Talking Simpsons - Talk to the Audience?!? - January 2020

Episode Date: February 5, 2020

Ahoy-hoy and welcome to this month's episode of our community podcast! As we outlined in our 2020 update, the final Talking Simpsons slot of every month will now be occupied by an episode of Talk to the Audience, and we've got a great one for you to kick off our new schedule. Listen in as we discuss Hank Azaria's statements on no longer voicing Apu, Kevin Smith's Simpsons guest spot, Seth MacFarlane's lucrative new contract, and so much more! And, as always, we read and respond to your questions and comments from the recent batch of episodes. Thanks for listening, and here's to a great 2020! Support this podcast and get dozens of bonus episodes by visiting Patreon.com/TalkingSimpsons and becoming a patron! And please follow the new official Twitter, @TalkSimpsonsPod!

I heartily endorse this event or product. Ahoy, ahoy everybody and welcome to Talk to the Audience where this is always death. I'm one of your hosts for this one, Bob Mackie, still waiting for Simpsons Hit and Run 2. Who is here with me today? Henry Gilbert and I would just like to announce I signed an overall deal with NBCUniversal for $1. Wow, that's it? You should have held out for more. Well, I get a free subscription to Peacock as well, so that just pays for itself. It was worth it then.

But yes, welcome to many of you who are going to be new listeners to this podcast series of ours because for the first time it has burst out of the paywall. It escaped. It jumped over the wall and now it's in the free feed because the last week of every month in the Talking Simpsons slot we'll now be doing our community podcast, which is where we talk about news in the Simpsons world and in our world. And then we respond to your questions and comments

from the last month's worth of episodes. Both on Talking Simpsons and the sister show, What a Cartoon. So you get to hear us pick our favorite comments and chat all about them. And yeah, this is, you know, our changed up schedule. Not only did we begin our revisiting of season one, but also we are, you know, sharing with you guys our community podcast once a month. Also just to ease up our schedules ever so slightly in these uh very busy times and it has helped a lot i will say uh this has been a much better month for both of us

i think even with a live show and even with me having a retronauts weekend i still feel like uh i have room to breathe yeah me too i think we and it's made us more productive and get the you know cooler man we have some cool guests lined up and some cool stuff planned. All of it thanks to us freeing up our schedules just a little bit. But man, February and March, big stuff coming guest-wise. I'm excited. So let's get into the news. We've got quite a few news items today starting with uh take off this podcast with a happy fun story that will offend no one it's all about apu our favorite character on the show

yes yeah it's apu watch we haven't had an apu update but i felt uh mostly our community podcasts uh the news section are talking about disney streaming or apu pretty much but uh but i guess i'm bringing this up because many people shared it with us on Twitter. Just like, hey, you guys see this? And I think both of our reactions were just like, well, he's just restating a thing that has been true for two years now at least.

Not to sound too entitled, but I think some of these news places should reach out to us for comment because the second this headline went live, it angered me because i remember when mike reese was doing his round of interviews for his book really good book by the way he was on chapo trap house they asked about a poo and on that podcast he was like oh you know we retired a poo like two years ago and no one has even commented on it up who's not a thing for us

anymore so that was an official statement by someone who works one day a week on the show and has been on the show for 30 years. I trust Mike Reese's statement on that, that no one bothered to quote, that no one bothered to look up, and it was in my brain. Yeah, no. I mean, there's been like five other quotes just on this ever since. They've commented on it so many times, and these just spread around because it is easy clickbait. I hate using as a former member of the press online. Clickbait is a dangerous term that I feel like dismisses good content of just like this headline makes you want to read it. But in this case, every time someone asks for a new quote from his area or another Simpsons producer about like, hey, what do you have to say about a poo? And they just repeat a previous statement.

It becomes a whole new round of news of like, did you hear Apu's ban from the Simpsons? Censored Apu on the Simpsons. Yeah, it's good, you know, a good way to stoke the culture wars, I guess. Yeah. But I mean, I guess like technically, it is Hank Azaria saying,

I will not play Apu anymore. But that's like me saying, I won't order pizza at McDonald's anymore. There's no pizza at McDonald's. I can't order pizza there. So he can't play Apu anymore because Apu is no longer existing in the world. I guess it brings up the idea, should an East Asian actor play Apu? And my answer is that character has too much baggage.

Maybe somebody new can run the Quickie Mart. Or maybe even that's an issue. Who knows? But I think just stay away from the Quickie Mart. Or maybe even that's an issue. Who knows? But I think just stay away from the Quickie Mart. We've had like 25 years of Quickie Mart jokes. We can move on. I mean, we have so much Apu material. It's fine.

This new specific source of the news was that Hank Azaria was doing a TCA panel. That's Television Critics Association, where basically a bunch of television networks bring around all their producers and actors to be interviewed by the television critics, who then ask them a slew of questions. The final season of his, you know, live action show. Brockmire. Brockmire, yes. I almost said Huff. I was like, no, that was a while ago. That's like 15 years ago.

But, yeah, so he's promoting the final season of Brockmire. And of course, you know, somebody asked him an Apu question. And Desiria said, all we know there is that I won't be doing The Voice anymore unless there's some way to transition it or something. That's the quote, which is just, again, pretty known quote. I'd say it's just, it's been repeated, but I guess it is a new quote, I suppose. I'll give him that. Yeah. But so, Alan, now the right-wing culture warriors have a new quote to spur them to make another 2 million viewed video about how people censor comedy and how you can't be funny anymore.

I'm sure famous Simpsons watchers Ben Shapiro and Dave Rubin both had to weigh in on this. I didn't check because their Twitter feeds are poison for your brain yeah but uh but yes so let's uh let's get that out of the way the Apu chat uh happier news about a voice on the Simpsons though yeah so Kevin Smith is doing his I Didn't Die victory lap throughout entertainment which he should be doing honestly we love Kevin Smith not a big fan of his movies anymore but I'm just happy he's still around but he's gonna be playing himself on the simpsons and he was cast by carolyn omine yes yeah carolyn omine who by the way she's a a strong birdie supporter on twitter so thumbs up to you simpsons executive producer carolyn omine or co-executive i forget her exact

title but she's moved up in the in the ranks uh but yeah you're right kevin smith almost died uh over two almost two years ago a year and a half ago now from a heart attack lost a ton of weight uh and is just kind of cashing every check he had of just like well you know ben affleck you should be in my movie again i did almost die yeah he didn't actually do that but i'm just saying i mean i would it created a ton of goodwill yeah and you know in general when you have a scare like that it does make people realize like oh they're not going to be around forever we should just have this guy on and honestly just in general kevin smith as a you know living character who talks about geek things like he should have been on simpsons by now it's strange

yeah it's strange that he wasn't on back in the kevin smith uh heyday like the late 90s when he was you know uh dogma jane silent bob strike back and comic books and just a bigger pop culture figure than he is now but i'm glad he's finally making it and i went to his instagram post it's the longest instagram post i've ever read i mean mean, he used to be famous for his tweets. I'd be like, one of 86. And then you just read them all in his really long blog post and all of his message board stuff. But yeah, go check out his Instagram post. It's very nice.

A picture of him in front of the recording mic. Yes, the recording mic. I mean, look, if I was recording for a voice on The Simpsons, I'd never shut up about it. Oh, yeah. We didn't shut up about sitting in on a rehearsal. Exactly. So we can't talk. And, you know, we've had some upcoming guests even tell us to didn't shut up about sitting in on a rehearsal. Exactly. We can't talk. And, you know, we've had some upcoming guests even tell us to our face,

we should be voices on The Simpsons. Also, I guess the Kevin Smith thing, it reminds me, too, that it has been announced that he was going to be the co-executive producer with David Willis on a Howard the Duck cartoon show for Hulu. That has been canceled. It officially got canceled. Canceled before the show aired. Scripts were written, but it was coming to the point of like,

okay, let's start animating these. And I think there was a big turnover in what Marvel television is now. And I don't think Kevin Feige wanted Adult Swim style shows to represent the brand. Nothing was animated is what you're saying. Seemingly not. Seemingly not. What a huge waste of everyone's time.

Yeah, yeah. I mean, you know, you still get paid for a script whether it airs or not. But this happened, you know, like four or five years ago, this happened where Donald Glover was going to show run a Deadpool animated series for FX, like an R-rated one. And then eventually Marvel put the kibosh on it. Like, you know, eventually Marvel gets cold feet and they just kill this kind of stuff. And so the only one that's still happening that has like an actual cast and is going to be animated is MODOK, which basically sounds like an Adult Sw style uh midlife crisis type show but starring modok played by pat noswald which is perfect cast it does sound fun he has a giant head and arms uh but yeah hey congrats to kevin smith i look forward to hearing him on the simpsons i

think you know i've been thinking about this too i think kevin smith has become the new stan lee like he's if there's anybody who is the Stan Lee of like he's famous for being himself and appearing in things and being like, well, let's ask Kevin Smith what he thinks about new comic book thing or new nerdy thing or Star Wars thing. That's what Kevin Smith is. And he has a new costume, too. He's no longer hockey jersey guy. He is giant purple blazer guy. Yes, you're right. He lost, I don't know, 200 plus pounds, but he kept giant purple blazer guy yeah like he lost i don't know 200 plus pounds

but he kept the same blazer size so he's like uh stop making sense kevin smith is walking around i i love him in his cavernous blazers yeah no and i mean he's got uh he's he is uh giving himself more hair as well i've noticed so like oh really uh well kevin smith always had this like big he was bald when i saw him like 20 years ago at a con i'm like whoa he has a really big bald patch you never see when he wears a hat but uh hey look i'm not just i'm not judging buy yourself some more hair yeah yeah all right that's a glow up i call that a glow up so i guess uh disney put together a little clip reel of all these simpsons episodes that had star wars references in them right right? Yes. Oh, Marvel. Marvel.

Well, no, they did three. Oh, geez. Okay, I only saw the Star Wars one. Disney Plus was... Disney Plus this last month because they lost... The Mandalorian's over. They are advertising hard with promoted tweets and other social media ones. And one of their smartest ones was to make three different clip reels of every time Simpsons referenced Marvel, Disney, or Star Wars.

But those were three separate videos. And the Marvel one was the most interesting to me because they really ramped up their Marvel specifics in the last decade. There were several in there. I'm like, oh, I've never seen that joke. They did a post-credits joke on the on simpsons that i totally did not know about i'm sure they had stan lee cramming the hulk into a convertible like a toy convertible you know what they didn't show that clip because that i think it's because it involves batman they did show stan lee but not that one that was putting him into the batmobile wasn't it okay

which that was pretty cool i like that scene i, and they had, there were a lot of specifics in there. I mean, they also didn't have the, like, I don't believe they had the clip of, someone put amazing Spider-Man, Peter Parker, the spectacular Spider-Man, this will not stand. Maybe that was too obscure for them. And then same within the Disney one, they did, the only clip I saw on it from the Inchy and Scratchy land episode was the 1205 parade gag it's definitely not nazi superman will be our superiors i didn't expect you was missing from the simpsons land at universal studios which they basically play

that episode in its entirety while you're in line yeah yeah which is with all the clips added up one universal can be a little nastier because they know they're playing clips about Disney World and Universal. Yeah, and in the Star Wars one, the most noticeable clip that was missing was where they, in that Days of Wine and Dozes, where they made fun of George Lucas as like he's a short guy who just steals ideas. That was a weird joke because like george lucas isn't short though no and it was like six years after phantom menace and they did a phantom menace parody yes it was kind of a funny parody but it came like super late yeah but i did i did like that it ended with yoda in the senate going like, begin they have, or have they? And then he nods his head. That wasn't a bad joke.

But yeah, Disney Plus going all out with the Simpsons clippage. But you know what? If you're going to try to go viral, get them in the fucking aspect ratio, guys. They still haven't done it. No, the video was formatted for phones, so it was the other kind of cropping. So yeah, it was vertical cropping, not horizontal cropping yeah not good people don't understand aspect ratios though it's a tale teach it in the schools i say yeah we have another uh sad story here we could have had a simpsons hit and run too but unfortunately ea got the simpsons rights and it never came to be yes so yeah simpsons hit and

run was the only good GTA like before Saints Row basically before Saints Row got good actually yes yeah yeah Simpsons you know after they they did Road Rage which just ripped off Crazy Taxi but not that it was bad but it was good the Road Rage and Simpsons Hit and Run they were the first one games that felt like they were made by people who obsessed about the show and knew every reference to cram in there and even the the simpsons game like it did its best with that but it it felt still more corporate sheen on it than hit and run did yeah it's a very aggressively mediocre game the simpsons game and uh i did i don't like mediocre games that joke about how

mediocre they are just like well yeah you're not being very good or entertaining but yeah the uh the fun part of that game was there was animated sequences between levels like real simpsons like episode quality animation yeah between levels i remember so much it really sums up the game for me was a you're doing the modern warfare sorry the medal of honor section of it in a you know raging hellfish type sequence but it's abe saying yes it's an escort mission i'm like so you joke about the escort mission and then you still give it to me like that that that is my least favorite it's like jokey tutorials like no you're still a tutorial like don't be so cute and and there's a level in the ea games factory which is just like well that's funny but this is from the ea games, it was very self-referential. But yeah, I recommend if you want to learn more

about the first game, the podcast Watch Out for Fireballs recently did a whole episode about it. Oh, that hit and run? Oh, that's cool. Yeah, it's not quite as good as you remember, but it's still very, very faithful to Simpsons lore. And you could tell it was made by super fans. So yeah, very cool. Yeah. So I guess just the hit and run to one of the developers did a, uh, Andrew, a recent interview where he revealed that there was a gameplay prototype for hit and run to that. They were pitching to Fox,

but, uh, then EA got the Simpsons right out, bid them as EA is known to do. And so the, in the run up to the Simpsons movie, they started working on the Simpsons game. They couldn't make it in run two, which is too bad.

I mean, there's even like, there are open world bits of the Simpsons game too, but it's like, it's just the game tried to have everything. It's a real nondescript open world. It's not good. When I was playing it, I don't know, over 10 years ago, I'm like, this is it? Like, this is what you're getting?

Okay, fine. It's a weird year of playing the Simpsons game and watching the Simpsons movie in the same year. And now that's 13 years old. Yeah. Yeah. We might be talking about the Simpsons movie somewhere soon. Hint, hint. Perhaps.

Yeah. I'll leave this in. So we have some good, good news for Seth MacFarlane. The rich get richer over here over there in hollywood uh yes seth mcfarland in a shocking turn of events signed a new production deal with nbc universal leaving fox which has been his home for 20 over 20 years as a television producer now he's still gonna do family guy american dad and orville which i wonder like how much time do you have to produce a tv show new tv shows when you are the star of

a show like the orville a live action show i think the episode orders on that one are pretty small though yeah i mean just set aside a month and he's like film everything or maybe in the next season it's like his character gets killed in the first episode or he only says one line per episode uh but yeah so seth mcfarlane signed a gigantic deal 200 million dollars with nbc universal uh and the rumor in the hollywood reporter story was that or their reporting is seth mcfarlane chose nbc ultimately because he was going to get to work on a lot more varied projects while it sounded like fox just wanted him to or disney this would be a deal with disney the distinction between fox and

disney will be important in this in the next news story here but he would have made a deal with disney but i think they wanted him to stick to what he had been doing well meanwhile nbc universal apparently is offering him more varied stuff of like do you want to make a weird thing for peacock or sci-fi more acting yeah do sing it it'll just be all songs he's like every idea he brings to nbc universal is like uh this one i sing for an hour long and it's uh every night more rat pack covers but please no more seth mcfarland starring movies we've learned our lesson yeah it didn't work but uh but yeah this also does throw into question the future of family guy american dad and orville now american dad just got renewed for three more years

on tbs it will actually get to a 300th episode that's great to hear because there's like 12 years of american dad i haven't seen i can just boot up on hulu uh and uh and orville has been renewed but family guy is a little in question about like now that seth mcfarlane has made this deal are is uh fox and disney gonna pay a lot extra for a guy who's not loyal or who's who isn't gonna focus on not that he's like run fit i don't think he's really been the showrunner of family guys since season like two or three yeah yeah uh but the other side of this coin with seth mcfarland leaving is at the previously mentioned television critics association the boss of fox actually has been talking about what their future is on fox television broadcasting in a post simpsonsons, post-Family Guy universe. They sure are making a lot of animated shows these days. I feel like we're in 1999 or something.

It's really weird, but I got to the bottom of this, I think. So for folks out there just like, oh yeah, why does Fox keep announcing so many new animated series? The situation is that Disney bought all of these fox entertainment properties they even do own bob's burgers but fox television which is a separate company and was not purchased by disney they still want to run a tv channel and they also want to produce shows that they own for that tv channel that are not owned by disney like bob Burgers, Family Guy, and Simpsons. So in August, I missed this, Fox Television bought Bento Box, the animation studio that makes Bob's Burgers and many other shows. So they are using that as their new production studio for their huge ramp up in animation as they are trying to find the replacement for family guy simpsons and uh bob's

burgers i say bring back king of the hill you mistreated it uh you did give it 13 seasons to be fair but uh fucking mad about you can come back yeah king of the hill should be back on the air mike judge is done with silicon valley now what else is mike judge doing uh tales from the tour bus i think that's it i mean if uh if Mad About You returns on a channel no one watches, did it make a sound? Where is that? I heard Paul Reiser on Gilbert Gottfried's podcast. I'm like, oh, yeah, but this is a thing?

Where can I see this? It's on a cable network that's not around here. Okay, really? Well, like a cable company, like basically if Comcast paid to bring it back to only play it on Comcast channels, which are, that's our local cable station, cable provider, which I hate, but we must use. It's another one of those brought back mad about you. Wow. So weird. And did you know that Lauren Bouchard has another animated series that looks just like Bob's Burgers.

It's all musical and it's only on apple tv oh i didn't know that yes that's the only place to watch it because every three weeks twitter will just be nothing but apple tv ads just just like please watch snoopy in space or the morning show or whatever the lauren bouchard the lauren bouchard is doing bobs burgers and this other thing for apple at the same time so weird and he actually has another show i just learned about uh as part of so uh michael thorne at the tcas when talking about the animation expansion and they're just like we're prepared for a future without the simpsons the simpsons is expensive family guy's expensive like the only committal thing he would say is like bob's burgers has a long future on fox tv so i think this is the way that fox tv is like getting people ready for the idea of they're not

going to renew the simpsons or family guy after their current renewal process and the shows they have coming in the replacements they they've got a lot of big names to work on it all being produced through bento box the duncanville show we've talked about before by mike scully and julie thacker with with amy poehler and then there's the great north which i'd not heard about before it's um a single dad show uh where he's like uh well he's played by nick offerman so you know the character this dad is are we just reassembling the cast of parks and rec to make animated shows now but you spread them out like

yeah Offerman on one show Amy Poehler on another show Rashida Jones she's also on Duncanville I thought so both yeah you're right it's wow but the Great North that is also produced by Lauren Bouchard but the other showrunners are the Molyneux sisters who wrote some of the best Bob's Burgers episodes so i'm

really looking forward to seeing that one and they were also minty sorry and minty i forget her last name sorry minty who worked minty fresh she worked on regular show and there's also a voice actress on it she's great and they renewed bless the hearts for season two which uh you know bless their hearts oh bless i don't know if it's bad but uh it seems like a way broader king of the hill and uh i really dislike how it looks it looks like one of those cliptoon facebook thingies you'd see like four or five years ago i mean i know they only have so much to work with everybody works hard on it there's great people who work on it but it looks like something on my facebook wall now my my husband darren has uh his pejorative for it the way i use rugrats as a pejorative

sometimes his pejorative for that type of animation is progressive ad like oh you're right it's like that is some progressive ad shit right there like i i again i'm saying it's about a show i don't watch uh but there's one more so there's a fourth animated series there they're bringing up too after duncanville great north and bless their hearts i had not heard of until today which was it got announced december house broken which is a show about uh hollywood dogs basically well i think it's back baby uh but i believe it's like the secret life of the pets of famous people i think it is or it stars uh jen lisa kudrow love her and also jennifer crinton is uh an executive producer on it oh cool yes they're hiring the right people but i think really i i hope they're hiring up a lot of great people bento box because

this is a lot of work for one production studio to do especially when like i love the look of bob's burgers but most the animation can be lacking it i i like the look of bob's burgers it's one of the better looking shows of that type yeah but it's also one i can just listen to and enjoy that way while i play something else it is a fun podcast and a show so but but i guess the ultimate simpsons news of that bit is just like, Michael Thorne, the president of Fox Television, he is preparing you for the day they're going to say we're not renewing The Simpsons. It's going to be a dark day for baseball.

Or sorry, TV. Well, speaking of sports, I have one last crummy, stupid thing to mention in the news. Like, I found a, as you may know bob the super bowl is this weekend i was gonna say when is the stupid bowl i went there uh sorry sports ball i'm sorry i apologize uh no the super bowl is this weekend ahead of us if you're listening to this on patreon or it's two days in the past if you're listening on the free feed. But either way, it's the Kansas City Chiefs versus the San Francisco 49ers. And in an attempt at going viral with Did Simpsons Predict It? I found a local ABC reporter in Kansas City from KCTV5 tried to say that the Sunday Cruddy Sunday episode predicts that the 49ers will

defeat the Kansas City Chiefs in the Super Bowl. Oh, wow. See, his reasoning was that I was going to play a clip from it, but he takes a real long time to get to the point of it. But basically, Sunday Cruddy Sunday takes place in Miami, which is apparently also where the super bowl is this year. I think, I don't know. I could be wrong, but he says that the, there's a red team versus a blue team.

They read the red team looks like the 49ers, a blue team looks like the chiefs and the red team one. It seems like a bit of a cheat to me. Yeah, I think so too. The guy's trying to go viral with a Simpsons predicted. It's like a, it's like the magic eye test of's trying to go viral with the simpsons predicted it's like a it's like the magic eye test of uh sorry magic eye picture of simpsons predicted it's like i can

kind of see that though i squint i will give a thumbs up to the reporter in it that he did correctly bring up that in the early 90s the simpsons did predict the super bowl rightly three times that's correct yes they really did like just straight up saying lisa says this team will win and they did win they should just rerun that episode every year and change the teams i mean it's a good episode to begin with well now it doesn't look like regular simpsons and it's probably uh they'd have to cut like an extra two minutes from it for commercials now i bet you yeah but i guess we shall see this weekend if Cruddy Sunday predicted it accurately that the 49ers will defeat the Kansas City Chiefs. I'll be in Disneyland then, so I won't be. I'll be hanging out with Nina here, probably going someplace that'll be evacuated thanks to the Super Bowl.

So it's the perfect time to go out and buy groceries, I swear. If you're not into football, go to a place that's normally crowded. You'll have lots of fun. Yeah. Except bars. Don't go to bars. I'm hoping at Disneyland it will be that case as well. all go uh to a place that's normally crowded you'll have lots of fun yeah except bars don't go to bars i'm hoping at disneyland it will be that case as well and i'll be able to just like walk on to rise of resistance that's a perfect time to go actually someone told me super bowl sunday is the perfect time to go to disneyland awesome man all right cross cross your fingers

everybody for uh my i guess again if you're listening to this on the free feed, I already did it. But wish me well in the past. I'll be seeing Mystery Science Theater live the day before. Wow. Good old Joel. That is definitely a protest against the Super Bowl by going through that. So we have some news about us. And the live show was on the Patreon last week.

It's on the free feed this week. So you all probably heard it. So much fun. I think it's our best live show yet. Our biggest crowd. We got the main stage, a piano fight in San Francisco. Jordan Morris was great.

I couldn't be happier with how that turned out. And I think, like, with every live show, I get less and less nervous about it if you don't count the five minutes before we go on. Yes, yeah.

That was a lot of pacing. And it was Jordan Morris, especially he did something that really helped me in the pre-show jitters was he committed to a lot of nothing small talk with me just to get my mind off of the countdown of the last five minutes he was a great guest and uh who gladly offered to be a guest without us having to look so that helped us out so much and he was perfect for the topic yeah i can't wait to check out his disney plus show he promoted in that one it's it's a i man just great guy yeah and uh and thanks to

everybody who came out for it and you know got the posters the great posters that nina made like just so much fun and also i think everybody really enjoyed your video bob that even if they weren't there in person they got to enjoy it on the Patreon. Yeah, in case you haven't seen it, it's on Patreon. It's a free post, but we ended the show with a death reel featuring all the characters who didn't quite make it. And I know people are like, well, Bleeding Gums lived until season six, and I say, you know what?

That's not funny. Yes, that's not funny. I wanted to be funnier. It's funnier to do that. Yeah, he eventually died. And I know Marvin Monroe actually didn't die because he came back as a surprise in season 15 yes but yes please check it out on patreon but yes i can't wait to do another live show maybe we'll do pax again this year who knows that was really fun and an easier trip for us yeah we had a lot of fun at pax west that was that was a really good time uh with uh with another really cool guest on that too we We have so many great, such great luck with live show guests.

Yes, including guests who came here to Berkeley in person last week. I mean, we can talk about who they are, right? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, they'll be in an upcoming episode. Yeah, I think next week's episode, but you guys can know about it now. As part of SF Sketch Fest, we had our buddies Found Footage Fest. They came to town to, uh, we had Nick Pruder on before and then his, uh, we had Nick on before and his cohost on found footage fest, Joe, he was able to, uh, come on the show

as well. So next week you will be hearing those guys talk about no disgrace like home. And they, they were so nice. They, they came here three, here three they came here about six hours before their flight to toronto and recorded for over two hours right yes yeah and and also they they sell they came in with like they have props for their live show that they brought in with them yes one of them is an industrial penis pump it is yes you gotta see the live show to figure out what it is oh boy what uh i mean i i didn't want to say hats off to them they did an

amazing live show i uh sometimes still have nightmares about it honestly i think henry you're more cut out for the non after dark version of their show their Yes, their VCR Party Live, which is just fun things and ALF puppets. That's a nice, wholesome show. But if you've got a stronger stomach and you're ready to see some of their adult stuff, which is not in any way sexual, it's horrifying.

No, it's great. And they tour so much and you should definitely see them. They're great guests too. They'll be back. And they were so friendly and so kind and very much praising us in our work so i really appreciate that they do good work too yeah i love those guys check them out and you're gonna hear them on next week's

episode though we did uh for their time constraints when we did the whole biography on the writers and directors we did that without them just of like we don't want to make you guys sit around for 20 30 minutes while we talk about directors of the episode and it's going to be a fairly long episode because we did a writer's corner for algae and mike reese which i think was maybe like 20 to 30 minutes long and then and then 10 minutes on the director greg vanzo yeah so it'll be a beefier season one episode but i'm loving this season one revisit i'm getting so much more out of it we can play more clips we can just dig down deeper because we are doing this for a job, for a living. So we have more time to spend on it.

I bet that one is five times longer than the first time we did see that episode. And yeah, I think you're right. I hope you guys are enjoying it too. You know, it's just been a lot of fun to just go into the history and really talk about the production of season one and to celebrate season one as a legitimate season of good television to watch instead of just going like season one sucks skip it it's not funny who cares like it's that you

it's it is them figuring out the simpsons but it's funny as they figure yeah and i'm learning new things on this watch through i didn't think i I would. It's actually, I thought it'd be like, oh, we're not doing this because it's easier. We're doing this because, you know, it's a fun thing to do and appropriate. But going into this, I thought, oh, this will be a lighter load for me. It's like, no, actually, I think I'm working more on these

just because I'm like, no, I have to get this right. And this is like very important historically, this first season. So I want to dig as deep as I can. So yeah, we're spending lots of time on these. They're coming out very well. I'm very happy with what we're doing yeah and i hope all you guys are enjoying it too and uh and in general i guess like i i hope you guys are enjoying you know the new

schedule for uh talking simpsons and what a cartoon as well you know i think we're it's it made us be able to focus more on these things and do all this extra research for season one like it uh or to prepare for some bigger stuff down the road we're gonna do so i i i hope everybody's enjoying the new schedule let us know in the comments how you're feeling about it we're already working farther ahead than we did in the last two months of 2019 so we're really doing a good job here which is good too because you know we got a we got a limited series coming up again soon or a mini series i guess we should say it'll be it'll be here before you know it should be landing in march or perhaps early april we got to figure it out but it will be here in the spring and uh and

also i guess let's if you guys uh have enjoyed this new what a cartoon movie that just came out uh next month should be pretty fun too yes it's going to be 80s Disney, correct? Yes, yeah. So the poll will be up at the start on February 1st, and you'll pick from one of four 80s animated Disney classics to help us pick what the next What a Cartoon Movie would be. Your votes shall decide it. That's right, and the choices will be in chronological order, I believe.

We have The Black Cauldron, The Great Mouse detective oliver and company and the little mermaid i have an idea of which one will probably win but you guys always surprise me so who knows maybe we'll do oliver and company a movie i saw once when i was five me too yes i don't think i've seen in full since i watched it in the theater as a five-year-old. But, you know, Billy Joel songs are eternal, and I still have, Oh, why should I worry? It'll be fun to look at Disney during a darker time, just as things were picking up towards the end of the decade.

Now I have the proper cultural context to appreciate Bette Midler and Cheech Marin staring a scene together. That movie really was about an uptown girl. Yeah, but, I mean, you know, I don't think we'll be talking about Oliver and Company But prove me wrong, children Prove me wrong How about those mice?

That's where I'm leaning I love Basil I love Basil Sorry, yes No, I haven't seen that movie ever I really want to see it Oh, really? Yes, I've only seen the reference in Darkwing Duck

So let's talk about the What a Cartoon schedule for February, right? Yes So the first episode of February on the Patreon So let's talk about the What a Cartoon schedule for February, right? Yes! So the first episode of February on the Patreon, it'll be live on February 3rd, free feed February 10th. We have Yu-Gi-Oh! 5Ds. The episode is On Your Mark, Get Set, Duel. The first episode. Yes, with a very special guest, right, Henry? Oh, yes, yeah.

Well, we haven't recorded yet, but if you if you like uh yugioh and when uh perhaps stories of yugioh are shortened i think you might like our guest this week and because henry is producing this one i'm going to challenge him to get the spelling and uh you know the case of all of this right because yugioh is all intercapped there are hyphens between it there's an exclamation point at the end five capital d apostrophe s so it's very overly complicated one would say which also is i think wrong punctuation because it's supposed to be multiple d's the five d's can mean dimensions or dragons but it means five d's as in letters. But some people, I was watching some videos,

like they call it 5DS, but I've watched classic commercials from it from both Japan and America. It's 5Ds. So yeah. Please retain the apostrophe, even though it's wrong. It's card games on motorbikes.

Sounds crazy. So up next, Patreon date, February 10th. Free crazy. As the meme goes. So up next, Patreon date, February 10th. Free feed date, February 17th. We have Goof Troops episode,

Nightmare on Goof Street. This is a Patreon request and yes, we are going to the Disney afternoon. We have not covered Goof Troop yet, a fine show.

Disney sort of making their own lighter Simpsons in the early 90s. Yeah, I mean, we cover the crap out of the Goofy movie. Sorry, a Goof I mean, we cover the crap out of the Goofy movie. Sorry, a Goofy movie. We cover the crap out of a Goofy movie. And that was on a What a Cartoon movie. But now it's time to go into the thing that really began the Goof-naissance of the 90s,

Goof Troop. And yeah, that was a fun patron request. And it's named Goof Troop because it was once about Goofy being a scout leader, like a Boy Scout. What's the adult? Scoutmaster. Scoutmaster, yeah. So it retained that title. You'll learn more trivia like that on the episode. I did not know that. Oh, very good.

It's a perfect time for that impression. So up next in February, a very short month, as you all know, February 17th is the Patreon date. February 24th is the free feed date. We have the Netflix series Hilda with the episode The Bird Parade. So this is also a patron request, correct? Yes, it's one of our top level patrons. They picked this one out, though I've been looking forward to doing it too justin's excuse to watch the show hilda is uh seems like a very nice uh kid show based on a book series yeah graphic novel book not as good

as sparks i say if you got a kid buy sparks first and then buy hilda yeah once you've bought sparks for every child you know then buy hilda for your child but uh yeah and also it's interesting that it's like i i looked into a little bit the creator of the series also is showrunner on the show too, or at least is involved in the show. And he had worked previously on Adventure Time. He storyboarded several episodes of Adventure Time. So I'm curious to look into it. It looks like a very cute and sweet show. It does.

Very British as well. Very tweed and uh and we'll have on that patron to talk about why they wanted us to do that one as well so just gotta cram in all the hilda by the uh i plan to watch all of it before we record it for sure yeah and the last week of february of course will be the extended preview of our what a cartoon movie whatever wins that month we'll just have a 45-ish minute preview of that episode that you can hear the full thing of if you're on the $10 tier to hear our What a Cartoon Movie episode every month. Yes. So please, please look forward to it as Japanese game developers would say. And let's move on to our questions and comments for episodes. And up first,

we have Talking Simpsons comments. And the first episode we're covering is Bart the Genius. By the way, these are normally longer, but we did our talk to the audience late last month and we're doing it early this month. So next month will be the normal rotation of questions. So Bart the Genius is first. Joe Quigley says, teacher perspective time. Just a quick correction that the school is more like a magnet school than a charter school. I found this episode really interesting because Ms. Milan's classroom isn't actually that different from mine. I tell the kids my job is to facilitate their learning. I let them choose what books they read. And even the debate isn't really out of the realm of possibility for an average classroom if you provided them with some accessible text to

grasp the content. In short, despite how exaggerated things are, the classroom isn't as wacky as I feel like the writers intended. Well, I'm sure in 89, it seemed pretty wacky. The kids would have personal computers and beanbag chairs and could just learn in their own time. Yeah, these are the people who grew up in the 60s, very regimented strict schooling you know uh very standardized so i'm sure they were trying to make fun of the new progressive schooling

no no i'm sure matt graining would have at least then would have agreed like oh i wish my schooling was this instead of what i did have oh sure yeah yeah i think they they they show that it's an improvement for bart but also maybe bart has too much freedom or or it shows that you're miserable no matter where you are in bart's case bart should really be monitored with those chemicals is what i'm saying uh but i i do appreciate that uh quigley uh helped us have a little teacher perspective he's done that in the past in our comments uh also on bart the genius steven nettle says first i actually have seen Carmen in Russian at a small experimental theater in Moscow in 1995. It was very bare bones production and, well, pretty crappy even for post-Soviet experimental theater.

To add to the surrealism of the show, the actor playing Don Jose was the spitting image of Carmine Ragusa from Laverne and Shirley. Take your word for it. Secondly, Tiny Toons oddly shared several storylines with the first two seasons of The Simpsons. An offensively accented convenience store clerk, a reaction to The Raven by a famous actor with a distinctive voice, Vincent Price, in the case of Tiny Toons, and finally, a trouble trouble making main character switching test papers with a genius plucky switching test papers with egghead who i think only appeared that one

time that's right yes they did that same plot and i just remember the convenience store clerk was in the episode where plucky stole the candy bar it was like their anti-shoplifting episode it just was hard to watch because poor plucky yeah i mean plucky was usually the one to learn a lesson and i mentioned yeah i think this comes from uh you know actually i bring it up on bart the general there's an episode where hampton has to deal with a bully as well being bullied by montana matt that's right yeah in a very similar way it seems like these are all very much stock like kid school kid school stories, almost. I mean, and it makes more sense for Tiny Toons to deal with them than Simpsons, really.

But, yeah, that Raven one, I forgot the Raven one. What is it? It's a camel who's the convenience store clerk, isn't it? Oh, I think it's a human. A human? They didn't go that far. All right. I must be thinking of something else.

You made it worse, Henry. Hey. But that Egghead character, he did not have the longevity of Martin Prince. That's fine. So we're moving on to Homer's Odyssey and Stephen Nettle is back. And he says, for those growing up in the 70s and 80s, nuclear power was always something that made us nervous. One of my earliest memories about the TV news were the various reports about Three Mile Island in 1979, which was about 30 miles away. Flash forward to the late 80s,

we had moved and nearby was another nuclear plant with a reputation for safety problems. When I was 14 or so, we went on one of those tours and they showed us a propaganda short pretty similar to Smiling Joe Fission. Afterwards, I asked the tour guide who was boasting about how clean nuclear power was some pointed question about how clean it would really be if there was a serious accident. He tried to reassure us that an accident was very very unlikely when i tried to say it could still happen and if it did the environmental damage would be pretty bad he stopped calling on me and moved the tour along he should have removed you from that uh tour steven should have said like free thing a free thinker alert the free thought alarm we got a peace nick yeah you know

i'm wondering if that the Simpsons inadvertently with making jokes about Homer working on nuclear power plant, it defanged our generation's fear of nuclear power. Like, I was alive when some of the bad ones happened in the 80s, but I didn't really pay attention to it. And then the only thing I think of with nuclear power for the longest time was like Homer doing stuff like even more than Chernobyl or whatever. Totally.

Yeah. I mean, I think we talked about it on Homer's Odyssey, but that was the joke up front. But the joke was, you know, nuclear power is scary, huh?

Well, this guy works at the nuclear power plant. Can you believe it? Stupid. Yeah. That's his finger on the switch. Yeah. Yeah.

I, uh, and I mean, you know, there was a flare-up of nuclear power fears. I feel like the last time was, well, obviously there was the Chernobyl miniseries, which, you know, reignited people's memories of that or reminding people, like, boy, I was fucked up that happened, right? But I think the last time in the real world was like the Fukushima situation after the earthquake in Japan in 2011.

I mean, personally, as a kid and teenager, I was brainwashed by SimCity. Like, no, not coal power, nuclear power, not roads, trains. So Will Wright warped my brain. Yeah, well, you know, I've just been playing a lot of Civ, the phone game version of Civ, because it relaxes me for some reason the civilization civilization games but it does teach me the wrong lesson of like well what i need is money all the time money will buy me more things like it it makes you really into a capitalist you lose a lot if you become a communist can you give the app money to get civ money in return uh yeah i think so okay uh and so

also on homer's odyssey our animation pal Thad Komorowski has some interesting insights. I've got to say, you went pretty easy on how bad this episode looks. Way worse than anything in the rejected first version of Some Enchanted Evening, which had bad stuff, but was mostly just down to miscommunication. That scene of Marge and the kids with no lip sync, the final shot of the crowd pan, this is just raw incompetence. Maybe the other episodes were so much of a shit bed that the glaring flaws of this lame but canonically important episode had to be passed over. Poor Wes Archer. You know what? I agree with that.

He was right to scold us. This is the worst looking episode. Ever of Simpsons. Secretly, the cover for every talk to the audience is a character addressing an audience or talking to an audience and of course Homer's Odyssey has one of the perfect talk to the audience screenshots actually several of them because third act is just him talking to a crowd of mutants so man, nothing gets worse in The Simpsons than that

crowd scene in Homer's Odyssey they were not ready for a crowd they really weren't and it was like wes archer's first show directing to i think in that one of the ones that didn't even bring up is like just in the show sherry or terry's head is floating as they walk like they yeah that's just a mistake still in the show they forgot the cell yeah that's probably cropped out by disney plus you know after just re-watching the simpsons pilot footage that we did at the live show, the only difference I can see about why Some Enchanted Evening got rejected and this didn't as harshly is difference of people.

Like, Wes Archer was their guy and they trusted him. And meanwhile, Kent Butterworth, he wasn't their guy. And I think you can see in the Some enchanted evening stuff they took liberties that even wes archer didn't take or it's the kind of liberties they didn't like so i think that's why that one comes off as like oh it had worse animation like not really but it took wilder swings than this took that were actually good animation but absolutely wrong for what they wanted The Simpsons to be. But yes, I totally agree with you, Thad. Homer's Odyssey, worst animated episode of The Simpsons ever. The animation never looked worse.

And we got over it. We got through it as a society. Yes. And now it's on Disney+. So yes, on over to what a cartoon comments. There were some SketchFest comments, but they were mostly like, hey, guys, awesome show. Good job.

And I don't want to read praise for myself It's like retweeting praise for yourself Which I do sometimes Time for nine more minutes of compliments for us So up next we have Psycho Pass Our first What a Cartoon for January The episode Crime Coefficient The first episode of Psycho Pass

And the great Dave Whittington, our $100 patron Was on that, thanks again to Dave for sticking around For so long as a high level patron And he will return. Yeah, he's a fun guest, too. I love talking about anime with him. So, BatmanBoy11 says, My friends who are more into anime than I am

hadn't heard of Psycho Pass before I'd asked them about it when you guys put out the January What a Cartoon schedule, so I had no idea what to expect going in, and I was very pleasantly surprised. I bought the first deluxe episode off of YouTube, so I watched the first two of the original version and was captivated the whole time. Initially, when the premise was being explained in the episode, I definitely thought of Minority Report and how a thousand other Western stories have explored the idea of pre-crime to the point that I'm sick of it.

However, even in such a small amount of content as the 40 some minutes i watch this genuinely did a good job of bringing new directions to it and hammering home broader social implications beyond the morality and accuracy and uh debates of other stories uh yes i totally agree yeah it it was fun to come at this kind of uh concept that i thought was tired too but at a new angle like especially as it is like no it's about we live in a society not how do we judge people kind of thing especially the

bit I like how it's not just about one person wrongly accused it's how a victim of a crime can be blamed like or even people around a crime like I like that it's it it spreads the awareness there and as as you put it pop i like to you he said you are damned by your credit rating basically

it's not too far from our own reality it's a very interesting social commentary so i definitely recommend psychopaths check out that episode if you're unsure if you'd like it i think it'll get you into a fun darker show and uh then the next episode was batman the animated series almost got him our first of our revisiting ones we're going to be doing once a month uh yugioh 5ds is technically our revisiting next month so uh but this one for batman the animated series man what a fun episode that was and uh joel hodgson also had thoughts about the production company behind that episode almost got him dong yang very much feels like the show's second choice when it came

time to assign episodes to animation studios but it's pretty rewarding to watch the shows handled by this studio improve throughout the life of the series dong yang ended up getting most of the episodes for the production season two as well as the new batman adventures the worst studio may have been a com who got fired after one disastrous episode in joker's wild their production was more on par with standard kid shows with animation goofs and miscolored parts bob and henry will go we'll get to talk about them in greater detail with next week's episode as they did bucky o'hare as well as most of x-men and also the first season of simpsons they were the only production company

for the first season simpsons overseas we certainly did talk about a common episode yeah i mean again like that i think talking up dong yang is good because you know sometimes uh especially korean overseas animation studios can get a bad rap of just like oh they sent it to korea like i really hate the to get in that direction about it like and i i agree i think acom was just like yeah this is the level americans expect from us for the money they're giving us what what's the problem like yeah so drew mackie i believe from gayest episode ever correct previous guest on homer's phobia cool everyone should listen to that gayest episode ever podcast it's really great it's

very good uh so drew mackie says this was great and i am not a correct epitomist so much as someone who cares too much about arlene sorkin but the frazier thing is that kelsey grammar was never talking to the celebs who called in every call call he got actually had him talking to Arlene, and then they dub over her voice with the celebs saying the same lines, which means she is kind of a bigger part of the whole series, just not on camera. She actually gets to appear in person in the series finale, which is also sweet.

That is great. Yeah, I didn't know that. And I have to recommend a recent episode of Gayest Episode Ever. It's about a season 14 or 15 episode called Three Gays of the Condo, which they covered. And they said, Drew said he's inspired by us and our research. So yes, we approve of this podcast. Very good. I love it. Check it out. I gotta listen to that episode. They did a really good one on Seinfeld recently, too.

Oh, boy. Yeah, I gotta, I mean, as I recall, Three Gays of the Condo, it almost felt like an excuse just to have Hank Azaria play his birdcage character in All But Name. Basically, yeah, who became a recurring character. And then Scott Thompson is on because Harvey Fierstein didn't want to play a character that was so broad. Yeah. Carl was a trailblazer in his time. My mother said never kiss a fool all right i gotta listen to that one then yeah sure and i and look forward to us doing that one in uh four years three three or four years to get to season 15 i think now on our new schedule i think it'll take that long yeah i think so but uh we'll get there we'll get there it's gonna be quite a ride so up next we have the animatrix henry ah yes yeah

the animatrix our movie what a fun time our longest podcast uh to date yes and uh we had uh one concern by a listener that because patreon has a file size limit we have to cut the bitrate down of our longer podcasts which makes them sound a little worse than our normal ones in the future if a podcast runs this long for our ten dollar people we may just post it in two parts just to give you a better sounding podcast because uh the limit is 200 megabytes we can post a million megabytes in a day but it has to be in 200 megabyte chunks for some reason yeah but uh but yeah if uh if you guys would prefer that let me know in the comments i'd'd like to hear that too. But yes, on the Animatrix, Adam East said, I was in peak Matrix fanboy mode at this time,

and I did love the second Renaissance episodes, as well as Beyond Program and World Record. Lord of the Rings kind of stole my love after the disappointment of Revolutions with Return of the King coming out the following month. As a note, in your world record sections he would have been running the 100 meter sprint i believe that's the standard in athletics olympics with the world record being 9.58 by usain bolt though i didn't know they still do the occasional 100 yard dash which was something that I learned. Based on the 10-second split times of that in the 9.58 world record, Bolt would have run under nine seconds in the

100-yard dash. So, okay. I was coming at it from a very American non-knower of sports section where I was like, well, obviously this run is the 100-yard dash because everyone runs in yards, not meters. Meters. And a perfect name for a runner is Bolt. Yeah. So then if he broke – if Usain Bolt's record is 958 and that guy hit 875, like, he really must be a Matrix breaker for that kind of speed. Also the name of my favorite Disney movie, Bolt. The classic animated movie we all love and talk about.

Yeah, but it's cool to hear from another Matrix fanboy, too. What a funny time to think about. Again, the MCU never ends. So to think about how, like, yeah, if 01, really 99 to 03 was Matrix and Lord of the Rings, and that was just four years, and then it was just over. Bam, slamming the door shut. I kind of prefer that.

Come on, Bob. They'll never be an end to Spider-Man movies. Isn't that great? That's why Back to the Future still is my preferred movie trilogy and universe. It just is so tight. It's a tight little ball of movies, and you can't really unpack it. Can you believe we're getting close to five years after the farthest they went into the future in that show? It's terrible. I hate it. And we don't have uh i don't want flying cars but i do want uh not hoverboards i want uh the 80s cafe that's what i want yes yeah why didn't anybody build that in 2015 well now we're up to the 90s cafe bring me that give me that uh so we have batman boy 11 for our final comment for talk to the audience this month and And he says, The second Renaissance two-parter in a particular way was a very interesting exploration of the backstory of this universe.

And upon some reflection, helped me make some more sense of the end of Matrix Revolutions, frankly. I always wondered why the machines would just honor their deal to back off from humanity once Neo gets rid of Agent Smith. But given their history, that all they wanted was to be treated like people, it makes sense that when someone so important to humanity would be willing to do so, that they would listen. And frankly, the turn of events leading to the machines enslaving humanity is all too plausible if their inbuilt bias doesn't just have them become bigoted from the get-go, given how some AI has acted so far. that makes sense that by building up the ai as wanting to befriend humans and being more of like a spurred spurred by by humanity it makes more sense they'd be accepting of them and even wanting to like instead of entirely eradicating them and finding a new power source like nah we will keep you around we but you are our slaves now but hey we don't hate you guys it's not really very very

gooey batteries for us yeah i uh you know it's really about how both sides are wrong sometimes bob that's that's a true message it really is it that always works out doesn't it yes yes but but seriously though i yeah this it's been it was fun going back into the matrix for this again but i uh i think the matrix is the really only truly unvarnished film of theirs like the rest are the the the rest are have their problem yeah and if you're listening to this you want to hear our full animatrix discussion it's our longest podcast to date four hours and 30 plus minutes 25 25 so almost 4 30 it just squeaked over the cowboy bebop movie threshold to become our longest movie uh what a

cartoon movie today so yeah that's available on the 10 level along with all the previous what a cartoon movies probably like 50 hours worth of podcasts you haven't heard at this point maybe i should have pushed it to four and a half if i had instead of putting one minute of a rage against the machine song at the end i should have put the six minute version of it just put it to four and a half hours we're really pushing patreon and how much they will allow us to post in a given month love it is that really on the soundtrack uh that's actually the credit song on matrix reloaded okay it's uh a wake up is the i think i heard a shot well they are raging against machines very much so in the movie so it's all too clever.

But yes, thanks for listening. If this is your first time listening, welcome aboard. And I hope you guys are getting used to our new schedule. No complaints yet. And it's really helping us make better podcasts and to breathe a little and relax a little bit. And, you know, enjoy time with our loved ones. And by that, of course, I mean video games. Yes.

I played all of Yakuza 6 this month. Oh, wow. That's awesome. I played all of Yakuza 6 this month. Oh, wow, that's awesome. I played all of Yakuza Kiwami. Oh, man, what a good time. See, isn't it nice to hear that we're having fun? Yeah, yes. And I played all of Dragon Quest Builders, too.

I had a real gamer month I did here. But yes, thanks, everybody, for your support. Hope you guys look forward to next month's community podcast as well. Yeah, thanks for listening. We'll see you next month for another episode of Talk to the audience thanks so much and we'll see you then wow infotainment