Talking Simpsons - Talk to the Audience?!? - December 2023

Episode Date: January 3, 2024

We've reached the beginning of the month (and the start of a new year!), which means it's once again time for another installment of our community podcast! Join us as we discuss even more season 35 episodes, The Simpsons' ranking on Variety's 100 Greatest TV Shows of All Time list, Bill Oakley's annual Steamie Awards, and more.  And, as always, we read and respond to your questions and comments from the most recent round of episodes. Thanks again for another great year! Now let's all sit back and play the waiting game...

I heartily endorse this event or product. Ahoy, ahoy everybody and welcome to Talk to the Audience where this is always death. I am one of your hosts, the Steamy Awards presenter, Bob Mackie, and who is here with me as always? Mel and Sebastian old man fan henry gilbert so if you're new to talk to the audience on this podcast we talk about what's happening in the world of the simpsons and in our world and then we respond to your questions and comments from the last round of episodes and if you're on the patreon this arrives at the end of the month and if you're on the free feed this arrives at the beginning of the month and i have to announce

folks it's finally happened after a very long year this is now our final podcast recording of 2023 it's happening i looked up that sound effect on youtube just for this moment in time it was worth it that was great no hi uh it's it's been uh a it's been another busy busy month to get get ready for another long break as we basically, seven weeks apart, are both taking long trips to Japan. So now it's my turn. I was just thinking about it the other day, and I don't know how we still put out all of our podcasts on time because we each took two and a half weeks off kind of for Japan, for our Japan trips. And then we moved and we didn't record for six weeks. So it's kind of for japan for our japan trips and then we moved and we didn't record for six weeks so it's kind of like we didn't record for two months ish wow yeah

when you put it that way we did and and also i mean uh before that six weeks off definitely me and you both took visits to our spouses as well and like we kind of took like weeks here and there off too so it was a lot of a lot of time off that we squeezed in there maybe that's why we felt it felt so busy when it wasn't time off this year yeah it's a lot i'm looking forward to a much uh more stable year next year uh now that i we both planted on our roots the long-awaited moves to finally happen the listeners are tired of hearing about it i don't blame them i'm just happy to be where I am right now. I guess February is going to be our first actual normal month again

because January is not normal. January not normal. Bad start. No, actually a good start because we have a live show. We'll talk more about that later. But February, it's going to be

a steady Eddie of a month. February. Looking forward to it. Simpsons News. Not a lot of Simpsons News, but I finally, I was a good little student and I did my homework and I watched the new episodes after I went to the gym this morning. And I must say it wasn't worth it.

It's good gym. Oh, you mean after the gym? After. When I was having my post-workout banana, having my coffee and watching them slowly perform sexual sexual favors on taiko itt oh yeah that's uh that's the rougher of the two i would say uh but though though both are heavily built around um guest stars too which is i think a negative on them i guess with the so we can talk about them and what they're called and everything so we have i bonnie romance which is the uh i was gonna say joe willie it's been a long year groundskeeper willie marriage episode where there's a brief bonding experience with bard and then he heads over to scotland and we have a lot of uh scottish guests on the show but they're not playing themselves correct except for yeah they're all there there are new characters and yeah so it's uh david tenant aka dr who uh well one of the doctors uh karen gillan

who was also on dr who but is uh more famous as nebula from the mcu movies and uh paul higgins who's i think just like a scottish guy in bbc stuff and of course bell and sebastian uh who made me feel hip until i i think you did some scary math in the discord bob what was that scary math it was uh was it what did it involve you know what they would have been listening to 20 years ago i forget what it was it's that they are as old as the larry davis experience from the first episode of the simpsons like because larry davis experience was referencing 70s music and now bell and sebastian is like 1999 2000 indie music which is also just as old as 70 70s music was in the 90s hey uh they're appealing to the 40 year olds in the audience i guess

hey and i love bell and sebastian that this was the highlight. I got to say, the second episode, Murder, She Boat, didn't care for it very much. Taika Waititi, he's a bit overexposed, and I like some things he does. I hate him in things most of the time. He seems very obnoxious in these roles they're putting him in. But it is a very kiss-assy role they've given him, where it feels a very uh a very kiss-assy role they've given him where it feels like the standard role they slot the guest star into if they really like them where it's like oh mr ytt you're just so prolific and talented and they're kind of smug about it in the end there's maybe like one mean joke about them but it's all in good fun and it's very tiring uh

it was a very ytt worshiping episode but i must say the most offensive thing in this and i hate to be joke police about one joke but this joke went on for about 90 seconds there is an extended parody of the love boat opening in a sitcom in the year 2023 that was so dated and overdone that the simpsons wouldn't even do it in the 90s or the 2000s but here it's not just a tiny Love Boat reference, which Futurama did, to be fair. They had Isaac, the bartender on the Titanic, which was a tiny reference.

Whatever. It was cute. Here, it's just an extended parody of the opening sequence. Who is this for? I got to say, Michael Price, great guy. He's the writer of this episode. He's also 65 years old. So maybe that's where it's coming from yeah no i mean the it's it's very it's it's very old stuff especially when they're trying to be

kind of current with some of their like movie references in it and all of the like mcu and star wars stuff that's in there but then yes a very long uh love boat sequence that would be a parody like i was thinking like south park did a whole opening of love boat parody for the catholic boat and at least it had a joke to be made about like you know the horrors of the catholic molestation thing but that it was old then and that was over uh that was 20 years ago now that the catholic boat Pope bit not the best time for your love boat reference and then at the end sorry to interrupt but at the end there's some other super super dated reference in the middle of this episode I think I was so mad about it I forgot and then

the ends with the Titanic reference that also is very old too yes they do they do a Titanic reference I and take away TD is annoying I say as somebody who loves the What We Do in the Shadows show and the Our Flag Means Death. But I am a little tired of him especially. But he is, the character he's playing, I feel like they hedged of just like, the joke is he's very in your face and always talking. And he's supposed to be the annoying annoying over-involved guest star bit they do but it's still too much and i mean as you know it the title and structure is also sort of a parody of murder she wrote and spoilers the episode follows the rules of murder she wrote where the most famous person is uh you know, who did it?

I mean, I guess structurally I liked it more than I, Bonnie Romance, because this was a mystery. But the one thing, I might have talked about this on another episode. Maybe I just ranted to you when the things weren't rolling. But there's a whole thing in the Scottish episode where it's a destination wedding. And then there's a very long long and I apologize if I've complained about this before but there's a very long extended sequence where Homer he hears they've been invited and then we cut in throughout the day as

throughout the day he's complaining more and more to Marge about this destination wedding and my own issue is we've talked about this on especially in the teens episodes of the Simpsons. They're complaining about things that are not at all relatable to regular people. So I feel like if you're a comedy writer living in L.A., sure, you probably get too many of these and they're annoying. But most people would welcome a free vacation.

And it's weird that Homer would be a guy sick of destination weddings and very familiar with what happens on them. It doesn't seem right to me. no you're you're totally right it's very bougie complaints that Homer has for that long sequence it is similar to what we've been going through in season 14 of like the Simpsons go to a skybox and it's like well come on now or they get free tickets to see something and it's just you know in both of those season 14 episodes they have to make up an excuse for why that happens and they do the same here and it sucks that it's in both episodes back to back like in the to go to scotland they have to explain that they uh had their credit card stolen that then got them a bunch of free miles that then they got to keep and now they use it to go to

scotland and now for this one in the in the boat trip it's like they discover that they they got to keep and now they use it to go to Scotland. And now for this one in the, in the boat trip, it's like they discover that they never got their, um, that their checks for their government, uh, surplus thing COVID, they didn't actually get their, their money.

And so now they have, you know, $4,000. So then they go on a giant cruise and I'm just like, you keep having to make excuses for Simpsons to live beyond their means rather than write a story within their means i liked in the scottish episode that i thought it would end like that burns episode earlier this season where like obviously the person he marries they're not going to be married at the end of it but he's still uh willie is still married at the

end of the episode so i don't know how much we're going to be seeing that wife of his but he this is a successful wedding yeah i wonder if this will be continuity all these characters are getting married like comic book guy and uh kirk is getting re well he was he was remarried like 17 years ago to be fair but what did you think of the of his wife calling him comic book guy gene they say it twice in that episode comic book guy gene yes it wasn't guy ginned but she like over enunciated yes she's like crying and says my comic book guy gene yes i i forgot about that uh i i don't know i guess that's one that's one of the japanese words that a listener probably knows but i don't know if this is a new thing she's doing or not yeah it's uh it feels weirder again it's good they cast an actual japanese

american in the part but then it seems like they're still writing her um as shallowly as they did originally yeah it's like the these are just lines that would have been given to tress oh yeah and bart did the Angry Dad story again. He wrote a comic that then comic book guy destroyed. I was like, wait, you did this 20 years ago, Simpsons. Yeah, it's not a great month for the Simpsons, although there is another episode that will air on the 24th. We're recording this on the 22nd.

So we have not seen Do the Wrong Thing. And according to the official description, it's about Homer and Bart becoming kings of the blue collar sports circuit and marge suspecting something dishonest about their bond so maybe that will pull the simpsons out of the toilet this month after two not so great episodes it sounds like a parody of barstool sports or something i'm i'm scared we should i guess we'll see i i just saw some promotional photos, and that's all, or photos, drawings. The Simpsons are real, by the way. Breaking news. They've been photographed.

So let's move on to other Simpsons news. Not a lot, so we had to really, Henry really scraped the barrel here. And this is worth reporting on because it's the holidays. Writers are taking time off, so it's time to write a giant thing people can argue about for weeks and that giant thing this time is a variety's list of the 100 greatest tv shows of all time and the simpsons on this list is number four coming in behind the sopranos at number three mad men at number two and i love lucy at number one and i think fairly predictable although if you if you would have told me that I Love Lucy

went behind The Simpsons and Simpsons was number one, I'd believe that as well, just based on sheer longevity of The Simpsons. I feel like I chose you the age of the people of variety, that Simpsons is now old enough that it can really climb up the ranks of variety, but there's still even older people there. It's like, the sitcom begins and ends with Lucille Ball.

Okay, where you going with that? Then they put out their cigar and swirl their brandy. But, I mean, this is an okay list. I just don't like how it's basically, if anything ever aired on TV, it's on this list. So it's not the list of the greatest sitcoms or the greatest scripted shows because we have things like 60 minutes on here we have miniseries like roots on here i think it

frankly is far too broad and reality shows yeah that too i mean the reality shows being on there make you angry made me angrier too they're like honestly okay if i could do what you're supposed to do which is argue about things on it. I felt like community being at number 100, it would have been more insulting to just leave it off because putting it 100 is them saying like, yeah, we know about community. Fine. It's 100. I think it's 100 because it's the first thing you see when you click the article and you're like, oh, I like community. I want to read more. It does feel like strategically placed at 100 if it was something like uh i don't know the white shadow or something you'd be like i don't care about this or room 222 or whatever that james l brooks sitcom was oh yeah no i mean square pegs something like that we've we've been involved in the making of these lists too so we know how it

works also and then i you and i mean also it felt having Mad Men ahead of Sopranos also surprised me too because I I would definitely reverse those but though my second biggest complaint was I believe Deadwood is number 73 I would put Deadwood in top 20 personally but I get it again this isn't my list I get it but simpsons being the second highest sitcom after lucy though and hey look i do love lucy though i had to put honeymooners above it personally i think that's just as big of an important sitcom yeah i'm not sure where did that rank on this list you know that one i don't know let's uh let's do a command F on this thing here. Oh, boy. All right. You know what? Variety list. Bang, zoom straight to the moon because I don't see honeymooners at all on this thing.

Wow. Wow. OK. So glaring omission. We do not respect this list. Though I think we did talk about Roots. I will say I've been proven wrong on an older episode where I talked about how Roots was like, oh, you don't hear about it as much these days. But on this very list, Roots is number 10. So I was proven wrong. Roots still ranking very high on lists of best TV shows. I think the third highest scripted thing ever watched was the last episode of that or maybe it's second. We just covered this not too long ago on Talking Simpsons.

So, yes, that is the variety list. Check it out. Argue with your family over Christmas. It'll be fun. And our friend of the show, Bill Oakley, he had his sixth annual Steamy Awards this year. Always a good time. And we made an appearance in the, I forget the official title. Was it Best Foreign Candy?

International Candy. International Candy. So we were the presenters of the Best International Candy Award. in the uh i forget the official title was it best foreign candy international candy international candy so we were the presenters of the best international candy award so please check that out i believe uh where can people watch that i know they're posted to twitter but there is a youtube channel correct yeah he has a personal youtube channel though i think he uh i i don't want to put words in his mouth but i bet bill would most prefer if you followed him on instagram because that's where he does the most of his posts and you can watch the videos in full on there as well but yes he has a YouTube page

Instagram is what he links to when he posts the videos on Twitter and yeah we were it was a great pick for us too because of our own international podcast position so you get to see us all dressed up too and I found two of the

candies here in canada and they're both delicious i'm saving my chunky kit kat drumstick for the holidays and it does sound very tasty i bill it doesn't taste like drumsticks but it does taste like the ice frozen ice cream confection drumstick by the way in case you're wondering we were confused at first and we're on there with several pals as well like uh the the the presenters right before us uh were will beneker from choppo trap house with felix who will's done the show and then before that also was nick and mitch from doughboys also our pals so bill has good taste in podcasters all the stars came out to shine and also we did as well so moving on

to more bill oakley related news he is having more mission hill live shows to celebrate the 25th anniversary next year so please check those out i believe he's posted the dates to twitter but i assume there will be more promotion as uh you know we get closer to the shows but i did notice he's not performing in the cities we live in. Is Bill Oakley avoiding us? Stay tuned to find out. I'm going to have to go to Portland to go to the nearest show to see Bill and Josh. I think they're not trying to repeat cities, maybe, because I don't think they did San Francisco before, and now they are doing San Francisco. It's a lot more East Coast and South America, or the Southern states of America, not like Buenos Aires.

Bill Oakley will be in Argentina, where Mission Hill never aired. Yeah, Bill and Josh, I saw them for their big Seattle show. It was really good. If you like this podcast, you will really enjoy the presentation they have of Mission Hill classics. And all the fun information and Q&As they do are really great. And our final bit of news, if you live in America Hulu and Disney Plus

have been integrated if you pay for both so you're going to be seeing a lot of really weird things that frankly I'm used to having lived in Canada because all of the things are just on Disney Plus but now it's new for you Americans and I'm sure I guess you're seeing Rick and Morty next to like Mickey's holiday extravaganza or something yes yeah it's uh Hulu has so many

things on it but now you can watch King of the Hill Family Guy and Futurama on the app as well on Disney Plus if you're a Hulu subscriber in addition which i am uh and but the weirdest thing is that yes they got all of these warner properties on hulu so now as our pal ian jones cordy pointed out you can't watch okay ko let's be heroes anymore on max but you can watch it on disney plus if you got who well soon it'll become warner mounts or whatever they're doing now. Oh, that's going to get even. Yeah, that's late breaking news, I guess, that it is looking like. I would bet it will happen because things are that awful. But the process has begun for Warner to absorb Paramount.

Warner's the bigger company, so they will stay in charge likely in this scenario. They will merge and become one thing. So if you thought that this is already too monopolized of companies, here is there's about to be one fewer one of them is very soon. All I got to say is yo ho yo ho. That's my future. Like Zaslav will be in charge of Comedy Central and Nickelodeon and MTV. So if you think like if you like those things and what's done on those, those won't exist anymore.

Or Showtime also. Like, well, there won't be a Showtime anymore. He's really this century's greatest monster of entertainment. Yeah. So that's what's happening in Simpsons News and related spheres. Let's talk about our news. And let's talk about our January schedule. So for What a Cartoon as usual in January we're taking

that month off we're taking a week off to have a little break for ourselves and we've built up some content to post in the meantime so everybody who has not heard the podcast about the Incredibles the six hour podcast that will be made available to you the week What a Cartoon goes

live in January so you get the entire podcast the entire what a cartoon movie podcast about that as our little treat for you while we take some time off and yes the week off will be the first week of the month if you are on the patreon and the second week of the month if you are on the free feed so just keep that in mind but people in the free feed we've dropped some little presents in your stocking that will keep you busy for that week and maybe give you the incentive to sign up you might get to hear some things that the patrons here uh that you're missing out on buddy so yeah if you've just joined us this year maybe you don't know that every january we release uh in place of a regular episode a

classic crusty of uh but of us are what a movie, which we work super hard on those every month, all year long. And Incredibles is, I think, a really great one to give a listen to because it's very related to The Simpsons. It has a lot of very Simpsons-style comedy in it. And we've talked about Brad Bird and his relationship to The Simpsons quite a lot. If you go back in your free feed for Talking Simpsons, you'll see the Iron Giant episode as well. So they're a really good combo if you haven't listened to either of those and again we both work so hard on those movie podcasts

you're basically missing like three extra podcasts we do in a month by not listening to those we're really proud of them so yeah please check it out and if you haven't signed up maybe you'll get a little taste of what the treasures of Patreon will give you. So that's what a cartoon taking that month off in terms of the regular episode. But let's talk about what's happening on the Patreon. If you're a patron for $5 at patreon.com slash Talking Simpsons, we have Talking Futurama, the Farnsworth Parabox, a very great, very high concept episode as we are arriving at the end of the fox run we've got a few more and then some other things in store so you're going to want to stay tuned for those but

for the moment having a lot of fun with the end of futurama in giant quotes because then it started two more times and you know what happened and uh yeah that talking futurama episode is about the very novel idea of a multiverse have Have you heard of these things, folks? They're pretty big these days, but it took about 15 years for that to catch on. So that is Talking Futurama. And then on Talking of the Hill, we have Sleight of Hank, a great episode where Hank is mad that he can't figure out how a magic trick is performed, and it nearly rents the family in twain.

So it's a very small episode that's very character based and we had a lot of fun talking about it and magic oh yeah it's it's not an illusion the fun you'll have listening to that podcast and also for the month of january the what a cartoon movie for subscribers at the ten dollar and up level we are covering disney's bambi so for the past two years we've done uh one very classic disney movie a year we did pinocchio we covered dumbo and to start off the new year we'll be covering bambi which i believe comes right after dumbo or pinocchio there's an order here that makes sense to me but it is a classic film it was what traumatized uh children before mufasa

died so we're going to look into that. And I'm going to read the original book, which I assume is not very long. Yeah, the Bambi's mom jokes in The Simpsons will finally make more sense to us as we deconstruct all of it. No, I love that one, too. One of my favorite songs as a little kid growing up, like very little, my mom would play the April Shower song from Bambi over and over again on a tape. It was one of my favorite. Well, much like Pinocchio, much like Dumbo, I have never seen this movie. So I'll be going in fresh.

Well, spoilers. Don't spoil me on whose whose mother might die. I don't know yet. So that's what's happening in the month of January and also in the month of January we have a live show happening on January 24th at 7.30pm at the Gateway Theater in San Francisco so there are more details to come on this

and in the new year we'll be putting together a post and a little commercial for you to remind you of where to be how to buy tickets and etc so this will be our fifth year in a row at sketchbooks i'm saying in a row because we've performed all the possible years we could five times yeah from from 2018 to to 2024 we've performed five times yeah uh the math checks out on that but we're really excited

to do it uh we're gonna be loving to go back to the bay area where we we we trade it we let we turned our backs on it but now i'm sure they'll welcome us with open arms it'll be great to go back as visitors and experience it again but yeah it's uh we're at the gateway theater in san francisco 7 30 p.m on wednesday january 24th gateway theater is where we did our uh 2019 show if you were at that one it one, it's a very nice theater. I'm really looking forward for us to go back into it. And we can't announce it yet, but we have a cool guest. The guests are looking good.

I'll just say that. Absolutely. So stay tuned for that, another live show in our future. When you really care about someone, you shout it from the mountaintops. Absolutely. So stay tuned for that. Another live show in our future. So now. When you really care about someone, you shouted from the mountaintops. So on behalf of Desjardins insurance, I'm standing 20,000 feet above sea level to tell our clients that we really care about you. Home and auto insurance personalized to your needs. Weird, I don't remember saying that part. Visit Desjardins.com slash care and get insurance that's really big on care. Did I mention that we care?

It's time for us to talk about what we've been playing and watching that's not related to podcasting. And I've got a few things because in the month of December, I finished three whole video games that were all very good. Super Mario Wonder. Henry and I just talked about that

for 90 minutes the previous podcast recording so stay tuned to RetroDots at the end of January. Obviously we both loved it. We both think it's the best 2D Mario game since Yoshi's Island If you haven't played it you gotta play it. It's so good. It did not disappoint in any way and we talked about it

for 90 minutes and you'll hear that uh much later so that's that i also finished the super mario rpg remake a tidy 50 15 hour game rather uh and i like how literal the remake was it's just like let's take all of these things make them more presentable to the audience and basically leave everything else untouched for the most part and i had a really great time reliving that game with graphics that weren't completely dated to the era of pre-rendered 16-bit stuff so i know henry that's going to be in your future and as someone who's played this game like a dozen times or more through the original i had a blast uh doing it again and everything it just moves much faster it's much prettier the soundtrack is has been touched up in a very nice way so yeah really recommend this one as well

i liked what i've seen online from people and you included showing how like oh this this silly joke that you thought maybe current nintendo wouldn't be as into because it's you know a weird little gag or it also kind of breaks the reality of Mario or whatever they kept it in there and just that the weird little shapes of Mario that he makes in his like basically him is a silent film star I love that they kept so much of that in there Mario doesn't speak once in terms of uh you know voice dialogue which I love to hear uh or not here rather and I also finished the Resident Evil 4 remake that was amazing it's a bit it's a bit of an older game now came out like I think winter of 2023 but

it took me a while to get around to I love the original this is kind of the opposite of the Mario RPG remake and it is taking the idea of Resident Evil 4 but thinking like how can we make this as a modern game and they basically did that and i think it was very good uh capcom's been on a real roll lately with these resident evil remakes now we're getting to the games that aren't very good or are kind of lesser like five is is fine six i think is a bad game i wonder if they're going to touch these but if anything they can make them better i hated six and i played all i don't know 50 hours of that too long game. I could only do 20 hours of six. It was like, yeah, it was like they just made three games that were called Resident Evil 6 and glued them together.

Like it was. But Resident Evil 5, that'll be interesting if they do remake it, because I do remember enjoying it. But also like it. What an innocent time it was, what, 15 years ago or whatever when it got announced. And that was the first, it felt like one of the first times that I could remember seeing games journalists say, hey, isn't this kind of problematic, this trip to Africa? And they adjusted it before the game came out. But I feel like they'll have to make more adjustments when the game comes, were they to remake it?

Yeah, it would be a good game to remake uh spiritually with with a modern eye and yeah talking about like the racism in the game and everything that was really when in in the innocent year of 2008 i thought oh i i think gamers might have this unaddressed problem with racism and uh that that certainly won't uh you know bubble up to the surface and by 2014 let's just forget about that let's put it to the wayside but i gotta play that four remake though i four is my favorite resident evil as like you know duh it's most people's favorite but i really i did i played a bit of the two remake but not three so i'm curious uh the four remake does sound really great four is so so good and it's actually pretty long like presentable for the original surprisingly long this one is is just as

long it even cuts some stuff out of 4 that actually is reinterpreted through the Ada Wong DLC which people really love that came out in the fall as well so yes had a great time I love

finishing video games it's a fun thing people should try it and I think up next on my agenda my wife played through Disco Elysium a few times last year. And she's telling me that I love it. She wants to talk to me about it.

So that's the next thing that I'm starting is Disco Elysium. A great, fun little RPG that I can't wait to talk more about it on these podcasts and talk to my wife about it. And also, because I did this little thing called moving across the country, I didn't play any Pikmin 4 in my entire life and that's next on my agenda with Disco Elysium I played the demo of Pikmin 4 and then it was time to pack all of my shit together and do all of the things I needed to do to get to

where I am now so that was put on the back burner for far too long and I can't wait to touch it and I'm not even going to continue where I left off with the demo I'm just going to start a new game because I've forgotten everything so far I can't wait to touch it and I'm not even going to continue where I left off with the demo I'm just going to start a new game because I've forgotten everything so far but can't wait to do Pikmin 4 you got the costume in Pikmin Bloom for beating the demo

I saw that oh yeah and also Alan Wake 2 I know you love it Henry you got all the achievements it's been winning awards it won a BAFTA some game awards things but those aren't real I'm hearing great things about it and i got a free copy with my new gaming pc so it's been waiting on uh the epic game store for me

waiting for me to play and uh i'm very curious as to see what what it does so yeah i'll i'll say again if you never if you didn't play the first alan wake you should at least watch a, you know, uh, the Sam Lake, the director of the game did a 15 minute, uh, recap of it, uh, that covers everything you need to know before starting the game, because, uh, it'll, it'll definitely make Alan Wake 2 a lot better if you, you have that information. But yeah, Pikmin 4, as, as I was making a list, my games of the year, top 10, Pikmin 4 is very high for me. Cause it really is like, I was just saying it to a friend last night that it makes every other Pikmin game feel like practice for this Pikmin game. This is the first true Pikmin game and what they always should have been. It's so good.

Miyamoto better stay alive. That's all I'm saying. I need more of these in my life. So as for watching stuff, as for TV, I finished the first season of chainsaw, man. I really loved it. It's about time that anime can have really fucked up. Great animation with violence and gore and everything you want from anime,

or at least in the olden days, it's, it's, it's a nice revisit to that time where you could, you know, pop into VHS and tell your friend, look, check this out.

You won't believe what happens next. It's fucked up, man. I recommend it, Henry. It won't believe what happens next. It's fucked up, man. I recommend it, Henry. It's very dark. It's very well animated, but also reminds me a bit of Evangelion because we have these massive threats affecting society, and the people tasked with fighting them

are just giant dumbasses that are frankly too powerful. I like that. Boy, it's hard to... i've had one shonen jump thing and on my front burner for so long it's hard to hard to think of other shonen uh sj things uh in in its place and i hear what uh this is just in from uh from the wife wire she told me about this but apparently they're doing what they did with Demon Slayer in that they're not doing a second season of the anime. They're doing a movie that adapts an entire arc.

And then later they will make that into individual episodes. And so I'm prepared for that to be the new number one movie of all time in Japan, whatever they do, the Chainsaw Man movie. I guess it made a trillion dollars to demon slayer so that'll probably be it for like everything then from now on yes that feels like the approach uh they're going to be taking from now on so the chainsaw man i'm keeping up with spy family

enjoying that uh i'm also doing a one-piece journey i i left off in like 2018 and i've been doing anime and manga you know keeping up with both uh at the same level and right now in the anime and in the manga I'm on the Thriller Bark saga which I really like because it's spooky town and it's just an excuse for the manga creator to have all these weird designs so I'm enjoying that a lot there's some Thriller Bark haters in the One Piece community I've seen that they feel like it's not. I feel like every I think people have this dumb idea of like if it's not directly involving the main thing that is the point of the series and it all feels like, oh, this is like you're wasting my time. Get back to the main story. But Thriller Bark is a great time. That's where they get Brooke. You know, people said that about the Davy Beck arc, and I thought that was great. It's like a little Laugh Olympics with the One Piece characters.

Davy Beck, I love Davy Beck. It's so funny. It's so great. I love that Count Chocula goofball. That made me think of the thing that they referenced on the Murder, She Boat episode of The Simpsons that also made me mad. It was Wacky Races. Oh, right. It was Wacky Races, on the uh murder she boat episode of the simpsons that also made me mad it was it was wacky races

oh it was wacky races but it was starring sideshow mel as dick dastardly and it and then it was a fury it was fury road meets uh wacky races which like sorry that's almost a decade old like that's not fresh either okay i'm no longer mad now i just wanted to bring that up. And yeah, all the TV has been great. TV, what a concept. Also, I watched 18 movies this month somehow because my wife and I are really ramping up the holiday movie watching. So yeah, I finally saw The Holdovers. I'm liking it more the more I think about it,

but I came out of it very happy with what I saw. I think we might have talked about that before. I can't remember. I think it's come up. Yeah, I don't think I had seen it then, but I think we talked about it on that before. I can't remember. I think it's come up. Yeah. I don't think I had seen it then, but I think we talked about it on another podcast. We recorded spoilers. We recorded all of January's podcasts already.

So I can't remember what I said and when, but I saw a little movie about a guy named boy and his friend, the Heron. And I thought it was incredibly mid did Did not care for it at all, and I want to know what people like about it because, you know, obviously, glorious animation, just fantastic spectacle in front of you, but I feel like Miyazaki failed these animators

by writing another bad, poorly planned story that is, frankly, I won't even say borderline incoherent. At times, it is just very incoherent at times it is just very incoherent and i know it's a big allegory about him and all i gotta say is don't make people do all that work to tell a story about you you're not that interesting but he's the only guy who gets to make those things like he's nobody if it wasn't uh if it was a different director they wouldn't get the money to do it i well okay uh i also saw boy the heron i i think i definitely liked it more than you though i it's not like my favorite miyazaki film though i i know

i'm the odd man out i'm seeing these letterboxd reviews from people who aren't me and they're all like 4.5 and 5 and i'm i'm sitting at a three but well okay i saw pony, um, the wind rises this year, like back to back. And so those were his last two, uh, films he did. And those I liked less than I remembered, especially wind rises.

I was like, man, this is kind of slow. Like it's, and it, and so compared to wind rises, this felt like a better return to form of like, this is much more of like he got

a boy goes to a magical world who would have thought but this but i i like the i mean the heron's a fun guy i love that guy i wish he was in it more yeah i mean there were things to like i like the parakeet kingdom uh the cannibal parakeets were very funny you know there are things to like but it never came together as a whole it just felt to me the the back i don't know 70 of the movie felt like a less successful uh spirited away that's what it felt like to me like nothing came together for me i saw people coming out of it thinking like oh i'm gonna have to think about this one for a while and in my head i was just thinking i'm not to insult these people but it's not that you're stupid or anything. It just wasn't done very well.

This movie is not challenging you. I just felt like I was there. I was paying attention. I was going in with an open mind. And, you know, earlier I've thought, you know, Miyazaki just needs help with his storytelling. At this point, I just think he's kind of bad at it. And he's failing all the people he's making do all this work at the at the command of uh under the instructions

of please illustrate this very bad story i'm trying to tell well okay i think another issue and this is slight sport if you want to know nothing about the plot uh this isn't going to say the ending but he really loves he's the older gets, the even more he is into this theme of the old master who wants to let somebody else inherit it or what's going to happen after I'm dead. All these kinds of ways of thinking. And I feel like that just comes about because he refused. He had, there's a 20 year period of like, now's the time you're training the next person. But every person he hired to train is the next guy.

They simply could not work with him. He was impossible to work with. So then when you see these movies that have the and Wind Rises and Ponyo also kind of have this too, where there's an esoteric weirdo guy at the center of a creative project and everybody's like, boy, you're hard to work with. And he's like, well well somebody will come after me and the more i know about miyazaki's life i just want to scream at this at the movie to be like but you didn't like that oh that why are you so old and you can't find your inheritor because you refuse the inheritor you didn't let them do

something it's just really weird to me that he makes an entire staff animate scenes about these things it just feels kind of cruel to me but the craft on display is incredible also i mean have you ever seen bird shit drawn better bob i mean that was great i can't tell if he hates birds though i mean yeah i did enjoy all the birds some of the spectacle i did like but i i just i have to come to terms with it i I don't like his kind of storytelling and that's just where I'm coming from. I won't even say it's untraditional, just it doesn't work. I feel like that's not something he's focused on. He's an artist first and foremost, and I feel like he just has too much seniority and power and status for anyone

to ever challenge his ideas. I mean, we shouldn't have an 82 year old person as president we shouldn't have an 82 year old person directing a animated feature your your wife said it in her letter box very well nina said you know somebody should tell him he's allowed to retire but he doesn't he doesn't want to but yeah and i'm gonna say it's okay if you like this i've already laid out my issues with the storytelling i i just wish this animation could serve a much better story because people are working so hard to make this look so good. It's it's their most expensive movie they've made based on what I've been hearing. Yeah, I think, you know, if you compare it to the last over 20 years of his films now, I definitely can't. I'd say with Spirited Away, Howl's Moving Castle's moving castle ponyo wind rises and this all

because he does not write a script or a full proposal to be approved he just boards it and thinks of the story and makes adjustments as he goes all of those if you think of the last 10 minutes of all those they all are like a mad dash of like care like some character will say well now we have to do this because we have to do it's just a dump of information to say for resolution and i feel the more i learn about his productions i think it's like it's suzuki his producer saying you didn't resolve these things were on the last five minutes you have to have some character say what happened yeah it's i won't say it feels unfinished because it's a long movie but uh and is no spoilers, by the way. The final scene is so abrupt.

When the credits started running, I assumed there was a mistake in the file that we were watching. But no, it's just how the movie ends. And if any movie needs the Studio Ghibli-style epilogue where you see little snippets of the characters' lives after what happened, it's this movie. But the movie just slams the door kind of in your face and then you're just i just felt uh i don't know it wasn't a good time for me i was able to turn my brain off and just watch pretty things understanding i won't know what any of the significance of this is but that's fine but i demand a little more and maybe the studio can continue with stories told by someone else i i really hope it does i i

my last thought i just want to see i'm going to watch the second time uh probably in january with the english language edition just to see if there's some things that might be clearer or at the very least i could not be reading the bottom of the screen the whole time and even more soak in the best thing about the movie which is the animation craft on screen you know I was I don't want to you know predict how you'll feel Henry but I was scouring letterbox reviews because I didn't want to be

negative about this movie and I just wanted to say you know prove me wrong what am I missing here and someone wrote a review where they saw the dub and they assumed oh this will make more sense now and to them it didn't i'm not saying the same thing will happen to you but i'm curious as to what you'll walk away with having seen the dub yeah okay so again this is the the miyazaki slandering corner has ended and i apologize if you were offended by that this is how i feel i also saw new on netflix

nobody's talking about it is uh chicken run dawn the Nuggets have you seen this yet Henry? No it appeared last weekend but really this last week has just been so busy for my husband and I for getting everything ready job wise and packing wise for our trip that when I pulled up Netflix

and said hey we could watch this he's like we have to do this and this and this I was like yeah you're right you know what it's merely okay and it made me realize oh the chicken run characters only really had one story to tell i mean i had fun for the most part but it was lacking this sounds very weird talking about chicken run it's lacking the emotional depth of chicken run which when i went back to that movie it was so surprising where the characters have all these secrets and there are all these big turns and revelations and things like that. The characters as we knew them in the first movie are essentially static,

which makes the movie not as fun. And they realize there's not much to do with these characters who've all gone through their arcs. So the back hour of the movie is this big heist. And frankly, too much of the movie is devoted to that I preferred in Chicken Run one where there were multiple attempts and then there's one big set piece at the end here it's just

the second and third act are the set piece and I think that's because they didn't know what to do with the characters you know glorious clay animation by Aardman but kind of like with the wind ride not the wind rises a boy in the hair and I thought oh I wish they were working very hard on a better script, these animators. I hope this doesn't portend poorly for the Wallace and Gromit movie that I think is, what, next year, right?

Yes. I mean, I feel like those characters obviously have more than one story to tell. I think they can be slotted into different stories. Chicken Run, they got their freedom, and I feel like that's the last time we should have seen them it sounds like one of the oceans 11 sequels that like we're well we're stealing another thing or it's like another one of these they work hard but they really can't justify it and i saw batman returns in the theater it was great uh number one batman movie uh i i i just i love that movie more every time I see it it's now I need to

this has been a year I didn't watch it but I did watch another similar thing I'll talk about in my section yeah I went like 25 years without watching this movie maybe even longer and then I think in Christmas of 2020 I wanted to watch it again for Christmas and then I fell in love with it again and I think I've watched

it a few more times since but yeah yeah, a controversial sequel at the time. But I think it's really held up. So check out Batman Returns if you still have time this holiday season. And it's running out. Yes. Yeah. It's a great Boxing Day viewing. Yes.

So my last thing is January is very busy. And I rarely do this. But I picked up a non-podcasting work assignment that will take me to New York City for a few days. Exactly. And no one will be lassoing me away. Don't worry. But since I'm there in town and I have an

extra day, I did already buy tickets to see Back to the Future the musical on Broadway. So that's where I'll be headed in mid-January. And I've never been in a Broadway audience. Like Marge, it's always been my dream. That's adorable.

Yeah, no, it looks fun from the little bit they performed on the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade that I saw. So I'm looking forward to hearing your reviews back from it, Bob. Yeah, I mean, that is the series, the movie series, I am the biggest fan of. That outranks all my other movie-style fandom. So I had to see it. I've been following the news of the show for a while.

I'm completely ignorant about the songs or how the plot goes or whatever. But yeah, I want to be there and just take it all in with fresh eyes. So I will report back next month, I guess. Yeah there and just take it all in with fresh eyes. So I will report back in next month, I guess. Yeah. But that's it for me. So for my month of December, yes, very.

We were both very busy and I am about to to to fly to Tokyo in about 18 hours from this recording. But yeah, so speaking of Japanese things, I fully played Like a Dragon, Gaiden, or The Man Who Erased His Name, the new spinoff, or Interquil, maybe you could call it. And it's really, really good. If you've got Game Pass, it's included in Game Pass. It flew right by. Compared to a regular Yakuza Like a Dragon RGG game, it is like 10% of one of those, or maybe 15%. But you can squeeze every minute out of it. I like that. I've had that for a while. I don't have Game Pass, but I bought it when it was new to support the brand

because I like what they're doing. And that could be a holiday thing for me too i i like the digestible yaksa because uh like a dragon yaksa's eight seven is it was it seven eight it's eight infinite wealth so it's uh eight sideways but the last one was seven right seven was the last one yes yeah that was a pandemic release and i played that for a hundred hours um i don't have that time now so a nice little digestible yaksa would be great it's a great adventure with kazuya uh it also has a wonderful ending uh that's worth getting to and the side missions are good though the it lacks a good host minigame that's the one thing it's it's really missing but mainly it's just

like hey remember these areas well we slightly updated them and made one actual new area and uh you don't have to play uh uh shogi or go or uh thank god koi koi if you don't want to i don't have to learn the rules to 20 dice games now you mentioned the host segment the host uh minigames they do exist but they're full motion video and i personally find that delightful i'm looking forward to trying those out and assuring my wife i'm not watching porn as i do it you're just pretending to talk to a girl in a low-cut dress that's all yes i gotta i gotta get these achievements and the the whatever the exclusive weapons i get for maxing out my friend meter but also after doing all of the um the turn-based combat of the last one getting back to punching people as kiryu was

was a fun fun new thing well or it was a return to form that i really enjoyed so yeah and also like i guess it depends how attached you are to kiryu's character and how long you've stuck around with him because there's a whole lot of fan service just for that of like hey remember this thing well we brought it back or he's meeting this character who hasn't seen since like the fourth game or whatever also uh I played a little bit of Baldur's Gate 3 but it's so huge that we're uh it's a co-op game for my husband and I we played four hours of it, and then we're like, this is going to have to wait until after we come back. But it really does feel like playing a tabletop role-playing game.

It actually amazes me in that way with the amount of things you can do in it. And also, if people just bought it because it's like we bought it and started it because it's on Xbox now, and that's what I was waiting to play it on. But other people who are waiting or who played it before, you're just going to bounce right off it because it does not. It's not nice like a Mass Effect game even. It's just like, no, you better know D&D because it's like this is how turns work. This is how initiative works. It's how all this stuff works you got to know that stuff it's so it's like old school balder's gate but with a

new presentation no i've heard really good things about it i'm furious because this is the year i moved and it took away so much of my time and then all of these 9 000 hour games came out like tears of the kingdom and balder's gate 3 and and so many others and uh i i wish there were time there was time maybe in the future i do want to try this because i bounced off the other balder's gates but they were more antiquated i was not used to playing that kind of a game i feel like i could really get into this but there's five other hundred hour games that are coming first frankly it might be a good one uh for spouse play as well just like spouse play and also to get ready for our trip i have been playing playing a lot of duolingo but i'm at 139 days streak and almost done with unit six uh no unit

seven almost done with unit seven so very nice and uh as for watching it was mainly a movie month for me as well so boy in the Heron talked about that. I also saw Godzilla Minus One in theaters, which is really, really good. Though I am also, I feel like a stinker like you do, Bob, with Boy and the Heron, where I've seen people say like, wow, it's such a great film about like World War II in Japan, thinking about its place in that and overcoming, you know overcoming the shame of losing the war, all that stuff. And it is very inventive that the concept is it's called Minus One because original Godzilla comes out in 54,

and so this movie is mainly set in 1947. So it's like, what if Godzilla showed up earlier and destroys Tokyo right after it's slowly rebuilding? But I do feel like i've seen i think shin godzilla was a better uh symbolic exploration of difficult topics in shin godzilla was more a reaction to the um the 20 uh the march 2011 earthquake uh 311 tsunami and everything yeah yeah so minus one meanwhile again if you if you like minus one and you want to watch other really great movies from japanese creators that reflect on the war and what japan rebuilds after world war ii i would definitely say

watch cone ishikawa's fires on the plains and thep of Burma or The Burmese Harp it goes by two names they're both on the Criterion channel right now he was a director who made them in the 50s who he has a very realistic look back on what it was like to survive the war and react to it and and also it my biggest complaint with Godzilla Minus One that unlike those films, I don't think it deals enough with what Japan Japan's own actions in the war. It's more just about feeling bad that they it's more survivor's guilt than reacting to, hey, we invaded these countries and we were bad. I had similar issues with Boy in the Heron, and they're really highlighted by Letterboxd review that I wish I remembered who wrote it but I think I did like it so if you go to my review you can see which ones I like but they

pointed out like a lot of the this is taking place in like fascist era of Japan but the son is like a privileged boy of the like war economy who gets to go live on this secluded estate it's very very privileged perspective

the titular boy maybe that's what that could be why he's so boring yeah sorry i mean i guess i guess i mean this happens in the first five minutes but i guess his mom died but i guess the the big uh issue in that movie is like this my new stepmom's i don't like her that much it's like yeah that's like every kid with a new step parent get over it loser miyazaki used to interrogate class a lot more in his films as opposed to boy in the hair and that's for sure yeah yeah sorry sorry to hijack your movie descriptions here no no well also Godzilla minus one listen to our millennium actress podcast too and obviously look I know who am I as an American to tell Japanese people how they should interrogate their country's

history and wars when we are a horrible imperial power who makes all these movies about how it was so sad that we had to kill all these people in Vietnam. Like, that's fucked up of us. I know. But Millennium Actress, I think that dealt much more well with reflecting on Japan's actions in World War II. The representation of the spirit of Imperial Japan in Millennium Actress is this broken, penitent, sad man. He's full of regret that they even were this way. And I feel Minus One doesn't deal with that as much.

It is just more about survivalist guilt of a soldier. Yeah, I feel like we are going to see it. They're extending the run of that movie now into January. And I feel like that's the motivation for us to see it when it comes here. And also it led to very bad discourse because the publicly announced budget of it is $14 million. And people are like, that's a tenth of what the Marvels did. And look at this. I'm just like, one, I'm sorry.

I love the special effects in Godzilla minus one. They are not comparable to the Godzilla versus Kong as in like depth. And Godzilla minus one can't do nothing that Godzilla versus Kong does from a VFX standpoint. Secondly, you do not want to mirror the way that animation companies work in Japan. The reasons it's so cheap is not because everybody takes a pay wage they like. Yeah, and also how much of that Marvel budget is just sheer corporate waste that goes to nothing yeah yeah but uh on a completely different note I also watched uh Merry Little Batman because we were in the mood to watch a light uh Christmassy thing that was new so we put that on

the background it is uh one of something it could have been on Max and instead they put it on Prime very weird yeah yeah I mean I don't even know what's happening with Max I haven't had access Something that could have been on Max, and instead they put it on Prime. Very weird. Yeah, yeah. I mean, I don't even know what's happening with Max. I haven't had access to it in months. It was the home of, frankly, too many Batman things. Well, this one now isn't on there anymore, or never went there. So it's called Merry Little Batman, which is Batman is a big friendly dad now, and it's about he goes out of town and it starts as a home alone thing with his child damian wayne uh and batman's voice by luke wilson and uh yes it's uh it's it's all

right it's a good it's a good little time if you're looking for a nice new thing uh that's uh that is batman related for the holidays you could do worse and also watch the one piece movie baron o'matsuri and the secret island which was only uh it's great it's amazing animation but i also loved watching it because it was uh mamuro hosoda's reaction to having trying to work in ghibli and like this the shit that happens to them on the island I think is his reaction to uh working for Miyazaki that's that's like the one one piece movie I've seen and it's really good because it feels like he was just allowed to do whatever he wanted including changing the way the characters look it's it's more in his distinctive style and I

have to credit Maddie for showing me the movie when we hung out in Portland a number of years ago uh because it still has not been officially released in any capacity. Because it isn't real, or I mean, it doesn't, it breaks. I've read enough One Piece now that I do actually watching it go like, oh, well, you shouldn't do that, but whatever. It's still really great. I also feel like the rights for all the older movies are complicated because, I mean, now that there is an American fan base they are releasing the movies you know somewhat soon after they're out in Japan but there's I don't know a dozen other movies that just never came out here because there just wasn't the support the movies needed to justify their release here

Oh and one piece check in I'm at volume i'm in chapter 700 aka volume 71 right now i'm only on i've only read 45 of the comic books uh which which arc is this uh a dress rosa is just about to start that's i know that one hazard it takes a very long time from what i've heard so yeah buckle your seat belt uh though i'm i want to get current just so I can watch that Red movie that everybody's saying is so good. Yeah. Yeah, I was seeing a lot of stuff. I mean, I think it had stopped playing in Japan by that point or maybe not. I saw a lot of One Piece Red stuff while I was there.

You probably will, too. And, you know, also one thing I didn't like in that Barino Mozzarei thing was the sub. It was such a fan sub because every time they said Nakama, they just wrote Nakama. Oh, yeah. Was there a big footnote before the movie started? No. Here's why we use Nakama. It doesn't mean friend or comrade.

It actually means something quite different. And then there's eight more paragraphs. I wish it did have a full thing of that on screen. But no, I think it was so weebish that they are just like we don't even have to explain nakama you know what nakama means hey i mean thanks for the free translation but uh let's tone it down a little bit so that's oh go ahead sorry lastly because you'll hear this in next month's futurama i now have seen all the new season of futurama so and the last two aren't that good. In fact, the second to last one is that really weird one I think I mentioned on one of the thousand podcasts we released this year where it's a treehouse of horror. But the stories are, what if the cast were made up of these? Sorry, let me do that again.

The stories are, what if the cast were one of three kinds of antiquated toys? And the stories they tell are not interesting and i don't know where that idea came from or why they executed upon it it just seems inexplicable were there not enough ideas for a new futurama season i guess they wanted to do you know we haven't explored neither of us enough of the comedy central years but in comic central they did do more sort of anthology of interest so that because they did the one with the animation styles i remember so i mean i get the i get the format but the the choice of subject matter seems so odd to me yeah well and then especially because the next episode also is a high concept one that deals with a lot like one of the

key components is basically pixel versions of the characters for a bit of it so you're also dabbling in different character animation very easy to animate pixel versions of the characters it's not like nes it's basically they're what four pixels each yes yeah yeah minecraft has many more pixels to them uh yeah no i but i i did i liked more than i thought the zap gets canceled episode it's it's predictable everybody's like oh man if zap were alive today he'd be canceled be for all the things he does but i at least like that they keyed it into kiff being the counselor because he's like yes everything that uh that that zap does to him is sexual harassment of some kind. I will say that I would give that season maybe like a B-. I'm hoping they do a little better next time,

but I will say in the future, 2024, maybe we'll visit one of those episodes on Talking Futurama. Who knows? There are some really good ones in it. It's a good end. Yeah, I feel promise for the future as opposed to how I felt at the end of, say, Bender's Game. Yes.

Yeah, I guess at some point we got to talk about those movies. We'll figure it out. We'll figure it out, folks. I'll be in Tokyo very soon. And so next episode, you'll be hearing my Tokyo tales as well. And we promise to keep the white guy in Japan stories limited about 20 minutes, right? Sure, sure. Yeah.

That's what I kept mine too so let's move on to questions and comments on the latest round of episodes so first we have uh mr plow and uh wood duck says having re-watched mr plow in preparation for this episode i decided i needed to see sorcerer watched it with my old man who amazingly hadn't seen it when it's absolutely the type of boomer dad film he would have had me watch with him at some point as a teenager a grimy sweaty look at human desperation and colonial exploitation and this is Bob speaking I need to revisit Sorcerer

perhaps not right after I watch the Wages of Fear in fact I had another Wages of Fear rewatch planned but the DVD came to the library the day before I left for Japan so I had to abandon it. But I will, I mean,

I last saw sorcerer in like 2007. I think I've aged into an old enough man to appreciate what's going on there. But I know Henry, you and Will were big sorcerer heads. Yeah. Though not to the expense of wages of fear. And it sounds like a great,

it does sound like a great one to watch with a dad or a father figure in your life too. Like it, it's funny to learn from a wood duck that they had never watched it. Their father, he didn't even see it when it was new though. Maybe, maybe their father was also like all the people back in 77 when it came out

who thought, Oh, it's from the exorcist guy and it's called sorcerer. It must be like a magic thing. Instead it's guys in trucks. Terrible, terrible name. Joe Hodgson on Mr. Plow says,

I too have those Mr. Plow sneakers Henry is in possession of. They were a Christmas present from my wife, and they are my special occasion shoes, which would sound ridiculous to any audience that isn't this one. I also got the standard blue Bart shoes with a discount, which have been my everyday shoes since, and they are super beat up at this point and not particularly comfortable but i just can't bring myself to throw

them away hmm you know we we were gifted some very nice shoes by uh who made those shoes vans vans yes i i got two pairs of normal shoes in the um the flip-flops, basically. And I've worn the two pairs of special nicer shoes occasionally, I think maybe to one live show. But the flip-flops get constant use when I go take out the garbage or when I go do things within the apartment or condo building. So I have to say, those are really holding up. Yeah, yeah. I also did throw away my Bart shoes out of pure use.

But yes, my Simpsons pink donut slippers are still near the door because anytime it's like, oh man, the delivery just got here, and I slip them on real fast and run down and get them. So yeah, they get a whole lot of use. I liked hearing from Joe that they also have their pristine Mr. Plow shoes they save for very special occasions, just like me. Maybe you'll see me wear them at that live show on Wednesday, January 24th. Finally, shoes nice enough to be buried in. So moving on to Barting Over, David and Waffle says,

As a childless person with no parental bias, but has done a lot of happy uncleing. I can say that baby stink breath is an essential product. Do not believe any parental propaganda. Baby's breath is generally a mix of sour milk, barf and whatever awful group they just ate. And then barfed whomever named that plan had to be doing it satirically. I guess I just never got close enough to a baby's mouth. This is Bob speaking.

Like I said, I, I think I said on a recent podcast, I held a baby once in my life and I was 14 and I thought not for me moving on so my nose has not been close to the baby head opening to understand the real meaning of baby stink breath I appreciate a similarly childless person who at least has more uncle experience than us holding a baby I think I'll if i ever have the opportunity i still don't think i'll smell a baby's breath all that closely in any time in the near future it's got to be a baby you know yes uh yeah my nephew and my niece were born uh well my nephew was born and i

had just like just moved away to the west and then my niece was born while i was living out here so i never got a chance to smell their mouth holes just never got around to it you're gonna have to hope you become a an uncle with for a third baby at some point i don't think that's on the agenda but we'll see uh oh sandra giacchetti also says about that episode i wanted to give my theory on the whole puppy goo goo discussion i think millhouse does fact, have two dogs as a child of divorce. One fake, one real. And perhaps the fake one is with his father, who we saw earlier in the episode, can't have pets at his sad apartment. And the real one is with his mom.

Perhaps because of Milhouse's proclivities, he simply calls both puppy goo goo. I buy this headcanon completely so the real puppy goo-goo with mom the fake one with dad and that way Milhouse can have the puppy goo-goo fetch him a dream wherever he is the the real puppy goo-goo could not live with Kirk Van Houten he would he would starve pretty

soon yeah he cannot be trusted with that thing so yeah thank you Andrew I totally love this lore you built for Puppy Goo Goo. And we have Lisa's first word next. And Fry's Jacket says, Bart swinging on the clothesline reminds me of the best level and the best NES game. Virtual Bart, of course.

And this is Bob. Fry's Jacket, I know you're being sarcastic. Here's the thing. We had David Sims on the podcast, right? And we love David Sims. We love the Blank Check podcast. We feel very lucky to get him on the thing. We had David Sims on the podcast, right? And we love David Sims. We love the Blank Check podcast. We feel very lucky to get him on the show. We're also trying to get him on the show for months, but he's a very busy guy, you understand. He's got a full-time job, a new kid, and the very long podcast he put out with Griffin.

So when this scene is happening with Bart swinging on the clothesline, I'm thinking, this is the perfect time for me to talk about virtual Bart. But then I see that we have David Sims in a little video window and I think do I really want to waste David's time by talking about virtual Bart so I chose not to but just so you know I was personally interested in launching that reference on him but I didn't want to anger David Sims he we have to get closer to him and do more uh time with him to do to be trusted with big divergences like he like griffin does every episode of blank check with him yes we uh we need to get to know him better before we start talking about uh virtual bart levels so yes yeah

believe me i was thinking about it i i had totally forgotten that when i saw fry's jackets comment i was like oh crap right. This is a stage. But I guess, you know, we've missed a few in virtual Bart that are like, oh, this is like that. But thank you, Fry's jacket. Matt says on that episode, I cannot recall if it was Bob or Henry who stated that the houseboat that Captain McAllister was selling had no defects. I disagree. The sea captain stated stated check out to the galley that's real shag carpeting and that is the biggest red flag for buying a home ever having a

kitchen that has a carpet and not some sort of hardwood flooring is just asking for trouble for those liquids smells stains etc end up in shag carpeting instead of just being able to be easily cleaned sounds like an absolute nightmare. Yuck. The only thing worse is a carpeted bathroom. Why don't I just stand in the toilet? That's what I'm asking you people with a carpeted bathroom. Yeah, no.

I've never in none of the places I have lived in have had a carpeted kitchen or bathroom. They've all been very, very clean. It sounds awful. Thank you for pointing that out. Who was that, Matt? it sounds awful thank you for pointing that out who was that matt thank you matt for pointing that out so so real shag carpeting despite him trying to sell it is actually an extra joke in that scene of him failing to sell something that actually sucks that i guess would be even worse on a houseboat where water is everywhere yeah it's gonna get musty on that houseboat uh so moving on to our What a Cartoon episode for December,

it was the TV Funhouse episode Christmas Day. And Mark says, Super glad you guys did this episode. I love the show and its time and was a huge fan as a preteen of this subversive comedy era. This, Strangers with Candy, or soon after That's My Bush, which I'm unsure if it's worth going back to, were wonderful to me. Also mentioning the Mexico Day episode made me so happy because I have had in my head a love for over 20 years now. That close-up on the line, I like pita.

I don't even think I had pita before this, but it made me try a restaurant called Eda Pita and I became a fan. So, hey, yes, it's spreading pita awareness and laughter. It's too bad TV Funhouse could only live for eight episodes. And actually, Henry, I know you watched all of them for the podcast. I only watched a few, but I've been watching all of them with Nina. And what I find fascinating about TV Funhouse is there is continuity in those eight episodes. Oh, yes, that's true. But between the characters, like Foggy's not eating his own poop saga goes on there.

And I was just surprised. Chicky's family? Exactly. They were making them so close together that they couldn't help reference other episodes. But yeah, there's like a timeline. There's a chronology in that series that I didn't realize when I saw it back 23 years ago. If you watch the sauna episode now, it's a perfect time because it's them doing their New Year's resolutions. So I love that close-up shot of him saying, I like PETA.

I like PETA. And hey, Robert Goulet, having watched that episode again, the two-parter with him, man, he'll just do anything. He's so great. RIP, of course. It's also great on the commentary they talk about how they got him was calling his manager directly and his manager is his wife who is named vera so the joke is true i just love him talking these crappy these crappy puppets it's just so charming and also on that episode blake says this was great i had only ever heard of tv funhouse in

the snl shorts and had no idea this iteration of the show existed i had to look it up midway through the podcast and order the dvd which amazon says stock is running low so that must be the talking simpsons effect for a reasonable 12 it has shades of saturday morning all-star hits another send-up of the distinct era of kids tv that i couldn't get enough of everything about that tingles the christmas tension segment hit way too close to home i was all over christmas as a kid and it was my favorite time of the year now i'm an adult with bills to pay on top of dealing with the well who do we spend it with this year on the in-laws front and that never seemed to make

anyone happy for me december 1st now means oh this again damn that tingles uh another another uh fan of tv funhouse it's great i like we weren't sure if anyone had really heard about it or watch it we just knew that we liked it a lot and our listeners would like it so people really came out for it yeah i really like seeing uh several comments like this one that said you know oh i thought you were going to talk about the SNL scenes I didn't even know it had its own series so thanks for showing me this and I and yeah that to hear to hear the tingles our favorite scene uh touched all these people especially it was great I I'd also say very unhelpfully for my research purposes a week after we released the episode, that is when the museum of television history released no joke, nine hour full interview with Robert Smigel about his entire career.

He talks about the TV fun house, uh, process for an hour full. Like it's, it's nuts. So that's going to be a holiday. Listen, while I play some video games,

I think it's, it's perfect background stuff. I learned I learned extra bits. There wasn't anything that made me the only thing I wish I had known before was he gives extra details on the pilot they did, which was hosted by a clown and not Doug. It was much more of a direct Bob Bell Bozo parody than just the what Doug Dale is in the show. Oh, cool. can't wait to hear that so who put that online the Museum of TV and radio or something yeah yeah the whatever is the Emmy one they the ones who do the very in-depth like like

okay yeah we think you might die soon let's talk about everything kind of he's not he's only 63 no I guess yeah I mean anything could happen got it got to sit him down and go over his career so let's move on to what a cartoon movie, The Muppet Christmas Carol. And Harry says, as a younger British millennial, I can distinctly remember seeing this as a child, perhaps as part of some weird rite of passage for English kids. Marley and Marley never scared me, but the ghost of Christmas past sure as hell did. My stupid child brain couldn't work out whether she was a Muppet herself

or a real, strangely diaphanous child. However, like all English people, I am a glutton for punishment, and so child me trained myself to watch the film over and over until it no longer scared me, and I now consider it a holiday classic. On a side note, I visited Dickens' childhood home in Portsmouth several times, not too far from where I live, and was disappointed to find out no mention of the Muppets in any of the historic information in the museum my friend decided to rage against the system ended up leaving a tiny plush Kermit in one of the rooms I'm sure it didn't confuse any of the geriatric visitors who usually frequented the

place uh so yes uh I mean I guess I have to assume there's just been so many adaptations that they can't credit all of them. But like play to your audience. Everyone coming to the Dickens house has Kermit on the brain. They think Dickens is gonzo. I would guess the silver haired pensioners who go in there and they even they would regard The Muppet Show is like Tom foolery of the highest order. Hogwash. Yeah, hogwash or bar or humbugbug they see it as mere humbug they're

still saying it i always wonder what yeah again we we we talk about it with the muppet thing all the time that it was such like a an americans in england production that i i always love hearing from uh british millennials how the muppets touched them in similar yet slightly different ways from how Americans felt like we see it as Americans. They see it as Brits and they're seeing Americans who mostly Americans who made things in England. And Steve says, and I appreciate this comment because it's going to let me sing. Oh, no. Steve says about the same movie. One observation I just have to share is the repeated musical motif of the christmas carol good king wenceslas it's part of the overture

and more pointedly it's the carol bean bunny is singing when scrooge chucks a wreath at him if you're not familiar it's a story about a kind king who sees a poor man freezing in the snow on the feast of stevens, which is December 26, and immediately goes to provide him with warmth and food. The song concludes, Therefore, Christian men, be sure, rank or wealth possessing, ye who now will bless the poor shall yourselves find blessing. The perfect carol to reference because at different points in the story,

it shows contrast with Scrooge's treatment of the poor. And by the end, it's a direct parallel to the new changed Scrooge. Yeah, I guess I didn't flag that because I knew the melody, but I didn't know the lyrics offhand. So that's a good pull. It wasn't just thrown in there like, oh, here's another Christmas thing for you. I really like that. It is a good old timey carol. I was just getting into the old carol of the holly and the ivy. I like that. It is a good old-timey carol. I was just getting into the old carol of the holly and the ivy.

I love that. Though it is a very British carol in that it's like the holly and the ivy. Well, first they rhyme grown with crown. When it is fully grown, it wears the crown. And then second, then everything is just similarly likeile like you know it's bark is very bitter much like how mary had to bitterly hold the baby or bear or bear to the baby for gotta bring him into this i mean without that song we wouldn't have harley quinn and uh poison ivy getting together either right that's right that's where it all comes from that was the name of the segment

in holiday nights which hey if you're in the holiday spirit listen to that one we covered a couple years ago now yeah i think it was 2021 maybe uh it's in the archives so moving on to talking futurama absolutely fabulous and riley jessett says on the etymology of the term snowflake uh and i wanted to point out bob here There was a discussion as to whether or not Fight Club popularized the term or invented the term, but Riley included this link to the Merriam-Webster website. And there's a very long article about, like, did early 1860s a snowflake was a person who was opposed to the abolition of slavery the implication of the name being that such people valued white people over black people the snowflakes hoped slavery would survive

the country's civil war and were contrasted with two other groups and then Riley goes on to say TLDR it funnily enough was a term used by abolitionists to describe defenders of enslavement in America so back then a snowflake meant you wanted to keep slavery

around wow that's that's funny and then I saw it had similar uses in the 70s like a snowflake was considered like a white person who wanted to be black various different uses of how like what a snowflake was throughout time

wow man i guess then the our use of snowflakes still or the our use that but the modern one uh still goes back to the idea of like as a ironic attack on the term being used to like aren't we all special we're all special little snowflakes and they use that in a derogatory way to like as a rejection of uh that kind of liberal touchy feeliness and everything yeah i guess we have to find the first use of the sincere use of snowflake meaning unique but uh that's someone else's job the dictionary i think it's an after school special or something yeah uh speaking of people not knowing where things come from uh rubber cat says on the same episode love the digression about fan wikis and how people have such small frames of reference i've encountered someone who i guess has never heard of it's a

wonderful life and thinks the plot originates from a fairly odd parents episode we have we have gotten to that point in our lives where we're now old enough to remember things that happened before people that are online were born and so you often have that we're like oh that must be a reference to x it's like well no x is a reference to y which happened 20 years ago 20 years before that i mean we we did it to people we were the cause of that when we were young and saying like oh this is a reference that simpsons episode and then someone will say well no this that simpsons episode was referencing the godfather or twilight zone or psycho or whatever or like a lot of people who will make connections like well the similar thing happened in this movie ergo it is a reference when you're like oh they just had the same idea otherwise it would have

the reference would have been spelled out more i think i. I do wish fan wikis, some people who ran them, who I think a lot. I appreciate their help. It helps a lot in research sometimes, especially for dates or ratings or whatever. But the references pages on a lot of fan wikis are just not all that helpful sometimes because they just are like, I think the reason it came up was on the Futurama. You mentioned how it says it's like, this is like five different episodes of Star Trek. It's like, well,

because it's just, it's just a trope in sci-fi. Yeah. Yeah. They were, they were really reaching at times, but yes, fan wikis,

try harder. It's our challenge to you for 2024. So moving on to talking to the hill, the wedding of Bobby Hill, Blake says, formerxan chiming in that luann sadly would have had better access and chances of getting an abortion within the state in 1999 versus 2023 it wasn't a walk in the park but the means were there compared to the recent events surrounding kate cox where a woman had to outright flee the state to save her own life

almost all of the current let's own the libs politicians like abbott cruz paxton etc were put into place in the 2010s elections and i do not see them being removed of their power anytime soon uh and yes uh the reality is bleak and depressing and it's weird to think of how backwards we've gone from even 1999 uh yeah and i remember having the naive thought as a child like oh everything just gets better right and it turns out that's not true no it's very it's very depressing as we face another election year coming up but i especially yes i hate i it was sad to be reminded of this in the comments because in the episode i i mentioned how that in the theoretical pregnancy or in the fake pregnancy Luann is having for prank purposes

in the episode nobody says well just get an abortion because you would never say that in the Hill family like that is not an option but that was more because like uh you know you would not do that because of your faith or whatever. Not because you literally illegally cannot do it. And that's, yeah, it's a fucked up thing to be continually reminded of in this awful, awful country. Yeah, yeah. I just, I see news coming out of where I used to live in Ohio thinking, oh, God, everything is getting worse. Well, of course, you know, it's not it it's illegal if you're poor like you can go oh yeah yeah you can everything is another state easy yes i guess i guess nothing

is truly illegal once you hit a certain income bracket some some kinds of murder but only if you're really bad at it yeah if you if you really suck at murder and even a lawyer can't do much for you there but a certain murder you probably can't get away with if you're that rich. And probably do all the time. Absolutely. And we have one final comment. Yes. A happier note here.

Lance says, AJ was definitely a low-tier guy in Rad's group. Since he's one of the guys Luann said she had sex with before getting re-virginized. So she probably slept with him as revenge after breaking up with rad thibodeoxis oh hey nice continuity in king of the hill i forgot about that joke in luann 2.0 luann virgin 2.0 i'm really looking forward to that one uh when we finally do it again because i love that it it is such an the opposite of most messages about young people having sex in American TV shows. And then also, I love Peggy's story about the gay man she had sex with. It's a really funny story.

So very, very gay. Tossed aside all the pillows on his bed. Decorative throw pillows. Yes, yes. But yes, I look forward to the continuing tales of AJ we're going to get as we go through the series. And yes, this has been, once again, our final recording of the year 2023. Oh, I interrupted myself. Sorry. 2023. There we go. And like we said earlier, we have all of January recorded.

It's been a very long month and a very long year. We thank you for sticking with us as we both have gone through several big life changes a few very very long delayed vacations with our spouses uh but we managed to keep up we're very tired we can't wait to take a week off henry can't wait to go on his vacation and we can't wait to see all of you again in 2024 it's going to be great and expect what you've expected the past uh almost seven years of this patreon and the last almost 10 years of this podcast yeah 2023 was a year that we had been looking forward to for such a long time and it's been really great how all of you listeners have supported

us through this whole thing and as things become normal again i'm uh are normal we appreciate you guys just as much for hanging out with us and i hope you guys enjoy hearing the full incredibles podcast next week in in this place whether you're on the free feed or on uh the patreon and i can't wait for 2024 it's going to be quite an exciting year i am sure thanks again to all of you listeners for an amazing 2023 and we'll see you again next month in 2024 for the next episode of talk to the audience. We'll see you then. Wow. Infotainment. sorry I didn't mean to kill you several big life changes a few very very long

delayed vacations with our spouses but we managed to keep up we're very tired we can't wait to take a week off Henry can't wait to go on his vacation we can't wait to see all of you again in 2024 it's going to be great and expect what you've expected the past almost seven years of this patreon and the

last almost 10 years of this podcast it's been you made me laugh too much yeah 2023 was a year that we had been looking forward to for such a long time fuck my voice is still scratchy damn it okay for real this time sorry should old acquaintance be forgot and never brought to mind?

Should old acquaintance be forgot and days alongside? For auld lang syne, my dear, for auld lang syne. We'll take a cup of kindness yet For auld lang syne © BF-WATCH TV 2021