Talking Simpsons - Talk to the Audience?!? - December 2021

Episode Date: January 5, 2022

Can you believe that 2021 has reached its end? We are certainly in shock about it as we reflect on our December, talking about the Simpsons news of the month. Not to mention we reflect on the many TV shows and movies we watched over the holidays and then we respond to some of our favorite comments on Patreon. So get ready for one more community podcast to close out the year with a bang! Support this podcast and get over 100 bonus episodes by visiting Patreon.com/TalkingSimpsons and becoming a patron! And please follow the new official Twitter, @TalkSimpsonsPod!

I heartily endorse this month as always. Well hey it's Henry Gilbert and I did a top 30 list of Simpsons episodes but I'm not releasing it. Until next year maybe? You know what? Until we hit a certain number on Patreon. I'm not going to say it but when we hit it. At 20k we will release it. Both of our top 30.

But in case nobody knows what's going on here this is our community podcast. Every month we talk about what's happening in the Simpsons world and in our world and then we talk about what your happening in the Simpsons world, in our world. And then we talk about what your questions and comments for this month's round of episodes. In case everybody knows or doesn't know, I'm currently in Canada using a different setup. I have not moved here. I'm just here temporarily. So this will not be the sound quality of talk to the audiences in the future.

I'm just on a different sound setup just to let everyone know ahead of time. I will not sound like this in the future. So just to put that out there. We haven't recorded together in two and a half weeks. Was that how many weeks? Probably closer to three. Wow. Yeah, I guess.

Closer to three weeks. Yeah, man. Time flew. It's been a very, very, yes, very nice break. Thank you to all the patrons out there. Because of you, we can do this full time and work way ahead to give ourselves some time off for the holidays. So it's been a lot of fun for me. And I know based on the notes we have in front of us, Henry and I have seen a lot of movies.

So this podcast might be more about movies than The Simpsons. But hey, that's fine, right? Yeah, now this has become a what movies did you watch podcast? That's what our podcast has turned into. And I'm also a little bit sick, but not with Omicron. Because if you would not believe this, there are also other diseases floating around out there. So I came down with the cold and I thought I had Omicron briefly, but I took two tests and I'm fine. So, you know, that was a little scary.

That's the pain of any cold. Now, my husband had a cold recently. I didn't have it, but we both were like, well, we have to know for sure if we have a cold like symptoms we should know i feel like that's just gonna how it it's gonna be and of course i mean how available were take-home tests over there because in our neck of the woods not easy to find i think nina had more ahead of time but the only downside of canadian health care everything else is a million times better but you still have to pay for tests for rapid not for non-rapid tests for like i forget what the uh abbreviation is yeah something like that yeah

the ones that most people need for like uh crossing the border and everything like that oh yeah the take-home ones here like they still cost like 25 bucks in there i had to uh when we used up our two ahead of our trip to visit family then i was like well we need to get two more there weren't any at any of the local drug stores around here and so we i just literally bought them on amazon for 50 bucks for for four tests total which uh this country we should all be reimbursed for all of this bullshit i'm sure joe biden's gonna introduce a great form for us all to fill out to our health care providers as long as we say it's a broken website yep yeah uh but we should talk about uh simpsons news starting off so i mean

we started off with some depression uh the covid discussion and unfortunately our first bit of news is a tiny bit depressing because i mean we saw we've been seeing a lot of these. Surprisingly, we saw a few of these at the beginning of 2021. Now we're at the end of 2021 and another Simpsons writer has passed away. So Frank Mula, he passed away. He was the writer of I Love Lisa, The Last Temptation of Homer and Faith Off, the season 11 episode. He passed away at some point in December and the last episode of 2021 was dedicated to his memory. So Frank was kind of like an older Simpsons writer. I mean, he's not as old as John Schwarzwalder, who I believe is the oldest Simpsons writer, not counting James L. Brooks.

But he was either 71 or 72. Oh, man. Frank Miller. it was such a shock when I so when I saw Al Jean tweet that the rerun that aired this Sunday would have a dedicated to Frank Mula at the end of it with a picture from Isle of Lisa I was like wait did I did I miss something I did miss something but like it wasn't as far as I could tell up to yesterday he didn't get like a big obituary and like variety or or even like his local newspaper uh the only other place i could find like frank mula on twitter mentioned was some friend of his who i think worked with him on on a not simpsons i was like uh r.i.p to frank mula one of the

funniest guys worked on everything i was like wow how it's just you know it makes me wonder how much he had left hollywood that he was that his passing could uh go without you know like a press release or like his manager telling somebody to publish it yeah well when we did faith off in uh for season 11 maybe in 2020 i forget when that was but i did a mini bio on him and i think faith off with his last credited episode script and i wrote a few notes in here just as a reminder for like what he did on the simpsons so he started with brother can you spare two dimes as a writer on the show so late season three he left mid-season five after homer and apu he came back in the late 90s to be

consulting producer and then in season 11 he was co-executive producer of the show i believe he left fox sorry he left the simpsons because he had a development deal with Fox and like a lot of those guys from the first four seasons he created his own sitcom that failed that was called Local Heroes it was a Jay Moore sitcom it aired five of seven produced episodes and before the Simpsons he was a writer on the Gracie Films ABC

sitcom Sibs for which Sam Simon and James L. Brooks produced so I think that's how he found his way onto the show that's where he got like retirement money he's uh yeah i you know with that timeline he does seem to be one of those guys who's like didn't stick around in the merkin time like who just you know we heard some stories that merkin didn't get along with everybody yeah it seemed like i mean we love david merkin but it seems like uh he's a real particular person and not everyone gets along with him and there are a

lot of people that didn't last beyond season five with him uh so he might have been one of the ones who said you know what i'm not a big fan of murkin i'll find something else to do or uh hey fox is offering me this uh pilot deal so i'll go off with uh and do that but he came back to the show for scully's run and i think he was a scully friend because like scully mula was a writer on both uh what a country the yakov smirnoff sitcom and uh out of this world the high concept alien girl sitcom which i think gayest episode ever just did a podcast about oh yeah they did no yeah the scully you know scully always likes working with his uh the same troop of guys and even better for him, it's like, hey, I used to work with you, and I know you write great Simpsons episodes,

so why don't you join me on the show and help out? I think, too, he was looking at this when Gene became a co-executive producer. Lots more people moved up to co-exec producer in the Scully years, I think, than in the... I should look more into the ranking of people. Was Dan Graney a co-exec producer under Bill and Josh? years i think then in the i should look more into the ranking of people like what was like was dan grainy a co-exec producer under a bill and josh like who else was an executive producer under the job bill and josh years yeah i mean there seems to be a lot of producers around that time and i

mean frank only wrote uh three episodes but basically any episode between uh brother can you spare two dimes and homer napoo he was responsible for at least some of the jokes in those episodes so uh he contributed a lot especially to season four which everybody loves to death so yeah that's him and uh one interesting fact i found on his imdb one of his earliest writing jobs was writing for uh madam's place which was the waylon flowers and madam the puppets oh they had their own own show oh that's waylon flowers is the namesake of waylon smithers because he didn't know and he was like a 70s variety show comedian sorry henry no no that's amazing i i i'm sad we can't i was just gonna say oh to ask him questions

about working on that it's like now now you can it's i i uh the only other thing i have about mula is that i really love him on the commentary for i love lisa like he's so deadpan and funny and he uh the best thing is that they have a you know they have the uh vietnam flashback joke where the man gets shot through his valentine to death and mac reigning says i got letters from people saying that they didn't like this that they were vietnam vets and that this was very distressing to them and then then Mula says, like, you should have wrote back and said there wasn't a Vietnam flashback in the show and just to fuck with their, like, just the subtle way he was joking about someone's PTSD was just, it was a real shock laugh, but I had a good chuckle at it.

That was a commentary highlight. And he's's also on Twitter or he was on Twitter rather his Twitter account is still active the Talking Mula and his last tweet is on November 6th so it must have been a sudden thing or he wasn't public with whatever was going on with him but yeah he was a big contributor to the show I mean you really can't count their contributions

by the amount of episodes they wrote because obviously it's a collaborative effort so just a huge impact on some of the most formative years of the show oh yeah so the one thing about canada is the well there are some downsides in that there's no hulu there's no hbo max but uh their disney plus is much better because they don't have hulu so a lot of hulu stuff is like packaged in with disney plus as part of the star package so uh they do have new simpsons but unfortunately uh as of this recording the latest ones they have are a serious flander so i didn't get to see these new episodes for december one of which called mothers and other strangers kind of

rewrites the mother simpson uh timeline and apparently henry didn't care for that very much and not not so much i well it was a it was an al jean, meaning it had a lot of references to think too, because he really liked her, you know, the idea. And Glenn Close as a big guest star. But then they killed her off, you know, like they killed off Mona Simpson not too recently. But this was like trying to fix it again

where, you know, it's such a great, what pissed me off about it was it is such a great joke in Mother Simpson when Homer says, my dad told me she died while I was at the movies. great what pissed me off about it was it is such a great joke in mother simpson when homer says my my dad told me she died while i was at the movies like it's just such a heartbreaking sad thing and it's about what homer is just such like a trusting idiot and then this story uh is a big flashback

where homer goes like oh actually no i realized by the time i was a teen she wasn't dead that she had moved away and that then we're going to, and she was on the lam and we're going to try to find her. I'm like, well then wait. I mean, obviously you could just say Homer has so many, much brain damage. He would forget he did this. But I was like, if Homer and his teens went looking for Mona and knew she wasn't dead, then why was he so shocked to find out she wasn't dead in the entire, it like removes

the whole point of that episode you know which is like one of my favorite episodes yeah so i really don't like that i i probably will watch it just to get mad and actually henry uh that episode where they killed her was a while ago it was actually may of 2008 good lord wow almost 14 years ago is when they thought well you know 20 seasons are probably fine for us and uh let's just get rid of this character but no it's going to keep going on forever and uh yeah i'm not a fan of that as a big mother simpson fan i don't like how they're doing that i mean i i think i get al gene's intention that he just wanted like more sweet moments with with homer and his mom which he's you know he they are very powerful but if you keep going back to that well then it creates

more moments and it makes them lesser by doing them, I think. And then also, it just ended in such an Al Jean special, completely unrelated to the rest of the episode. They then have it end with an eight and a half parody. It just straight up puts different versions of Homer are in the parade. If you've seen the Fell felini film eight and a half it ends with a parade of every character in the movie uh like what doing a like basically a circus act and going in a circle to a very specific song they got that song played it over black and white

of different versions of homer from the entire series doing all the moves in it i was like well this this has nothing to do this episode wasn't an eight and a half parody it's just you decided the last like 90 seconds should be that and it just felt kind of disjointed yeah yeah that feels like a critic move not in terms of the emotionality but just like well now homer exists in this movie world yes here it is yes yes it actually is extremely critical and in that the joke would have been exactly the same 30 years ago, too, on The Critic, because it was still an old movie then, you know? And showing off how smart and clever you are if you get this Fellini reference.

I've seen this black and white movie. So there's another episode that was out that I also didn't see. I apologize to everybody out there, but I'm behind the maple curtain here. They don't let these new episodes uh pass the gate and uh yeah there's an episode called a made maggie and then maggie joined fat tony's mob it was a christmas episode i had no idea they were doing another christmas one this year because they did two last year right yeah it was slightly christmassy and uh okay i i honestly i didn't want i watched a few minutes of it i was like i eh, I'm good.

I'm good. I just, I'm getting tired of hearing Joe Mantegna. He's also getting pretty old as Fat Tony. And I think they don't always have the funniest stuff for him these days. I don't know. I would just go back to watch instead. If you want to watch a good Christmas one that's recent, just watch the one from last season where they're filming a Hallmark movie in Springfield.

I thought that was a better gimmick episode but that is because it's a selman gimmick one not a you know treacly algae one uh no offense people think we're yeah we like algae but if people think we're being too negative uh we'll go back to last month and we liked most of the november stuff oh yeah that was probably the most new simpsons i've watched and enjoyed in uh i don't know 15 years or so so we yeah, yeah, we had a good November with the show. We had so many nice things to say about a serious Flanders. Yeah. And so we talked about this up front, Henry, but Variety did another top 30 list of the top 30 episodes of the show.

There was a nice triad, including some post season 10 stuff. You can tell how they kind of lose self-control and immediately revert back to seasons one through nine yeah one thing i noticed about this uh and i feel the times they are changing or as skinner would say they are becoming quite different is that uh last exit to springfield is no longer even like in the discussion of best simpsons episodes ever uh at the beginning of the 2000s i think maybe to 2010 even that was just like oh hands down it's the funniest one the uh you know done so long done i'll plan all the fun jokes from that but even on the commentary uh kogan and waldarski was like yeah we half wrote this and conan finished it and we didn't even

think it was good yeah and they're just surprised that people think it's the best one of all time but i think history has proven that it's a funny collection of gags but as that episode it really doesn't hold together oh yeah it's it's a hilarious episode but not uh like the timeless one not even in my like top uh five of the season probably and that but that's also that season four is like so good but you and me bob we've both done our uh in our previous lives our fair share of listicles and you want to like balance it's all these like demands i so i just read it with the thought of like, oh, the people putting this together. We're thinking like, well, what are we going to just be? We can't be predictable.

We got to show that we watched episodes after the 10th season. Let's even surprise people and have like number 30 is the 2020 Treehouse episode that our pal Julia Prescott wrote, which my issue with any of these lists is like in a top 30, my top 30 would just be a collection of episodes from one through eight, because as much as I like any episode from season nine onward, and I do like some, there is no way I like them more than any 30 episodes from the first eight years, you know? Yeah. If you have to be honest with yourself, it's not just nostalgia. It's also the lightning in a bottle of all those people together that could never be joined again. And even if you're a huge fan of the show, I can't see you liking a new one more than anything from seasons one through eight.

Yeah, yeah. And then on top of that, like they had Maude's death episode at number 18, which I thought was like, what are you talking about? Do you know? Yeah, that felt like a real stunt pick or a pick to get people to share the list which sure why not but there's no way there's no way that should be on any top 30 but yeah i think maybe we've helped with the dethroning of last exit to springfield on lists like this but yeah if you want to save yourself the click the top five are five is tree house of horror four four is who Shot Mr. Burns Part 1,

three, Mr. Plow, two, Marge vs. Monorail, and one, Homer at the Bat, which I would not put Homer at the Bat at number one. No, I would accept that as a top five, maybe not in that order. Obviously, for me, a Two Shot Mr. Burns Part 1 is number one,

but that's a good top five. Maybe something from season six should squeeze in there outside of Who Shot Mr. Burns, that's a a good top five maybe something from season six should squeeze in there outside of who shot mr burns but uh still a pretty good pick yeah yeah for the top five i think either mr plow treehouse or who shot mr burns like all or monorail all of those are acceptable number ones on most people's lists like i'd and i think we've talked you mean you have talked about this to death but yeah i i agree that if me and you were to make a list, I think Who Shot Mr. Burns part one is number one. Yeah.

You know, we talked about how Last Exit is no longer the unanimously decided number one episode. I think the times are changing also in that people aren't as mad about the Armin Tamzarian episode anymore. Yeah. I don't hear that discussion happening nearly as much. When there were like maybe 15 seasons of the show, they were like, well, that's the one that killed the show. I really don't hear that as much. I still hear it, but not as much.

I don't want to take too much credit for it, but I do think we helped change the dialogue on that. I do. I think so. We had a good defense for Oakley and Weinstein and Ken Keeler as well on our episode, our live episode. Yes. So in other news, the website NME.com, they tabulated what Homer's medical bills would have been in America, of course, because it's a hellish health insurance industry we have here.

What they would have been over the course of 700 plus episodes. And apparently he would have owed 143 million. I don't know if that's in like if he's subscribing to the bronze plan of Obamacare, if he's got private insurance, if he's got paying out of pocket. I assume it'd be in the billions, but that's just what their estimate was. And I guess in that case, you assume that Burns has good health insurance, though, you know, just for one example, in his triple bypass surgery episode, he says they don't have health insurance because they gave it away for a pinball machine so so so honestly his bills would be higher and that's like 90s bills but uh i mean the show i i always appreciate when the show talks about how expensive uh health

insurance is people people need to know yes even with a doctor with a b i assume dr nick would be charging i don't know 10k out of pockets compared to what Nick would be charging, I don't know, 10K out of pocket compared to what it would be if you did it through a legit insurance company or whatever. Yes. Yeah, I think so. You know, maybe it's like going to a barber school, though, and you get to get a free haircut. Maybe, oh, my God, a really cheap because of that. I mean, we've been talking a lot about COVID up front. Apologies. We're in the middle of the Omicron spike if you're listening to this in in the future but i i did like the tweet i believe from the cdc that says if you don't take the free vaccine you'll have to pay lots of money at the hospital just like wait

a minute is the problem people not taking the free vaccine i see a bigger problem that's just being uh shoved under the rug here i couldn't believe that yeah hospital stays are expensive so get the vaccine it's like well that won't make a hospital stay for a different thing not expensive but i what if i get vaccinated and get sick well too bad yeah well we didn't say we'd give it to you for free no i god this i i'm really getting sick of uh no no pun intended about uh that it's just all on you it's like well hey man you know you can you're gonna die if you don't get vaccinated and otherwise fuck off like we don't care like we we did all

we could it's a matter for the states now so they can figure it out and that was to kick the ball further down the field that was bad when trump said it when biden said it it's you know it's very sober and realistic you know yeah telling us what we don't want to hear. So let's move on to other things here in non-American news. So Hong Kong, and for their Disney Plus package, the episode from season 16, Goo Goo Guy Pan, has been banned from the service because of a Tiananmen Square joke. And Republicans are having a lot of fun with this

because we all know Republicans like protests against the government. They're a huge fan of that in general and they get really mad when that's taken away so in this case they're extra mad yeah it's uh you know like obviously this was late breaking news last time and now in the in the year in the month since we've seen some more reactions to it's like yeah i don't't think Disney should like scrub that Simpsons episode from the Disney Plus that airs in Hong Kong and China. Like that's wrong to me. But also, again, when I see the what were all the places reporting on it, like FoxBusiness.com was the was the most central or centrist read on it I could find. Actually second i clicked on the fox business link henry

it started playing a video like oh iran is ramping up nuclear weaponry and we're worried so yes that just tells you like hey if you're not scared about this be scared about this too i know it's like so that's why i mean again i don't like this like it's not good that an episode was censored for political reasons but i just i hate that you only hear about this out of like saber rattling about against you know just like red scare bullshit against china and i it's dumb i get annoyed at it too because i think that people who talk about china's human rights violations like they don't they don't give a shit about america's and it's almost honestly like brought up to just say like hey i know america's bad and all i'm not saying it's great but what

china does blah blah blah like that is you covering for america and it's war crimes like i just so it's i don't like it you know i i think it's safe to say that everyone complaining about this in bad faith uh really wants every american protester run over with a tank absolutely they want that to be illegal they'd flatten all of them they put them in jail yeah it's uh they they don't it's only because this is a thing that happened in an official enemy country which like you know boohoo like be mad be mad at disney that they're you know bowing to the business of of another country then i guess instead of bowing to the business of another country then, I guess, instead of bowing to American business and our interests as they should. But obviously, as with Starcray Big Dad,

this thing has aired 9 million times in multiple countries around the world for the past, I don't know, let's say 17 years, I think. So if somebody wants to see it in Hong Kong, they probably can. Yeah. So I don't think Disney Plus is going to stop people from seeing this episode at all, which is an okay episode. Yeah. And I dana gould to weigh in on this because it's his episode

it's autobiographical i've not seen a quote from him on this yet i'd like to see a snarky dana gould comment yeah this i mean this is perfect for him too like he can take easy like this is straight bullseye at republicans like some of his best stuff is that uh moving on david silverman very busy making all this extra content for the show lots of shorts the latest thing he is behind is a simpson starring video for the performer bad bunny and i'm almost 40 i don't know who this is i was informed by this news item uh the video was for the song pardon my uh improper uh other language skills but te deseo lo mejor i don't know what that means in

Spanish, I take it, but the video is about Homer being addicted to his phone, and Bad Bunny heals the wounds between he and Marge. It's a sweet little video, you know, and it's also after Plusiversary, this one feels really nice, I think, and yeah,

I'll be honest, I likely would not have heard of Bad bunny either as an old man uh but i uh fortunately this year he did an entire thing at wrestlemania so i know all about him yeah he uh he he's a uh a puerto rican american music star who uh works a lot in the uh i believe trap genre of music but he's very like sex positive guy who's trying to uh make it a lot of the uh i believe trap genre of music but he's very like sex positive guy who's trying to uh make it a lot more inclusive too but has you know nice songs that you know you like chill out and vibe too and and i i didn't realize he you know was such a uh that he'd be into a simpsons crossover is that like this guy likes pro wrestling and the simpsons like i'm i'm

more into this bad bunny guy by the minute and it does not use the wrestling and the simpsons like i'm more into this bad bunny guy by the minute and it does not use the uh english language simpsons dub the actors that we know i don't know if there is a puerto rican specific dub but it's a spanish language dub they're using those actors in that video yeah i did see gene uh when he thanked him on twitter it was i think it based on the names he used i saw it was like it was the guy who's been homer a lot in spanish language dubs of simpsons but i believe the woman he named who was marge was actually the the bart dub when i i googled it i could be wrong about this but the important thing is like if they wanted it to feel authentic to especially spanish-speaking simpsons fans, then getting the dub voice of the Spanish-language

Latin America version of Simpsons was the right move. Definitely, yeah. So check that out. It's on YouTube, as is everything. Yes. And moving on, other cartoon news. So Mike Judge and Greg Daniels are teaming up again for another cartoon.

Unfortunately, it's not Port Royal King of the Hill, but one day we will break them. Yes. This show is tentatively called Praise Pet pd and the premise of the show it's about a former new york city it girl moving to a small town to take over her dad's uh waning cult and apparently it's going to be a parody of uh based on the the summary i took it as a parody of like girl boss culture and corporate feminism that's what it felt like because they use the phrase lean in in a cheeky way so that's what it's going to be about yeah yeah i mean i want him to make more king of the hill i mean we're doing more king of the hill by

the way because now it's a monthly series and it's like god i love this show so much it could come back and be perfect but uh yeah mike judge is really busy he's also that new beavis and butthead show is still in production yeah all these things were that were announced uh at the beginning of the pandemic right before like new uh tiny tunes new beavis and Butthead show is still in production. Yeah. All these things that were announced at the beginning of the pandemic or right before, like new Tiny Toons, new Beavis and Butthead, new Ren and Stimpy, it's all still being produced. That's right. And it's probably going to come out next year. I forgot about that new Tiny Toons until somebody in my feed tweeted out like,

hey, we're still hiring for your Tiny Toons. I was like, oh, right. Yeah. But no, I mean. I forgot about the new Ren and Stimpy until somebody on my feed, they posted their contract for the show and said like, yeah,, I forgot about the new Ren and Stimpy until somebody on my feed. They posted their contract for the show and said, like, yeah, I'm writing for the new Ren and Stimpy. So that's still happening without without John Kay, without John Kay. Yes. Yes. He's completely out of it.

But Judge and Daniel's getting back together and selling a new show is really exciting to me, especially because, like, it does sound I i you know they both understand corporate the evils of corporate culture so much but they the girl boss culture and corporate feminism didn't exist as much back then and this gives them new territory to deal with which is like a thing to mock with girl bossery that is just that it took it took a good thing which is feminism and get you know equality and turned it into like yeah equality is your awful manager who treats you like shit can be a woman and like yeah so it's like yeah it's like turning feminism into like hr culture or something like that yes yeah which is uh worth skewering i think i look forward to i i haven't seen anything from dans or Judge

that makes me think, like, oh, these guys really lost a step, or they're too old, or whatever. You know, I think they still seem good. Maybe Praise Petey will suck. I don't know. But I'm giving them the benefit of the doubt. Yeah, and like I said, Judge is busy, and I'm hoping this will be good. But

again, more King of the Hill. I can see this happening. Everything has to come back, and, more King of the Hill. I can see this happening. Everything has to come back and so does King of the Hill. Yep. It's in the stars. So moving on, we have... So Henry and I can take full credit for this for being little whiners online.

But the Cowboy Bebop show on Netflix is dead. Even though seemingly everyone watched it to make fun of it, which, I mean, they're never public with their ratings. They just say, oh, Squid Game is the most popular thing ever viewed. And we don't actually see the numbers really. Or they can just pass off whatever they have as numbers.

But I guess too much bad publicity for this. And it's not coming back for season two. As it stands, there's 10 hours of this. If you like it, that's quite a bit of content for a show nobody liked. Yeah, that's I mean, that's technically I think that's more hours of content than the original season of Cowboy Bebop. Not counting the movie, but I think just the, those 26, 22 minute episodes is probably less than the 10 hours those shows lasted. I, I mean, yeah, the show was like its own worst enemy.

Like it, honestly, the people, like, I didn't particularly like what I watched. We talked about that, but like, was really its PR campaign was awful. Like all of those side by side pictures to try to entice you. Like, see, we really get this. Like it just made it look, I think twice as bad as it actually was. And then on top of that, I mean, the worst move they did that I don't want to blame the actor. They were given awful stuff.

All these there's lots of great actors in this who were given awful things to do but the poor actor who was given ed for that one scene that was the post like the post-credit sting of like stay tuned for more that then the second that got shared was like i think that killed the series to be honest like yeah they should have they should have put like some sort of copy protection on that scene only just like if you try to share it your computer shuts down or something but i mean some things just don't work in live action uh and there's a reason why this show came into uh inception originally as an animated show and i think unfortunately the takeaway from this from the suits is going to be add who cares about anime nobody likes this which will give more time give more resources to like g kids or whatever to scoop up everything

and release everything i don't think netflix will still fund things but i don't think they're going to be going whole hog on another project like this for a long time i mean this looks so expensive and then on top of that they have like i think it probably took him twice as long to make the season as they planned because john show injured himself and then covid shut it down and so i would bet this didn't uh this was not a cheap show either but yeah and then everybody just dunks on it on twitter including us like but i felt i did feel it was deserved it wasn't oh god i think i was thinking about why did everybody turn on whedon-esque dialogue now that like there's so many lines

that people were making fun of in this show and and deservedly so that i don't think would have been made fun of like five years ago and I I think the culprit is Whedon himself every story on him in the last six years of like this guy's an asshole like every single one and especially there was uh when people were talking about how like oh when I worked on Buffy with him he was either a creep to women or just a dick to you and I think that on set he thought he was really funny and sarcastic saying his whedon style things to other actors but everybody else like that shit wasn't funny it hurt my feelings but he was the boss and we all just had to take it yeah everyone had to be

nice to him and he just came away with the wrong impression like oh everybody likes me yeah and so i'll amp up my dickishness so then when you hear somebody talk like a whedon character, I think for me, if you're somebody who was reading all the articles about like, oh, the Buffy set was awful. Angel, he fired this girl, this actress, because she got pregnant and he was an asshole. It's just like, oh, I don't like hearing dialogue that reminds me of all those horrible stories I read about what a bad guy Joss Whedon was. And it's also not good dialogue to begin with. Also just bad the

little the magic trick is over yes uh we we've heard enough of it but uh in our last news item this is related to uh this month uh sorry december's uh what a cartoon movie millennium actress the uh the anime screenwriter uh keiko nobomoto passed away at 57 in december uh behind such titles as macross plus cowboy bebop and tokyo godfathers uh just an amazing uh like history with writing for anime and for video games i think she had a large contribution to the first kingdom hearts as well oh yeah yeah no she she was uh so underappreciated as a i mean you know uh the writers don't get interviewed as much in uh in you know retrospectives about anime like it really much more is about you know character designers singular animators or

the series director the chief director and and and also when after she passed i was trying to find like interviews with nobomodo they're they're kind of rare the most i could find was uh in 2018 she along with a bunch of other people who worked on the original series came to new york comic-con for a 20th anniversary panel and she talked a little bit but but didn't talk too much so it makes me sad now we didn't get to hear as much from her there's a great bit in the if you look up people uploaded the whole panel and there's a funny bit where she talked you look up people uploaded the whole panel and there's a funny bit where she talked about how like she grew up watching american stuff in japan like bewitched in sesame street and now she thinks it's so cool seeing all uh how much americans likes the things

she wrote and so that was that was a sweet thing i i also was thinking about it with relation to the cowboy bebop netflix show because i think there was some perception that the original Cowboy Bebop show might have been like sexist and they needed to fix stuff in the Netflix show to deal with that. And I was like, the lead writer on this show was a woman. Like, I just I feel like it erases her a little bit with with feelings like, I don't know. I'm more OK with the things being horny than I used used to be because now I see what taking that away can do. And it takes away a lot of the flavor. But that's not true for everything. But with Cowboy Bebop, it just felt so watered down

based on what I saw, based on the hour. I didn't watch a second of the TV show. I did watch an hour-long review of it. That qualifies me to talk about it, I swear. No, I mean, I watched the first episode in several reviews, and like, I mean, talk about that girl boss thing. Like, they turned Julia into a girl boss,

like, instead of, I mean, yes, she does, she gets fridged in the original series, but in this series, the twist is like, at the end of the season, oh, actually, spoiler alerts, she takes over the syndicate, and she's, she actually takes she's maybe more evil than vicious and i was like i don't care much for that now but yes that was our collection of news about the simpsons and related shows now let's move on to news about ourselves so our talking

simpsons schedule this month is going to be we're starting off the year by taking uh basically taking the first week of the year off on the patreon side uh on the free fee i believe it's the next week of the year uh so we're starting off with giving everybody shrek the what a cartoon movie for shrek uh we did that in april of 2021 we had a lot of fun with it uh spoilers we don't like shrek we had fun talking about it and of course uh talking about the villain of what a cartoon jeffrey katzenberg both both the villain and hero he's sort of the the walter white he's just as cool too and bald yes imitate everything he does and then after that we have new content of course episodes on more of the simpsons uh children of a lesser clod and then talk to the audience and then three men in a comic book uh kicks off february with a very special guest we recorded that episode i think possibly in oct Yes. I think it was a long, long time ago.

I wonder what the, our guest has gone through a couple jobs since then and an injury. So I hope his leg could be healed by then when it finally comes out. But just as a tease for who might, I think some people might be able to figure it out from that. But I look forward to it. I think so. but a little bit of spoilers for you up front there but uh yeah so moving on the january center for what a cartoon again we're kicking off our our new what a cartoon schedule but we're taking the first week off so uh you're going to get uh shrek of course for free on the talking simpsons feed and also on the what a cartoon feed you'll get the talk king of the hill episode on manger babies that's our uh our kind of free content for you that we just take a week off at the beginning of the year

and so our other new content in february is sorry january don't want to get ahead of myself here other new content is going to be week two of january for patrons is going to be the uh talking futurama episode bended in the wind with special guest host nina masamoto a big beck fan and we also have on the last friday of the month uh snow job the king of the hill episode uh so we're starting off king of the hill year uh sorry monthly uh throughout 2022 and uh we normally would do one new what a cartoon a month but this month we're taking that week off but yeah now february will kick off with one new what a cartoon episode and of course the what a Cartoon movie for January is going to be Lion

King 2 Simba's Pride a very different movie from Millennium Actress yeah it's a pretty hard turn for Millennium Actress but yeah we're so yeah we're this first month of the year no What a Cartoon we needed to take the week off on that

too but yeah you're getting on the free feed you're getting the talking in the hill for manger babies which you know takes place during january and super bowl week so you know it's it's well timed as well it's relevant yeah yes and if you're a patron of course uh you'll also you'll get talking futurama as well so if you're a patron you get all of the advanced content and also two patreon exclusive episodes every month for futurama and king of the hill so it's a good bang for your five dollars and uh moving on we have the february what a cartoon movie poll it will be uh movie adaptations of things we've covered on what a cartoon and those are going to be things you might have not voted on before but might this time like aquatine hunger force colon movie film for theaters the batman

superman movie world's finest sailor moon are the movie promise of the rose and south park bigger longer and uncut so i i can't really i can't really assume what's going to win normally there's one in my mind i can think well that's the obvious winner but this time it feels like a real mix-up yeah you know i uh if i had to bet on one i think i'd it's it's tough because i think after all our batman talk i think people would love to hear another batman one and us doing the the crossover movie would be a lot of fun but then again lots of folks liked when we did south park so i feel like there's a lot of energy for south park as well uh meanwhile that could be the dark horse and and aqua teen that'd be a fun one to suffer through

i think a little bit or just what a weird one to go minute by minute through i think yes i was happy to see that in theaters but yeah that is everything on our schedule for january and uh yes that poll will be live very soon if you're listening to this on patreon or if you're on the free feed it is live now on the Patreon so vote for Aqua Teen, Batman, Superman, Sailor Moon R or the South Park movie whichever floats your boat and we'll be doing that at the end of February. Now it's time to move on

to what we've been playing and watching outside of the podcast and I will say buckle in it's going to be a long ride because we've had a lot of free time on our hands as for me not as much gaming because I've been very busy hanging out here in Canada with my wife, watching lots of things. But I finished The Great Ace Attorney Chronicles after 94 hours. That's what my Switch yearly recount told me because it's two games.

They're both very long. There are still some extras on the collection I want to check out, but heartily recommend it, even though it took me three entire months of my gaming life to get to the end it was a quite a fun experience uh also before i left i was still chipping away at arkham origins i'm still enjoying that uh playing lots of pikmin bloom in vancouver getting new postcards uh getting lots of steps unfortunately i will have to send my pikmin to vancouver when i come back to for them to get their little outfits so that will take about nine days but i'm ready for that i just want to do that with all my disneyland uh pikmin as well and uh yeah it's been fun sending sending postcards back and forth to each other i like seeing all of the uh the vancouver landmarks there was one that even was called like gilbert's park or something you guys said yeah we both we

both sent you that to troll you yes yeah and uh. And before I left, I also, the Sam & Max Remastered second season came out. They do a very good job remastering those. So I played the first episode of that because it is Christmas themed. And the weird thing I did is I have all these new games waiting for me to play them. They can't wait for me to, you know, touch them and push their buttons. But just like last year, so last year, instead of playing any new games like Hades or whatever, I played through Dark Souls again. This year, I started a new game of Breath of the Wild because I am an insane person.

That is crazy. And I'll tell you what, I have my reasons. When that game came out in 2017, spring of 2017, it was probably one of the worst times of my adult life. Everything was going wrong in every possible category of my life job personal life everything uh i don't think i i let that uh you know out on the air of course but it was a bad time and because of that i just nothing nothing was fun and then we started at patreon that year and everything got better and i met nina and everything but i wanted to play the game and actually finish the game but i'm in a much better headspace and this time i am and i'm lot of fun with it. And Hey, you guys heard about this game breath of the wild.

It's pretty fun. The sequel should actually be this year. So you're getting ready for that. I'm hoping I can draw right into that, but yeah, it's kind of fun to start the game. I mean, we won't be able to talk about this game for five years, but it's kind of fun to start the game with all the DLC already there. Oh yeah. Which was not my experience last time. I played about 50 hours last time for Wii U and never finished it but it was on sale for switch uh before i left i was like you know what i'll give it a try it'll be fun to mess around with and i'm like really into it so again hades i'll see you in 2023 probably you you don't really play much of you you saying that that it was five years i can't believe it but march will be five years i just yeah i and it on breath of the wild also for me is unfortunately connected

to uh us at the worst time in that shitty job and i think about having to try to make i actually when i think of breath of the wild i think of how all the unappreciated work both me and you were doing behind the scenes just to get an early copy of that fucking game that our dumb bosses didn't care how they obviously because they didn't run a video game website before they didn't know how impossible it is to get on the nintendo list if you're not a real website you know like yeah i do associate it with a lot of that pain it was one of the last games i covered in the press uh at a very bad website where we were both having a very bad time which is why we left yeah to do this which turned out great but yeah i just uh that was just the

darkest time of my adult life I think and it's good to play that like oh, I'm happy now and this game is lots of fun It's not just like nothing will make me happy blowing up bombs So yeah, I'm really having fun with that and you know I think I'll beat it this time and as for watching So we both have to be selective of what we're talking about for this because we both have seen a lot of shit And I will say I've been to the theater like eight times. Now, before you gasp and your monocles fly across the room, it's pretty safe in Vancouver.

It has been getting a little bit less safe for the past few days. But everywhere in Vancouver, you have to be vaccinated to get in. They check everything. I've had to bring my passport and my vaccine card everywhere. It's been very safe. Everyone is masked up for the most part. Everyone's following the rules so i've been to the theater a ton seeing a ton of new and old movies i know henry released a podcast about this without me with his new best friend matt mcmuscles uh yes i also saw spider-man no way home and my review is a movie enjoyed by all which was my experience and yes it wasn't made for me

i understand that i thought it was a cake made of pure frosting and i want to know what people will think about it a month or even a year later i really want to know because it feels like it's one of those movies designed for you to not think too much about it to be wowed in the moment and i really want to see not to be proven right or anything you know just an intellectual exercise but i really want to see what people think about it years down the line because there's a lot of things i thought were cool ideas but they were not really executed well no spoilers or anything but there's certain elements of like different universes and even kind of the idea of time travel where i at least expect a back to the

future level execution and it left me with too many questions uh again i won't spoil anything here but um yeah not for me also i don't think it's for spider-man fans i think it's for people who saw five of the most popular movies ever made i think that's what the movie's for well okay so look yeah i agree with that as as a spider-man fan i who predates the movies like this is just about celebrating the movies that everybody saw right but uh but yeah i think uh it's it's about different eras of spider-man and celebrating them and it has shown me how people can unite across fandoms like it was in the theater yeah i'm not going to spoil it either but yeah in the in the theater i could hear i could hear younger people cheering for some moments i could hear older people cheering for other moments i could hear men cheering for some moments more than women

and vice versa like it was it was a fun just litmus test of like but but yes you're you're right bob it is like such an event movie or dare i say a theme park ride uh that yes well the scorsese jump on this call what's going on here but i like theme park rides but but yeah you're right when you go back to it it's like i had the same reaction uh actually very positive to seeing endgame avengers endgame in theaters and now whenever i've gone back to end game i have watched like an hour of it parsed out because i'm just like i there's some parts of it i just love and there's other parts i'm like i don't need to watch this scene again it sets up the cool fireworks i'll just cut to the fireworks you know but i i stand by what i said in in the spoiler cast about it i

still really enjoyed it though yeah not to go on too long about this but uh we also watch batman returns again just for fun we just put it on on a whim and we're like oh i can't stop watching this and i'm like oh yeah this is my favorite superhero movie and i want to go back to letting demented little freaks direct superhero movies where there's no like um i mean it'll never happen again but there's nothing is like really focus group it's not like what the algorithm wants it's like what's this little weirdo want to do let's let him do whatever he wants and we know that like marvel doesn't like that most big you know movie studios don't want that anymore really and and it's horny i mean like there's there's like one kiss in no way home and uh and some people are like hot for aunt may but that's's about it. Meanwhile, in this, like in Batman Returns, because I actually watched it over the break

too. Oh, awesome. I forget. It's like they're just grinding on each other. Like this is like third base happening on screen in the movie. It's a great Christmas movie. And again, my mom took me to see that when I was 10 and she did not object to any of the content.

So my mom is cool. And I guess I should mention this because it was a very similar movie we could talk about because i know you saw it too henry i saw matrix resurrections all right and uh i i know okay so i don't want to take this away from anybody uh their enjoyment because i know a lot of trans people find a lot of personal meaning in this and queer people as well i'm not either one of those identities i did not like it i i kind of you know like with this and with spider-man and Ghostbusters, even Evangelion. And I've tweeted about this,

you know, over the week, I I'm just kind of sick of movies being about themselves and about fandom. I just want movies to be a movie on its own. And it feels like, uh, no spoilers,

but with both Spider-Man and the matrix, it was like the entire thing was all about setting up a status quo to make more movies that aren't dependent on anything. That's what I took it to be. And I don't like that I have to watch that process. I just want to see the movie that can exist on its own. And I know

that's not the way movies are anymore. Maybe I'm getting old, but I didn't like it. And I'm sorry if that offends anybody out there. I know a lot of people really like it. But some of the things were fun to watch in IMAX. It was the first movie I've ever seen in IMAX in my life. Never done it before.

So, you know, yeah, of course, the action scenes were great. And there were some fun ideas in there. I liked some of the setup of the movie that really, again, no spoilers. But the movie they're setting up doesn't really happen. And I didn't like that. So I'm not a Matrix fanboy. I love love the first movie didn't care for the sequels but uh and again me saying this won't make it won't stop it from being the number one movie of all time like spider man so uh i'm not taking i'm not trying to drag it down or anything but those are my thoughts on

matrix resurrections which i know you've seen twice henry uh me i mean matrix resurrections like its box office is not good like it did and probably because it's all in hbo max but also maybe maybe everybody overestimated how much uh the regular mainstream america wanted to see more matrix i think i think a lot of people are done with it i but i did love it i'll i think spider-man really is like you said a cake made of frosting i think matrix is much more about like lana wachowski dealing with like, honestly, I compared it to Evangelion a bunch, but it really is like, feels like Lana Wachowski dealing with her reaction to making it. And it is just so insular and inside and just like a dialogue with yourself, which

is what I love. It's what I love about Evangelion is what I loved. Rebuild 3.0 plus 1.0. And, uh, they came out in the same year and both come to very similar points was very interesting to me. And, uh, I just, I wish they, I really wish Lawrence Fishburne and also Hugo Weaving were in it. Like it was really missing a few key people that I don't understand why they're not in it yeah i just uh i mean uh this i don't think this is a spoiler but a lot of the sentiment in the in the first act is like are we really doing another matrix are we really doing this and that could be a fun exploration but i'm

kind of tired of it and uh yeah you're getting paid millions to make this and i'm also paying 20 to see it i don't need to see you like go through therapy about this idea i just want to literally go through therapy yeah i mean facetiously i tweeted the move the moral of the movie is uh therapy is evil and don't take your meds which i i won't be surprised if a lot of people take that message from the movie it felt kind of irresponsible although you know obviously that wasn't my reading but i could see like walking out of it i just thought like a lot of people are going to take this the wrong way um no spoilers

of course yeah no uh and well what did you think that there was a there's uh like jeff gershman is kind of in the movie there's not really but there's oh yeah there's one guy in the movie like that guy feels like he's jeff gershman doing his gamer bro character in this movie it's very and of course the game awards are featured in the movie as well which i i wasn't a fan of that having worked in the industry and uh been around those people i like the send-up of those types especially like you know silicon valley game bros that was all very funny to me i don't know if that was really for anyone else in the audience but that's the part i enjoyed the most that i kind of sent up because i loathe those people and also we could just point

it like i know that place i know that hotel i like i seriously think there's a fight in a hotel that i've taken more than one game uh preview appointment in in the movie and i think in 2020 right before the pandemic everyone we knew in the city was saying oh they're filming matrix 4 here look at all these photos yep yeah my my husband was right across the street from the if you see the noodle shop that's featured in uh the uh the long montage of time passing that's in the first 30 minutes of the movie and keanu reeves is filmed in a noodle shop eating noodles that was across the street from where my husband worked after the time yeah i know did he get injured or is that somebody else no no no to my understanding there were no injuries on it i i don't remember hearing about injuries on matrix

okay uh so enough matrix talk i mean i know you'll have more your own thoughts henry if you have any more but it was funny that i saw dune uh you know it's on its way out of theaters it's not an imax anymore uh nina wanted to see it i was kind of interested but i was worried is this going to be like really dry and long and full of all these proper nouns and hard to figure out? Because I mean, the lore of Dune is very dense. I really, really like Dune. And it's weird that it felt like more of a real movie to me than Spider-Man or Matrix, even though Dune is a genre movie based on a famous sci-fi book. And it's part one of two. It felt like more of a real movie, which is a strange feeling

but i i have to really recommend it i know is this all on hbo max uh you know i think it's cycled back around to be on hbo max now i think or if not yet it will be soon i i really liked it and we watched the david lynch do which is a fun mess it's i mean it's it's bad but it's also a fun watch if you just want to watch it once and i I think I'm going to actually read Dune when I get back to the States. So I'm a Dune head now. Yeah, I liked it. You're right that it feels more like it's certainly more of a movie than No Way Home. And also, I do think one thing that will look bad on No Way Home in the future when I think Dune, you can look too closely at it and see like, oh, but they filmed this on a real set or this looks really smooth.

And I do think there's going to be a lot of times when people have a home version of Spider-Man No Way Home and say like, oh, that is the green screeniest shot of all time. None of these people were near each other, were even in there in the same week. We're going to see a lot of fun freeze frames, I think, of that movie. Yes. Yeah. So I saw a ton of Christmas movies in a theater at the Great Rio Theater in Vancouver. I love that theater.

But so I saw Tokyo Godfathers, a great Christmas movie. We've talked about it before. I assume it'll be a what a cartoon movie in the future. Oh, yeah. Nightmare Before Christmas, of course, in theaters. The first time I'd seen it in theaters since the first time I saw it in 1993. So that was a fun experience. It was fun to see it that huge,

just looking in the background, seeing what every character is doing. It's my favorite thing to do with that movie because there's so much thought put into every little action in the movie. Oh, that's so cool. And I also saw on Christmas Eve, just like in 2019,

I saw It's a Wonderful Life. And the best thing about it was it was a snowy Christmas Eve and it was a white Christmas. So it was the perfect mood to see the movie in. And again, it was great. We both was the perfect like uh mood to see the movie and again it was great we both loved the movie uh fantastic time to see it and we had sushi dinner afterwards which is the trend that we started in 2019 hopefully it will continue to the future i wanted to run

down the street like george bailey you know get into a car accident punch a cop all the fun things he did on that snowy night and i also saw again this is going to be a lot of movie talk uh i'm trying to keep it brief here but i saw the princess bride for the first time i never saw it before uh now i know all the references although i kind of knew them before and i think oh it's a fun movie with gentle humor that kind of falls apart in the third act but you know what it's 90 minutes after seeing a lot of two and a half hour movies i was like i welcome this and weirdly enough it's kind of a christmas movie because in the background and like like Fred Savage's little room there, there's like Christmas decorations up and there's like snow and lights outside the window. I assume it was released around Christmas, but absolutely nothing in the movie has to do with Christmas outside of like things you see in his room.

Wow. I never noticed that, man. That's crazy to me as a child of the 80s because like yeah, we Princess Bride was one of those taped off HBO. Watch it 800 times movies. And of course, as a kid, I loved anything with sword fights in it because I was a lightsaber fanboy. So I would watch just the sword fight scenes over and over again. So other stuff I'm going to speed through this year. Aggretsuko season four came out.

We watched that over the course of a few days. I think it was fun. Maybe getting a little too cartoony for me. I hope they pull back on that. but it was a fun exploration of the character of haida who i like although i wish we learned more about his like internal monologue and what he was thinking but it was a fun season and not everything is back to status quo which is interesting i want to see what they do in season five which uh is is greenlit because i think the the show ends with like season five is coming or something like that some some little message letting you know it's not over yet okay i i haven't given that a watch

yet so i uh i should watch it henry okay and finish season three i know i did watch all of season three i did watch these okay i wasn't sure if you did yeah i did yeah that's good season four is really good other things i watch home alone one and two i saw home alone one maybe like in 2013 again but we hate movies at a podcast about it. So Nina and I watched that again. We also watched Home Alone two, which I had not seen until the last time I saw it was on VHS like in 1993. So first rewatch of that movie.

It is the most cynical movie ever made, but it's still kind of fun for the 90s quality in the 90s New York quality of it all. But obviously a much weaker movie. Glad they ended it there. But it's a fun, fun for the 90s quality and the 90s new york quality of it all but obviously a much weaker movie glad they ended it there but uh it's it's a fun uh bad movie as well although it's a a huge step down from the first one but i'm surprised it's as good as it is i i haven't watched two since childhood i saw it in theaters and i haven't watched two since so i i did watch one over the holidays as well and it's still it still holds up i still still cry well i guess i also probably helped that i watched it sitting next to my mom and so probably probably helped with the waterworks flowing this is not this is not a home alone

two podcast but it feels like it's a very focused group they ask kids like what do you want to see home alone two all these 90s kids and so it's mostly macaulay culkin like there's very little what's katherine o'hara up to moments in the movie and obviously i think the kids wanted more of like the the trap hijinks and uh honestly you know when you watch home alone 1 the trap hijinks you're surprised like well that was pretty brief and it doesn't happen till the end of the movie i think it goes on too long and too to the point where it feels sadistic where kevin isn't even like making little wisecracks and having them chase him around they're just kind of trapped in different rooms injuring themselves

for 20 minutes and it's not a lot of fun it gets pretty sadistic and brutal it becomes saw at a certain point it really does become saw and I like the point where Joe Pesci is just about to shoot Kevin in the head that's what it comes down to this ends tonight wow man

I forgot that part i forgot about that too uh so other things finally i'm wrapping this up uh thanks for sticking with me everybody through my very i watched 15 movies in 15 days so also watched we're big christmas carol heads over here we watched three adaptations we watched two last year so uh we watched the 1984 version with george c Scott. Very good version. Hits all the beats you expect it to. He's a great Scrooge. We watched the 1999 adaptation with Patrick Stewart. It's the cheesiest thing you've ever seen.

It's made for TNT with some really bad effects. Stewart is too old, is too young and handsome to be Scrooge. But it's still fun to watch him because apparently he was doing a Christmas Carol one-man show. He played every character for a few years. So I think Christmas Carol is really personal to him. Okay. That one I never watched because I figured it seemed too low-rent a TV movie for it, even though I'm a Carol head as well. But, yeah.

It's pretty fun to watch, and it's pretty easy to watch for free. And also, we watched Scrooge, the Bill Murray adaptation of Christmas Carol. It's fun. It's really messy. There's good performances in it. But the third act is just a mess. And it ends with this insane improvised ramp by Bill Murray that doesn't make any sense and doesn't really close the movie in a satisfying way.

But they just let him do it because he was Bill Murray. That felt like a mistake to me. And other moments are fun, but yeah, it really falls apart at the end. You know, I talked about that. I haven't watched that one in a few years, but Dave Schilling, previous guest on this show, he had a whole Twitter thread about Scrooge and how he loves it, but it's also a giant mess,

and how he talks about how he had read the original script for it and says it had much more of the stuff about him being like raised by tv and how family stuff in it and he's uh schilling told me like oh yeah they just had to cut a lot of that to make room for bill murray goofing around you know murray murray had taken three years off of movies after uh the world according to garp i think it was and he's like okay now i'm back i'm gonna be a big blockbuster comedy guy again so i'm doing whatever the fuck i feel like yeah it's uh i mean he's fun to watch but obviously uh he would do much better stuff after that like what about bob and groundhog day and things like

that but you know it's it's fun to watch really cool makeup i like the uh the bob marley style character just the corpse that does the classic cartoon gag of drinking something and then the the booze flies out of his body through little holes to see that fit and it answered the question i had as a kid about christmas carol stuff of like well what's under that cloak and it's it's scary as hell to like a seven-year-old yeah fun fun little demon puppets but again thanks for sticking with me i rarely watch this much stuff i usually play more games but it was a fun uh fun two weeks so far of sitting on my ass and absorbing content so henry you're up next it's nice to just let the content flow through you and not do a podcast about it until now until this moment yes well now

it's all paying off everything is homework so I also played a lot of Pikmin Bloom. And the big thing, though, I played this month was Shin Megami Tensei V. I am 60 hours into it. And I think I've got 30 more hours ahead of me. And it's great. If you like the SMT world, this is really good for it, especially if you're more into the hardcore side of it uh of the coin and not the some smt fans will be mad i'll even compare it to persona but

it is it if you like persona but want a little more hardcore version of it uh that's also a bit darker then i think smt5 is is a good one and it's like it's a switch exclusive there's this year was such a good year for switch games man uh i totally forgot about that some people were saying there was like a it's a week's year for switch games but monster hunter that was that's a switch exclusive for like nine months of the year no smt5 bowser's fury the ace attorney games you played like yeah i mean was there was there an animal crossing this year no but like there can't be an animal crossing and they had a huge update for Animal Crossing. And I also played, because it was free with Game Pass.

Well, I guess not free. But Halo Infinite, I did the first few hours of the campaign, and I was like, yeah, it's Halo. It's Halo. It really thinks that people gave a shit about Halo 5, because it just picks up of like wait no no you got to give me some explanation but halo refuses to and and actually though my uh when i was playing it my husband was like you never played destiny 2 you need to start playing that if you if you miss

playing halo you should be playing destiny not halo you know what destiny 2 is fine i played like 60 hours of it i wasn't that addicted to it but it's like as far as uh gunplay mechanics go it's the most polished thing you'll ever play in that in that genre yeah that's that's i did play a few minutes of destiny and i was like oh yeah this this is better to me than halo infinite even though i do like that grapple hook in halo infinite but uh and yeah i also been dancing it up in just dance including uh the very childish jingle i just like i'll play every christmas song in this thing and even the ones made for babies but as for watching boy did i do a lot of watching as well i'm gonna try to speed through this as

much as possible uh but tv shows still going through sopranos best show ever blah blah i say it every month but the new season of what we do in the shadows so good so good the best season yet uh every actor and it is the greatest and it got gayer like it is a gayer show every character in it is by and fucks everything like and is that is that season four because i think i watched the first two before falling off and not realizing they made more no just season three it's it's the third season okay cool you're only one season behind and it's great and then yeah the uh i love the show and uh also jojo's bizarre adventure part six that's on netflix uh great first season or first set of episodes 12

episodes i still wish it was weekly. I miss having the weekly conversations about it on Twitter instead of just no one's talking about it anymore because it dropped and everybody watched it in a weekend. And so the discourse is over on it, which is a bummer. But speaking of Netflix shows, I can't shut up about this because I feel like I'm the only person who's talking about it. But it saturday morning all-star hits or smash now look if you see the trailer for it you might think what is this just robot chicken just more of this like i remember the 90s cartoons that isn't what it is i promise you it has so much more to say than just look at this funny parody of denver the last dinosaur Bears. So much more to it. But yes, if you were a child like me and Bob,

if you listen to our podcast about Cartoon All-Stars to the Rescue, or like I remember every second of this in the event that it was, this is the show for you. It is made for you. Previous guest Scott Gairdner was an executive producer on it.

It's so funny. It's great. I feel like it's me and Matty Kopp, the only two people I see on Twitter, saying this show rules. everybody should be watching it uh it's 10 whole episodes kyle mooney is the star of it he plays like 17 characters in it if you liked when we made fun of bobby's world you will not see a better sketch parodying bobby's world than on this smash show i'm i promise i know it's made for me i just haven't had time to watch

it like a series while i've been here it's more movies but uh probably when i get back i'll give it a chance that if it looks cool and i trust scott garner yes no it's it's really great and i guess also i'm just after seeing how um netflix was just like no more cowboy bebop just slashed his throat immediately i feel like i feel like if i can't get people to watch it in the first month the show will never be renewed i i don't uh but okay also great comedy show uh hey who here has peacock i i do because i'm an xfinity guy mcgruber amazing season well worth the 10 years away i love mcgruber and it's a great comeback series and set during christmas so it's a christmas series too uh it's so i mean uh i hate when things are exclusive to peacock because who cares but i haven't seen anyone tweeting about it i think that's why i think

i've seen one tweet and it made me realize like oh that's out okay uh i guess it's on peacock i know it's it's just one step above that season of Mad About You that nobody knew happened either. Oh, the crackle season? Yes. Yeah. I think it was crackle. MacGruber is ever so slightly more famous on Peacock, but yeah, it's the funniest shit. Will Forte is the funniest guy. You will see his ass quite a lot, so I'm preparing you for that.

If you're like, I don't know if I want to see Will Forte's ass, well, then MacGruber's not the show for you. And as I was assigned by Disney, I did watch Hawkeye. It's good. It was good. I like Hawkeye. Maybe it was my favorite of the – it's the first time I've ever liked Jeremy Renner's Hawkeye, so it succeeded in that.

And if you haven't been spoiled on it yet, there's some cool stuff in there if you like uh the marvel cinematic universe crossover stuff but yeah and it and it's only six episodes on you know it's oh that's it yeah over over in a second uh and also i engaged with red state television i watched an episode i watched a couple episodes of yellowstone uh wow what is this it's the number one show on tv bob it's the well no wonder i don't know about it it well it's the number one scripted show like it got four it's season premiere got 14 million view views viewers well i'm talking like it's a youtube video but it was huge rating success for a scripted show it's okay so it's set now but it is about land oh a ranch owners in montana and it is

like uh stars kevin costner as the as the patriarch of this family it's kind of game of thronesy meets breaking bad about like oh i'm the king of this land is what kevin costner says and it's like oh my daughter she married this guy and it's it's very game of thronesy except more much more red state because it's about you know ranching and cattle drives and all this stuff and uh so the one episode i watched get this bob uppity portland oregon hippies come into town to protest of airport and the cops beat their ass as they deserve to be beaten and characters literally it's number one show on tv characters literally say to them like you're not important anymore the cops aren't the bad guys here and i was like holy fuck that's what this is the show

i'm watching here like but i mean it's it's fine as far as like a tv show made for people or whatever but i just couldn't get over how conservative you have to see uh which uh commercials like what commercials they're showing it really lets you know about the audience were there my pillow ads was it like health insurance ads was it like centrum silver so no okay it didn't have the old people i also watched them jeopardy and and wheel of fortune with my parents who they totally admit like yeah these are old people shows we're old we're watching them and their commercials are there's literally one for a funeral home that i was like this is too much man like but but so on yellowstone it was for big trucks it was for other cowboy movies it's also the creator of yellowstone

is kind of like the shonda Rhimes of TV right now like Taylor Sheridan makes like five other TV shows uh and the other thing the craziest one to me though was they are trying to sell seltzer to red state people and I can't believe it it's it's called ranch water ranch water oh it's insane yeah I I guess aha or uh spin drift or what have you is uh just too gay for them maybe yes yeah but but i mean it's like it's ranch water even if they call it ranch water like we like this uh ranch water we drink it's like no this is still too fruity for people who want to drink a course you know like they don't they don't, they don't want to have ran, even if you call it ranch water, it's still a light beer. Yeah. Yeah. But yeah, it was, it was interesting to at least engage in. I was like, Oh, I guess I should know about this. Uh, okay. And then quick movie talk.

I saw Spider-Man matrix. We already talked about it. I saw mate, I saw Macross plus the movie in theaters, uh, which was really great. I'd already purchased tickets for it and then two days before it it was in the theater uh keiko nobomoto had passed away and that added extra weight to it and then made it really special and it was great i mean just to be in a theater and hear the song voices play and just just be reminded what a magical song it is and like if you've never seen macross plus yes there is a problematic thing about one guy the zentradi guy definitely there is i will say though that if you're a cowboy bebop fan this is like cowboy bebop it's the entire team it's it's it's watanabe

it's nobomodo it's kano and it's um and a mech designer too. All of them, all the four major people of Cowboy Bebop working together on this show that then got turned into a movie. It's really great. Yeah, that was one of the must watches back in the 90s for me when it was like, okay, I'm going to get the anime. What do I watch?

All right, Akira, Cowboy Bebop, this, that, Macross Plus. It was, I think it still is. And Macross Plus had been out of print in the U.S. for such a long time. Finally, last year, the Harmony Gold Macross thing got sorted out, and it can be here again, which is great. And once it's out on Blu-ray, I would bet next year, definitely check it out. And the last movie I want to talk about in depth,

or even a little bit is i watched tick tick boom which is the big netflix movie this while the big netflix musical this month i don't know if you heard about this bob it's no but uh andrew garfield's in it right yes and he's he rightly is getting a lot of praise for his acting in it he's very good in it uh but it is the adaptation of the other musical that the creator of rent did if you like rent i apologize but i think his i think rent is lame as hell i think it is incredibly self-serving i think also it co-ops the pain of gay people to tell the story about a straight guy who can't make stupid movies that suck and this is even more tick tick boom is so self-aggrandizing like there's a reason i think it didn't get

adapted for such a long time because it's about what a genius the creator of it is and how hard it is to write things and how not enough people support him and there's multiple scenes where people just tell him like uh you're the greatest you're so smart you're a genius i was like look look i hate uh that so it's it's like the movie mr burns made in um yes yes stars burn sorry i couldn't think of the name offhand no it's it's a bit like that it's about it's i mean it's about how jonathan larson while trying to write one of his musicals uh he was worried he's like i'm 30 i'm too old and then everybody tells him you're not too old you can still do it you'll be great and then also it's about how like stephen sondheim complimented him a couple times and how he kind of just made a whole musical about that and then also about how

his his girlfriend didn't support him while he was trying to make the musical and how she messed up. She should have. She shouldn't have moved to the Berkshires. Like, eh, it's, eh, I don't know. I've watched better musicals. On top of that, Lin-Manuel Miranda directed it, who I think also is a very self-aggrandizing dude. So, yeah. But, eh. And then I also watched a ton of Christmas classics as well, including the Muppets Christmas Carol, which was a whole lot of fun to go back to.

Yeah, I saw that last year. I also see Christmas toy on your list. It's been I saw that like in 2012 or 2013 again for the first time in, I don't know, 20 years. And what I like about that is I mean, Toy Story is a better movie, but I like that Christmas toy establishes there is a punishment for being seen moving around and that is dying. Yes. Yeah. Toy Story. They never answered the the question like what if what if a human sees you well in Toy Story 1 the answer is nothing because they all turn on Sid and scare him but in this movie it's like no if you're seen moving you are a dead toy you go to toy hell you go you just stop moving and yeah the it cares much more about the rules and builds up those rules so you'll care when a character dies you know like when and yes does it does it then trash that rule at the end

of the movie to just be like yeah you let's bring people back to life this is too sad for kids at christmas time yeah and and i mean the song at the end of it like old friends new friends home for the holidays love Love that song. Love the, same with Emmett Otter. I love the songs in that too. It was a very Muppety Christmas. I also watched Christmas Vacation, which I like all right, but I keep forgetting that that movie, all of those Christmas, all those vacation movies had to have like, and now

something for daddy moment in them, which is very uncomfortable to watch with your mom. You know, I mean, I know I know Clark Griswold is a jerk. You're not supposed to sympathize with him, but it's like he's a guy who is like resisting cheating on his wife. And also the biggest way he's jilted is not getting enough money for a swimming pool for his Christmas bonus. Yeah. The last Christmas bonus I got was a cafe press gift certificate for $15. I'd be happy with those jams and jellies yes yeah that it really is a gift that gives throughout the whole year i agree with his

wife no well it was written at a time when you actually could expect a good bonus i suppose or better in the corporate world yeah i mean yeah also uh the most i like about it though is that it it does capture the idea of like you know you're trying to prove to your parents you're a adult now and you can host christmas and that's the most i felt for clark griswold in the movie where he's he's trying to prove he's a grown-up by making his own lights and then the lights don't turn on and the the disappointment his family all faces him with like that feels very real i like that but yeah so that's everything i watched i also watched way too much this but if you take away one thing from this please watch saturday morning all-star hits i'm telling you if you like our podcasts and and feel like me and bob in so many ways about the things we like that is the show for you i promise you give it

give it a watch if you have netflix so now we're moving on to talking simpsons comments some on-topic stuff and the first episode is brush with greatness and robert flaxman says i was a big beatles fan as a kid and remain one and one year i thought it would be funny to play birthday on a loop at my birthday party i think it ran three or four times and everyone agreed the gag had run its course and then some and i will say uh you know what it could be a better gag but i bet that was before family guy and if you did a post family guy everyone would say that's a classic family guy style funny moment i like it that's true man now it's just family guy by doing their own jukebox jokes make it uh it makes it feel like oh if you do the same song five times in a jukebox you're just ripping off family guy you just look uncreative now instead of like a fun prankster also on that episode of nina matsumoto says regarding the arizona water park death it

wasn't the water slide that he got stuck in but the vertical steel tube supporting the water slide which i think is even worse you can see pics of it in this one news story don't worry you don't see the body and then nina also says i've never had a non-supportive art teacher they've all been great my high school art teacher especially she's asian and her brother collects comic book pages so she was super cool with my manga art i was also in computer graphics class where i just did a bunch of digitally drawn manga art and constantly got a's wow that's very nice that's that's the way they do it in Canada. And I appreciate I would have, you know, I did have

one supportive art teacher. I did have that. I was reminded of that when I went home and saw some of my and my brother's arts like from childhood still kept by my mom. I was like, oh wow, look at that. That's nice. How nice. I'm glad to hear that

there are supportive art teachers in Canada, especially about like anime manga style and quotes artwork, because obviously growing up in Northeast Ohio, very different culture in high school is when anime and manga were kind of exploding or starting to explode. And art teachers hated it. One weird trick to piss off art teachers in the late 90s is to draw some sort of anime or manga style creation. And some said shockingly racist things in front of children so there you have it that was my experience yeah no i've heard these art stories from many american comic artists who grew

up liking japanese comics a lot but their uh comic art teacher uh in college or high school would tell them like that's not real comics like read our crumb now that's the real yeah and throw the how to draw comics the marvel way or whatever yes face yeah and also thanks nina for clarifying that uh water slide fact that is much more horrifying because yeah the picture is it's this straight steel tube that's supporting a big twisty slide so getting stuck in the center of that like that actually does sound much more horrifying yes yes don't think about it it's bad moving on to i'm going to praise land uh shy ranger says time for me to complain about syndication cuts once again

margie's someone had a fetish line i've never heard in my life despite me seeing this episode dozens of times on tv and that's an unfortunate cut. That's when Marge, she's like a shoe rack or something. She has more than one pair of shoes or something in her house. Was that the joke? Yeah, that Marge owned more than one shoes. Like, someone has a fetish. That's such a light moment. There's better stuff to cut out of there.

I'm sad to hear that that got cut out of it. But once again, it's good that syndication cuts are now the rarest version of the episode defined. Thanks to Disney Plus is how everyone watches these now or the DVDs. I know they're still on TV, but I mean, Disney Plus is like seven bucks a month. You can see all 7000 episodes or just steal them. You know, there's always there's always plaques for. But no, stealing is wrong. Also on that episode, Nick M mold says this never stood out to

me as a particularly bad episode probably because it lacks anything especially jarring or awful like jockey elves or panda sexual assault but it really is one of the poorest of the scully eras the only highlight is disco stews and comic book guys versions of heaven and it just leaves you wishing they had done more with the concept for other characters another reason why they may have cut the original ending i think is because chief wigum lighting a cigar and causing a gas explosion had already been done in black widower which is a good point you know yeah he didn't do it enough for it to become a running gag so maybe they thought uh this was this is an ending previously we don't want to do it again and i gotta say brian quimby uh was an all-star on that episode uh new guest to the show a big

fan of him and his in his podcast and stuff and i felt so bad after i watched it like i can't believe we're bringing you on for the first time for this episode but he made it a lot of fun and he does want to come back for another one so i'm looking forward to having brian back on a better episode of the show yeah it was great having brian it felt i felt like i uh i knew brian in high school like it felt so like oh yeah you're just like five different guys who i was friends with in high school and it just felt like it really did feel awesome to get back in that groove with it with an old bro broing out absolutely uh like it did feel like i was in high school just kind of shyly sitting next to him at the lunch table. Like this guy seems fun and he probably won't beat me up.

Yeah. And to this day, he never has. So let's move on to Lisa's substitute. And Kat Hedberg says in the 90s, Payless had this dyeable shoe line. They were white satin. And the idea was you could easily dye them to match an outfit. When we go shopping for Easter shoes, I asked my mom if I could get them. And she would always say no, that she didn't need any extra work and that the shoes are probably for weddings

like to match uh bridal party dresses and not easter that doesn't totally explain why lisa was asking to dye shoes she already owned i think you could probably only dye them once but it does confirm that dying shoes was at least a thing around this time at least among the middle class pay less shoppers i i mean this is me speaking it could be like 30 years later uh you know we haven't even more like the disposable culture and that like shoes are just so cheap just throw them out get new ones it's fine and go to the dollar store they probably have shoes there so i think we're less thrifty when it comes to reusing shoes in that way or just finding new utilities you need green shoes go buy new green flats for like 20 bucks yeah yeah as we learned about the the evils of fast fashion in

that smithers boyfriend episode from this season on the show i i appreciate cat becoming a comment clarifying this because this did dumbfound not just you and i but also emily our guest too emily vanderwerf that was another like great guest we've been wanting to have on for such a long time and it was it was so great to have her for such a big lisa episode as well also on that same episode we got a comment from paul who says it's interesting the two eras you are in are more saccharine classic sitcom but also the less emotional joke a second plot that doesn't matter season in season 12 and you can see the strengths and weaknesses of both styles i often see and hear people talk about modern simpsons as if it is in the latter category. But if anything, Simpsons

the last few seasons has had less jokes and been more emotional or saccharine than previous eras, with stories about Homer trying his best. I feel like instead of trying to imitate Family Guy or South Park these days, they are trying to capture what makes shows like Bob's Burgers so great with mixed results and that's a good point yeah I mean my thoughts are I think uh this is an important episode but if everyone was like this the show wouldn't have lasted we would have gotten really tired of it it would have become everything it was trying to parody so I do enjoy moments like this but I feel like I'm really getting ready for when we hit Blood Feud uh at the end of season two because that for me is when the show

finally like figured itself out everyone was so tired and punchy they didn't care what happened and things just got a lot crazier and more unhinged and the moral of the story is sometimes things just happen yeah and that's an ending i do like how it feels like a mission statement for the next uh 30 years that that episode yeah yeah i think lisa's substitute proves that if everything hits on all cylinders and they do everything right it can be this great but if they did this tried this emotional thing every week you'd get more clunkers than not or ones where you just go like like you that's too much grandpa or like it can't you can't have that all the time it showed that they could get there and could strive for this in the future,

that when they can hit you with emotion, like even in David Merkin's like incredibly like mean seasons, even then when it could get something emotional, it could surprise you with it. But if it did it so often, like they did in the half of season two, we'd have been sick of it. Yeah, I mean, David Merkin, as heartless as he is,

he gave us Lisa's wedding. He gave us lisa on ice and lisa the vegetarian like all great episodes with emotional endings about lisa and bart's comet it's that's another one that just always gives me goosebumps yeah uh so moving on to what a cartoon we have comments for rudolph rednose reindeer the 1964 uh tv special i had a lot of fun producing that one and hope you all enjoyed it and uh bradley given says, we really need to cancel mistletoe. It's used for creepy consent bypassing kisses. And since it was what Loki used to kill Balder,

it's also directly related to the beginning of Ragnarok. What an evil plant. And yeah, I only see jokes about it now dealing with creeps. It's no longer like a fun kiss me and I'll giggle kind of gag. It's more like this creep is trying to kiss me and using mistletoe as an excuse yes yeah the guys who walk are it i think even in our childhoods it was the joke of like oh yeah the the the office creep at the party is the one who has

the mistletoe head thing on that has it hanging in front of like oh mistletoe mistletoe yeah it's uh we yeah and uh bro lives is out there telling you to kiss women for him yes with that oh yeah that's wrong i'm or even sam the fraud the snowman they i could understand if a snowman's like i can't feel a kiss so kiss kiss her for me i'll never know that sensation i also like the deep pull on the loki killing balder with uh with mistletoe that's uh that's a real uh mythology classic there assumed it was the marvel characters but uh you proved me wrong no it's the real thing actually i'm sure it has happened in a marvel comic but balder is actually kind of a lesser despite being the balder i think in the classic myth is really the lead guy of myths like

thor is secondary to balder balder is the real hero but thanks to jack kirby's amazing thor comics that made him the main guy balder is kind of a secondary dude in all the marvel stuff i'm only familiar with his gates all three of them uh he makes a good gate he does uh so paul also said about uh rudolph i love the do you recall lyric for how little sense it actually makes now listen children you might know these other eight famous reindeer but tell me this do you know about this other even more famous and well-known reindeer like yeah it's the the concept is it is the most famous reindeer of all but do you recall him kids like well he is the most famous you should recall him you never

think about it uh because it's just such a it's such a like you just say the words uh phonetically now when you're singing the song but it's actually a pretty cheeky lyric yes yeah that first lyric of the song so thank you johnny marks you write a lot of good songs i think if you teleport yourself back to when the song was brand new it works as a great comedy line of like we're introducing to you the idea of rudolph but we're acting like he is the most famous reindeer and everybody's heard of him and then it just became true because the song was that and this special or that popular again it's the brilliance of johnny marks yeah uh moving on to a lesser curse of special sorry henry uh frosty the snowman uh and kat hegberg says though I've seen the special dozens of times I

remember nothing about it other than it was the first animated thing I thought was boring every year when it would come on I would reluctantly watch it out of some strange sense of obligation but it also makes sure to have a whole pile of Barbies or Legos nearby to keep me entertained and I say this as someone who had previously watched and even sort of enjoyed

the internet christened worst holiday special of all time 1991's The Christmas Tree at least that had conflict also i now just realized they were once children named karen and uh i actually i know a karen who's in her in her late 30s so as late as the early 80s there were still karens being born there will never be another child named karen from now on but yeah no i actually that comment made me realize like oh yeah this karen she'd be 58 now like so she is the perfect age for a karen if she was a you know an elementary school age child in 1969 then she'd be in her late 50s or early 60s now a perfect karen video uh lady age she'd be on uh on on facebook she'd be q-pilled she'd be asking for managers all

the classic karen antics and and kat has a good point that this was one of those specials that it's like well it is a cartoon on at night and that's not normal in in 1988 so i i should just watch it uh that maybe that's why i had all this particular emotions for it but uh but ryan kurtai says about it frosty's expert sledding or belly whopping actually does make sense scientifically snow takes on different consistencies depending on the temperature transition it goes through we can assume that it was a relatively warm afternoon in the town because slightly wet snow is ideal for snowman making as wet snow cools it gets hard from freezing. Since Frosty started to melt early on before setting into his preferred extra cold temperature, it makes sense that he

would have a slick, icy exterior by nighttime. Snow that settles at below freezing temperatures meanwhile becomes powdery and ideal for sledding. The fresh that in that child endangeringly cold wilderness might have been good powder so an ice bellied frosty belly whopping down the powdery hills is plausible enough otherwise it's a magic snowman so maybe the science of his body consistency doesn't really have to make sense but uh durante knew more about snow than we realized and i apologize to his estate i i appreciate r Ryan giving us the very scientific explanation of why his belly whopping would slide very quickly on that snow. You know, I assume a lot of our listeners are experiencing snowy conditions right now, but it was a magical snowy Christmas in Vancouver because apparently that never happens. And I've been wanting it to happen for the past three years I've come here, and's been great going on lots of fun snow walks looking at all the great decorations it's uh as someone who

grew up in ohio that's kind of the only thing i miss about it is just the the seasons really so i've been having a lot of fun up here i was so close to getting uh where i was staying i i visited my mom and stepdad we all tested they were boosted and we didn't go anywhere, but we stayed together. The whole 24th, 25th, 26th, the weather app on the phone was like, snow's a-coming, snow's a-coming, no snow, like no snow on the ground. We leave. An hour later, they get a text from their neighbor who's like, oh, look, it's snowing. I was like, ah, it was like waiting for us to leave. It was like three inches of snow on the ground.

It was a perfect snowy backyard they had. And I missed out on the snow once more. It's, it's, it's completely snow pilled right now. And before you get mad at me, I drove in snow for like 10 years. So I know that part sucks. So I apologize if that brings you pain over the next couple of months. So moving on to the Grinch and the classic Chuck Jones special, of course. And Tiny Crow says,

I think one of the things that bugs me about Jones' tenure at MGM from 1963 to 1970 was for a guy that really respected literature, he was quick to overly tinker the source material to his taste. While I think it works in the Grinch, this obsessive need to make things a quote-unquote Chuck Jones cartoon really hurt the other books he adapted like The Phantom Tollbooth or Frank Tashlin's The Bear Who Wasn't. Say what you want about the Patty Freeling Seuss efforts, but at least those artists bent over backwards to be respectful to Seuss's design language. I guess in the 60s, Jones wanted to prove to the world his genius, or he lost the people who tamed his indulgences. But the filler and cloying fourth wall gags in The Grinch reads to me like a dude

too into his own hype, or someone so self-conscious they resorted to just doing what they knew worked in the past. I have immense respect for Chuck Jones and his crew and I still think the efforts made at his peak are some of the greatest cartoons in American history. It's not to say there also aren't gems from his MGM years such as the Grinch and I admit I enjoy his Tom and Jerry and the dot on the line

but this period does represent some of my least favorite attributes of Jones' work and he only just got worse the older he got. I mean, this is Bob speaking. That's true of all of us. We're all getting worse at everything we do, just like Chuck Jones did. Hopefully, I'm not getting worse at podcasting. But I'm definitely in the corner of Tiny Crow here in that I can't ever say Chuck Jones is a bad animator, a bad guy with layouts, a bad guy with anything involving cartoons.

But this period, I feel like he was living in a jar of his own farts and sometimes that resulted in some very self-indulgent creations and i mean good for him because people still didn't care that much about the art of animation and i think through his self-promotion as much as it erased other people's names he helped make animation cool and we owe him that at least and you know i yeah i think it's we we were a little rough on late era chuck jones on this and there's there's things to criticize about it i think it sucks for him that he made some of the greatest cartoons ever in the 50s and then 20 years later he still wants to make cartoons that aren't as good as the greatest cartoons ever made and then on top of that with jones i also think that like if you can

he mentions the patty freeling ones which were more respectful of the zeus the seuss design language but oppositely didn't have half the budget on screen you can see that as in this grinch thing like i think part of chuck jones's high estimation of himself also kept the budgets a bit higher and he was not the type to be like oh no we can do this for less yeah just let us do it we'll underbid this other guy like that's why the grinch looks so much better in this than in any other time you see the grinch in any cartoon his ego did pay off there yeah uh and joe hodgson says about the grinch this is my jam i love this iteration of the grinch and i consider this this the best Christmas special of all time.

I don't think it's particularly controversial to say this is the best version of the story. It's obviously better than the films, but also better than the source material as the music. Boris Karloff and the animation add so much. I grew up mostly watching this on my old Christmas tape, and CBS must have been in agreement with Henry regarding You're a Mean One, Mr. Grinch, because the TV edit the year my recording came from omitted the second of three segments of that song. I was so confused as a child whenever I watched Home Alone, as the part Kevin is watching on TV is the one I'd never seen, that cut sequence. Most of the airings that

followed seemed to favor cutting down the sequence of Grinch and Max on the sleigh, but today it's usually shown completely uncut, which is for the best. I do have to wonder if the live action film is truly a Christmas classic or if cable networks are just trying to convince us that it is. I don't know anyone that likes that movie or I've never, and I've never been able to get through my second viewing of it after seeing it in its original theatrical run. For for some reason my dad really wanted to see it the newer one is okay my kids like it and it's tolerable but definitely completely unnecessary and full of the illumination quirks i hate like lights and music used for a joke which that really makes me worry about my mario says henry but yeah me too there's going

to be some uh quote-unquote funny musical drops in that. I absolutely know for sure. Yeah. Yeah. Like some people were a little a little peeve that we were mean to the 2000 Grinch. And I still stand by that. I saw it in theaters. I paid money for it. But I do feel like I respect it because Jim Carrey committed so much to playing Andy Kaufman and the Grinch that he went insane. Yes. And he's never been the same since. That is a committed actor. No pun intended yeah i i saw a clip of uh an old clip of him from an interview talking about like yeah i was taught by f while doing makeup for it how to resist torture by fbi agents because that's what it felt like like that and i that home alone thing he mentioned that totally was what hit me watching it on watching home alone over the break i was like oh yeah this scene uh of the grinch is the one that was cut from tv at the time that this home alone uh movie came out in 90 so i wonder if like columbus or some other producer wanted to say like they shouldn't cut this scene from the grinch i remember from when i was a kid i'm putting it in in the movie i could see that i could see that being an intent uh their intent for that for sure

so we're doing this recording so late that we can actually cover Millennium Actress. So first we have Adam Elmady who says not finished the episode yet, but I just wanted to say Roshan Z is legitimately excellent. It's no Akira, but it's not intended to be. As a satire about how society treats the elderly, the automation of social care, and the militarization of technology, it's perhaps

as prescient as it's ever been and well worth a watch. And this is Bob speaking. Yeah, I definitely want to check it out now. I feel like I was too immature to care about it when it was airing on the sci-fi channel like anime about old people uh show me cool sci-fi things and boobs and whatnot but now i'm like almost 40 i could be in one of these old people pods i think at this point so uh let's let's watch rogen z i'm on board we're finally old enough to catch up to what otomo was talking about which yeah uh and uh yeah no i'm gonna get to check it out as well and uh chris dobson says We're finally old enough to catch up to what Otomo was talking about. Yeah. And yeah, no, I'm going to check it out as well.

And Chris Dobson says in our final comment, I love this movie and every clone movie, so it was great to hear y'all talk about it. You guys touched on it, but I think the reason that Chiyoko blends her real life with the characters she played so much is that she more or less stumbled across the Stanislavski acting method and that she is since memorying her performance to the point that she has trouble separating her life from the roles which is even harder because her career is full of her playing exactly the type of roles she lives she's a virginal hero chasing after something desperately

and then ages into the unsatisfied middle-aged actress who still is chasing after someone because she's unhappy. The early scene where she's so woodenly acting is contrasted with her good acting, which is when she's literally just saying what she wants, not even as the character. As she goes on, she's able to take the character she plays and find the connection to her own life that lets her internalize the character. But it makes it so that when she recalls the roles it's very much caught up in her own life she remembers her fight with her mom as the same fight a character had with echo in a scene because she has used her emotional intention and sense memory for the of the real fight in that acting fight which i that is a great point i didn't i didn't think about like that's another it's not just that she's old and her memories are fading together her acting being so good calling upon real emotions that's what tethered it together that is a great point by dobson yeah and it's definitely worth a

second watch just to piece together what is a memory what is real what is a crossing of the two because it can be a little confusing the first viewing and it's a short enough movie that watching it again is not a big deal so i definitely if you didn't get a lot out of it the first time check it out again uh i haven't seen it like four times now i like it even more with with each viewing and there was one other comment i like that it's both it's free on youtube in the u.s at least and it's also free on the app to be but the somebody mentioned watching it on to be and right at the end when the music would come in, which is like this beautiful, gorgeous moment,

it's like an ad for the next thing you can watch on Tubi just shoves over the screen, and it's like, oh, God. That's awful. Yeah, I heard it like people were saying Jingle All the Way just took over their screen as soon as the movie was done, which is like a way different tone. I guess it's also a holiday movie, but hey, I don't want to hear about Turbo Man.

I want to see who made this movie. Oh, and yeah, I mean, that's pretty much it for talk to the audience. But one thing I forgot to mention about my personal life, if anyone cares out there, is that we've been talking about my ongoing journey to become a permanent resident of Canada. And in a very unceremonious way, when I landed, I became a permanent resident.

That doesn't mean I'm staying here. I'm going back to the States in January to continue continue living my life but odds are i'll be moving in 2022 we're continuing the podcast again nothing will change setting up recording studio here flying back a lot to uh do recordings in person but yeah like i landed the last step was handing a customs guy a piece of paper they stamped it they signed and said you're a permanent resident now here you go so my card is coming in mail. And it took about from when we first started working on it until the actual acceptance into Canada. It was February to mid-December, although we submitted all of our paperwork in late April. So for most people, I think that's a quick turnaround.

And even if you have a wife and a job and have a clean record, it still takes a lot of time. And our two great lawyers helped us out a lot. So it was quite a journey. And thank you for all being patient with all my updates about it because it's been taking over a lot of my life. It's like a third job on top of Reckonauts and Talking Simpsons is keep track of all the immigration stuff. I was very happy to hear that it was finally official to see you tweet it out and let everybody know, like, yeah, it's finally official now. You know, you can move forward with the actual plans to move now that you actually are allowed to live there on a full time basis. I was very happy for you, Anita, too.

That was great news. Oh, sorry, Henry. I have to laugh about like invasions of privacy. People like the government's not telling me what to do. Well, in my case, I'm fine with it. They've already won. I've given them my blood and my pee and x-rays and everything so it's like you have everything you need fine take more it's fine just let me live here it's cool yeah have every part of my life

i just let me live yeah i think i mean part of it basically make a scrapbook of your relationship so they essentially got the bob and nina story like the novelization of our love. So it's soon to be a bestseller in Canada. Look for it. I think something is a very American, uninformed way of looking at it that we all kind of unlearn if you go through this process is like, whether you're trying to like leave America for Canada or come into America, it's not like, oh, and then you like sign a piece of paper and you're a citizen, right? Like, no, absolutely not. They make it the hardest the longest thing ever uh well honestly i think it's because there's so much anti-immigrant bullshit in in every country that they have to

they have all of this like means testing shit just to prevent you from making it too easy and they know they know how good their health care is and so obviously i mean i don't i don't think it's cool but they don't want people to abuse it. So they want to make sure you don't have like lingering health conditions or whatever, which is why, again, the full medical examination I had to go through to be like, are you healthy enough to move here? But now I can get sick as I want. I can get every kind of sickness now without they approve me. So I'm free to be sick. Well, that's so great.

And also, like, like you know perfect timing too just ahead of your anniversary as well and happy anniversary to you guys too it's very sweet and I appreciate all the listeners and their support because I couldn't have time to do all of this stuff if I had to do a full time job on top of you know the podcasting

so because of that I was able to devote like tons and tons of hours to working with Nina and our lawyers to get all this done so I I appreciate everyone out everybody for their support this year and we've you know we're we've got more subscribers than ever on the patreon we we welcome all the new folks and all the people who've been with us since it started we're getting close to our fifth anniversary now even of starting the patreon and so yeah i just i but thanks for making this 2021 you know great for for us. We really loved working on all the podcasts this year. I mean, again, not another great year in general, but for us, it's been very, very good.

For the Patreon, we have more income and more listeners than ever before. And it keeps getting better. And it's nice to see that people, our hard work pays off and we can even pull back a little bit, like on What a Cartoon, and people don't leave in droves or call us lazy or call it, try it, say that we're trying to rip them off or anything. We know our listeners, we have, they have faith, more faith in us than that. So it's been so nice to see just at least one thing is stable in this crazy world. And that's, that's podcasting. Yeah.

Yeah. And, and, and thank you also to all of our amazing guests this year, new and old. And we've got some really great ones coming in the new year too. We've had so many, we had so many guests this year that I was like, oh wow, I've always wanted them on, but will we ever be able to? And then like, boom, we just got a, like, I, they, they were all great. I don't want to single out one of them. Just it would be a disservice to all of our great guests to just single out one of them.

But we, I loved them all this year. And just a brief recap of things we talked about up front. So first week of the year, we're taking off on Patreon. That'll be the second week on the free feed. But you'll get things for both Talking Simpsons and What a Cartoon in their place. So there'll still be stuff for you to listen to from the past from our archives. But again, January, we're kicking off two Patreon-exclusive podcasts every month. That's Talking Futurama and Talking of the Hill.

And our normal Talking Simpsons schedule with talk to the audience as well and keep it out for the february movie poll to vote on either the aqua team sailor moon r batman superman or south park movies pick them as our february what a cartoon movie in the poll on the patreon so that was talk to the audience everyone thanks again for another great year and we'll see you next month. Wow. Infotainment.