Talking Simpsons - Disenchantment Season 2 Review And Chat About "In Her Own Write"

Episode Date: October 14, 2019

Here's a special surprise for Talking Simpsons listeners: Our newest episode of What A Cartoon! podcast where we review the most recent season of Matt Groening's other series! The second season of Disenchantment has dropped on Netflix, so we are here to share our thoughts on it all! We return to Dreamland to review the newest batch of episodes, discuss what has improved since, and then delve into the eighth episode of the season! Can Bean find fulfillment as a writer? Can a pig act? And what's with all these beheadings? Grab your opera glasses and listen along to find out! Support this podcast and get dozens of bonus episodes by visiting Patreon.com/TalkingSimpsons and becoming a patron! This podcast is brought to you by the streaming network VRV: home to cartoons, anime, and so much more! Visit VRV.co/WAC to sign up for your FREE 30-day trial and kick a little money back to your friends at the Talking Simpsons Network!  

Attention Talking Simpsons listeners, we have a special mini-series just for you. We're going through the entire first season of King of the Hill, and you can only hear it if you're a $5 and up patron at patreon.com slash talking simpsons. We're giving the Talking Simpsons treatment to all 13 episodes of King of the Hill's first season, and if you want a free sample, you'll find the first episode available for free in the Talking Simpsons feed. Patreon.com slash talking simpsons. It's the only place you'll find the first episode available for free in the Talking Simpsons feed. Patreon.com slash Talking Simpsons. It's the only place you'll find the first season of Talk King of the Hill. Major, go click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click.

It's real easy, man. Cartoons from present and the past. Every week will be an animated bash. What a cartoon. What a cartoon. Maybe a short, but mostly shoves. What a Cartoon Hello everybody and welcome to What a Cartoon, a heartbreaking work of average to moderate genius. I'm your host, Twinkletown University graduate Bob Mackie, and this is an audio exploration of every cartoon ever who is here with me today.

Henry Gilbert and I took two turkeys before this podcast and nothing. Sure took three. And today's episode is the disenchantment episode in her own right. That's a good start, but if you want to be a real writer, you're going to need to procrastinate a lot more. So before we start, I want to say hello to all you Talking Simpsons listeners. We drop this into your feed as an act of sabotage. Or sabotage. Sabotage, as Shatner would say. Just to let you know, we have another podcast you might like to listen to. It's What a Cartoon, of course. You might have heard that up front. And we talk about a different cartoon from a different series every week. And this is a little sample of it

because it's Simpsons related. It's our obligation and duty to talk about all Simpsons related projects. Yeah, we did one for Disenchantment season one, which I think you folks heard last year. Both What a Cartoon and Talking Simpsons. And now it's time for, well, season one, part two. I was going to say season two but the

naming system of this is very complicated I don't like the parts especially when they're a year apart it just it's a new season to me but I think that's uh Netflix avoiding some sort of legal red tape or economical obligation you know what you're so right about that they negotiate 20 they only have to negotiate one season of 20 episodes then then release it as two seasons, basically. Yeah, you do one year of work that they parse out over two seasons, or parcel out, rather. But yeah, What a Cartoon is free. You can find it where you find Talking Simpsons and other podcasts, and of course at patreon.com slash talking simpsons. But this is just a small taste of a Simpsons-related episode of What a Cartoon landing in your podcast machine right now.

And yeah, it's been 13 whole months since we last talked about disenchantment i i thought it was going to be year to year but they decided like they did august before and now they did september this time my theory is it's because bojack horseman is normally their september show but now it's gonna have its final season debut in october so i didn't know if there was a rhyme or reason to Netflix, because I just assume everyone watches the season in the weekend it comes out. Pretty much. Which is why it comes out on Friday, right?

Yeah, yeah. Basically every Netflix show comes out on Friday to give you the whole weekend. And if it's a big Netflix show, they put it out over a holiday weekend, like I believe it was Memorial Day weekend when Arrested Development Season 4 debuted on Netflix. So then everybody could be confused all at once watching that overly complicated thing. I'm really glad Disney Plus is breaking up the binge model because I like having everything at once. I love our overlords. I like having everything at once, the option of that.

But it's also ruined the way we talk about television. No one could talk about things incrementally. It's always got to be like, you have to be up to date. You have to have watched the whole season. And some of us don't have five hours free immediately when a thing drops. Well, that's your fault. Yeah, I'm living like incorrectly.

I re-watched that Birthday Boy skit a couple weeks ago. Oh, there's too many shows? Yeah, too many shows, which it's about TiVo and how there's too many shows. It doesn't even take into account streaming services for the too many shows, which, of course, that sketch ends with Bob Odenkirk telling you that you do have to watch every show, so get to it. It's our job as part of society. But, yeah, I do think the the streaming

model and that uh will come into my critiques of this season as well but i do think the streaming model has kind of gone too far or it's just like it's i understand how the machine of netflix works that like when netflix and it's just kind of grown into this beast you can't keep up with is that netflix got its real start because prestige tv like sopranos and six feet under and mad men those are super successful and they were seeing that everybody was getting the dvds at home and just binging all of those and sending them back and when netflix got into the streaming world they saw how much tv was being watched way more than movies even though

they're called flicks netflix but it was television shows so then they start making their own original shows and they thought well we can't make people wait every week they just want to watch the whole season once so when they release house of cards as that one of their first original big originals they're just like just watch it all once just fucking do it and so then as netflix as the industry leader everybody had to copy that so every show has to dump them all at once and i think with shows like sopranos or breaking bad things that are built for cliffhangers and constant moving forward and just this like breathless motion forward it works for those kind of dramas more than it does for a comedy or other genres not every show is suited for that format and i think it puts obligations on some creators that

make the shows worse yeah yeah i and i i think that people i hope are learning that there's a different way to watch tv or that they can go back to it or that you can just like freaking wait we're not part of the water cooler office conversation anymore like i i really time for the complaint about the old job bit of the podcast but i'll get my popcorn i really didn't like the feeling of obligation i had there uh at our old job of well you had to have watched game of thrones don't you have an opinion on the newest one uh no i was playing this 50-hour video game i have to write about and yeah all those shows whenever they come out it just feels like you gotta be part of the conversation especially for as big of twitter posters as we are it also is like you feel this constant urge to be part of a conversation and have a take you gotta have a

take which i had a much better experience with comedy this last month of where i decided i'd finally now watch the first season of the what we do in shadows show which is really really funny big thumbs up matt barry who's on disenchantment is one of the leads in that show and he's so funny really good things about it uh but what was awesome was it had aired on fx months ago and so i felt no urge to watch all of it. And me and my husband just watched it once a night at our own pace, which was really fun. But meanwhile, with Disenchantment Part 2, though, I felt the same kind of urge of like, I got to next one. Let's see the next one.

Let's do it. Let's do it. You don't want to be spoiled. But I feel like so. We love Mystery Science Theater 3000 And I think a good example Of forcing a story Or forcing this sort of narrative On something that doesn't need it

Is the Sci-Fi Channel episodes Where the Sci-Fi Channel Was like You need a story You need cliffhangers And they just sort of shrugged Like this is not what our show is But Sci-Fi is like

Oh you're a weekly show Well people need to Want to tune in the next week Even though They didn't understand the format So I feel like The same sort of lessons Aren't being learned here that weren't learned like 20 years ago with mystery science theater on sci-fi channel or even with season 11 of mystery science yeah i will say the story is much lighter than these weird arcs that were in season eight of

mystery science i'm sorry this is too specific but there are these very bad even the creators would say they're not very good like they're making these people who aren't trained actors do these dramatic scenes with stakes and you know uh plot development and things like that when they were just ultimately their job was to stand there and be goofy and be like be immature on purpose as part of the charm of the show yeah it really like them going to rome i think that sequence especially really stretched them yeah past their break point we have three actors and uh they would cycle them cycle through them over and over in the netflix mystery science theater shows i think by the second set of them they realized like let's just have six at once we

can't drop 13 14 movies on people and expect everybody to watch them at once like that was that was literally like 20 hours of content just dumped in on one day i think disenchantment is still uh they're still figuring out how they deal with that and in part two of season one that's we had thought maybe you'd see more of the lessons learned in part two but i think this was all still kind of produced together yeah so i feel like it'll be more in next year when we'll see more of the lessons learned i think i did enjoy part two unfortunately had some of the issues i didn't like about part one and i thought too much time was spent sort of doing cleanup on the plot developments of season one part one and it took them a little too long to get to what i liked more about the first part which was the standalone adventure episodes that were just like fun explorations of this world i felt like all of a sudden there were stakes and

all of a sudden there weren't stakes and then there was a lot of cleanup and i just wanted like no i want to see you have fun in this world but they were like no we need to get the status quo back into order we need to repair this world and i just if they didn't destroy the world in the first place they wouldn't have needed to spend time repairing it i felt like there was so much time spent on both aspects of that plot element that it took too long to get to the episodes that i liked it was kind of the reverse of part one uh in pacing where part one started with these kind of episodic adventures and then for the last three episodes it was like oh here's a big plot development this is all leading to a giant

cliffhanger and tons of revelations and then season part two began with three episodes of all the fallout of that and all just to get back to a status quo that would allow more episodic episodes and it it felt like robbing peter to pay paul of just all this extra work to uh to get to the thing that the show is best at and when the show can get to even though okay so like in episodes like episode two with the heaven and hell stuff there were definitely funny jokes in there even in the first episode which was just uh all about dagmar and the uh her mother's kingdom all that stuff it there were lots of funny jokes in there but i still was also thinking about like oh where's this going like i was engaging my brain in both in two different places sitcom brain and drama brain and i wasn't sure how much to enjoy it with one or the other. That's true, yeah.

I don't know if it's our fault for expecting a gag-heavy show like The Simpsons or Futurama while we're watching this. Maybe that's not the show they're trying to make, but when I see those Matt Groening drawings and I hear those voice actors, I can't help but think that there should be more jokes. But maybe that's not the show they want to make and

if that's true, then that's maybe my fault for engaging with it the wrong way. Yeah, yeah. I mean, I think they are really challenging themselves, but in a good way, with straddling a line of like, they do want to have a Futurama style show of observations about our current day, but through the lens of fantasy, just as Futurama did with sci-fi. And they want to have just these kind of sitcom setups like in this episode but they also do want to have a story with stakes where characters can seriously die and not come back and they kind of

these are things that like futurama didn't really do futurama would play around with this more definitely more than the simpsons but on this show and a character like dies they are dead you know though not of any of the three core characters but like when they killed off jerry i was like oh they he's actually dead yeah he's dead yeah we so many people die in the show that it's hard to take death too seriously though because death is often the punch line yeah that's true uh though it's sometimes it could be so grisly i think that too is a an interesting uh needle to thread there or when they bring back characters like oh by the way we're just going to spoil stuff from part two in this chat yeah you know part two yet you might want to check it out up front is our part two

discussion we'll get to the actual episode in the second half yeah yeah but yeah when they say bring back characters like the sea captain from the pleasure boat and uh from part one i knew he was dead i was like i was just waiting to like this guy's totally gonna die they only brought him back to die and then he gets killed yeah like murder is a new fun joke for them that i think they overuse because like the sea captain gets killed in this episode the director gets killed i'm like that could have been a fun character like ultimately i think they don't have enough characters yeah in this show but i guess the thing they're trying to do is is to be game of thrones while making fun of game of thrones and now that i watched a lot more of game of thrones in the last season which was that was the perfect time to get on to game of thrones

when no one's talking about it no i agree with you sincerely but now i see a lot more of the things especially with the character of bean being so much like daenerys targaryen the uh the white-haired heir to the throne whose lineage is of people who have a history of mental illness like that that was the cover for her character going mad and why her father was the mad king and all this stuff and that's why with bean this season they're like no you're she's not dragonborn like daenerys was but she has some sort of magical background in this other land and tell her like you might be crazy you know half of our family goes crazy which that's that is straight up daenerys reference that's the context that i didn't get

or didn't have yeah yeah so that that new context shows me more of what what they're going for the game of thrones which like yeah get me they if they didn't touch on it that would be like futurama never making star wars or star trek jokes like that it's just the popular thing you hit on but i do think this season has a lot of really funny stuff in it like the my second favorite episode in this the dreamland job is is a really really funny one that's one of my favorites and it has uh it has some very random jokes and i actually thought zog was uh less funny this season last season but he's still really good i think he's less funny because all the jokes are about him being sad and miserable uh and i think uh bean became a lot more of a character in this season too. Like I think she really became the main character in this season.

Yeah, she's working through a lot more stuff in this season. One thing I definitely felt in part one was that because Elfo was this, you know, new to the world guy that everybody explained things to, that it kind of made him the main character, even though Bean's supposed to be. Because everybody's sad about Elfo. Everybody explains things to Elfo. Then in this one, like, no, Elfo is really secondary to Bean in the show now. Yeah, they did change his character in a way that I think they didn't nail down. But towards the end of the season, I was kind of getting a feel for who Elfo is now and

that he is not like the Fry-like, very naive character in this new world he is now super jaded and he's now more just like a losery creep yeah then an innocent he's been tainted by dreamland yeah i don't want to see him pining after bean really i don't it's like the bean doesn't need this guy yeah like f alfo uh or elmo as he is often called hey an improvement in part two is that i think they enriched dreamland more there was more places to go oh especially because the elves moved to town and so it's like oh they can go the elf village now lucy gets a job yeah as a tavern proprietor yeah the flying scepter is now lucy's bar which is uh gives as i think they they rightly realized if they were going to write so many episodes where bean gets drunk, then you

need more to do in the bar than just it being where she's drinking. Having Lucy be sort of the Mo, the bartender of this world. Exactly, yeah. And one thing I will say to this show's credit, it is the best looking non-anime animated show on Netflix. Yeah. And it makes every other show look like a pile

of puke, as Mo would say. I don't, I mean, I'm sure the Groening name probably meant that you give this show lots of money. Maybe that was the man from Groening and Company. But this show is just a treat to look at. There's so much texture to the backgrounds. It's gorgeous. The color choices are so interesting. It's just fun to stare at.

And everything else looks like color forms moving around compared to Disenchantment. And I think it's because they're getting a lot more money. Yeah, oh, definitely. It's, sorry sorry it's traditional animation yeah yeah i mean it's still digital because everything's digital now but yeah i think it's much more in the way they make the rest of the network stuff like it's the level of network animation yeah which is above the level of like even adult swim what they'll spend on animation well or it's like venture brothers versus most of everything else on adult swim on animation although i think it looks better than some network stuff like bob's burgers because bob's burgers uh they do what they can with their assets but it is puppety puppety style animation and uh disenchantment

definitely isn't that yeah well and that's what disenchantment needs versus bob's burgers like we both really love bob's burgers it's more of just line driven and writing driven it's it's it's made for the puppets to basically express their say words and then leave though they can do action well when they want to but most episodes of disenchantment have at least like one like actiony kind of set piece so you need fuller animation for that too i think animators would have to relearn a lot of stuff to do bojack style animation in matt craning style or it's just like our brains couldn't understand it you know we're used to that style of drawing moving in a certain way that if it was more puppety and flashy it wouldn't look uh it wouldn't look right to our heads and i

will say it looks very much better than the simpsons does now too which i think the simpsons is using that puppety tool set they're better at disguising it but you can still see the strings in a way i really hope disney gets them a new uh production give them some pencils yes please i again i don't blame the current simpsons staff they're doing what they they can with this show that Fox just kept going like, can you make it cheaper? Can you make it cheaper? Can you make it cheaper?

Yeah, this is not just us complaining. If you go to the most recent DVD commentaries on season 18, you can hear the directors and animators pining for the old digital animation they were able to do before the puppety stuff moved in. Like even they miss it and what they could do, but it's more money. But also in the show, another thing I really liked is that Lucy's, I think Lucy's character improved a lot more too. He was the fun sociopath in part one.

He's bendery. Very bendery. And he's still a bit bendery in this. But in Lucy in episode two, he actually does sacrifice something major and he gives something up to help them. And he admits that he likes them bender with him they never he obviously likes fry but they always go back on and on the show he's like oh yeah fry you are my friend anyway i stole your wallet or whatever those are the kind of jokes they did but

like in the season finale for example lucy's just like i care about you guys i'm not immortal anymore but i'm happy to die with you i'm with you guys like that was a sweet moment that i think the character of lucy needed more of like eric andre has so much more range than just being like the guy's like noise yeah which he's good at that too i love eric andre i think too something that hurts the first three episodes that makes the rest better is that all of those supporting characters are frozen in stone for three episodes. And even when they come back, you barely see them after the third episode. You don't see enough of them. Like, I feel like the first part of this first season or whatever you

want to call it, the first 10 episodes, they got a lot more work out of their side characters. And I think they were so focused on telling the story of Bean that they sort of lost those other side characters like Oddfall, who comes back in a big way towards the end. But even characters like Bunty, who I love. I think she has like one line this season and it's in this episode. Like, what happened to her? She's so funny. Bunty's one of the funniest characters in the show.

And we lost Jerry and we lost, I forget his name, the guy played by Rich Fulcher, the weird like priestess guy guy that was with dagmar he had a lot of great lines in the first episode of the part two but yeah he um seemingly is dead just died unceremoniously i mean maybe he's coming back who knows a bookcase fell on him i guess dude did you notice how much they really went on the futurama stuff i mean not just the uh steam land and bite my shiny metal axe yeah but all which that i was like farnsworth avenue or whatever yeah farnsworth avenue that guy when he had his goggles on he looks like young farnsworth oh you're right yeah uh what is his name gunderson yeah yeah and this was one i didn't catch but i saw people retweet so i'm stealing it from them but gunderson opens up a drawer it is a collection of wires that is the exact collection of wires like drawn the exact

same way that farnsworth has in episode one of futurama oh you're totally right about that wow so they're really going deep there i will say up front that was my favorite episode because it is doing what i want the show to do and be and maybe that's just my own baggage i'm putting on the show but i want it to be like Futurama. And I want them to go to different places and explore different aspects of this world. And I thought they got a lot of fun material out of Steamland. But a lot of the show is spent within the castle, within the town surrounding the castle. I think they ventured out of it a lot more in the first part.

Yeah, they really did. They stuck a lot more in Dreamland. At least for the first two episodes, no Dream this uh they stuck a lot more in dreamland at least for like well the first three episode the first two episodes no dream oh yeah for sure but then yeah for the next six episodes or seven uh five episodes it's all dreamland then they go to steamland and then the dreamland uh finale which finale it cited more on dramatic than comedy especially with like i don't know horrible things happen to zog a lot on the so that's another the part of the balance there that like there's so many jokes about horrible things that happen to zog that then don't matter the next episode like his his gout goes away instantly which by the way that gout oof that was my favorite b plots but but that was a situation

where zog was better by the next episode but later, they want the cliffhanger to matter of Zog has been shot and he might die. Like, you guys should be really worried about that. And it worked to a degree, but I also was thinking like, well, he just had that gout stuff. Yeah. It's fine. I mean, I guess it's the difference between comedy violence and more realistic violence. Like, getting shot through the chest is not less of a joke than getting like a big swollen toe or getting your arm chopped off or whatever zog is just funny throughout the whole season yeah he's

i mean he's the receptacle for their fat lazy bad jokes except he's now a king who can murder anybody when he says so yeah i love uh john dimaggio in this role yeah yeah he's uh i mean it's a danger but a quality of the show is that they get so close like can we just have all the futurama guys just talk to each other yeah every scene and uh in the first our first episode of what a cartoon about his enchantment i thought it was nice that all the futurama guys came back in lesser roles now uh with the second part i miss them because you don't hear as much of the side characters. Like the King's wizard, who's played by Billy West and the Jester,

you rarely hear them. You rarely hear Oddball played by Maurice LaMarche. I felt like there was much less of them in this season. Like it feels like Billy West came in for like half an hour and did all of his lines. Oh, and another interesting thing they did in the show was like they wrote off the character of una seemingly unless she comes back with a vengeance and yeah next season i mean it's

a credit to the show that uh i miss these characters but they're also making a mistake where it's like you're getting rid of too many characters yeah they they need una i mean that one could have been a situation where they they knew where the season finale cliffhanger of this was going and it doesn't work the same if una is there so you have to remove her to make that cliffhanger work like a big part of the cliffhanger is that derrick inherits it and he's he's the one in charge if una's there then she's the one in charge so they can't do that we see a lot more of him it's sort of like the ralph wiggum of uh he's a little smarter yeah which that's what's fun when he comes off as more uh intelligent there's also though a bit of him uh another game of thrones thing he's ralph wiggum if he was a

more innocent joffrey which uh king joffrey as we all know he's a nasty little child king who takes over for Baratheon who basically is Zog he's the not funny version of Zog okay he's a big fat loudmouth who loves hunting and all that like that snotty blonde kid in Harry Potter yeah he's basically the same yeah you've seen the pictures you know who he is yeah I think they found some new stuff with Derek I like that a lot with him and also like uh it was something i was glad they started exploring with derrick and bean it gave more depth to bean too that she was like oh yeah i guess i do have a brother don't i yeah i i mentioned it before but another thing i really liked was the the elves coming back because all the elf jokes the blanco jokes all of those shocko shocko weirdo all of them uh they they always make me laugh like

they're so so silly and goofy that i really like that and so them moving to dreamland out of their magical land almost makes no sense why they would exit it but just for joke and story possibilities i'm really happy the elves came back and all live in dreamland now we saw the return of levo yeah which i think uh josh weinstein told us on a podcast interview but i think he asked us to cut that out oh yeah he's like uh levo might come back or something like that it was the ultimate spoiler yeah for season two now part two i was uh i definitely enjoyed seeing levo uh appear the legendary Levo appear. That was nice. And yeah, I think, I guess another thing, though, I had to get used to with the show

was to learn to not eat watching it because it can get gross. Like, yeah, I was not ready for how scatological this part two was, even though part one was a bit. And it's not just like how much people die in the show but also like the um i guess i'm thinking specifically about the the elves being sick episode oh yeah that's not a good one to watch while eating yeah when they're all drinking the filth water like that all made me like i i literally get like it did its job with though it uh though the opening of that episode too reminded me ofurama and the nudist planet

of just everybody's naked with their butts hanging out. I will say, in terms of content, I feel like the one actual swear they're allowed to say is goddamn or goddammit, and you can't do that on a network still for some reason. I feel like they're maybe leaning too hard into that where there's like one goddammit per episode. It's like Bob Odenkirk writing this.

I think we joked with them. Goddam this. I think we joked with them. Goddammit. I think we joked around with Josh about like, will one episode of Elfo finally say fuck? Oh, yeah. Speaking of that,

so between the last episode of What a Cartoon and this one, we actually went to the Disenchantment offices and interviewed Josh Weinstein. And that interview is on our Patreon

at patreon.com slash Talking Simpsons. And we were led into the writer's room or the rewrite room and so for every episode of season one part two there was like a little drawing in the title and so we were kind of spoiled as to what would happen the last episode so the last thing I saw on that wall was being tied to the stake and everything on fire yeah so I totally forgot about that until I saw it in the show I was like I saw that in like February yeah February yeah I buried that back in my memory after seeing that but you're

right that was uh josh only let us look around for just a minute and swore us to secrecy and also was like no pictures nothing but it was it was so cool to just walk around the bongo office former bongo offices where the production was out of and see it like josh was super nice and i think you know he's he's working really hard on this show i think i think he said to us it's been a learning experience for them to go from a weekly show that has to be 22 minutes to the more open style of netflix animation that can kind of some episodes can be 22 some episodes could be 25 some could be 28 it's just how you feel it was unfortunate though that like it was a quiet time in the office so we didn't get to

meet any of the other writers on it they weren't around we got to track down david x cohen somehow he's not on twitter i had bill oakley tell him to go on twitter he did not respond yeah boo come on david cohen be bothered on twitter by everybody he's got a phd in computer science he should be on twitter i mean i guess he's enjoying like semi-retired i think him and all the other writers on this it was like you know a few months work uh and then once your script is in and the writing's done they they don't have to live in uh santa monica anymore they don't have to live in the la anymore we could ask david all about berkeley because he had to live here for a few years right man i want to hear about 1992 berkeley actually there's a joke later in this that reminds me of 1992 berkeley because he had to live here for a few years right man i want to hear about 1992 berkeley actually there's a joke later in this that reminds me of 1992 berkeley but i'll get i'll get to that

we got to interview him then they also since the last one we did it was confirmed in october 2018 that they'd get a new season which is 20 episodes so they'll be just enchantment until 2021 at least we could so 10 a year yeah let's let's not come on guys lord step it up crossing our fingers we'll be watching that part four uh under a new president in that time when bernie nationalizes netflix yeah we'll have free disenchantment you're where your voice to god's ears man that's what i say but yeah that that part situation it still always makes me think of like the final season of Game of Thrones, for instance, had two parts, which was really just like a second season. They didn't want more season. But I think it was in all of the contracts with the people making it that they're like, we're only signed up for seven seasons.

Okay, then season seven is in two parts. How about that? Yeah, like I think Breaking Bad did that where the last season was like six episodes or whatever yeah i mean and that presentation of it is just like it's corporate doublespeak that we kind of have to get saddled with and uh but yeah as as for the like staff and everything on this it's basically the same as in uh season part one that that we talked about in that what a cartoon uh you know josh weinstein co-developed it with mac reigning and uh he brought together a ton of writers and artists who had a lot of experience on both simpsons and futurama including his old partner bill oakley patrick varone david x

cohen but also young writers who are new like uh shinon takeuchi uh jenny batten and m dickinson and also um rich vulture of uh of mighty boosh name i saw more new writers this time less of the old futurama harvard crew a little less yeah did david cohen write an episode or was he just okay i must have missed that then yes david x cohen wrote the stairway to hell episode, the second one of part two. I must have missed that credit then. The only new writer name and credited writers in part two is Adam Briggs, who is an Australian comedy writer slash rapper

who apparently has real rapping credit. He raps about this and he raps about that. Wow, two different things. I will tell people, we said this earlier, but don't skip the credits. Don't skip intro. It's like 10 seconds long. you see who writes the show and who directs it but

also you get some nice drawings too yeah original drawings i actually kind of stop i i never skip intros on stuff but sometimes i don't like seeing those images before i've seen the episode because i'm like oh i know that scene so we're gonna come in, where we'll come in like it. It turns a little spoilery. So in my first viewings, I just look at the names. I don't look at the art. That's a good strategy. But I mean, you should never skip an intro. Celebrate all the people who make the shows you enjoy. Look, I get it if it's an anime OP you've seen

for like 70 times and it's 90 seconds long. You can skip the Evangelion intro if you watch it once at least. But that's the greatest intro of all time.'re a cop if it's true that intro that's what i say uh and yeah i think uh another oh yeah one other big change though from this season by the end of this season is shion takeuchi one of the best writers she wrote the she wrote an episode last season she wrote the first episode of part two uh she has since sold her own series to netflix so she is no longer working on the show

i would assume she's now got her own anime series direct competition fight fight fight fight fight and she's working with uh josh weinstein and her's old boss alex hirsch to make the show okay that sounds great josh was one of many writers on gravity falls and upcoming what a cartoon on here as well coming this month so you'll learn more about shion takuchi there but also if uh the only other thing i know adam briggs for is him uh eating at outback steakhouse with bill oakley in a bill oakley oh that's okay yes if you remember seeing a large australian guy doing that uh i guess uh final thoughts on just part two of it i i still think

they're figuring out how much they want to make it a linear show with drama and stakes versus how much they want to make it an episodic show of a fun unique sitcom situations i still prefer i i do think they find more humor than some would with these linear stories or the all these dramatic situations but i in this part two i still prefer the episodes that were just a unique situation that allowed the characters to explore and discover themselves like this episode yeah yeah i feel the same way and that they are not really clear what kind of show they're making or maybe it's not even clear to me and they're kind of splitting the difference between two types of shows and i prefer the standalone episodes i did like the steam land one a lot but even then it was just being alone

in this new world and not like elfo and lucy or even zog with her just her alone by herself and i felt like if that would have been a whole episode in that world with other characters it would have been even more interesting yeah yeah it was uh it that episode that's why that one isn't my second favorite just because i would have liked a little more like fun comments from elfo or lucy experiencing that world that could maybe that was another situation of the overarching narrative they're building instead where they they only want bean to have experienced steam land because then nobody believes her when she comes back that pays off with the dragon flute slash gun yeah but i guess that's an example of the uh the storytelling

getting in the way of jokes yeah that's uh that is the very challenging mission they gave themselves that they want to have these very plot driven things that matter but to make that work then you do take away your comedy arrows and your quiver. Yeah, it does seem very difficult and I sympathize with that. But I hope season three or season two part, what? Season two, part one, whatever it's called. Sure. Whatever you want to call it.

I hope that they do more exploring of the world and do more standalone sitcom-y explorations of things within Dreamland with like a point or like a parody of something or a satire of something there was very little of that there was very little of the show i think about things outside of the show like a bigger ideas where you would see those all the time on futurama yeah i hope they commit more to that though i don't know you know they're serving a lot of masters there like i do think uh who we don't know but i i think netflix really wants those kind of cliffhangers netflix is built on cliffhangers. And so maybe they're just really being pushed to have that kind of linearity stuff, which

to get back to our bigger discussion of how people consume streaming content, people went to it for all these dramatic shows they watch a ton. But now what are the series that everybody is really following streaming services to? They're upset about Friends or Office or Seinfeld or Simpsons. That makes the news. These just pure comfort foods from 20 years ago that you just are like, oh, God, this makes me feel better. Maybe that's the difference between the situation now and the situation five years ago.

Yeah, people just want their treats. I want my treats. I don't want to be challenged with anti-heroes like i've had enough of these anti-heroes no matter what show they make no matter how popular it is they can't compete with you know friends or the office or seinfeld or the simpsons these things that they're just every week a reset button was hit and that was it i i guess to you know it was a novel concept of like what if a person with power was bad now it's just like, yeah, what if?

What if? It's happening right now. We don't need to ask what if. Yeah, that's why it felt like a real throwback. I started, I watched the whole first season of Barry, the Bill Hader dramedy on HBO. And when it falls into like the kind of, you know, television antihero stuff and the kind of cliffhangers and these like, oh, these Breaking Bad type kind of you know television anti-hero stuff and the the kind of cliffhangers and uh these like oh but these breaking bad type kind of moments i think to myself like oh this is this feels really

retro like i guess shows can still be this huh like it was it's funny to go back to that like the obama era prestige tv yeah well because i stopped watching those kind of press after breaking bad i was like i got i got my yeah like i i watched sopranos i watched mad men i watched breaking bad walking dead was a bridge too far i was like this isn't smart enough no i can't do it it was a good uh pilot movie and they never made any episodes that's how i choose to view the series i think the shows uh could use a little more brains if i fear the walking dead uh and same like game of thrones i think a thing that uh that it's fall from grace i think damaged my want to see bingeable prestige television as well because

they just uh when push came to shove and it came to the end they didn't have their ending figure out and it was just a mess it was really just a mess for like the last two years of it where they were just going down this path they decided on and it was a bad path and they couldn't change it and so like well shit and also just seemed to forget what was good about the show before and everybody was just like dutifully watching it i'm interested to see you know how our favorite simpsons and futurama writers and artists how and actors how they all engage with the changing way that fiction is presented these days.

And Disenchantment offers that up to us. It really does. Alright, now that we have fully discussed the overall feel of part two of Disenchantment, why don't we take a quick break and focus with laser-like intensity in the episode In Her Own

Right. Elfo, wherever you are, I'm sorry. Hello? Who is this? Elfo? Is that you? Lady, you're the one that called me. Hello? Hey, it's Henry Gilbert. Welcome to The Break, and I hope you're not listening to this smeared in your own manure. Hey, everybody, it's Bob, and I love hot, bitter beer. And we really love all you guys listening to this week's podcast,

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it's very, very easy to access all of the stuff we're doing on the Patreon levels. So thanks so much for your support. Now, why don't we get back to the land of dreams her own right the eighth episode of part two of uh season one of disenchantment and everyone out there stop calling it disenchanted that's a different thing altogether you're hurting its seo yeah but i picked this one not just because it was written by our our best friend in the world bill oakley oh yeah he's met with us on uh one separate occasion Yeah, but also because this is my favorite episode of the season,

the Dreamland job, which was the heist episode. That's actually my second favorite, if just for the ear joke. That ear joke is really funny. Oh, you're right. Yeah. But there's a lot of strong episodes in the season. I think, too, something when you binge it so fast, you don't have time to think about the episode you just saw so you can't reflect on an episode as much in second viewing that's when i could really appreciate this

episode just on its own not as part of a narrative arc of 10 episodes yeah me too i think too you know bill oakley uh and the rest of the team who worked on this made this a very self-contained episode that just has a clever concept at the center of it that allows the characters to explore themselves and the world of Dreamland and find new aspects of the world, too, to deal with. I really like that about it. This episode is directed by Ira Chirac, who they have five directing credits on the entire first 20 episodes of disenchantment so they have directed full of 25 percent oh wow i looked at ira's uh background and uh definitely the it seems like an expected pathway through the the graining verse ira got their start as a storyboarder and then assistant director on duck man oh no way okay well i trust him now

uh he was assistant director on a favorite episode of mine the amazing colossal duck man oh that's a great one one of the best like animated ones of the series yeah and after duck man he stuck around in the claskey chupo averse uh working as a boarder on the newer episodes of Rugrats, Ah, Real Monsters, Wild Thornberries. But then in 1999, he left the Klasky Chupo building for the bright future of Futurama. Oh, nice. Where he worked on the show in 1999 and then also for the return seasons as well at Comedy Central.

And in between those years, he was a storyboarder on The Simpsons in 2004 to about 2006, which he then also joined Sit Down, Shut Up, where he worked under Josh Weinstein on that series. I still have to watch that show, at least one episode. And then he has been a director. His first pure directing credits were on shows like was on Sit Down, Shut Up. And then he stayed as a director, but also doing boarding here and there on shows like Bob's burgers and uh brickleberry uh everybody does their brickleberry time we've we've noticed uh and then post bob's burgers he moved over to disenchantment where he worked on the entire first season of it good stuff yeah ira's background is an interesting one and uh yeah i we talked

about the opening before i never hit the skip, but sometimes I don't like having shots spoiled in it. But I did really like the three color versions of those tableaus are really good. Yeah, those should be posters, honestly. I love, especially my favorite in this opening is the one of Bean being sad and looking down on the stage while Zog looks on. And the episode begins with a helpful series of flashbacks as Bean is having a scary nightmare, which that feels like he's building up something more. That wasn't really paid off in part two

about the power of dreams in Dreamland. Yeah, maybe that'll be a part three thing, but the king drops some lore where he says, you know, dreams are more powerful in Dreamland. They're having the same dream about Dagmar. Yeah. Yeah, so yeah, they don't really reference that again in this season that could just be you know planning seats for the future oh i definitely think it is like i mean what if the secret society that oddball runs part of that

is to harness the power of dreamland that's why everybody wants to take dreamland i would not be surprised and it's uh legitimately scary visual of bean without her mouth. Like that's a really good shot there. And a very cool shot of the camera sort of rotating around the bed that she's in. And really cool lighting too. Again, they couldn't do this on another Netflix show, I don't think. These ambitious shots. Or they wouldn't look as good. Yeah.

Well, then when she wakes up, nice call back to the owl bell chimes. I like that she's like, what time is it? And three owls strike the bells, which is not necessarily mean it's 3 a.m., but she's like, 3 a.m. I like how there's an owl problem in Dreamland, like in Futurama. Just like Futurama. I will say there is a little too much bird violence in the show,

so let's tone it down, gentlemen. Well, there's violence to everything. That's true. They're an equal opportunity offender, Bob. I guess that's true. I guess you don't like, your PC culture can get out of here. I hate freedom of speech.

But yeah, well, actually, I guess in the next scene, two birds get eaten. That's true. Oh, good. You're still up. I'm always up. I haven't been able to sleep for weeks. They say turkey helps, but I took two and nothing. Why are you awake?

More nightmares about mom and you and me. I kept trying to talk, but I couldn't get any words out. Was your mouth sewn shut or you didn't even have one? I didn't even have one. How do you know so much? There's a reason this place is called dreamland. Something about this castle makes dreams more powerful. You can't escape your dreams, but you can stop a nightmare if you work through the issues causing it. Wow, I wish you were this wise all the time when you were awake. I can definitely hear that line being echoed in the future in like a flashback. Something about this castle makes dreams more powerful. Well, it's stated in such a straightforward, non-joke delivery way that it does feel like a flashback line that would be coming up i and like

zog has never been i wonder if like zog is actually talking in his sleep and seemingly awake that's what it seems like that's uh but i i do love his joke of like he took two turkeys like two nyquil oh god that's a lot of turkey just ate two full turkeys and then it has like a full thanksgiving plate under his blanket as well he pulls out more food after he falls asleep right yes yeah which uh i mean uh this uh these jokes really speak to me as a fat guy who likes to eat in bed it's uh hopefully not whole turkeys it's homer that's homer level i'm working my way up with pheasants the turkey fell behind the bed oh wow he's yeah i didn't realize it was he was so homeric already

from the start there being then you know she's she's dealing with her pain but there's nobody to talk to so she leaves the castle looking for something i like that she the door just like slams behind her on her way out like the nobody wants to hear her shit no the drawbridge keeper is uh busy enough i liked how they write bean is very self-involved like she's she's a caring person but she was raised as royalty so she like really doesn't think of anybody else's people she doesn't have a job or like anything to do really so she's very self-involved yeah which uh i there's some great jokes with that in this episode too as she uh walks down the street only in this episode viewing did i catch the great uh the great sign gaggery oh yeah there's four uh in a row so we

have uh poem depot uh berets bongos and beyond uh dreamland ditchweed dispensary and my favorite was gertrude's steins that's the most clever but i i like that they just legalized ditchweed in uh in streamland but you have to go to the dispensary for it that i like that the story california writers i so i swear and uh yeah lucy's bar it's funny that lucy's bar is still covered in scepters like it's still the flying scepter even though it's his barn those are load-bearing scepters i think they've damaged important beams and they can't be removed uh but leave it to bill oakley of portland and portlandia writing credits to introduce dreamland's first coffee shop in this episode like definitely this whole section with the unique artists that are at a coffee shop definitely feels like the Portland roots

of Bill Oakley coming through with this. Instead of all working on their MacBooks, they're all working with a parchment and quill. I love that. It's really nice. It's so clever, yes. But let's learn about this thing called coffee. Okay, okay.

The political situation in Dreamland has really gotten me confused. First, everyone in the kingdom got turned to stone. Then we all got de-stoned. Ever since then, I've been trying to get stoned again. This is hot. It's supposed to be hot. Hot, bitter beer?

It's coffee. It's a new drink. Kind of like tea, but stronger and worse. Will it make me forget my troubles? No, but it'll stunt your growth. I'm 23, but I still get to order off the kids menu. Now tell Miri all about your problems.

You look really familiar, Miri. I have another job working for people who never notice me because they're so self-absorbed. We were talking about you. So you're saying she does show up Elsewhere in other episodes I definitely noticed her in my second viewing In the castle

I believe she appears in other episodes too But I mean her hair is down That's why her hair is up in this When she's there Usually she has one eye covered With her big frizzy hair I don't appreciate that coffee diss Although I am drinking green tea right now.

They put sweetener in, I said no sweetener, and it's too sweet for me. Is this episode why you got tea instead of coffee? Because it was so negative towards coffee? I'm honestly trying to cut back on coffee. Oh, I see. But I'm a coffee enjoyer in general. I hate coffee.

So good. The only times I like coffee is how i like alcohol which is the flavor is masked by a bunch of uh sugar i just want the richest blackest coffee which is funny though because i don't i don't need caffeine to wake up in the morning i do pretty all right without it so i don't need my morning whatever but i do like just straight green tea i do i i can drink i fucks with some tea. But really, though, only if it's served at a place and it's with a meal. I don't just drink tea on its own.

I ended up, this is getting so nerdy, but I ended up after going to Japan. If you go to Japan and you go to a sushi restaurant or just a restaurant in general, there's often a little faucet of water at your table that just shoots out boiling water. I can see why they don't have that in America. We're too irresponsible. But you spoon in a little bit of matcha powder and you put it underneath a boiling water faucet. You have instant hot green tea. It's so good.

I love that so much. But it's a responsibility that is too much for Americans. I mean, a lot of stuff when you walk around Japan, you're like, well, we can't have nice vending machines like this because somebody would break it. Or we can't have these kinds of faucets because on the show Jackass, they just fill a bucket up with it and throw it at their friend and melt his skin off. Those Jackass boys, yes. But again, yes, we brought it to Japan somehow with our disenchantment podcast. We apologize. But yeah, the coffee shop is pretty funny.

The jittery is a funny setting billy west phil silver's voice is amazing all the time but this i love this play on his jester character because when he's on stage of the coffee shop he gets a little more woke so instead of just his like uh regular gesture he's like the political situation yeah he's got a real like lenny bruce style pose to him and just sitting on the stage talking about what's happening in the news oh yeah yeah smoking a cigarette right yeah yeah yeah it's it's a it's the mark maron kind of pose was what i was thinking but yeah it's it's like bruce although i was wondering because wasn't there a recent thing that netflix is like okay nobody can smoke on our shows from now on and

lucy does a lot of smoking. Yeah. And they're smoking in this episode. I believe they want to crack down on it more. But they also, I think, announced a loophole from the beginning of like, well, if Quentin Tarantino wants a character to smoke. If it's necessary for, I think the director just has to approve it. But also I think it's the, if you're famous enough, then you can do it. Like, probably if you're somebody who just sold their show to Netflix and you're like, I want this character to smoke all the time, they'd tell you, no, no.

Unless it's like uses a prop, an important prop. But if you're Matt Groening, yeah, smoke away. Like, that's, which like, they're not smoking. They're against smoking. It's the bad characters that smoke. And now it'd be vaping anyway. But they haven't done their medieval vaping joke yet in the series. I hope there's one in part...

Wait, season two, part one. There we go. Steamland should be the home of the vaping. But boy, okay, let's pitch a joke here. What would be vaped in that situation? What would it taste like? We need to workshop this somehow. I don't know.

You know, I forgot to mention in that talk of part two as well another i really did like the episode where zog fell in love with the bear woman like yeah it was just a sweet story for zog it was kind of his rebound and i also just like the the her trying to deal with human humanity she's like no no i'm actually a bear who takes off her skin and is a human but i'm a bear first i noticed in that episode that all the forks have two prongs ah yeah for some reason the two prong and forks that hasn't been explained yet but uh yes uh mary there though she is played by lauren tom who oh okay i didn't recognize her voice it's not her first appearance on the show either though i didn't recognize her voice in previous ones i she's disguised more because maurice lamarge and billy west are doing voices

they did on futurama but lauren tom really only did two voices on futurama amy and her mom so like con jr and min basically yeah honestly the exact same thing so so in that case with lauren thom she didn't do characters like mary who have you know an affected accent of some kind but but it's just like the extra plain accent i think is what what mary does but yeah it's uh another of the many futurama uh cast members there and i like i thought it was a funny joke too that she she she tells bean to her face that she just ignores her all day and Bean just stares at her. It's nothing. I think in part two, I really started appreciating Bean's design even more.

Like that shot of her not reacting to what Mary said. It's funnier because of how far apart her eyes are and how derpy she looks with her buck teeth. I've come to appreciate the buck teeth more and more as I watch more of the show. I think it was a really bold design choice that really paid off for her i think design wise i might like lucy more just a little bit but i think she's my favorite of the designed characters of the show eight coffees later bean has quite a lot to say about her problems but it was all a trick my mom and only marry my dad to have me. She betrayed both of us and I still feel so bad. She's my mom, you know? And my dad, I mean, he can barely. You see, this is why most people only have one or two. Admit she existed. But me, I mean, I just keep

having these nightmares. Because you're bottling up your feelings, dig? What else can I do? Express them. What do you do for fun? I... Besides get drunk. I... No, I did that because I was drunk. Oh, I... No, I did that to get drunk. I am open to your suggestions. Well, there's art, music, wearing weird clothes you make yourself.

This is Judy, by the way. Sup? Basically, anything that lets you work through feelings and heal. You know, creativity. Creativity? look around you all of these people are expressing themselves this is all really impressive but i don't have any talent so do you have hands yeah can you hold a pen yeah then you're a writer and i already got a head start with the drinking that's true i do think I selfishly wanted this episode too because it's all writer jokes.

I thought of it and I thought also watching this episode that until recently I had been writing for like 19 years professionally with constant deadlines. Now I don't do that anymore. I don't miss it at all. I've done enough writing. I've written enough words. I have pushed myself to write all these words i i was reflecting on that today of like oh yeah i guess i probably wrote a thousand articles that were posted on the internet at least 500 at least oh yeah i have to be i i think i wrote like

a book's worth of text every month when i was working on a website just like two articles a day often like 800 words and i never want anyone to read it again. I'm on the fence. Some of my stuff you still can read, but I'm also publishing a book that's not Vanity Press. I'll tell you more about that soon. Oh, boy. So, yeah, we've both already got a head start on the drinking.

That's true. But I think I did like this one, too, because it felt like Bill Oakley is saying a lot about the profession of being a writer in this episode. Yeah, and I like it in that it's more about a thing. It's not about the profession of being a writer in this episode yeah and i like it in that it's more about a thing it's not about the characters of the world it's making a comment about a thing yeah through the i guess though too it is a homer gets a job type episode too yeah but they don't do that too often on the show yet i like to that bean the way they explain being a writer of like she says well i have no talent i have no discernible talent she's like well you can hold a pen right then you're a writer yeah a writer is somebody who

is talentless but can write things down going back to complaining about her old job i often think that's what executives thought of us it's like yeah how hard is it to write right by right see i just wrote a sentence who cares make a thousand of those and give it to me i sent you an email i wrote things down there and it took a. Why can't you write like seven things a day? It's easy. Boom. Yeah. It's the cheapening of writing that is hell on earth. They don't think about all the self-punishment that comes into writing.

Yeah. Or also all the drinking the cinnamon buns. Yeah. That was also really good acting on Abby Jacobson there. Like her very speedy saying of things. It reminded me of like the drug-fueled rant she had yeah yeah episode three part one i think she uh she binge drank coffee like it was beer so she drank eight coffees instead of slowly sipping on one like that that is too much coffee and beer is her default beverage yeah i also like her explaining of drinking of just like uh bean is slowly realizing

she has a drinking problem that every every night she drinks every story of her life is drinking uh she makes other people drink with her because she's alone like there should be an intervention episode of the show but then it's less funny well that you know on a show like futurama or simpsons they don't really solve these problems or have arcs for this but on a linear show that is about being you know a story from a to b there should be a moment where she's like i guess i do drink too much or like this is a character thing to be solved yeah and then i mean we're just pitching story ideas now but then you could do a joke about like what is a 12-step program like in this medieval world? I love that, yeah. Oh, man.

I'm a writer now. Because in the 12-step program, you have to like, you know, give yourself up to God. Well, give yourself up to God like so, or a higher power. So what does that represent in Dreamland? Bean has decided she's going to be a writer

and she has such great helpers as she writes. So, what are we writing? It's something personal. I suppose you can say and watch though. Here I go. When I was young, I overheard a conversation between my father and... Um, no. What?

No, nothing. I was going to say something, but then I was like, you know what? I don't think it's fixable, so maybe just go ahead. What's wrong with it? Nothing's wrong with it, really, other than just being bad. But go on. Stop talking. Are you sure that's the right word?

I think you're conflating confusing with conflating. It's confusing, but I don't like that part either. Wait, we're your biggest fans quit shoving come on i can help you you ever heard of a writer's demon i can also help ow oh come on there's nothing to criticize out here although this door is hideous so i think with uh elfo there they really make him extra whiny and annoying in this episode, too. Bean is making a common mistake that first writers always make in that they write about themselves, or they will write a main character who is themselves but better, and they will write every argument that they lost in real life except that they win. Some writers, like Aaron Sorkin, never outgrew that.

No, and it's the same like eight arguments. Yeah, just like um actually sir uh yeah but she's just getting started as a writer it's it's a common mistake we all made i think too though uh she's trying to work through a memory she doesn't fully grasp which who knows maybe that'll come up more in the future like that there's some big reveal in that lost memory but i also like the joke where elfo says they're her biggest fans after being ushered out of the room and insulting her yes yeah i uh i love that that he's so uh he's such he's the bad critic for so much of this episode i really love that they they give all

those lines to elfo that he's uh i mean he's somebody on twitter is what he is who's also criticizing it as it's being written who's just like me you know it can't even be fixed just go on i don't care and the thing that's very subtle that i like is that uh beans motivation is spite yeah that's the greatest yeah before anything is written the words i'll show you are said out loud or in someone's head my my main drive for writing a lot of things was anger at somebody thinking i couldn't do it like that uh spite willed me through a lot of things was anger at somebody thinking I couldn't do it. That spite willed me through a lot of things, which as I got older, I learned I really needed to find a different drive as a writer than just proving someone wrong or being pissed off about it. But I don't think I ever

really did. So that doesn't drive me as a podcaster, proving someone wrong. It's just my love of saying things and being heard. I like opinions and having them. Yeah. I mean, the podcasts are hot take machines. But yeah, I think another reason I really like this episode is that Lucy kind of gets back to his roots by becoming a writer's demon. Scenes with just Lucy and Bean where Lucy is making bean feel bad or kind of needling

her in directions i really like those moments with the character like yeah it's his original role was to uh you know to corrupt her yeah yeah to be your personal demon and i mean he as a writer's demon he is representing the voice that's in all our heads when we're writing, which this next clip is just all so well observed. So writers have demons? Oh yeah, most of them have dozens. And the demons help with writing? Sure, we also cause depression, self-doubt, insomnia, suicide, and drug addiction. The writer's life.

I don't know. Eh, you're no writer anyway. Nobody gives an elf's ass what you gotta say about your trite little life. Up yours. Yes, I am. Huh? Huh? Okay, you can stay.

I mean, the problem is now after you become successful, the people who you want to laugh in their face, they can't be found. Yeah. They're not even on Facebook. It's annoying. You can't shove it in their face as easily as before. You called me a nerd. Now I'm a nerd people know about.

Some people. Take that. But I guess that is the better of it. It's like they're so unknown, you can't even find them on Facebook. Yeah. I have to assume they're in prison or dead. Or, you know, parents who don't tweet about their kids which that's that's like a living death that's the way to be i think uh but yes the writer's demon bit it's a really fun just

little montage of him pushing her like letting her know she needs to procrastinate more that she's earned a nap like that's the feeling in the back of your head of like i want to eat something or take a nap i want to do anything other than writing god the greatest feeling in the world is i finished writing something now i can do nothing i mean a little bit for just a little bit when i was writing longer form things i would often find ways to reward myself to keep me going it's like okay you wrote for 20 minutes now it's five minutes of twitter time just like it's all about finding a reward system that works and hopefully it doesn't destroy you so it wasn't food for me thankfully it was twitter which could be worse but uh that's why you're you're a skinny writer

that's why that's true that's uh i i mean remember in uh adaptation where he is arguing with himself uh kaufman is about whether he's earned a muffin yet yeah yeah that's uh that's the eternal battle of a writer which is uh you know very like fat and boring but uh but that's skinny boring writers too uh but yeah bean is having a writer's block with her content she is suggested to write uh erotic fairy tale fan fiction which uh that's a it's a cute little idea and then i love the hate on one woman shows which spoilers she then basically does a one woman yeah at the end of the episode. Hey, one man shows are bad too.

I mean, we rarely praise Family Guy, but they did a very funny one man show thing. I can't make fun of one man shows without just doing the bit from Family Guy. Like, oh, I didn't see you there. Yeah. And you know, old man Jenkins used to say. There's also a very, very funny joke in Tim and Eric's bedtime stories. One of them is about these two awful characters who live together in L.A., and that's the horror of it.

And it ends with Tim as the character putting on a one-man show that's awful, and no one goes to it. I got to see this. I haven't seen this one. You got to watch the bedtime story series. It's on Hulu. Now it's October, the perfect time for it. They're really, really good.

And so as she's having writer's block, she then decides to write a play because that's easier than describing the sunset. And so she's going to make a play about her mother and father. And she needs to go to Zog to help with her memories. So why are they ripping out all the tulips? Oh, I'm putting in an archery range. I wanted a form of exercise that was mostly standing still. Sounds great. Okay, so one time you told me how you proposed to Mom.

Was it... I don't remember. I didn't even ask the question yet. What's past is past. And I'm not interested in reliving it. But Dagmor was part of your life. I mean, both our lives for almost 20 years.

We can't just pretend that never happened. I'm king. I can do whatever I want. Like hide in the tool shed until I go away? Maybe. You can't even do a DiMaggio impression because he's lived so differently than us. Yeah. Yeah. I love

the noises. They're so great. And it was upon my second viewing that I just realized, oh, yeah, Dagmar's big beehive looks just like a tulip. That's the metaphor they're going for there. You know, is her beehive also supposed to be a Marge thing? A mom with a beehive? Perhaps. I think she's hiding something within that beehive. Yeah, I a marge thing a mom with a beehive perhaps i

think she's hiding something within that beehive yeah i see well she lets her hair down in other true true but uh be to hide a machine gun to fight mummies but tulips are a big uh theme in this episode i guess you'd say they keep popping up but the man that one he's joke about an exercise it's mostly standing still but two the way he just like the the comedy pacing of how the statue squishes him and then he gets out from under and then just like kicks it down a hill so funny we'll see that statue again later in this episode uh just like great great timing to all of that and uh yeah it says it's also a really good shot of him when he storms off to hide in the tool shed it's a really good shot of him when he storms off to hide in the tool shed

it's a really good shot of him angry and then when he walks away it reveals his old happy statue behind him oh that's right yeah artistic yeah he's framed in front of it at first bean doesn't let that get her down and she uh she pushes herself on to write the scenes without any help from her dad and we get to hear hear Abby do a really good or fun impersonations of John DiMaggio and Sharon Horgath. I did like hearing those, yeah. You wound me, wife. Your heart is as if gripped by ice.

I am gripped by purpose higher than thy petty worldly concerns. Thou art but one fallen horseman in a grand battle waged far beyond your understanding. To fall in battle is merely one death. To fall in true love's betrayal is a hundred score. Exit stage right, end scene. Bravo. A heartbreaking work of average to moderate genius. A dramatic tour de force it was. I've never been permitted to sit down for this long. Nah, I was really hoping for more of a medical thriller.

Terrific work. First rate. Want to celebrate with a little suicide? No! Just doing my job. So, where does your script go now? Rubbish bin? Outhouse? Well, I think it should be performed on stage.

It's quite brilliant. But what do I know? Not much, really. Oh, man, I love her. Bunty's the best. That's all you get from her in this season. I really wish they remembered her. So you get a lot of the side characters in the scene

and it made me miss them even more when you don't see much more of them. Yeah, especially when Bean moved in with Bunty last season. That was so funny. And also with the executioner played by Noel Fielding, also from The Mighty Boosh. He's really great. And just hearing Merkimer again, Matt Berry's voice is the greatest. It is.

He's so stuck up. Again, him on What We Do in Shadows is so great. Yeah. I think he must have moved to America finally. That's why he's in everything now. He's no longer a slave to the BBC's four episodes of television every two years. Those are some good episodes, though. They have time to polish all of them. Him on G merengue's dark place fucking oh i forgot i need

to re-watch that oh god honestly that should be one of our live action shows that we do but uh someday in the future i also like elfo being again a terrible critic in that what he dislikes about it is that it's not the that it's not a different genre. Yeah. That's exactly what writers hate about critics, where they're like, you're mad at my work for what it isn't. Judge it on its own merits. And on the second viewing, I did notice that Mary is in the room. Yes.

Not with no speaking role or anything. I didn't catch it in the first viewing either, I think. It's something I fear with the show when it's so like a narrative arc that you don't watch reruns all the time like you like we did with simpsons and futurama to really pick up on all these details because you're just like well no i binged through it it's time to i i it's totally disposable yeah i binged it i feel people have that attitude now where it's like oh my plate's clean time for the next plate you go into the next 10 episodes of Glow or whatever. You feel like you can finally watch something else.

Like, phew, I finished that. Now I can get to my next responsibility of viewing something. And the reference to heartbreaking work of staggering genius is what he's bringing up. I read that book, but I'm so over those kinds of books now. Well, Dave Eggers has had a life, Bob. I know. I'm living his life right now in berkeley exactly we both are it was i uh i read one third of it and i kind of got bored uh but or i just it's it's a lot of pages i i don't i i'm not much into

this reading uh but i but it was fun to read the at least the first third of it while living in berkeley because it's about him and his brother moving to Berkeley after the heartbreaking death of their parents. It's a good English major-y book to read. If you're in college and you want to look smart, put on a nice sweater and read that book in public. It really is for white men who want to feel things about stuff. It lets you know that, well my alienation matters too uh but it was an interesting i did not expect a dave eggers reference there yeah yeah it's nice but man bunty laughing about all of her jokes about her serfdom are all so funny and her having

no confidence like what do i know nothing really and that she just like all she knows how to do is work endlessly and laugh about it and like how how her children die all the time i love that episode about her in the first part it was really good yeah yeah the uh and just how much bean doesn't see her as a bean likes her but all like doesn't understand what horrible life she lives the joke about uh she's never sat down for that long and she's moved to tears very dark but i love it and uh murkimer he could be used more he gets used more this season than he did last season i like him being ridden around by phippen fap in that one episode yeah i think

in the first season he just sorts of he just sort of uh runs off really right for a while and then comes back with the giantess and then kind of disappears again but murkimer i didn't know this until this viewing that his crown is supposed to look like jug heads it has the red circle and the green rectangle on it or exactly like the pins on jughead's crown as well the vision of a pig and a crown is pretty nice it's just a funny image with that voice coming out of it it's just god and he's he's so used to being a pig now he just kind of loves it he's used to being covered in shit he's very used to it bean follows bunty's advice goes to the theater to try to put it on he she then finds

out that no women are allowed in the theater as like a mime and a person delivering a bunch of cats for some reason i would assume to kill cats for something i want to be a cat balancing act uh but they don't allow her in and that's when she learns the sexist reality of old school theater which is based on the real practice of that women all the parts were played by men back then i thought this was going to be a shakespeare in love parody at first and i'm really glad that they didn't do that. I totally forgot about that. Oscar winner. I'm really glad.

Well, yeah, one of Harvey Weinstein's greatest successes is an Oscar campaign. But yes, Bean isn't so happy to learn this truth. Women aren't allowed to work in theater. I know you must be disappointed, Bean, but what did you expect? Like war and beauty contest judging, theater is the noble work of men. That's ridiculous. There's no reason women can't do theater.

It's a slippery slope. What's next, male cows? You know, I myself have been known to tread the boards. Oh, real boards? In my days at Twinkle Town University, I was the toast of the annual follies. My fans, stunned by my talent, showered me with homemade bricks and fresh ripe tomatoes. Ah, bygone days.

The most glorious time of my life. Ah. Hello. I understand women are prohibited from working in the theater yep how about pigs come on in i must warn you i am smeared in my own manure i said come on in good joke everyone is he's really uh he's relishing being a pig yeah he loves it he loves it now i mean i what in the when he returned in the start of part two he uh he announces that he's been having sex with other pigs too so he's he's pretty he's pretty into this pig life now uh but life i love how he remembers being uh showered with homemade bricks

and fresh ripe tomatoes yeah he's reading that uh differently than he should and also the another great line like warren beauty contest judging theater is the noble work of that could be my line of the show if we had a what a cartoon line of the show yeah i do like his like stilted hello like just it's cut off yeah it's really good just he wants people to know i'm smearing to my own manure it's just it's how which comes back to when in the next scene bean kisses him she's like you yeah she tasted the there's there's another guy smeared with something in this episode oh yeah in the jittery she's not even sure what that is she finds out though that he said the play was his and that he gives her the money for it which

it's a good little joke about how entitled lucy is that she's like you can't pay me with me her face is right on the money i do like his sad getting kicked out of the window that's the greatest yeah i i love that too that he's and also the uh it's real bender move by lucy to grab the coin oh yeah and run away yeah i it almost needs a uh giggling a john dimaggio giggling as he leaves he can't put the coins to his compartment, though. Fender would. That's true. He lacks a compartment. But yes, as Bean finds out she's got her name taken off of her work,

Elfo has some questions. Fortunately, I got them to give me something far more valuable than cash. The starring role. Whoa, you're starring as me? My character's the star of the play. I had to make a few adjustments.

Sad. Bean? What? I have a question. Don't throw me out the window. That's not a question. Don't throw me out the window? Also, I have a second question.

I could go down to the theater and be your little spy. That's not a question either. I think someone tiny's going out the window i hate you guys that's funny yeah i like the design on her window too still we've been seeing that for a while but the how it opens in like a jagged pane instead of uh a straight you know square or whatever yeah i do like that i don't know like the shot you see of the castle of dreamland reminds me a lot of planet express like the cgi shot of like rotating around the castle and i'm just zooming into it they're shaped similarly too i don't know i'm just getting a planet express vibe from the establishing shots i think you're right i think you're definitely

right also you know there's a uh a model of the planet express ship in steam land as well oh you're right they were really they're hitting it hard in the those episodes disney doesn't see that the makers of futurama yeah i guess they are futurama owners now boy if they were ever hoping to do a crossover i think they thought they had a friendlier people with fox than disney yeah fox uh fox was more ready to work with a netflix show while disney is ready to put netflix out of business is what they intend they're yeah they're trying to destroy it actively i mean they should honestly they should be thinking in the long term of like oh let them put a futurama character in there we'll own it eventually anyway but i mean all of you out there need to decide which corporation do i root for you gotta pick pick your brands here fight online for their honor it's funny uh to right now i'm

wearing a wrestling t-shirt of my favorite billionaire, Tony Khan, who's way better than the billionaire Vince McMahon. I'm wearing a Thimbleweed Park t-shirt my girlfriend drew. Oh, well. You're talking about the big bed you sleep in with your wife. I'm sorry. Merkimer is happy with his ill-gotten credit, which is then instantly stolen from him by the director of the play uh and then it's a it's a bit of a corny dad joke but i do like him saying like uh i'm a leading ham it's uh yeah it's corny but it's the director wyman petty who does not survive this episode yeah he's uh he doesn't make as much of a mark as some characters that get killed off so i love

the very futurama e uh wordplay where the guy uh dies because of the lead paint oh yeah and the i've seen this before death yes here let's hear about the death of an actor action the poets never wrote of pleasures so sublime my glorious kingdom a feast for my eyes my glorious bride a brunch for my soul for my soul cue dagmar get a doctor now i've seen this before death the finest actor of his generation struck down at his first rehearsal i think maybe it was the lead makeup. That's what you always say. Now take off his clothes and throw his corpse in the alley. Don't forget the wig.

Woe is me. Who should be my Dagmar now? Wow, I didn't see that coming. That really was the status of actors at this time. It's like, not even a pauper's grave for you. We just throw your corpse into the alley. Your nude corpse into the alley. They're not putting clothes back on him. They're just like, well, we need that costume for the next actor. So your corpse into the alley your nude corpse into the alley they're not putting clothes back on him they're just like well we need that costume for the next actor so chuck him in

the alley also that he's they say that it's his first rehearsal too so they just pick somebody it's not surprising they pick elfo who also has no experience to be at uh is that lead makeup a wizard of oz reference as well you know what it could be uh buddy epson almost died yes yeah the original tin man right yes and uh they recast him and got better paint for the the next tin man but yeah and then but buddy epson would go on to his own success as a uh a rich oil baron yes jed clampett's america's hero but yeah i really love alfalfos thinking that that's part of the play that the actor dies on stage you know so then they put up a poster advertising the show which causes a bit

of a stir I if I had a critique of the plot of this episode I think there could have been a scene where the theater troupe accepts that they're doing a controversial play or they're like oh we should be speaking truth to power with this controversial play or whatever because doing a play about the king is asking for trouble that's why like the stories of shakespeare were some one-off character or some line is really him critiquing a you know somebody powerful but through a secondary character so people don't know it but if it's the actual person you're casting then you're getting in trouble it's the actual person you're casting, then you're getting in trouble. It's a bio play in a way.

But yeah, I think, I mean, they're kind of building towards the last episode with these scenes with Oddball and the Lady Priestess, whose name I forget, where we hear about their secret society and things disrupting a plan. So maybe they're too focused on that to give us more of the theater troupe, which are there other actors in this troupe? There's much more treachery for oddball yeah in this

and then we'd seen before he didn't seem all that antagonistic to bean until the end of this season like yeah actually so i forgot oddball's name so i looked it up on wikipedia and the entry was like oddball is a character in disenchantment and one of the primary antagonists i was like antagonist so it did spoil the end for me this kind of does build up where we end up with him in the last episode where he's he is partially into this is introducing the stricture the sexism of the world that won't allow bean to be the queen in later episodes uh and so this this kind of sets it up while also showing that abdol is scheming as well yeah i do like the lines of people uh can't read the poster but they like the squiggles uh but odd of all thinks it is uh it's smut and not even religious smut uh that

nose is touching yeah and nose is touching is a pornographic image for them it's a real grope fest when i listen back to the sounds the woman in the secret society that is tress doing her ma voice for yeah it's very close i'd say 20 years younger ma yeah yeah she's got a real dial on the old lady voice and also oddball uh he calls back to zog punching him the many times he punches him in the show that's right yeah uh he's been punched five times today he says so instead uh he sends a messenger which instantly is killed you know i i like that's a clever guy yeah often like a shot of a corpse is a punch line like you're told a joke and then you see a shot of like a head on a pike or a corpse or a dead body and that's the punchline in this enchantment.

Zog is like Bender and Homer together, except he kills three people an episode, at the very least. Like, it's... But it was a different time. Yeah. Our laws didn't apply. Utterly scandalous. Well, it can't even be called theater. Nothing but made-up hoo-ha to distract peasants from their miserable lives.

But that's what religion is for. What it is, is treason. They make a laughingstock of the royal family, the kingdom, and most important, you, your majesty. Me? They're mocking me? What did I ever do? Aside from the yelling and the stabbing and the slapping and the gouging and the name-calling? Absolutely nothing, sire. I want to see it with my own eyes. Where do I see it?

The theater, 8 p.m. tonight. The theater? All right, but I'm bringing my bow. Good shot, sire. Right in the spleen. A command performance? Yes. Your next, and presumably final final show will be attended by the king. He will render judgment as to whether this production is treasonous and then pronounce sentence. Oh, okay. So no big deal.

What's the sentence for treason? A couple of light slaps on the bum bum? Because I don't think I can handle that. I think the story about Elpho getting hit on the bum bum by his father, which was improv, we were told by Josh Weinstein. I think that was one of the standout moments of part one. So it's referenced a few more times in part two. Yeah, bum bum has become his catchphrase for Elfo. I mean, it's funny that he just like, that's what he calls his butt, his bum bum.

And getting a few slaps, slaps on the bum bum. That is the ultimate endangerment. I like when wussy elfo comes out though also like he said sometimes they kind of go in and out of like is elfo afraid of a small slap on his bum bum or is he someone who has already died and doesn't fear death anymore i think he's just traumatized from the the bum bum punishment his dad gave him but he's been to heaven. That's true. Did you notice that God, I didn't notice this until I looked at the trivia, that God has four fingers in this world.

It's the reverse of The Simpsons. Actually, I think everyone in this show has four fingers. No, no, no. Everybody's got five fingers. Oh, okay. That's what you mean. Okay, yeah. So God has four fingers and everyone else has five.

Okay. While on Simpsons, God has five fingers and they all have four except when they screwed up yes but no i didn't notice that at all yeah everyone in the show does have uh four fingers and a thumb and they actually show god's face well not really but they're not trying to cut around the face of god like they do in the simpsons it's just a glowing light all voiced by phil lamar which uh, which I like him hanging out with Jerry. That's really cute. Jerry got a good end.

But yes, Elfo doesn't realize he's going to die. Pretty much his death is on the way. And we then get a shot of them preparing for heading out. Zog is drinking as he's also seeing a tulip, which I think Dagmar or somebody is placing those tulips in his room to drive him crazy i think i think the season finale kind of confirms she's like

hiding in dreamland so yeah you're right you're right because they fall underground and she's there interesting yeah i did like the joke about the opera glasses that was funny it was a really snappy joke yeah i think uh the pacing it's a clever idea of like, let me get my opera glasses. It's two glasses of beer. But the pacing of it happens so fast. Like if you're given too long to think about it, you think like, well, obviously it doesn't mean real opera glasses. He's going to have a drinking glass, right? And so it's about the speed and execution of it too, which I think they pulled off real well. As the play is about to begin, Bean is sad. This is so frustrating. I've got to be the only writer in the world who has to sit around helplessly while idiots ruin all my hard work. Then why are we here? You could be around

the corner at my bar. Because I love this drink. This bitter, bitter drink. All right, people, it's that time again. Amateur night. Please give a tepid, jittery welcome to a newcomer. We call her Freckles Behind Her Back. My new friend, Bean. What? No way. Do it. Do it.

Do it. Do it. Do it. Do it. Do it. Do it. Do it. Right.

Shut up. Do it. There's a guy. That guy pops up up later the unseen guy who's late to the party on uh what's happening that's like the droopy voice yeah from simpsons except but i god i fucking love that line like i have to be the only writer in the world who sits around helplessly as idiots ruin my heart spoken like a tv writer oh yeah i love i love that line and that also they yeah they bring back lucy's classic do it from the first season but everybody joins in it's got to be nice for being like she actually has a community supporting her uh and i like too

that mary thinks that like the setup of the line is you think she's gonna say we call her her freckles as a nickname except she's like behind her back yeah we call her freckles now uh not that she really listens to anybody else but that's a really like a good friend kind of thing that mary is pushing her to get on stage and still finally perform like she wants to i wish i would see more of her i think b needs more non-weirdo friends yeah and women friends yeah yeah i think well what is lucy at the end of the day her only uh friends in life are those two and then uh the only woman friend she really talks to is bunty who is her slave yeah or surf surf not considered a person by being probably uh certainly

not uh and so then we see zog arrive at the play. He's just talking over everything, which I love. Just him. God, Zog is just the rude asshole. It's so great. And you get to see Fip and Fap bringing his milk duds. I like that, too. Or duds du lait. Yes.

The French milk duds. Oh, man. That made me want some teeth-ripping-out milk duds right now. Oh, man. If you've got fillings, it's going to be a big silver party in your mouth. That's the tastiest part of a milk dud is tasting metal inside of it. It's going to be a big silver party in your mouth. That's the tastiest part of a Milk Dud, is tasting metal inside of it. It's a prize. I liked, too, when the play begins, that you get to see how the background works,

like the guys pulling the levers and moving it around. It's like seeing the lead primitive stage tech. Yeah, yeah. That reminds me of how in Futurama, when they'd want to show how they'd come up with a crazy thing, but they'd also want to show more practicality of how it works. Same here. Like, well, yeah, we could just draw the moving waves and the waterfall and everything, but let's show the guys actually moving the pedals and how much work it takes to get it. The star of the play comes up on stage and everybody just laughs at the idea of a talking pig. They're disturbed at first and they're at the idea of a talking pig.

They're disturbed at first and they're like, oh, a talking pig. It's a real audience of rubes, but the king is there. Yes, yeah. Which comes later, but God, the Zog doesn't understand that a pig dressed just like him is supposed to be him. In a play about him. That they told him was about him, too. But before we get to that, we've got quite a big speech from Bean here once she gets on stage. Yeah, what I really like is this

so the animators were just given a very long monologue, but all of her poses are so interesting and good and well done. Oh yeah, they really met the challenge of being given all this audio. I hate Dreamland. I hate the overflowing plague pits. I hate Dreamland. I hate the overflowing plague pits.

I hate how when it's the end of the night and you're completely drunk and you've got to stagger home, it's uphill all the way. But you know what I don't hate? Most of you. I believe deep down underneath all that dirt and sweat and grease and mud

and whatever is all over you, sir, that you guys are kind and decent. You just do misguided things, like abandoning your babies in the Enchanted Forest. They're not going to survive. We're like betting on elf versus squirrel wrestling, like to the death. Is that what we really want to watch? Guys, the squirrel always wins. Do you know how much money I've lost

just thinking that I'm going to witness the first time that an elf beats a squirrel? It's never going to happen. But we watch it again and again. It's not a fair fight. And do you know what else is not fair? The fact that I'm up here on this dinky little stage talking to you, but I can't go across the street to perform the play that I wrote.

It's going on right now in front of an adoring, sophisticated audience. I like the metaphor, the futility of life is like watching Elf's Russell Squirrels. Yeah, that tiny squirrels can overpower most elves. That's why it was so, I honestly felt it was a little silly when they did the Elfo badass scene that he's able to kill all those giants. That was really weird. Maybe squirrels have like advanced elf fighting tactics we don't know about. Well, though Elfo's not pure elf so maybe it's uh he's got some unnatural strength from whatever else he is yeah like you said the posing

man it i think really her delivery abby's really reminds me of a lot of her speeches she gave in broad city yeah and i think they took the animators took a lot of those poses of how she's like, I can't go over there and puts her arms to the side. Over here, it really punctuates those bits. My favorite posing on it is the moments where she's talking about how she's on stage there instead of across the street. I mean, it's a real challenge to be given a minute worth of dialogue and the character can't leave one area. She has to stay in the same position, basically.

Like, how do you move her around in an interesting way? And they did a really good job. And, yes, the cut to everybody booing, and they're asking Merkimer if they can show us his teats. He then resets with pig shrieking, which I will not hurt your ears with here. It was a good shriek. Oh, yeah, yeah. I almost wish wish like well poor poor murkimer all he wants is a little respect as an actor meanwhile backstage elfo is uh not

in his makeup yet so they very cruelly dip him in a bucket of lead paint though i guess uh elfo is not allergic to it because he does not die it's a pumpkin uh yeah he gets in at a pumpkin to pretend to be pregnant, and he walks out on stage as he shares his scene. Like a tree in bloom, my love now sprouts anew. Dagmar is pregnant. Love, I am ripe with our blissful union. Witness, my king.

Come on, Dagmar never wore lipstick like that. I pray this be a daughter as fair as thou. We shall call her Tear Beanie, and she shall make a fine princess. Or maybe she'll make a nice pie instead. Hey, wait a minute. That pig with a crown is supposed to be me? And for an encore, you're all getting your heads chopped off. I don't know if we said this in the first episode of this we did, but there's a bit of Archie Bunker in there.

Oh, yeah. I'm sure we mentioned it, but I'm hearing it in for an encore. Yeah, you're right. That is, it's the same kind of like New York-y grouch working class type guy. But, you know, Merkimer, good at improv. Yeah, yeah. I like that. He rolled with it.

Totally rolled with it. Yeah. Make a fine pie. The way he looks at the audience, too, as the pumpkin explodes. It's so great that Zog just finally realizes it at that moment and that he kills so easily and doesn't care as we'll see later he doesn't give a shit that he kills people he's not even there for the execution you think you want to watch that but that's funny that an execution is happening while he has a heart-to-heart reconnection with his daughter which I think this is the dream of

most writers that your oh yeah art can connect you with a parent. This is sheer fantasy. Forget about the elves and the magic. If my father were to read my writing ever and reflect upon it, that would be more fantastical than a million dragons. Frankly, it's unbelievable. My dad told me there's a reason they call it Dreamland.

And for once, he was right. Because whenever I fall asleep it's nightmares about my evil mom turns out una was the cool one you never appreciate your lizard stepmom until she becomes a sexy pirate am i right remember you all got turned to stone yeah una did it no that was dagmar yeah dagmar said una did it dagmar, that was Dagmar. Yeah, Dagmar said Una did it. Dagmar was a liar. My whole life I just wanted her to be there, but it turns out the best mothering I ever got

was from a fat guy with a red mustache. She's whining about her dad. My dad was right. You can't escape your dreams. But when I fall asleep tonight, whatever happens, I'm going to fight back. I don't know what the joke is, but I did laugh a lot at the person observing.

She's whining about her dad. Yeah, I like that. I don't know if there's an extra joke to it or not, or it's just about a person in the audience going like, oh, I know what you're talking about. That's chappy of this episode. tweet for the ages that one that uh to that you get to see that the villagers don't know about the overall narrative of the series they're like yeah we all got turned stone it was una she did that i like i don't know if the writers are

commenting like we have to make you care about this but even our characters are sort of like that that happened yeah who is that i don't remember yeah i also it's a nice journey that bing goes through in the episode that she starts it afraid of her dreams and at the end of this you know she's got a new resolve that she's she's not going to be scared of her nightmare she's going to be ready to fight i like that too it's a It's a heartfelt ending that even with something as, you know, a little sappy as a slow clap from the audience. Yeah, yeah. But yes, she reconnects with her father as beheadings are happening in this happy, headless ending. What are you doing here, Dad?

You know, Bean, you're pretty good with words up there on the thing. Oh, Dad dad that doesn't mean much but it means a lot you know this puts me in a good mood i'm thinking maybe i'll call off the execution what i thought we're gonna have a happy ending tonight oh man wait don't chop the king has changed his mind. Ah, well. No, I'm done. Cheer up, Elmo.

We have vindication from no less an authority than the king himself. Our show shall go on. Oh, boy. Dad, don't you hate it that it's uphill all the way home? Yeah. Wow, that guy isn't lucky the head rolls by yeah yeah i did love uh how elfa wants to die instead of put on the play i love that uh he all he was doing it he was only doing the play to be a spy for bean just because he's a sycophant and now he's uh going to be forced to do it again and yeah he

almost died i love the the executioner just like i know i'm done like you just chopped his head we lost that character though who knows how funny he could have been it's pretty brutal the director got his head cut off but he was a sexist jerk and he did steal all the glory yeah so they made him just unlikable enough that you don't feel too bad at his incredibly unfair death, all because of the Tyranno. I mean, this is definitely an anti-monarchy show. Yeah, it is. That's just the point of it all. Like, you know, monarchs are bad.

They should probably not exist. Fortunately, nothing like that exists now. In America, nothing impossible. I go wrong. I like uh still though they call elfo elmo that's yeah elmo uh but even they they really have their cake and eat it too with having a heartfelt reconnection while also a head a man the king murdered his head rolls by but uh i you know it did give me a little in the it got me a little verklempt uh seeing

her and her parent connect over the same kind of observation i like yeah i i do like their reconnection in this season even if i'm not a fan of the more episode to episode sort of storytelling i do like the gradual you know reunion of the two yeah yeah but uh that was a pretty good episode of disenchantment of a uh generally pretty good season where i still think they're they're figuring out the kinks of exactly what they want the show to be yeah and i think more people should watch it i'm not seeing a lot of chat about it and uh with the first season i talked to a lot of people who a lot of people would ask us about it because we do a substance podcast but i found a lot of people like would watch just the first episode or the first two

and not go from there i say uh there's 20 now, and they're really easy to go through. I say watch it if you haven't. Yeah, and you know what? We talked about the feeling of pressure to watch all things at once, but now it's a couple weeks after the premiere. Take your time with it. Go with it, and just enjoy it. I think, too, spoilers don't ruin the show. No. Not like with, say, Game of Thrones, where you'd say, that character definitely dies, or whatever. If you showed me, I mean, I saw what the ending was of season, I saw what the ending was of part two, excuse me, back in February. If you show that to me before watching this, oh, Bean is tied up at a stake at the end of the season, I would be like, so? That means nothing to me. I'll just watch it.

Yeah, just watch and enjoy. It's a great, I think it's a lot of fun that is is better on each rewatch i think once you're not in the binge mindset and you just revisit episodes here and there the episodes are more fun when you can appreciate them on their own in a more sitcom style which is i mean maybe that's just the way our brains have been trained with the simpson style content we're old and these things aren't marketed to us anymore. That's true. That's true. We're almost out of that nuts-and-gum demographic, Bob.

Damn it. What was it, 18 to 38? Oh, shit. Did he say 35? I thought it was 35. 18 to 49. 18 to 49. Wow.

So we have quite a bit of time left. Yes. All right. Nuts-and-gum age is 18 to 49. We're still safe. That was back in 1993 or 4. the demographics are so precise now yeah but yes thanks for listening to what a cartoon yes if you want to support our show and get every podcast one week ahead of time and ad free please go to patreon.com slash talking simpsons and sign up at the five dollar level

for just five dollars a month you'll get that and you'll also have access to all of our exclusive miniseries, including the upcoming Talking Futurama Season 2. We're not doing parts. Actually, we are. So, Season 2, Part 1 is coming in October. You want to be there for it, but you'll also have access to the previous three miniseries and so much more. Too many things to list here, but over

100 bonus podcasts. But, Henry, we have special extra-long podcasts happening at the $10 level, including our longest podcast ever my god yes yeah the if you enjoy this what a cartoon podcast and want to get even more of it for ten dollars a month plus all of those stuff bob just talked about for the five dollar a month folks you want to sign up for the what a cartoon movie podcast ten dollar a month patreon supporters get to hear a different animated feature film be deconstructed once a month back in september we did cowboy bebop knock it on heaven's door aka cowboy bebop the movie four hours and 22 minutes of podcast on that and in october we're keeping

the halloween spirit in style with the nightmare before christmas by henry selleck that's who you should always identify with that movie. It's Henry Selick's The Nightmare Before Christmas, not Tim Burton's. Yes, but you want to sign up for $10 a month to get access to over 30 hours of podcasting exclusivity at patreon.com slash Talking Simpsons. So I've been one of your hosts, Bob Mackie. Find me on Twitter as Bob Servo. My other podcast is Retro Knot, a classic gaming podcast. Find that every Monday

and occasionally on Friday at retronauts.com or look for Retro Knot in your podcast machine. I think you'll like it if you've ever played a video game. Henry, what about you? You can follow me, Henry Gilbert, on Twitter at H-E-N-E-R-E-Y-G. Anytime new stuff comes out on the Patreon

or on our free feeds, I am certain to tweet about it and you'll know about it first if you follow me at H-E-N-E-R-E-Y-G. Thanks so much for listening, folks. We'll see you next week for the 1949 Disney adaptation of The Legend of Sleepy Hollow

and we will see you then All right, let's rehearse. Act one, scene two, Zog and Dagmar, written and directed by Wyman Petty. Wait, you're taking credit? If you're not happy, they're casting for Pork Chop No. 2 at the butcher shop. Pork Chop No. 2? I'm no common cutlet. I'm a leading ham.