining bursts, you know Yeah, Henry and I are a little bit older and we took different paths But we arrived at the same destination because when Futurama debuted we were Jaded teens who were getting tired of the Simpsons. We we agree with the narrative the Simpsons is bad now But here is this new show that's funnier every week And I know at least during the initial run of Futurama, I was a much bigger fan of Futurama and also King of the Hill than the Simpsons that were

running during that time as well. Oh yeah. Yeah. Now it was, it was an interesting time, like, uh, where it felt like Futurama was like all where the good stuff went from The Simpsons or whatever before I knew the names of writers or directors and all that on the show. But it kept getting stronger too as it went. And then on top of that, I think I really fell in love with Futurama extra from broadcast to the DVD releases because I got super into The Simpsons DVDs and then it was very easy. Like they don't release Simpsons DVDs, and then it was very easy, like they don't really Simpsons DVDs that often, so in the months in between,

I start getting into Futurama even more in their great DVD collections. Yeah, and that is the cool thing about, I mean, I also remember being frustrating and being one of the things that made me first clue in to how TV works, because Futurama was always getting yanked around on the schedule. It was like sometimes

hard like actually hard to watch or like figure out when it was going to be on but at the same and it was always like on the verge of cancellation if I remember correctly but at the same time it kept getting more ambitious, tighter, funnier until up its cancellation, and then I can't really I couldn't really believe that they brought it back I remember the inter between movies, but now it's like oh boy. I Kind of wish that they had let this thing go There's it has one of the more successful reboots. I'll say compared to other things and I'd rather now this might sound a little harsh I'd rather watch an okay Futurama than the best that Disenchantment has to offer. I gave that show three seasons,

we liked it in the beginning, and it kind of spun its wheels for a very long time, and ultimately disappointed with the project. But yeah, I feel like, yeah. I also appreciate that first season of Disenchantment. I thought it was interesting to see a groaning verse thing do something with a little bit more serialized storytelling, and I thought that there was, you know,

the fantasy setting was fun for them to play around in. But I concur, like I watched like one episode of the second season of that and I was like, all right, I don't think this is going anywhere. I think in the past we've diagnosed it as more of a Netflix problem than the writers. I want to be nice to the writers who've like, it really seemed like Netflix told them,

no, this has to be a Netflix show that constantly has cliffhangers, which is the opposite of writing for a Mac reigning style show. Yeah. I mean, they're the, in the best of like the few drama episodes, there, there are actually like really like, you know, stakes and, and you know, good sci-fi storytelling that has like real peril in it. But the thing that's so satisfying about Futurama is how tight those really good episodes are in a really like good sci-fi or, um, you know, almost, um, uh, Twilight zone style, like perfectly closed loop, little sci-fi short story, you know? For real. Totally. Also, I want to tell you, since we did our Monorail live show, Chris,

I have now been to multiple sets and props of The Music Man because I visited the Warner Brothers Studio Tour. So, Chris, if you've never done, you live in LA. Yes, I have done the Warner Brothers Studio Tour. I sure you okay when I've done it. This is a big digression I'm sure you like seeing the thing that they had there that really blew my mind is one of the original like two-story tall like cell photography things that Disney used to make like the Disney method of Like animation photography photography, which I thought was very cool to see in person. Now, Henry, did you see all 76 trombones that led the big parade? I think they only had one trombone in the case there. It's sad. It was right after we

had, it was within five months of us doing the live show I went there and they were like, oh this is where we filmed this thing young Sheldon or this is where we film Abbott Elementary and I was like, or friends and I was like, yawn, yawn and they're like, and here's where the 76 trombones marched down the street in the music band. I was like, wow. But yeah, sorry for the, sorry for the music man.

We gotta talk about that musical man. We actually have one more segment to cover, Chris, before we get into the meat of the episode. And in this segment, we talk about what we were tweeting about on the day this episode aired and that segment is called This Day in Twit's Story. Yes, it's This Day in Twit's Story, everyone's favorite segment on Talking Futurama. And I'm going to let everyone know what we all were tweeting about when this episode aired on August 26, 2010.

I'll go first. This is what I was tweeting about. Bob, I'm in Arizona now. Was going to blog about the first leg of my trip, but I'm a little depressed about the whole I'm in Arizona now thing. And Bob Mackie, Lor here for everybody. This is my great drive out west to where I stayed up until this very day so I know Chris you may you recently did a journey out west not too long ago right yes yes yeah we moved from New

York to LA in August of 23 it's great I've really enjoyed moving out here obviously this has been a stressful time in my personal and professional life due to things that have been going on with Chappo, and the personnel and my close friends who work on it. But the actual living in LA of it all has been great. I didn't quite make it there, Chris. I ended up living in Costa Mesa, California

because I was working for a video game developer. So, you know, a stone's throw from LA or a two-hour drive. Yes. Well, my mom lives in San Diego, so I'm up and down this part of the coast all the time. What I remember most about that trip was playing Bayonetta in my hotel room on the way over there. The trip was uneventful, the drive. So that's what's happening with me. Henry, this is what Henry tweeted about. And I want to know the answer to this. We're uncovering more Henry lore on this podcast. So Henry says, holy shit, secret gaming celeb sighting in the GR offices.

Kind of freaking out. Keep your ears tuned to this week's Teardar to find out more. Now in case you don't know, this is a podcast Henry was on 15 years ago. And I'm wondering, Henry, who was this celeb? Do you have the answer, or is this something you'll need to get back to me about?

Man, okay, you know what? I am gonna say it was UFC legend Frank Shamrock, I believe it was, I think, because he was in town to promote the EAMA game and I was very excited to talk to Frank Shamrock because he had fought pro wrestlers I knew. So I could ask him about that. But yeah, then he did a drop for the Talk Radar podcast that I was a mere seventh chair on at the time before I became the truly powerful podcast, a podcaster I am today.

Okay. I want to know the answer to that, so thank you. And Chris, we have a tweet from Chris. Chris, like us. Okay, great, it was going to take me too long to look it up myself, so I'm glad you have one. I did the research, Chris was smart like us and got on Twitter when it was cool 15 years ago, and this is what Chris says.

Netflix on my phone? The future is now, finally. Hashtag media consumption. So this really puts us in time. We were finally getting video on our phones. Streaming video had been a thing for, let's say, three or four years, and now you can watch Netflix on your phone.

Yes, wow. What a 2010 ass tweet. You have to be excited about Netflix is very late on. I'm sure I meant that somewhat ironically, or trying to be a joke about, joking about the excitement or push to to that but like I Netflix is something I download I did download on my flip phone the day came out and I don't think I've watched a single

Second of Netflix on my phone in the intervening 15 years I think I think I once watched one tiny thing on Netflix on my 3DS just because it was possible. Ah, no, but or also, you know what? This actually might make sense because at that time in late summer 2010, my main gig was that I was trying to help this this like 65 year old guy who had a contract at PBS make a documentary about the naval war in the North Atlantic in the 1940s. So I was spending a lot of time driving up and down the eastern seaboard with this older man, videoing the inside of museum submarines. But that also meant that I was like staying in like

shitty motels or in places as we did this and like Groton or you know where the Coast Guard college is. So I probably was actually genuinely happy to be able to stream TV shows on my phone in an easy way because yeah, that was a very weird mobile summer for me. Yeah, this is a time when Netflix was not making original programming, so we only had good shows that currently existed to watch, not their stuff. Yeah. It's before the

algorithm told them what to make and to do things like they did to disenchantment. We talked earlier. Now the only times I use Netflix on my phone are when it's the only option for Netflix, or say I've downloaded movies to watch on a flight with no Wi-Fi or this just happened where me and my husband are watching a movie on regular TV and then we say wait isn't that an actor from this thing or wait wasn't this a line from an old thing? We pause the main TV and then I'll pull up on my phone Netflix or some other thing to be like okay let's see the old scene on the old thing. So it's more of a second screen experience. So now we can finally talk about the episode. I will only say the name of this episode one

more time. It's Lure Reconcilable Indifferences. Thank you, Patrick Verone, for making such a complicated title. Every time I had to name a file something, put this title as a file name. I had to copy paste it from Wikipedia. I refused to write it again. Me too. Me too. Though, you know, on the, on the commentary for not the episode, but for the, the video comic that they made for this episode, Dan, he better of her own distances himself from that title himself even. And he's like, I didn't name this. It was Dan Weber who came up with it. Blame him for the complicated spelling. Uh, I, it is very stupid, but I do think it was, I remember watching this and being like, I didn't name this, it was Dan Weber who came up with it. Blame him for the complicated spelling. It is very stupid, but I do think it was, I remember watching this and being like, that's

a clever name for this, for those two characters and for this plot. There's a late King of the Hill, probably around this time with the same kind of title, because later in the show, I guess he's introduced earlier, but he becomes a character later. The character Enrique is a Strickland propane employee. He splits with his wife, moves in with the Hills. The episode is called Enrique Silable Differences. Much easier to say and write. See, all of these rich California comedy writers, they're experiencing divorce through either their own lives or friends. And so they learn about the term irreconcilable differences

and are putting it into their comedy. Well, it is one of those things where it's like, it almost makes me wonder if somebody came up with the joke name and then wrote the episode backwards from that. Yeah, yeah. I mean, it's brilliant and it's so overly convoluted in a very Futurama-y way. I can see that happening. But I love this as an episode of a continuation of the Omicronian story and an upping of like, you know, the human horn episode I think is funnier than this. It has more jokes about penises for sure in it, but this continues it of our, okay,

now it's not just their sex life is dead, but they are just like on the brink of divorce. Like that's how bad it's getting for these two. He's lost the passion for conquering worlds. I really, just on these characters, I do really like the one with the single female lawyer episode where they're obsessed with past broadcasts of some like network legal drama that then the crew has to recreate. I think that one's quite funny. And that's the first one where we meet them, right? Yeah. Season one is it's called When Aliens Attack. That's Ler and Nduh Nduh, his wife. And we

don't really get the dynamic between them until the problem with Poplar is referenced in this episode where she becomes the classic nag and he becomes the classic resentful husband. And they're both on the verge of domestic violence. But that's the episode where he's eating the human and she's like, do you want some human with your salts? And we see more of the salt problem in this episode too. Yeah, I really like that they become an outlet for a very specific complaint with basically, I would assume the writers who are in their 40s and 50s

have general like, you know, middle-aged man problems that doctors tell them, like, cut down on sodium, don't eat such fatty foods, eat some vegetables, and he and she is trying to push him healthier. His wife is making him, sorry, egg white omelets and turkey burgers. And Verone admits as much, like, he's like, hey, I was going through midlife crisis when I wrote this episode. He had turned 50, he had left his high ranking position in the Writers Guild of America.

He was president during the strike back then. Ooh, interesting. Yeah, after the 07, 08 strike ended, I totally understand why he's like, you know what, I wanna take a break and write about space alien divorce again. I don't wanna lead these strikes next time I've done what I'm done with this

Highly politicized labor action. Well, we open with another episode of the scary door and we can speed through this I don't think this one is as successful and honestly I think they really should have retired this device when they did the scary door which was basically every Twilight Zone in a giant collision with each other. You know, why should I trust you? You're Hitler. When the guy's on the plane, it's every possible Twilight Zone happening at once. Please help me Ava Braun. Like, yeah, I know the, I think the joke's fun. I there, this episode is full of like fairy fun, uh, Futurama David Cohen style turns of like, you know, why, why don't you believe I'll tell you why I don't believe in aliens. You are one like, but yeah, but it's also like,

is it's, it's kind of like, well, okay, so what is the joke here? Is the joke that it makes no sense or are these supposed to be? Because he's like, he's like, I don't believe aliens exist, but, but also you are one. And I already, I don't know. It's like yeah it's one of those things where I I always bump against especially in shows that I know can be so smart like this when the joke is is essentially like hey look at this purposely dumb thing that we made. Yeah I guess it's the twist is that the show forgets its own premise. Yeah maybe. I I think honestly they redid it to, they did it again so they could do a wide screen longer opening

for the scary door and the animation on the Dracula, or let's just say a vampire tap dancing, I love that animation so much in and of itself that I was like, no, I'm fine with this return to scary door. Some fun visuals. I also really like, yeah, the peeling the banana and there's a pickle inside. Ooh. Could you imagine?

I wasn't expecting that. Well, I mean, the big, ultimately the point of this is we pull back from the TV and now we're with Lurr and he's asleep and there's trouble in paradise in our first clip. Hey, I was watching that. The Saints just needed a field goal, a tie. Lurr! You lazy ruler of the planet Omokon Percy I ate. You said you would conquer a planet today, but you have not even shed your skin yet. Yes, and I heard you the first hundred times. I'll conquer something tomorrow after I fuel up on one of your disgusting egg white omelets. You want yolks? Fine. Enjoy your stroke.

And a lot of this is, I guess, the high concept device of we're basically writing Flintstones jokes or very classic sitcom jokes for these horrible, horrible aliens. Yes. Yeah. That it's perfect lure as a sad loser guy, or who is in a depressive episode. He hasn't shed his skin all day showered, and he's like sleeping in the afternoon with Twilight Zone reruns on. Like that is a sign of like a major low point in your life. Yes.

And he's basically being told to go out and get a job by his wife. Yeah. Yeah, I mean I think, I kind of like, again, you know, I hope I'm not spending too much of this episode being like, this show was better four seasons ago, but I like the Omakronian's jokes better when it was more focused on how foreign earth concepts

are to them more than that they're a dysfunctional mirror. They're married with children or whatever. I think I do the one of the most enduring lines from the show that I've now seen. I'm starting to see it used on on social media almost as much as like I said, the quiet part loud as a reference to like media is I see all the time. Why does this character not simply just eat the others? Exactly the largest friend. media is, I see all the time, why does this character not simply just eat the other smaller guy? Exactly. The largest friend.

Yes. Yeah. I mean, that is the, that is if we are to identify a single enduring Omicronian's joke, that is the one. And that is much more in the realm of like our, our earthways are strange and foreign to these violet space warlords. Then she's got the,i- literally there's so so much mileage in this episode of she's literally got the frying pan.

Yes, yes, and I mean we talked about this before Chris, but to remind our listeners, every time the show comes back they don't have as big of a writing staff. So the the the magic of the early years was all of these PhDs and two smart nerds together in one room and then they basically cut that in half for the Commie Central seasons. A big writing room does not always equal a hilarious show. A friend of the show, Bill Oakley, says he does not like writing rooms anymore and he doesn't think that's the key to a very, very funny show. It can lead to a lot of arguments, a lot of just very, very late nights for no reason.

But in the case of Futurama, I think more writers does equal more good. Yeah, I mean, I assume it's case by case, but you know, and I can assume it's, I've heard from friends that it can sometimes be very enervating, but then also from people who've said like, when you're there and it's just clicking with people, it's like the absolute best way to work in that medium. So yeah, there's definitely,

there was definitely something cooking in the original Futurama writings room. And I did not know that about the cutting of the size of the rooms, but it's grimly hilarious that you can see that one-to-one reflected with like the quality of the output. Yeah, we need a bunch of nerds arguing over is this the best form of this joke? Can we make this even more esoteric for the Comedy Central audience? Yeah, esoteric but clear, I would say, is like how the original, like the original magic of Futurama is like some really wacky out there science stuff, but always like the writing

is like, you get what this is supposed to be. Like immediately. Yeah. And then after this scene with Ler and Nandenda, we cut to this, The Adventures of Delivery Boy Man, which is a comic that Fry is drawing. And it's great voice acting by Billy West, doing all the sound effects, doing all the voices, funny crew drawings. It's kind of like watching an animatic for a show

that was never made, but very poorly done. My only issue with this is, when you make Frye this childish, it feels like it should be illegal for Lila to be sexually interested in him. He does feel like, at this point you're like, is Frye intellectually disabled? Like, I feel like they've regressed him too much

in scenes like this. Yeah, when they, well, and he's not written this stupid this season, this is, but it's so fun to see his bad art But it's inconsistent with how dumb or not Fry has become by this evening I mean I said the same thing when we did the the Star Trek episode where it's like is he smart enough to have been? A Star Trek nerd like that that almost seemed wrong to me with fry, but this Man, I really do like his bad comic book, but it's, this is the comic book of a six-year-old. Yes, yeah. I feel like, I'm

not, I feel like this is something that happens whenever Frye gets relegated to like B and C plots. It's like, if you're trying to go for just like a quick joke, it's like, you know, I don't know, hand stuck in the vending machine style humor with him. Yeah, it just, it's a little too much. And there are some clever things about this where the resolution of Delivery Boy Man is to go back in time to before when there was a problem and then he can kiss Leela. But that's kind of it. These are cute, but I guess, Henry, there was a Delivery man comic right for comic on 2010. Yeah so so yeah, they this also is a Thing in this episode it is full of like fan service and love for the fans and self celebration but you know, they're gonna go to comic-con later and Part of promoting at comic-con used this episode and so bongo comics which if you don't know, was the Matt Groening own official publishing arm

of Simpsons and Futurama Media. Like Matt Groening retained the publishing rights to the Simpsons, which a deal would never ever happen now with any cartoon. And so he also published Futurama Comics. Patrick Verone actually did write some Futurama Comics as well as for the show, despite being like, and it must be something he loves because it certainly wouldn't be the pay for like

a Harvard graduate, the head of the WGA to write it. And so, so after he wrote this for the show, I think it was his idea to pitch it as a comic and then they printed it as a comic that was their free comic they gave away at their booth and at their panel at San Diego Comic Con in 2020. And there's full scans of it online if you search for Delivery Boy Man Comic. The DVD has like a full video version of it with Billy West's voiceover. That was fun. But it's also funny on the commentary that the animation head Claudia

Katz throws a little shade at it like, oh, you just traced drawings from our artists and didn't credit them when you published as a comic. How nice. Actually, I said animatic earlier. Fry's comic reminds me of that brief wave of motion comics that were popular late aughts, early 2010s, where instead of reading Watchmen, you can watch someone cut up all of the artwork and make it move like a Newgrounds cartoon. Yes, yes. Yeah.

I mean, didn't they essentially do that for the Watchmen movie? Oh, man. Doing the, what is the comic within the comic, the Black Sails or whatever that thing? Oh, the Black, yes, yeah, the Black Sails one. Yes, yeah. That's like a DVD extra or something,

or like a direct-to-video. Okay, speaking of all this, and, yeah, the Black Sails one. Yes, yeah. That's like a DVD extra or something, or like a direct-to-video. Okay, speaking of all this, and Watchmen, did you guys go to Comic-Con during this era? Because I feel like this is like peak, specifically San Diego Comic-Con as like a cultural force and locus of like entertainment industry stuff.

If you want to feel more connected to humanity and a little less alone, listen to Beautiful Anonymous. Each week I take a phone call from one random anonymous human being. There's over 400 episodes in our back catalog. You get to feel connected to all these different people all over the world. Recent episodes include one where a lady survived a murder attempt by her own son. But then the week before that, we just talked about Star Trek.

It can be anything. It's unpredictable. It's raw. It's real. Get beautiful anonymous wherever you listen to podcasts. I was never sent there. I was in the games industry as was Henry. I went to E3. But Henry has been to Comic Con multiple Yes, thank you. Hey, since you asked Chris, thank you for setting it up. I went to many Comic Cons. I went to, by my count, I want to say six.

I went to six. One is a fan in 2008, and the rest professionally, and they were always one of my favorite things to cover all year. It was so much easier than E3 because video games were like the fifth or sixth most important thing of them. So I had fewer appointments, and I could actually sneak my way into like, because video games were like the fifth or sixth, the most important thing at them. So I had fewer appointments

and I could actually sneak my way into like, can I interview a TV show or movie person? And it's sort of about a video game. So that's when I got to like interview Phil Lamar or Adam West. Like those were the great moments. Well, Henry, you said that video games are number five. Number one, information about the show, Chuck. That's why you went to Comic-Con. Oh, fuck. that video games are number five. Number one, information about the show Chuck.

That's why you went to Comic-Con. Oh, fuck. I haven't thought about Chuck in so long. But yes, people were obsessed with that. Henry, we might have walked by each other because the only time I've been to San Diego Comic-Con was in 2008. I was living in LA that summer interning.

And again, I have family down in San Diego. So I figured, I've got to go see what all this is about. So I went down to San Diego for the weekend and went to, I think, one day in San Diego, so I figured I've got to go see what all this is about. So I went down to San Diego for the weekend and went to, I think, one day of San Diego Comic-Con just to get a scene check. And I remember that that year, the big thing that they were promoting that was everywhere was the Watchmen movie. Two story tall posters for it everywhere.

I don't think I did anything, but I was there and wandering around in the summer of 2008. To quote Zapp Brannigan later in the episode, it sickens me. All that Watchmen stuff back then is a Watchmen insane fan. But yes, I remember 08 as I went to it with my pals because we had a friend who was in the Navy and stationed there at the time. So he's like, hey, I'll host you guys. Free, free stay. We go. This was, I wanna say, less than two weeks after The Dark Knight came out in theaters. And the Joker ruled that Comic-Con.

Joker, Heath Ledger Joker was every single place. Yeah, it is weird thinking about the flips of stuff that has happened since then because like he let her joke Joker. But you guys mentioning Chuck again just like takes me back to a different era of TV where you would be like, Oh, the insane Chuck heads are out and we're going to like, they're going to be spoilers for the new season of Chuck or we're going to know who all the guest stars on the next season of Dexter is going to be. All right. I hear you companies doing a California Cation panel and like it's kind of funny because there were all these things, but there was still like few enough that they

could all have their own fandoms. Whereas now like it's, it's, it's hard to admit, like what would you even be out now? Like a Stranger Things panel, that's the only thing that people would be caring about now. They're still bringing back Dexter 15 years later. I guess 2010 was still, the nerds had not won, and now they fully have won, and we just live in Comic-Con now. Comic-Con America.

That's it. Target is Comic-Con, or any department store is Comic-Con. We'll see what happens at this year's Comic-Con. What I remember only really announced at last year's Comic-Con was that it was trying Marvel spending a lot of money to desperately recapture the feeling of when the MCU like wasn't looked down upon as crummy. So that, I mean, because they ended it with gee who's gonna be dr. doom that's right we paid the most money ever and what Robert Downey jr. is back except he's dr. doom crazy good luck

Marvel that seems like that ship has sailed I'll see what you do with the X men in ten years or whenever you get your shit together to do that so nobody cares about the story of a delivery boy who was bitten by a radioactive Superman, but Zoidberg finds one thing he does love. This is wonderful. It is, isn't it? Wait, those are the ads. These x-ray specs will really take the guesswork out of surgery. No more chopping blindly in the goop. Don't waste your allowance, Zoidberg. This stuff is butt-grade crap. We take the guesswork out of surgery. No more chopping blindly in the goop. Don't waste your allowance, Seidberg. This stuff is butt-grade crap.

Amuse your friends with real vomit. Throw your voice. Sea monkeys. Throw your sea monkeys. My disintegrator ray really works. But that's you. That's how I know it's Buncombe. The Farnsworth novelty disintegrator ray rays nothing more than a common teleporter ray

Worthless toy I'm sick of being critiqued by nitpicking nerds. I'm taking this to a comic book convention I'm not sure if that aspect has changed at all, but good observation. No, there's, okay, everything, like these jokes work for any Comic-Con, but they are drawing the outside of the San Diego Convention Center. These are the exact aisles that were there. Everybody's walking around with these specific type of long crinkly plastic bags that are given away at every booth. Like it's so specific and I say this too because Matt Groening is a big part of Comic-Con. Like he is part of Comic-Con before people knew who Matt Groening was. Like he, I found a 1990 interview with him where it's like he's the king of Comic Con cause Spring, the Simpsons just got huge and he's talking about how he went, he had

been going there for almost 10 years at that point as a struggling independent artist. Though also if you see the 1990 Comic Con in that footage, you'd be like, wow, things rea- this is so small by comparison. Yeah, I mean, I've enjoyed, I've looked back in some of the, that early Comic Con history because it is so funny that it, you know, cause I, I am, as I said earlier and brought it up, I am like fascinated by this single event as like such a driving force for culture, even though it seems like it has waned in the past few years. But thinking about it as such a niche thing for absolute weirdos

and fringe obsessives, actually an underground thing. I think it started in 1972 or something for those first three decades to then become the driver of culture For I guess a decade itself. It's a fat. It's a fascinating event Yeah, like in 1991 when they sent Bart and Lisa to a comic convention the writers were thinking is this too niche? Well people know even what this is and those are the conventions. I went to as a kid They were just in a local hotels ballroom, and it was just a a bunch of dealers in one room that was it maybe one celebrity through a brief stint in middle school as a magic of the gathering player oh there you go yeah no it was if you if you didn't live this

like it might seem crazy in a pre-internet age too, that like I went to, mainly Megacon in Orlando and DragonCon in Atlanta, those were my main ones growing up, and I experienced Comic Cons, like I've just, this was the only time you heard people like talk about comic books or other nerd stuff on any kind of elevated form on a stage. Or you could, like now you can tweet at, and probably see too much on Twitter of

your favorite creators, but back then you'd never know what Todd McFarland looked like until you got in line to get his signature. But this was them kind of interrogating what current Comic-Con by that point was. Though so many, I was trying to track how many shows did their let's go to comic con episodes like Like clerks did theirs in their sixth episode like making fun of it for instance Yeah, and we're about to do a Simpsons where they go to a comic con and macarooning is a great Yeah, I you know, yeah, there's there's oh and also the ending of Ted to Five years after this is set at New York City Comic Con. Specifically, it's like, oh, that is, like, and I've been there a few times.

I'm like, no, that is the Javits Center. That's where they filmed it. That's the beautiful glass and steel spaceship, the Javits Center. So, and yeah, Futurama, always very active at Comic Con. They always had, when they were trying to, like, get fan excitement for a relaunch, that would be at panels to be like, hey, tell Fox that you want us to come back. Cheer, yay.

And they recorded and shared it. So they care very much about San Diego Comic Con. Well, over the course of six production seasons of Futurama, this is the one Shatner joke they didn't use or weren't able to use. And that is the sabotage joke where Zoidberg is eating the Zap brandy and figure. It's a cute joke because it says mint in box and he thought there was a mint in the box. I like that. And it is the recording outtake session or sorry, recording session out takes that brandy and figure. And it's the classic, I don't need to play the clip for

talking to drama listeners. It's, um, uh, Shatner's being corrected on his pronunciation of sabotage and he gets very testy with the audio engineer. He goes, it sickens me. Don't tell me how to say it. It's great. I also love that in this episode where acts two has several jokes built around more, Maurice Lamarche's ability to imitate a, you know, underground tape of multiple takes by Orson Welles. Then they have another joke of Billy West doing the same fur for Shadr. And we covered it a few years ago.

On the Star Trek reunion episode, they did cut a sabotage joke. So that's on the lead of scenes. I think it's a Canadian thing. It's the better part of a decade. They finally jumped on it. And I think it's a Canadian thing, because my wife is Canadian,

and Canadians say pasta. And often they will say taco in Futurama so they're in a different world than us normal speakers of English. I was unfamiliar with this this Shatner lore I mean I assumed that the toy thing was the reference to some like legendary piece of nerd lore but I didn't know that it was like a specific Shatner recording session. I think before we all got the internet, it was one of five outtakes people knew about. It was like that, the Casey Kasem dead dog dedication,

Orson Welles. Or another classic Kasem, these guys are from England and who gives a fuck. From getting frustrated introducing you two on TV. And yeah, it was just probably passed around on the same cassette tape, duplicated over and over again before the internet. I just learned deep Kasem lore that from listening to the ancient commentary for Ghostbusters that the Rick Moranis party in the movie when he dances with the cute girl,

the cute blonde girl at his party, that's Casey Kasem's wife who they put in the movie because Casey Kasem did an appearance earlier in the film, Ghostbusters. Nice. But yeah, no, Video Game the Movie and Movie the Video Game, that seems quaint in today's media landscape. Yeah, although we're still making Video Game the Movie

because hell, Borderlands was a thing, but now we're canceling all of the movie the video game games. It's true They they've a bunch just got canceled the other day at the time this recording including a Wonder Woman game And then they decided why don't we just kill fire everybody at this? Studio it's not like it's been open for 30 years. Oh god Yeah, I and I just saw that, like, that, speaking of Marvel, doesn't Marvel have one of the most successful games in the market right now,

and then they still just, like, fire to everybody at that studio? That's right, yep, yep. They're like, content farm can take care of this from now on. You have fun. Actually, Chris, since you never heard it, I can play the sabotage clip for you here. Show me some sabotage.

Spock, sabotage call it for you here so that is spots have attached the system one i don't say so uses this is a good i mean it's a pretty funny so we go to ballroom twenty which is actually where they have these Futurama Simpsons panels, I guess Matt Groening's other panel

I I've been to many a ballroom 20 panel and it is a very realistic creation of it It's a good sized room. If you can't get Hall H and a Futurama Simpsons can get Hall H Futurama gets ballroom 20 Macroening still making new animated shows. This one is called Futurella about the far off year of 4000, but it is instantly canceled the second they start showing the trailer. Which Futurama has now come back a third time. I think they can stop being salty over this, although I understand. Yeah, it's a funny gag to put in the reboot of the seventh season of the second show you've had

while the first show is running in its 20th season at that time. Like how salty are you going to be about this? Yeah, yeah. He's still working for Fox, getting paid by Fox. And I feel like they got their victory lap out of their system With the first movie but it is weird to see it happening like a halfway like towards the end of this first new season And and I'm glad at the lineup of heads They drew so many people on there with helpful name tags just in case you're not a freak who can recognize

The drawing of David X Cohen when you see ya I guess that's his first spoken role on a TV show, spoken line on a TV show. Although if you've heard the commentaries, you've heard David X. Cohen a lot and his very, very distinct voice. It's Peter Avanzino, Claudia Katz, Crystal Chesney, Thompson Macrating, David X. Cohen, Patrick Barone, and Ken Keeler,

and the guy, the robot is drawn to look like Bill Morrison, the editor in chief of Bongo Comics. We've only had two of these people on the podcast for interviews, we have to complete this number someday. Have you talked to Cohen? No, he's not online and we actually told Bill Oakley, hey, give us his information so we can bother him and he politely said no.

Okay. Because he's like, I'm with David X Cohen, ask me any questions you want and I was like, can he talk to us? Can we bother him? We have precisely one question for him. Will you come on the pod? I just want to ask him about the three beefs and butt heads he wrote.

I don't care about Futurama. I still have some poochy questions for him. Bill locally answered most of our poochy questions, but I still got a couple. And the moderator starts up a Q&A, always the best part of these panels, and reminds the audience, don't ask questions about The Simpsons. We're here to talk about Futurella. And I imagine that on the disenchantment panels, they had to give many disclaimers like, don't ask about

this, don't ask about that. We're here for disenchantment. Yeah, it is, it is literally hell to sit in those audiences and hear questions being asked that are the worst questions ever by people who ask like a thing that's not about this, who have more of a statement than a question, or like I have been actually, Bob, we were at the kids in the hall brain candy thing, and I got in line to ask questions, and I couldn't stand it anymore.

There was a woman in front of me who asked a terrible question, and I just shouted like, that sucks, my question's better. Shut up. Henry does try to rescue Q and A's, but I think there's no rescuing a Q and A. There's never a good Q and A. Yes, this is why we do not do them at our live shows.

That's for the best. That's neither. Yeah. But yes, Bender is assassinated by Matt Groening for asking about a Second Simpsons movie at this panel. And this is funny because 15 years later, this is the question they're asked in every interview. Macraening, Al Jean, every writer, it's the first thing they have to discuss

with any interviewer because even 15 years later people want to know where is the next Simpsons movie. Well, maybe they shouldn't have made that first Simpsons movie so shockingly good. It's really unfortunate that it's just a checklist of, you know, is this, is this professional jealousy of people who get access to macrating and ask the same question over again? Maybe, but it's just a checklist of Simpson's movie. When's the last episode? Do you still work on the show every day?

What do you think of original Bart mania? Like it's all the same. It's all the same. It's why I appreciate good writers like Alan Segal, who he actually bothered with writing, like asking people new things about The Simpsons. Yeah, I thought like all that stuff, like lore questions I find deeply, I mean the only thing I ever wanna know

from people who are talking to famous people is like process questions. Like how do you work, essentially? We really always wanna know about the writer writers room when we talk to Simpsons writers like who came up with what? What were you doing? What's the process like? Like yeah, what's the order of things? Like when there's final input put in? Like yeah, all that stuff I find interesting. Trying to clarify lore, get people caught up on, you know, I sure hope somebody got fired for that mistake type things.

Really irritating. And when is something coming? It's coming when we announce it. Yeah, yeah. Or could you spoil this for me please? What's the end of your movie? And I think this joke gets another thing I hated these panels too of like,

there's one famous person on the panel, they're the only one who gets any questions and everybody else on the panel gets like nothing. Yeah. Well, Fry is not at the Futurella panel because he's busy talking to our first special guest here. Mr. Aragonis, I'm a big fan of your cartoons and your mustache. You want it?

Take it. It's brought me nothing but misery. Wow, thanks. If you could just quiet down, I wanted to get your opinion of my comic book. Señor, anyone who still writes comics is a hero to me. It stinks. But I do like the tiny doodles in the margins. That's just some relish from a hot dog I found.

Attention ladies and gentle boys, the costume contest is about to begin. The costume contest, the costume contest! So yeah, Sergio Aragonés now 87 years young. I don't know if Gru is still an ongoing thing. That is this comic that had been going on since I believe 1982. Well, is co-creator Mark Eveneer still still writing stuff too. I don't, I haven't kept up with Gru either, even though I was, I was a big Gru fan in the nineties, but yeah, I mean, what a living legend. I mean, this is also like, you know, macrating most of the Mad Magazine cartoonists he grew up reading

are no longer with us, but Sergio Argonis because he got his start like in his teens, he's still doodling around. And he is like one of the most like prolific, just how he is such a quick artist. He has drawn so much. I was just thinking about Mad Magazine. I had, for whatever reason,

I had a very clear memory come back to me about reading a Mad Magazine movie parody of basic instinct called Basically It Stinks and recalling reading that as like a seven year old going like, damn, they got, that's good. They got them. Got their asses. But yeah, I loved Mad Magazine. At a shared family summer house one summer, I found a trunk of like hundreds of Mads and cracked that had been collected

by the various like different parts of the family members that that shared the summer house going back into the early 80s and that was a big like learning what things like what pop culture references were for me experience and I was subscribed to it up into high school I was a big Mad Reader. I was leaning outside of the frame because I was consulting the Bob Mackie Mad Magazine archives because this is from, let me see, April of 89, so if you want to see them take down 30-something, those smug fuckers on 30-something,

this is what you've gotta read. But I will say, I did not keep a ton of my Mads. I kept some of my favorite ones, but if you want to buy Mad Magazines, it is a buyer's market because they are valueless. You can buy, I think starting in the 60s is when they start to get a tiny bit pricey, but still marginally affordable. But anything from the 70s or 80s,

you're looking at like $3 an issue. It really didn't change much from the cover price of 37 years ago. Sergio is seriously one of the best. He's a Mexican-American legend. Mexican legend that lives in America for decades now. He was working a ton on Simpsons stuff at the time. They talk about it even on

the commentary. But if you want to see a great piece of Sergio Argonis art that he did for The Simpsons, in in 2004 Simpsons Comics 100 he did a two-page spread of basically the by Mon sci-fi con from the show that is like seriously packed with at least a hundred jokes in a two-page spread like it is so dense in detail in his doodles like you it has to be seen to believe and their scans online, just look for that two page spread there that he did, it's just amazing.

Oh my God, I've pulled this up. It's really good, yeah. And these mad guys, if they retire, their blood stops pumping, which is why Al Jaffe retired at 99 and then he died shortly thereafter. I mean, I think the dying was always in the cards frankly, but maybe he could have hung in there for another like 18 months if he kept doing fold ins

Also as a comic nerd I really did love that not only did they have him on here But they make the joke last actual comic book booth, which is sadly more and more true at major cons that There is the artist alley which is yes, you know in the spirit in the old spirit of the cons it's like the the artists have their own boots where they sell their stuff and the artists are not being charged what you charge, you know, universal studios to put, have a booth there, but the real estate keeps shrinking or it gets more and more marginalized or pushed to the side. I believe it like a recent New York Comic-Con, it got put in a different building than the actual thing. I remember going to the last time I went to New York Comic Con, you had to like really hoof it to find where the actual comics artists were. And I even as somebody who's like not hyper dedicated

in the comics world, I was like, this seems disrespectful to the spirit of what this is supposed to be. Yeah, it's really, it's too bad because that's obviously where it all comes from. And also like not just the artists who do original art of their own stories, but even just the creators of the Marvel comic books that become trillion dollar franchises who get paid, if they're lucky, $5,000 for a character being in a movie, then they have to like sign stuff at tables to scrape by a meager living. It's the- Sgt.

John Lennon The people who even know that they are there had to walk a half mile to find them. Sgt. John Lennon Yeah, often these creators aren't even invited to the movie premieres for the movies these characters are starring in, so I don't see a lot of respect there. But yeah, you really need to go to local conventions and like horror and classic video game conventions is to find the comic artists and like the the game cover artists or like the VHS cover artists. That's where they're

usually hiding. I think another weird change to cons since 2010 is and I've seen that the on the the podcast blank check Griffin Newman talked about the person to blame for this is Stephen Amell because he went to these cons and saw just how much money as a celeb you can make there. And he bragged about it. And he's apparently the one who recruited a lot more celebs who used would have thought, Oh, doing signings at a convention, not worth my time. Now they all want to do it and collect that money. Uh, we really need to re-instill shame into our celebs and famos because it is getting the the amount of prostrating these people will do for the tackiest and chintziest

things like I was thinking about this during the Super Bowl it's like get some self-respect celebs yeah John Goodman for a fashion maybe he's still doing this he was playing a human thumb for a gambling ad? Oh, god. Yes, the gambling, oh my god, the gambling ads are the ones that really just kill me, and like any time a famous person pops up in one, I'm just like, I've lost respect for you.

I mean, some of them, maybe, like if it's somebody like Ryan Reynolds, obviously he's been on that race to the bottom shamelessness grind forever, but anybody that I have like an ounce of respect for, the second they do crypto, AI, gambling, I'm like, it's over. You've lost. It's your integrity. Not to linger on the Goodman thing, but like you were in Barton Fink, you were on a network

sitcom for nine years when that mattered. Like, is the thumb money that much better than sitcom residuals? And they're already rich. It's like, yeah, I mean, same with like Harrison Ford is in everything now. And it must be his accountant told him like, hey, in five years you won't be able to earn any more money. You are this close to seriously being unable to do things.

So you better, if you're going to make $20 million this year, it's got to be this year. It's not going to be in 2030. He can't year, it's gotta be this year. It's not gonna be in 2030. He can't fly, he's gotta do something. I do respect those people who, you know, didn't have the Harrison Ford style careers and were in niche things that had perpetual fandoms and got by by doing like contours and stuff like that,

even if it is maybe vaguely humiliating and they do make fun of it and stuff like, you know like the, in the few drama like the Star Trek reunion episode and stuff like that. Well, I want to kind of skim past this costume contest because there's nothing super great here. It's just a lot of fun visual gags. And honestly, the Spider-Man guy in the mobility scooter shooting whipped cream is really low hanging fruit.

Yeah, yeah, I did not like that at all. And there's nothing funny about wearing Spider-Man clothes either. Yes. It's very respectful. Dignity. And it's what cool people do. At times Henry will have up to four or five

Spider-Man items on his person. Henry, I think you're clean now, right? Knowing that there was the joke in this one, I actually really made sure I was not wearing any Spider-Man today. Just a Dragon Ball T-shirt or sweater instead. Nothing nerdy about that. Well, ultimately, the point of this scene is that Lurr crashes Comic-Con, so let's hear

that. I am Lurr, ruler of the planet Omicron, Percy I-8. You are hereby conquered. Please line up in order of how much beryllium it takes to kill you. Damn, that's a good comment. in order of how much beryllium it takes to kill you. Yeah! Yeah! Damn, that's a good costume. Next up, contestant 38.

I don't understand. Why are the humans still eating their soft pretzels instead of surrendering? They're probably just waiting for Joss Whedon. Joss Whedon's here? Wait a minute. You look familiar. Yeah. You almost ate meon. Joss Whedon's here? Wait a minute. You look familiar. Yeah.

You almost ate me once. I was in your mouth for five minutes. Leela? And the winner is... Nerd Gasman! Woo! I got three boobs! What's the use? Now what?

I send you out to conquer a planet and all you bring back is JJ Abrams face? I thought you'd like it. You haven't even tried it on. I might dress up in a face if you ever took me anywhere nice. Oh boy, here we go. And by the way, Bender dressed up as Lila, AKA every man's fantasy or every nerd's fantasy. Yeah, his fruit boobs is fine. I mean, you know, that cosplay is a huge part of the cons. I once at the time of I did that tweet, I was working

with a coworker who did great cosplay and worked for months every year to be ready for the Comic-Con cosplay. She was big into it. And yeah, JJ Abrams, he deserves getting his face ripped off, but Joss Whedon a little more, I'll say. See, this is back when everybody just loved him. Like everybody just loved Joss Whedon, and it was like, it's a joke. The joke is, oh, even Lurr has heard of Joss Whedon

and thinks it's awesome. Well, he is obsessed with Earth TV. That's true. So he presumably is at least aware. I think he's just getting buffy if the single female lawyer timeline works out. Yeah. Yes. Oh, and this is where another guest is, right?

Yes. We will talk about her in her first formal scene, but I honestly think introducing her here is a mistake because it really shows too many cards. I don't know why they did this. Yeah, I mean it does work at setting up why later she is into Zoidberg, let's say. She dresses up as more than one thing. Yeah, I mean I kind of like the foreshadowing to it,

but it's so obvious that something's going on because they have to be so tight on highlighting jokes. It's like, why, who is this random person? Why are they giving, giving comments? Who's this new voice we're hearing? This is not like Tress McNeil. You know, hearing the JJ Abrams joke too, it made me go like, I wanted to see what's he up to. And there is literally enough for a huge Wikipedia page called unrealized JJ Abrams projects. He announces everything and does nothing. Yeah, this fucking guy and hey, I'll give him credit in this shitty age. If you

can scam David Zaslav out of like $30 million to not make a movie, then good for you, I guess. But like he doesn't make shit. Yeah. I mean, we going back to something we talked about earlier, he's he's the movie man. I've heard of the music man. Yes. Yes he is. I mean this is, again, this would be like the, in this era of like peak comic con, like, you know, he was going to be like the new hero, like people were talking about him like the new Spielberg around this time, you know? And then Super 8 came out and people realized like, oh no wait, this isn't, maybe not. He can't do Spielberg.

Maybe not. So yeah, Lurr's They're, they're griping with each other. I love his line. I built this castle with my own two slaves. And this is when P is kicked out. He gets a frying pan embedded in the back of his head. You know, they, they did upgrade from the rolling pin. That's the more stereotypical, domestic abuse weapons. So there you go. They, they went up that a little bit. Well, I won the, something that really made me laugh recently is the Lex G movie podcast, great movie podcast, Lex G, a legendary film poster describing

L. Fanning in a complete unknown as giving Bob both the rolling pin and the frying pan. I guess they had done the rolling pin joke before because when Lila became the superhero clavarella, her logo was an arm with a rolling pin grasped by a rolling pin. I mean that's so pure Futurama that you have all these space aliens and it still comes down to like the most cliched of like you know ancient jokes of the wife with the frying pan. And also yeah the last bit last bit of Comic-Con was that at that Ballroom 20 thing, they showed this up to now in the episode, this entire first act, was what they played at that panel in 2010 that year as they remark on the commentary

that they recorded days before it aired on Comedy Central. Yeah, I guess they knew who they were playing to. So they're showing this late season episode to the people who would like it most. See, then that makes us even, like, so I find all this self-referentiality of this segment, like, just on the inside side of tedium, knowing that they potentially set it all up, not to have fun exploring this space

as a comedic premise, but possibly to purposely create something with the sole purpose of tantalizing the people at the Comic Con. Yeah, I don't know, that makes it a little more tedious. It's the fluffer room full of nerds. And I mean, we're 15 years removed, I will say. At the time, it was kind of exciting, while like nerds have a little power now these days and we can see nerdy things on television and hey future

I'm I'm always rooting for them. So now It's not as special. It does feel like a little Self-aggrandizing maybe yeah, and especially after all this stuff like completely cannibalized all of culture It is it's not as cheap. It doesn't feel as cheeky anymore. It feels more like a threat It is it's not as cheap. It doesn't feel as cheeky anymore. It feels more like a threat Fans weren't being serviced all of the time then so it still felt special I I think to the writers they write from experience and once you become a famous person And make money like you're not having regular personal experiences So, you know if you're if you've gone to comic-con for 20 years, you're like, you know, there's funny things about this.

This is my life experience now. So Act 2 opens, Ler's asleep on the couch, just trashed the entire place, raided liquor cabinets, sprayed urine all over the ceiling and the walls, as Amy notes, and we get the return of the Thing Longer as it's used to prod Ler to wake him up. So it has many uses. I mean, a guy, a space alien covered in urine, that's a good thing to poke with a thing longer. Don't wanna touch that with your real finger.

And Ler's thoughts are, my wife hates me and planetary conquest has become a chore. So, almost it's like, it's also like, it's getting a job and it's also having sex, I think. This conquest idea. Well, I also like, I like how they write all his interactions with Lila right from them talking about the soft pretzels are it's an emotional affair.

He never wants to have sex with Lila. That's the problem. But it's that from the second he meets her, he's like, Lila, like this is running into an old like high school buddy who you then start cheating on your wife with. Like that's how it's kind of written. Even if I find the, the find the bossy wife trope, again, a little tedious in this, I do think it is funny that the emotional part of the emotional fair is that he has found

another bossy woman to boss him around, and they have to have a boss off at the end. That's a funny direction to take this. Of only being the only competent person on the Planet Express team, Lila has to be the bossy one Though it eventually all just comes down to say like these wives already come on So Farnsworth tells Larry's having a midlife crisis

Ler draws his gun and says Ler demands the comfort of pop psychological platitudes And this is when they give him advice. You need to reinvest in your relationship with Linda and yes, it's clear what I must do And then very long montage where he's doing all the midlife crisis stuff, but he's a scary alien Yeah with a with a good ripoff of or imitation of like the born-to-be wild riff by Chris Ting Yeah, I like I mean Bender is the perfect co-pilot for midlife crisis. Like he's the perfect toxic male energy to be like, here's how to be a jerk and get laid. I do think that the segment is,

I think probably the most pure fun in this episode, even if it's not tremendously funny, but I do love seeing Lurr get his like, hype track jacket and sunglasses and the horn extensions and going space clubbing and stuff like that. I think that that is some fun premise stuff. Yeah, he's getting his groove back and they're laying down some plot tracks where you see that his gun is actually a gun in this scene where he shoots the tailor for complimenting him I guess. And then it will be replaced with the teleporter gun when he hooks up with girl soon yeah I'll credit them for setting up the

teleporter gun in a way that I did not feel on first viewing or even late return to viewing for this that was like oh they're setting that up for a plot device later like it just seemed like a a funny bit about bad comic book ad junk sold. And they go to malfunctioning eddies. We see Victor, we don't hear him, but we do actually hear him in this a little deleted scene. Yes, it is clear what I must do. The 3011 Thunder Cougar Falconbird, it comes equipped with both interior and exterior.

I have but one question. Are you a big enough jerk to own this car? So yeah, I was wondering why he would be there and we wouldn't hear him, but yeah, deleted scene there with good old Victor. I love that scene from the first episode that they're in. Or Amy's buying a car, right? Is he, is it the joke? He's like the dashboard is made with a hundred percent pure Eagle beaks.

Also there are some Eagles in the trunk. There's a lot. There's a lot of endangered animals involved. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Well, Amy's response said, that's a lot of Eagles. exactly. Yeah, well Amy's response said that's a lot of eagles. And Ler also gets plastic surgery and they kind of want to make him look more like a human, but it's pointed out that his horns are essentially his reproductive organs, so he gets those extended perhaps like a certain billionaire rumors say. Yes. Which tracks that he refers to, that calls back to referring to Fry's quote horn in the previous episode. Yeah. All right. Hey, that's good. I mean, what a great, a very Futurama-y line. Also, they

house my testes. Yes. Also, they house my testes. I do like the plastic surgeon like dialing up the thing to give Lurr the human, the like standard Futurama normal guy face. Yes, yes. But Bob, you're right. He doesn't buy, Lurr does not buy a social media platform, a president or do tons of drugs. He actually wants to have sex. Yeah.

How strange. Yeah, so they go to the hip joint, which we've seen multiple times throughout. It is the the Jetsons looking club that everyone goes to dance and drink at Benders is wingman here. He calls him Borgnein and he asked her what's your type and Ler pulls out an issue of horno and Instead of doing the joke where it's a very long centerfold It's more of like a roadmap to display the full beauty of an Omicronian woman. I I love that design of a Omicronian Marilyn Monroe, like it's the classic Marilyn Monroe playboy pulled out pose.

And also I love that Bender, like they could have done a joke of like, ew, I'm disgusted by it, but Bender's vision zooms in because he also is really turned on by Marilyn Monroe-Nacronian. I think then his boner eyes will then sag immediately after he sees it though. He's interested in the porn, but then he realizes what it is.

Yes. Oh, you're right. You're right. I really, I did enjoy the gag of the magazine fold out that just keeps folding out. And then I thought there was a nice bit of animation afterwards of him shoving the whole thing back in his track suit inside. And I really like his like, aughts jerk look of the gold necklace, the track suit. The cape honestly would just be, it's his normal cape, but that's like just Peacock in of 2010.

What does he say about the cape? That's a nice cape you've got. Thank you, I got it from the normal way, from killing my father. Yes, and I have a clip of Ler finding a babe. Look bro, you're just not gonna find a lot of hot gigantic Omecronian babes in this solar system. There's one. Hey cool cape, Where'd you get that? What, this old thing? I murdered my father. My name's Lurr, ruler of the planet Omicron Percy I8.

I am called Girl. Of the planet Omicron Percy I8? That is a pretty name. What's on the TV tonight? Oh wait, I don't care, cuz I got a date! I know it's not what you want to hear, but I think this is a mistake. Leela's right. That's not what you want to hear. What you want to hear is that I fixed my comic book. Now the hero is more relatable because he has no ridiculous powers. Let's watch, shall we? One more step and little misconstructive criticism here gets it.

Oh yeah? I may be just a simple delivery boy with no superpowers, so there's nothing I can do. Okay. I do have to say on that clip, I couldn't tell if it was supposed to be a meta joke on this or not, but they literally say about the delivery boy man crying, like all your hero does is cry, nobody wants to do that, and then for the back half of this, nobody wants to engage with that,

and for the back half of this episode, it's just Lurr crying. Yes, yeah, yeah, I guess that's some meta commentary there. In response to being told no one wants to watch a protagonist cry, Fry then starts crying. Yeah, but you're right, Lurr's the meta commentary there in response to being told no one wants to watch a protagonist cry fry then starts crying Yeah But you're right Lers crying quite a lot of this I I mean I do all of the all of the notes on comics

I do think this up maybe is a little bit of Patrick Verone complaining about how his wife would give him notes on something Perhaps but I I like that first It's the old complaint about Superman. This character has no problems, and he's too powerful to have any dramatic tension. So then instead it's like, well, this guy's too weak, and all he's gonna do is cry, which feels like a mocking of autobiographical comics that are just about losers who don't do anything.

And now it feels like a commentary on how every superhero movie is about a superhero who either quits or loses his powers, because it's like, well, they can't just use superpowers all the time. Yeah, I know. It's also, and around the same time was when every James Bond movie is about like James Bond quits being James Bond or James Bond learns to be James Bond again. It's like, that's, I hate, but yes, this is around two years after this will be when the man of steel comes out where it's about like it's really depressing to be Superman. This sucks. And we have Katie Sackhoff playing girl who made her debut in the first act.

She's now a character in the show and this is unknown to me because I have no idea who this woman is. I'm sure she's very talented, but she played Lieutenant Kara Starbuck Thrace on the good version of Battlestar Galactica, a show I know nothing about, I know people like it a lot, maybe had a kind of a rough ending, but I know at the time it was very respected, it ended in 2009, so right after this is when she's guest starring on Futurama.

And then she was on 24 when this aired, a season of 24, but she would mostly stay in the realm of nerd things, so in recent years she's been in a ton of Star Wars stuff like The Mandalorian, Tales of the Empire, Clone Wars and Rebels. Sorry Chris, I know you have some sack-off opinions. No, I'm just remembering who this woman is and knowing that I've now seen her in a few things. I did watch, I think of at least a few seasons of that Battlestar Galactica. At the time, her being Starbuck, she queen of Comic-Con. Like I remember that being a big deal.

And no, I have some minor sack off opinions of just that. Well, also she's a pod, well has been a podcaster for a few years now. And it's a popular enough geeky podcast where basically she interviews friends who that worked with her on all of these battle stars Star Wars all these kinds of projects about things though yes that most recently she became the star of the Mandalorian because she basically on the show the Clone Wars David Filoni made up a character for her because he liked her so much Bo-Katan who was like the coolest Mandalorian ever.

And so then in season two, Dave Filoni casts her to play the live action version of that character in the Mandalorian. And season three of the Mandalorian is about the Mandalorian, who's the main character, saying about Bo-Katan, she's actually way cooler than me and should be the leader of the Mandalorians. And I give her the dark saber and she's awesome and you can see you can imagine that some Star Wars fans did not like that.

So that's funny background because I have watched all the seasons of The Mandalorian and I thought that there was like something weird going on here about like why is this show suddenly being about making this other Mandalorian the protagonist of the show? And I guess the background about that actress makes it make slightly more sense, but still. Yeah, the prestige TV version of a backdoor pilot. Yeah. Yes.

It's like, okay, so now this is a different show. It was so crazy in season three that it's like, that every episode is just the Mandalorian constantly going like, actually, she should be in charge. I't really want to do this like I got a goal to hang out with this baby. Beautiful Anonymous changes each week it defies genres and expectations for example our most recent episode I talked to a woman who survived a murder attempt by her own son but just the week before that we just talked to the whole time about Star Trek. We've had other recent episodes about sexting in languages that are not your first language or what it's like to get weight loss surgery. It's unpredictable. It's real. It's honest.

It's raw. Get beautiful anonymous wherever you listen to podcasts. Well, we are in a girl's apartment now and we can see some nerdy things around that might let you know that she is not who we think she is. But they have a good dinner, she decides to get more comfortable, takes off her dress and then also her skin. And it's revealed that she's essentially the 3010s version of a furry. She calls it a cross species dresser, but she is dressing up like an Omicronian. We see her dressing up like a decapodian.

She does not want wanna be a human. So she's got these alien sonas, I guess you wanna call them. Yeah, I definitely prefer the read on this of it being a joke about furries, which was an easy joke back then too, instead of a trans panic or whatever type joke. I prefer that to it. I feel like if they had written this

like a few years later, they would have gone with some play on furries. But I imagine even at this time that might have been a little I imagine a writers room debate of Do Comedy Central viewers know what a furry is in? 2010 I would say the answer today is absolutely. Yes, you could make that joke But yeah, then a little more a little more difficult in 2010 Maybe furries but not bronies But now I think they're those are known to all parties and you can tell like this is still kind of primitive nerd Television because they don't say cosplay

Nobody knows what cosplay is that in the intervening years You can just you could just talk about on it on at least Comedy Central Network TV, maybe in a law and order where you have Ice-T explaining explicitly what a cosplay is. It's called costume play. Yeah, the 64 year olds in the audience need the definition. Also that they found their horniest animator that day when they needed the scene of her saying,

I've sharpened your horns on my scaly thorax. Like, her movements there were done with the extra credit care from an animator. Like, they went overboard. A little something for the cable TV horn dogs. They definitely got her breasting boobily in those shots. That scene happens, and then we go back to Planet Express. This is when Lur is confiding in Leela.

I think this is really when the the affair begins. Hmm. Conquering things, I guess. I could conquer Earth, kill all humans. That's a thought. No, we don't need a war of the worlds. That's it. We need a war of the worlds. I'll call Orson Welles. Dork calling Orson. Dork calling Orson.

["The Star-Spangled Banner"] You're asking me, the renowned spokesman for Paul Masson Wine, to recreate my brilliant 1938 radio broadcast merely to deceive and impress the wife of this skinny reptile? Sorry, never mind. I'll do it for free. Ladies and gentlemen, we interrupt our program of the Jonas Brothers and their orchestra to bring you a special bulletin. So now it becomes a War of the Worlds parody.

I don't think we need to go too far into what this is because there's been some, there's been some parodies of this that I think this is now known, but yes, a radio prank, but one that, it's been exaggerated how many people actually fell for this. It's almost too smart for Frye to have heard of this, honestly.

Yeah, again, like given the quality of his comic, to be able to be like, yes, I'll recreate that famous radio host. But you know, we just did the critic pilot with Will Minnicker and we talk about how Orson Welles takes over that show too, because Maurice Marsh does him perfectly. Like he is, he lives to do it. And also this was the first time I noticed that because they're filed alphabetically, they also plug in two Futurama voice actor cameos in there as well in the head museum.

Oh, so I did see, there's Frank Welker, right? And Dawn Wells! Oh yeah, was she in Futurama? She's LeBarbara, isn't she? Dawn, LeBarbara is Dawn Wells. You're thinking this is Mary Ann from Gilligan's Island, right? You are correct, sorry Bob.

I will say just while we're on voice acting, that's just a nice little showreel clip for LaMarche going from his, even if I find how weepy Lurr is a little annoying, I do love him doing the sad monster voice for Lurr straight into his legendary Wells impersonation. Great stuff. Yeah, yeah. He can still do it now. He did it back then. And he was really dominating the 90s with this impression. The critic, Pinky and the Brain, other appearances, Ed Wood, he did the dub for Vincent D'Onofrio,

something that D'Onofrio was very upset about because apparently he worked really hard in his impression but Burton was like, get Maurice LaMarche in here. But he would come back to do this voice a bunch on The Simpsons, weirdly enough, because they did a War of the Worlds parody for Treehouse of Horror 17. And then there's two more episodes where Maurice comes in to do his Orson Welles impression. I mean, I'm sure he loves the work, but after nearly 30 years of getting tapped for this,

do you think Lamarce is a little bit like, ugh, not Wells again, all right, let me, po-miss-on. No, I think he never stops. I think he lives, even he jokes like, he did the brain as him for forever and still will do it happily. And I apologize to Don Lewis for getting you mixed up with Don Wells.

Many, many apologies. One is a white woman, one is a black woman who's 40 years younger. Yes, apologies Don Lewis. They spell and pronounce their names differently. Do you feel like Fry here with misspelling Earth all of the time. But yes, we see this War of the World style broadcast with very handmade cheesy effects. Because Fry wrote it, there's a bit of back and forth between Orson Welles and Fry about

what he does and doesn't want to say. This is referencing another famous outtake, the Yes Always outtake, where this is how Maurice Lamarche ended up doing Orson Welles on a bunch of shows, because to warm up, he would just recite that from memory. Yeah. Not the Paul Masson wine outtake, that's a different one. Is it for frozen peas? It's for the peas, yes.

Yes. He won't say in July. In July. Yeah. My wife and I are constantly, almost any time the concept of wine is brought up, we're always going, there's a Californian wine. Yes, got it.

Oh, the French. Oh, the French. I also like Orson Welles referring to Lerr as like small or skinny by his standards. That's just how huge Orson Welles was. So yes, there's a big back and forth as to why he should be describing Lurr when we can't actually see him yet.

But let's hear a little bit more from Welles in our next clip. The leader of the attack is swaggering out of his ship and up to a convenient nearby microphone. Now why couldn't I have just described his appearance at this point? This is the type of thing I'm talking about people of earth. I am Ler conqueror of your planet Q screams

You will now remove your skulls and play dodgeball with them for my amusement Whoo, I could swear his horns have gotten longer I could swear his horns have gotten longer Sir I've intercepted an earth broadcast put it up on the Zenith God Earth is conquered the destruction of civilization complete now stay tuned for little orphan Annie To hell with little orphan Annie. We've got to do to do something. What's that honey? How many dead? I don't know. 80 million? Okay, I love you, too.

That was Inda, Inda. She's taking me back. I'm sorry. I've been so difficult. So he's a little contrite here. Not not common for Orson Welles. So he's a little contrite here, not common for Orson Welles. I love that they write Zap as the type of Rube who fell for the fake broadcast of the War of the Worlds. He is the, you know, the stories go, the legend goes of the guys running out of their houses with the towers type guy. That's who Zap is here.

Yeah. And there are other, I mean, look up other sources on this, but it was exaggerated how many people actually fell for it. And I remember when radio lab was basically the only podcast. They did an episode about war of the worlds and how when they did it in other countries, other, other DJs would try this. Sometimes they were murdered. Oh, for doing this. And it worked a lot better there than it did in America. I do. I also like Zap specifying, is it the Nimbus?

That's the name of their ship? The Nimbus monitors are brought to us by the Zenith corporation. The one that hung in there. I think we had a Zenith in our spare bedroom growing up. I also like that Amy and Hermes had very little little Amy and Hermes had very little do in this episode But they got to imitate the the Grover's Mall part of the invasion as well. Yeah. Yeah, I Did like that

I guess I guess Grover Grover's Corner is the name of the town that war of the world takes place in Oh, it might be I just like like, yeah, I love that Fry's Childish, they get a second Fry's Childish production, so he basically makes up, he builds a town out of, he builds a town out of milk cartons as well, just like a six year old would do, so he's still in a very young way of making things. I think Fry needs a CAT scan at the end of this episode

to see what's going on. Able to conceive of contacting Orson Welles to recreate this millennia old broadcast legend, but cannot spell Earth correctly. That's true. It's still ERTH. So we come back to Act 3 as that Branigan has surrendered he's offered up Kip as a sacrifice. Kip's leg

is just nonchalantly ripped off it doesn't seem to bother him that much but Ler apparently not a fan of Kip. No I mean he doesn't taste good. He treats it like a frog leg and he's trying to wash the taste out of his mouth later. Fortunately Kip can grow back his legs. Yes, I do wonder what Kiff could taste like. I guess you're imagining frogs, but he has also specified in previous episodes that his body is supported by a system of fluid-filled tubes,

so I'm just wondering about the texture there. You're not eating around bones. The tubes are just popping in your mouth. It's kind of like a gushers situation. Oh yeah. Like a savory gusher. Yeah, a savory gusher. This is one of my favorite things is to speculate what animated characters feel like.

My top one that I've asked on Twitter before is what do we think the minions would feel like in real life? And the best response that I got was nerf but warm like human flesh. Oh, that's good. Mine is less imaginative. I think it'd just be like a really tough pork chop. Just really tough and dry and dense. See, I always, it's credit to their tie in

with the Twinkies brand, but I always think they feel like a Twinkie too, because they were marketed on Twinkie branding. Yeah, like a well done Twinkie too because they were marketed on Twinkie branding. Yeah, like a well-done Twinkie. Next movie, one of them needs to bleed. We've got to see if there's cream in there. I want to know what their bodies are supported by. Is there bones inside?

I think we've seen an x-ray of a minion during one of the movies, but I always imagined it was more of a fluid-filled sack situation. Yeah, first act, next movie, it's going to be just a vivisection for 20 minutes. Just screaming as it's being cut open. Oh, a live one then. So some blender animator out there who wants to put together a really horrifying showreel should make that. I think it's already happened, to be honest. But Lila is the bossy friend we all need in our lives

because she's convincing Lerrer tell the truth about the hoax He's gonna launch into his explanation. This is when the enda shows up in the ship. She's got this slinky dress on She's sexually rolling her ours now and she connects with Ler in our next clip Why are you yelling softly with the purple furred one? It's nothing my queen He messed up my hair. I'm missing a leg. We fought like hell, sir.

But in the end, we caved like a house of souffle cards. Got it. Peace with honor. Well, I resign again. Come, Nixon. Introduce me to the kitchen staff. I must lay down the law about Lure's low-sodium diet. You've got to tell her the truth. And lay off the salted peanuts. I'm just trying to get the leg taste out of my mouth.

Lure, I'm in here now, not out there. Give me a little time. With a lady like Enda Enda, one must use finesse. Come in, gigantums. So they're kind of still starting off at square one again with the bickering. No, I mean, I love how even when she's happy with him, she's like, I'm in here now. Why are you out there?

And though Tress is so great when she rolls the Rs on the like sexily. I can't do it. That's why that's why I didn't even try. No, she's. Thank you. Chris, now you've done a whole podcast on the history of presidents. Did you know this piece without a reference by Nixon? Oh yeah, of course. That was his proposal for winding down Vietnam, which he had elongated to get elected again. Well, see, these, I only know this thing, that as a quote because Nixon says it here.

And I only know about the delaying of the Paris Peace Accords because Kissinger had a joke about that when he lost his glasses in the Simpsons. Yes, we should mention hell of presidents. I believe that's available on your Patreon. Oh yeah, the president's show is available for individual purchase for I think, oh, I, I god I reduced the price for five dollars for the whole

series for President's Day and I never put it back up so we'll see if I remember to raise it for ten dollars or you can just subscribe to Chappatrap House and for five dollars a month you get access to everything. This goes live in six weeks but I'll tell our listeners act now. Chris is very busy. So we see this Omicronian takeover. By the way, when we were still keeping track of COVID variants, one of them was Omicron, and I thought, oh, that's gonna ruin LR, but we all forgot about Omicron,

so it doesn't matter anymore. Although that was eight variants ago, and we stopped counting, and COVID, Bob, COVID's not a thing anymore, you don't have to. That's good. I'm sick of all these names. But we see a lot of O. Macronian takeover footage here. Some of the highlights, I do like how Ndenda

now gets to use J.J. Abrams' face as a set of opera glasses. It's a nice little use of that prop. And also, I do wanna note that we see this underground mining operation that's happening under the White House. They're putting jewels on a conveyor belt. One of the characters is the single Australian man

from Spa 5. Yes! I missed that! Oh, that's so great! Oh, bloody chunda. One of my favorite episodes, anything Hermes related is great. But yeah, the single Australian man

who runs the entire mining operation, I definitely clocked him as well and was glad to see he made an experience even if he didn't get a line. Yeah, we didn't get a line. It really does show you what a nightmare person Hermes is, is that that's how he got his groove back by finding out how to make one operation run by just a single slave. Yes.

See, I was just so distracted by all of these jewels because we covered Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs recently on the podcast. And so just all of these jewels are drawn to look like they reminded me of the mining done in that movie. And so just all of these jewels are drawn to look like they reminded me of the mining done in that movie. And they did look delicious when Indah took a bite out of one. Yeah. She like bites it like an apple and she's, Oh, that's crisp. And this is when Ler sees Lila outside starts to feel some pangs of guilt because you know, Lila's a friend at this point. She's been in his mouth for five minutes so

uh that that that means something and this is one he confesses in our next clip there's something i've got to tell you what is it is there someone else what uh no no it's about this takeover of earth it's it's the spark that reignited our marriage? Yes, exactly. Good night. Oh Lord. Now what? I couldn't tell her the truth. Look you scaly crybaby, you do what I say and you do it now. I knew it. Frying pans, cast iron frying pans. It's not what it looks like.

What do I do? Do what I say. Tell her. Tell me what? Give me the heavy one. The invasion was all a fake. I just wanted to impress you. You lied? What else have you been hiding from me?

This is when Leela buys her own frying pan from Bender. And she holds it up defensively. It's good, like, defensive frying pan positioning there. It's a shield and a blunt instrument for swinging around. Now, I mean, it is very much the Futurama sexual politics that, as Leela put it earlier, all shebeasts cares about is if you listen to their nagging. Just prove that. But yeah, I mean, Ler versus Leela, sorry, Linda versus Leela is a fun combo.

Yeah, yeah, they've got the similar levels of aggression. Yes. And they won't take any nonsense from anybody. I also want to point out that just in how much they try to squeeze out of the frying pan jokes that during the takeover montage, the Planet Express crew is shown updating the Statue of Liberty to be also holding frying pans.

Up in the air like the torch? Yeah, exactly. So I think no less than four different frying pan jokes in this. They don't go to the Statue of Liberty a lot in the series, which is weird because they're in New York. But when I paused the intro just to write something down, and I noticed in the intro baked in,

it's the Statue of Liberty. She's always holding a ray gun in the air, which is something that I don't think I ever noticed. Yeah. Oh no, me neither, man. I also love any description of that. We talked about Kiff's bladders. I loved hearing them describe that her part of arousal is that her organs are shifting into place. That in their biology, you need to shift your organs into different positions as part of preparing for intercourse. It's weird, I mean, they could have gotten a lot dirtier,

and I think the Comedy Central wanted them to, but they're still like, sensitive nerds who are afraid of sex, writing this show. Well, hey, credit to Ler, he did not have sex with her under false pretenses. He stops the interaction when he realizes he's having to lie to him. That is true, although I like how much of a little weasel

Lurr is being, because when he's with Girl, he's like, I'm part way out of a relationship. And then when Girl shows up in this scene, he's like, I barely made it with her. So he's kind of like halfway cheating with her. I guess, I mean, he did leave before they actually made it. Yeah, yeah. But yeah, girl appears in the costume saying,

I'm willing to fight for you, Lurr. Bender is trying to find some weapon for her, but all he has is a pie pan and a colander. And this is when Lurr explains, we had one date, we barely made it. And then says, okay, I have no resentment against her, whatever, and then he blasts, she blasts her out of existence.

Seemingly, the big twist is coming soon. Yeah, I didn't catch this, like, on first viewing. Girl comes in with the laser, or with the teleporter, and that she, you know, you just read it as a laser, and that's why Unda Unda takes it from her and keeps it to use later In it and puts it into position There's no reason to know McCrone and would actually have this thing sold on earth So it all makes plot sense

I give them credits only a tiny bit sweaty to get to the the conclusion of this episode Even though a girl has been disintegrated seemingly, Leela is now viewed as a potential mistress and wants to know about her. And I love the response, her? She's just a bossy friend. Yes, I mean, it shows that, yeah, that's so great. And it shows what's really important to her. The intimacy she cares about isn't sex,

though she did murder a woman for having sex with Ler, but then what really pisses her off is that somebody else is now above her in the bossing around order. And because of that, they now have to do the ritual of ermer firmer, I think that's sorry, ermer firmer or consequences. I wrote it down, but I don't know how to say it unless I hear it in the clip. And it's great that Fry says it all perfectly except for consequences. Yes, yeah. Yeah, he wants to know what the hell it is. We find out what it is.

Apparently this was going to take place in a very busy sports stadium, but the animators talked them down from this. So now it's taking place, and a very clever joke, White Plains, New York, except it's like the geometrical kind of planes. That's why there's these flat white squares floating through the environment and they're actually standing on them too. Now I like the, they were able, I mean,

they just had to do an entire Comic-Con full of people. So I can see why they're like, connect three, oh, and then also the enslaving of Earth full of huge crowds of people. If you can see why they're like connect three. Oh, and then also the enslaving of earth full of huge crowds of people. If you're going to enslave a planet, you're going to have to draw huge crowds. So I'm, uh, I'm happy for the animators who got to draw had to just draw some white planes. Just we're in the sky. It's just white planes floating. Okay. Instead of a crowded sports stadium, may I suggest an empty void? Yeah, yeah, let's go for it. So yeah, we see the entire cast.

Lurr, Leela, and Nnda Nnda are each on their own white plane. The rest of the crew is standing on a shared plane, kind of like the bleachers, I guess. And then Nnda Nnda goes over the rules in our next clip. The rules are the same as in the home version. Lurr must simply choose between myself and Leela. Fine. next clip. Um, no. Leela's gonna die. What would Delivery Boy Man do? Uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh. I-I do not want to shoot anybody.

You never want to do anything. Oh, nag, nag, nag. You want me to stop nagging? Then shoot me. Oh, you'd like that, wouldn't you? Beat staring at your fat ass on the couch! Oh yeah? I'll show you! Ray blocking power! Fry!

Fry seemingly took a ray gun beam for Lila and I like how this very formal ceremony just amounts to shoot one of us. Yes. Choose what you're going to do by shooting one person. Well, this whole season has been about Fry proving his worth and love for Lila and this is just like, this has to be the fourth time in the show Frye has, in Frye's mind, sacrificed his life for Leela's. Yeah, yeah.

That's why I like how in the new episodes on Hulu, they're just a couple and the stories are about couple stuff. It's not just, they kind of forgot that they're together and Frye is still yearning for her in these seasons. Yeah, they finally in Hularama move in together. I have not kept up with that. Maybe there's some potential quality there? I don't know. They are getting new stories out of it at least, but there is a one little deleted scene after the shooting of Fry here.

Lurr! You were willing to shoot that bossy temptress. You really do value my nagging above all others Let's go home and Regrout the old tub if you know what I mean you mean regrout the old tub yes Good line. I wish they kept that it's like seven seconds. It's so funny. Yeah, I think like this whole little thing It's so funny. Yeah, I think like this whole little thing, again, at this point I'm finding the real lean into the frying pan of it all, the gender politics, pretty grating here, but I do think it gets redeemed by also roping in the comic stuff and the teleporter gun thing. It kind of finds a way to tie everything up in a way that is at least

has some of that Futurama satisfyingness to it. Soterios I will say that in their new run, they did actually hire women. For the second run, they never bothered hiring a woman. There's two freelance scripts by two different women. Actually, one of them could be another writer writing as a woman as a pseudonym. We're not sure. But it's part of like trotting out this regressive humor in a future show is the high concept thing, but you're still kind of doing regressive humor at the same time. I mean, yeah, there's definitely ways to play into the honeymooner dynamic still.

Oh yeah, the one woman who wrote this season, or one of the women who wrote this season as a freelancer, is Patrick Verone's partner, like romantic partner. Yeah, and one of them is possibly another writer as a pseudonym that has not been confirmed. Are you guys taking it as your journalistic, the journalistic mandate of your show to dox every writer on Futurama? Yes, yes. They're like the Department of Doge for us.

We have to know where they sleep at night. If we can get them censured by the WGA, then we'll have succeeded. But we get to the ending here. So Lurin and Enda, they're back together. Leela seemingly is standing in front of the place where Fry was disintegrated. She says, good night, dumb prince.

Girl is there. She wants to have Lurish poplars, but then she immediately falls in love with Zoidberg, who agrees to marry her on the spot. So at least he gets a happy ending here. I don't think we follow up on this later in the show though. I hope Zoidberg at least got like one night of passion with girl here for first trouble. And we do get the resolution here, which is something that I guessed immediately in this third act,

that the gun in play was not the gun that kills you, it's the gun that moves you across the room or moves you to a different location. And Patrick Frohn on the commentary says, half the people are gonna get it, half the people are gonna be like, I didn't see that coming, I'm now in the half

that did get it, but I rarely get these big twists in fiction. Oh yeah, I know, I didn't see it coming, I'll say on the other half. I sometimes saw stuff coming, I don't wanna overestimate like, oh yeah, we all. I didn't see it coming. I'll say on the other half. I sometimes saw stuff coming. I don't want to overestimate like, oh yeah, we all saw that coming, right? When I didn't, but in this one, no, I did not connect that they were setting up the gun to be used later though. I mean, certainly on first watch, I did not think Fry is dead. I didn't think

that. I just wondered, you know, it's like, well, how are we going to get out of this one? And I realized, oh right, they set that up in just wondered, you know, it's like, well, how are we gonna get out of this one? And then I realized, oh right, they set that up in minute three and never commented on it since then. I did love Fry screaming, Ray blocking powers when that's like his superhero chant as he jumps into the way.

So yes, we go to our final clip now where we're back at Planet Express. Fry is there alive and well. Fry! Fry? Is this him? Yay! Fry, you're alive!

Not only that, I now know exactly how to end my comic book. Let's watch. Say goodbye to your forehead, because I'm going to shoot you in it. Not if I leap in front of your death ray. And I am going to do that. Jumping sound. Oh, I didn't shoot yet. As usual, your delivery arrived too soon.

Ah! Oh, delivery boy man, you saved me by random chance. Don't thank random chance. Thank my meteor wishing power with your lips. Good ending. Not great. There's some good stuff there. I like how they're kind of defending

their own writing choices by saying, we can just end something by random chance, but then we can excuse it by saying it was actually a plot element all along. Yes, yeah. I love, I mean, it was actually a plot element all along. Yes, yeah. I mean, it's a great joke about bad writing of an ending that, oh, it seems like it just a deus ex machina would be the term. And then their cover is like, actually, no, he had secret meteorite wishing powers.

So it's not really just a pulled out of our ass thing. Is it also kind of like the inverse of the thing where you say you shouldn't remind people of better media properties in your media property there's maybe an inverse of like you shouldn't remind people what bad writing looks like in your in your whatever TV show if if you're maybe sweating, if you just halved your writing staff. Yeah, yeah. I'm more a fan of the first rule, Chris,

because when people can get away with it, it's astounding. I just watched the movie 12 Monkeys again, and within that movie, a movie I really like, there's about a minute of Vertigo, the Hitchcock film Vertigo, and I just thought like, I can't believe you're getting away with this.

I'm not thinking I'd rather watch Vertigo because I really like 12 Monkeys. Yeah, are they watching it in the Insane Asylum? They're watching it. It's like a theater they go to later when they're on the run. Yeah. Yes.

Oh, I also just like the toss away joke of Bender going, is this him? You know, seven seasons in. Yeah. Bender's callousness of barely even recognizing his best friend and roommate. when Bender has nothing to do They give him a lot of good lines just to jam into a scene And yeah, you know, I really like that this is something else

I liked about the finale that they set up really great book ending because of the start of the episode Fry writes the story where the Lila character who I I learned from, there's a hidden thing on the DVD, you can find hidden on it the production design for all of the bad ugly characters drawn by the great artists. That's how I learned Lila's character in the book, his name is Leis Lane, as in a poor Lois Lane thing. But in the first one, Frye makes a happy ending and Lias kisses him. And he has to kiss his own hand to make the kissing sound.

And here you get the same kissing sound effect except Lila is kissing him in real life just like her character is doing in the comic. So that's sweet. And Frye will only need to sacrifice himself like five more times before they're together. Final thoughts on this so we can wrap up here. I think it, like you said, Chris, it's a bit mid, but there's some stuff I love. I love to learn and to stuff.

And I'm totally in the pocket for Maurice LaMarche doing his Orson Welles. As long as he does that at least 10 more times in his lifetime, in my lifetime, I'll be happy. So it's always fun to see them working his famous impression into other media. So I'm walking away from this happy, and I'm also happy that Chris reached out to us to be on an episode. Yes, well thank you.

I mean yeah, that's the other, when you pitched that you were on this one, I had remembered watching it because the stupid but funny name of the episode always stuck with me and I did always like these two characters. And I also, I mean I remembered it and I said it before, I mean I was pretty dismissive of it up top, deeply mid, but it's fine for this run. remember the watching the Comedy Central Futurama comeback as it was on and just kind of like episode to episode getting a little more of Like a sinking pit in my stomach. I mean, I don't want to be too dismissive of it But you know, I think that this one is fine pretty good probably for the the the reboot But I'm only being so harsh because I do hold those first five seasons of Futurama in such high regard I do hold those first five seasons of Futurama in such high regard, both personally and like,

I think objectively, I think that, as I said earlier, the best stuff in there is among the best of TV animation ever. Oh yeah, we are huge fans of that era too. And Henry, any final thoughts on this one? Yeah, I concur with you guys on this. I like that this was, I'd say at the average or above the average of the of this season on Comedy Central I I always love seeing learning and but I mean it is so fan service II that it could be distracting if you're not on

Board for it but I mean as an attendee of comic con after the time they are writing these jokes about comic con I It was speaking to me and now I hate to be nostalgic for that time of Comic-Con, but it's true that's not modern Comic-Con anymore. So I love it. Anytime Sergio Aragonese gets to be on television and remind people how awesome he is, I celebrate that. Absolutely. Well, everybody knows where to find us and how to get this content because this is a Patreon exclusive content, baby.

I know I told you I had a heart out at one but just I can go a little longer What are your guys's favorite episodes of Futurama? Oh? Okay, I was actually thinking about this last night, which is very weird I don't know why I was thinking about this, but I will say I'm pretty sure in terms of pure jokes It's insane in the mainframe and I think in terms of pure emotionality and clever storytelling, it's probably the sting. Yes.

Man, that's, you know, we had just done the late Philip J. Fry, so I really do love that one a lot. But that is of that era. Now I look back at it, I have to remind myself, I really, the episode's name, God, okay, it is the super friends parody one, them becoming the, where is that? Less than hero. Yeah.

Thank you, Bob. Thank you. That one is, I think, my favorite because I love, it captures the archness of those old cartoon super stuff and it is beautifully animated by the team headed up by Susie Deter. I think did a great job, but it and it's like wall to wall ridiculous jokes too. I will go. There's there's so many I love, but I think in terms of pure jokes per minute, the Atlanta or the lost city of Atlanta one is one of my favorites. And think in terms of pure jokes per minute, the Atlanta, the Lost City of Atlanta one is one of my favorites. And then in terms of clever storytelling and structure,

the time keeps on slipping one a lot. Yeah, I totally agree with you, Chris. If Insane in the Mainframe wasn't so full of the darkest jokes of the entire series, I probably would offer the Atlanta one for just sheer amount of great jokes. Yes. I'd also, one of my favorite just like TV inciting incidents of all time of Nibbler's

pet license arrived. Wait, this is a pet license? It's a fishing license and it's mandatory cuts to the ocean. Yes. That's a great setup of just a series of hilarious jokes. And we learned about what's really going on with mermaids. It's not the fantasy we all imagined. Yes. Why couldn't she be the other kind of mermaid with the fish part on top and the lady part on bottom?

You know, one more I want to shout out to is, or one of my favorites is Godfellas. I really do. I love that one a lot. Yeah. Chris, thank you for being on the show. Please let everybody know where they can find you online and what you're working on.

Of course, there's Chapo Trap House. There's your podcast and Introducing. What else is going on? Let's see, I think that just keeping the pods rolling these days is about all I'm working on. There is some other stuff that we're working on in the background that I hope I get to announce sometime this year, but for the meantime,

Chapo Trap House is the main show and introducing is their show about music. My wife and I also do a third podcast where we, um, she basically reads big challenging books of, of quote unquote, important men of the nineties to me. So we've read the entire, this is called infinite cast. We started reading the entirety of infinite jest. We moved on to inherent vice and now we moved on to Inherent Vice, and now we are on to Don DeLillo's Underworld. And every app, she just reads like 20 minutes of the book and then we discuss it. Say what again on Twitter, am I the Chris Wade on Blue

Sky? At Chris Wade on Blue Sky. Oh, and speaking of books, congratulations on the release of Matt Christman's Spanish Civil War. Yes, thank you. We can cut this. Is there going to be any more printings of this? People seem to be really wanting more. We will do something else with the book sometime. But I'm really I still have more books to ship out as of February 26.

I need to get Matt to sign 250 more books and get those. I'm not even done getting this book out. So once that's out, we'll sit on it for a while and then we'll maybe do something else. I also kind of have a dream of like maybe making an audio book and maybe getting like a real celebrity to do the audio book for it. We'll see. And then I also have other book projects for more Matt books that are already starting to cook. So we'll see what we'll do. Oh, kick ass. Kick ass. Ooh, that's awesome. Man ass. Kick ass.

That's awesome. Man, what a tease. Well, I I'm looking forward to that and all the great, yeah, you really have uh in in the last few years especially, you guys have have been killing it with the the Patreon exclusive stuff on on uh for Chapo

Trap House in addition to all of the the the twice a week great stuff you guys do there. $5 gets you a lot of stuff on the Chapoo Trap House Patreon. You get both me and Matt's history series. You get three now seasons of Will's movie miniseries. We now have Felix's series about kind of the history of the last 50 years of conservative media. All plus the regular episodes of which we have 500 or something on there. That's all that for five bucks a month.

Awesome. Well, thank you Chris for being on the show and thanks everybody for being patrons and we'll see you again next time which we have 500 or something on there. That's all that for five bucks a month. Awesome. Well, thank you, Chris, for being on the show and thanks everybody for being patrons and we'll see you again next time for The Mutants Are Revolting and we'll see you then. I want to have your Pocklers! There'll never be anyone but you!