Talking Simpsons - Talk To The Audience?!? - January 2025

Episode Date: February 5, 2025

The start of 2025 was short on happy headlines, but we have a few nice memories to share after January. First, there's news on the Simpsons' schedule changing, plus we preview some podcast plans, and then we reflect on a month full of RPGs, Squid Games, & David Lynch films. Lastly, we wrap up the usual way by spotlighting some of our favorite Patreon comments, including some talk of DVD bonus features and cat ownership. So dance with your favorite ice cream cone as you listen to our monthly community podcast! Support this podcast and get over 200 ad-free bonus episodes by visiting Patreon.com/TalkingSimpsons and becoming a patron! And please follow the official Twitter, @TalkSimpsonsPod, not to mention Bluesky and Instagram!

On the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz comes an unprecedented exhibition about one of history's darkest moments. Auschwitz, not long ago, not far away, features more than 500 original objects, first-hand accounts and survivor testimonies that tell the powerful story of the Auschwitz concentration camp, its history and legacy, and the underlying conditions that allowed the Holocaust to happen. On now exclusively at ROM. Tickets at rom.ca. I hardly 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 Bob Mackie and just like the Simpsons, I will not be having an episode for a whole month. And who is here with me today as always? The perfect lead in for Grimsburg, Henry Gilbert. And yes everybody, happy 2025. Wait a minute, this just in, it's not happy. Oh no. What's going on? Well today we're here to talk about the Simpsons

because this is our community podcast. On this podcast, we talk about what's happening in the Simpsons world and in our world. And then we spend some time responding to your questions and comments that have been left on the Patreon. So yes, 2025 is off to a interesting start, let's say. And there's the light smattering of Simpsons news.

Oh yeah, it was, I guess it's one of those months of no news is bad news for Simpsons. It's like inverse news was a lot of the news I picked up, like very few new episodes, news about how there won't be more episodes, and then also, you know, personal tragedies for some Simpsons writers as well. It was a rough January for Simpsons writers and for the rest of America as well. Yeah, for a huge portion of the country and potentially the world. But we're here to talk about season 36 because there was one new episode. And it'll be the last one for a while at least because there's going to be a little bit of a hiatus. We'll talk about that soon.

This episode was called a bottle episode by the father and son writing team of Rob and Johnny Lzebnik. And in this episode It's slightly burns focused and I did like that. I just watched it actually before this recording Homer misplaces or misuses this rare wine He has been enlisted to deliver to mr. Burns and to replace it They end up committing wine fraud and ended up in wine jail and there's a whole story about that, too I did enjoy this and I also enjoy that Harry Shearer has seemingly discovered how to do the Burns voice again so it's delightful to hear Burns back in his mostly okay mode. Did the headlines going mainstream of like boy Burns

sounds crappy get him to up his game did he have a new throat training thing did they find a fancy new technical way of voice sweetening his performance? I wonder, but he sounded good as Burns again, better as Burns, and Smithers I think sounded more Smithersy too. I think he just coughed something up that was really disgusting. He's like, oh that's why, okay.

And March sounded all right in the episode too. This is not gonna be our normal like, everybody's old complaint. But yeah, it was interesting. I did like it. I always love seeing Burns in Burns episodes and he's featured in it and weirdly enough what I really saw this online was the Robin Hood parody the Disney's Robin Hood parody featuring Smithers as Robin Hood

and Marge as Maid Mary and a character we all know activated a lot of furries across generations. Yeah it's funny this is like a stealth furry episode but also by making the combo Marge and Smithers that removes the sexuality from the two characters in the scenes they're recreating. I mean, it's a slightly gay episode that Smithers is a gay man, but I like that it keys into Smithers feeling some guilt about being around so many evil rich people all of the time. Yeah, I did enjoy this one and it's gonna be the last one for a while because after some speculation feeling some guilt about being around so many evil rich people all of the time. Yeah, I did enjoy this one, and it's gonna be the last one for a while because after some speculation that the Simpsons was leaving its Sunday time slot on January 21st,

Fox confirmed that Family Guy would take over at 8 p.m. starting on February 16th, and then the Simpsons returns to that slot on March 30th for the rest of the season. So it's vacating the famous Sunday APM slot it's had since God, I don't know, the fall of 94, that's when it was moved back to a Sunday. I think so. I think that was it. And yeah, it is virtually always had that position and certainly in the on months of the year, instead of, you know, the maybe in the summer, they changed it up or for a rerun time, but for six whole weeks, that is a long time. But you know, we, if you you've listened other community podcasts in the

last year or six months or so Family Guy got screwed already on this and that like this is Family Guy's season premiere is this February release like they were off the schedules for six months yeah yeah I assume they had their last episode in May or something like that when most TV shows usually wrap up that their traditional seasons So now Family Guy will be the lead-in for Grimsburg, the Great North, and Kropopolis And meanwhile, Bob's Burgers is seemingly getting screwed as well in some nebulous way because there is an unconfirmed return date I didn't know about this, Hunter. Maybe you could explain more. Simpsons episodes will be popping up on Disney Plus

The news was when they announced those Disney Plus episodes There was gonna be six of them and or five but one one of them was double length and that's the Christmas ones that did come out. So I assumed that during this two months ish timeframe of March, February and March is when they'd at least put out some of those Disney Plus ones exclusively, but they have not announced release dates for that yet as of this recording on Monday, January 27th. So I am assuming, I still would bet, at least one of those has to pop up

in this dead time for Simpsons Broadcasting that they'd be like, okay, now let's put out another of the Disney Plus ones. It would be nice because as of right now, we're looking on the barrel of two whole months without a new Simpsons, which honestly makes talk to the audience a lot easier, a lot quicker. It's a favor for us. But though, yeah, it's funny that Bob's Burgers whole months without a new Simpsons, which honestly makes talk to the audience a lot easier, a lot quicker.

It's a favor for us. Yeah. But though, yeah, it's funny that Bob's Burgers gets it even worse than Simpsons or Family Guy in this. This is like, well, it's just gone. But it we've said it before, but this is the Fox priority. They own Grimsburg, the great North and Kripopolis. So that's what they want.

Only one Disney owned thing that's popular to be the lead in it to setting up these new shows. Now, will Grimsburg be popular enough? I never hear people talk about it again. I never hear people talk about Universal Base's guys either. Yeah. Yeah. I never hear any, I don't know what Grimsburg is. A friend told me it's bad. I don't know about the great North. I'm sure it's inoffensive and Cropopolis. I know it was a show sold off of the idea of being a marketplace for NFTs I know that element dropped out. I don't know if it's good, but I think Fox bought three seasons site unseen I think so

Yeah, which is that maybe that's what they needed to commit Dan Harmon to wanting to do it He after Dan Harmon's experience of like Rick and Morty renewals taking forever until they renewed it for a hundred episodes Like he's like, okay if I'm signing for this, you have to commit to three years. I'm not waiting on this, but small bits of the great north I've watched. It's fine. It's, you know, Alaska, Bob's burgers, and it's kind of gay in a fun way like Bob's burgers. But then yeah, Grimsburg, I've only seen clips, but it is John Ham's animated series.

And it is a parody of like, you parody of gritty cop investigation murder shows. I haven't seen a frame of it. I did overwatch some Universal Basic Guys at a bar, and I don't really recommend looking at that show. It's pretty ugly. I felt bad from the tiny bits I've looked at it to, I felt bad complaining about Big Mouth saying, oh, that's a hideous show, with like,

oh, Universal Basic Guys has even less personality to it. We've declined even more since the Big Mouth era of, I don't know, seven years ago. So that's what's happening. A lot of shakeups happening at Fox. We don't know how this will resolve, but it'll be interesting, I guess,

and worth talking about on this podcast. And so 2025, it's already looking kind of bad, and it kicked off with a climate disaster. And by that, I mean the LA wildfires. And we know, we know of course many many people who aren't famous and write for tv shows their lives have been ruined by this but notably some simpsons writers have been affected by this and you know I've been seeing uh Dana Gould updates and I think he's okay but he was talking about evacuating and what his life is like now and we found out recently that Matt Salmon publicly said that they have lost their home and virtually everything

in it. And the official Simpsons account has posted a little message of support. Although I will say Seth MacFarlane personally drew a Brian in a firefighter's costume, proving that Seth MacFarlane can still draw. I don't think he's professionally had to draw anything for, let's say, 23 years.

But, well, OK, maybe he created the American Dad characters in like 2003. So let's say 23 years but well okay maybe he created the American Dad characters in like 2003 so let's say 22 years. I think I did see him draw similar amounts of Family Guy for a couple of like writers guild strike signs I think he maybe drew one or two there but it was it was cute and it gave a little chuckle in a dark time to see him draw an original drawing of Brian Griffin dressed as a firefighter. He still got it. So yeah, we don't know the extent of which Simpson staff members were affected by the fire, but I'm sure they'll be more public about it. And who knows? In 18 months, there probably will be an episode about their experience filtered through the Simpsons. Yeah. I mean, they, they did one about the, they did stuff reacting to the big earthquake that was seemingly a less destructive, I don't know the numbers,

but it seems like it was less destructive than this fire. But yeah, I mean, people like Matt Selman and his family, they've, they've also tried to put it into perspective, like how heartbreaking it is and how they're, they're left with just, you know, suitcases and that's everything they own, but they also are very fortunate people. They have insurance. We'll see how much the insurance companies come through on that stuff.

Sellmen and people like that who have been affected, they are quick to say there are many less fortunate people than us support these charities. There were a lot of animation folks affected by this this and many people who don't draw cartoons also. It was rough. Yeah. Even if you don't draw cartoons, our heart goes out to you. Of course, we have to let you know

if people we talk about for a living are affected by these things. So in other news, Jennifer Tilly is dead. Dead serious about letting you know how rich she is because I guess a lot of people don't know that she profits immensely due to her brief marriage to Sam Simon. Actually, I'm not sure how long they were married.

I just assume it was brief. I think it was under five years, though, even after they divorced, they seemed to spend a lot of time together, especially in his final days, too. Yes, yeah, they seemed to be on good terms with each other throughout their entire life, or at least since the time they met, obviously,

up until his passing. But I guess she is now featured on the new season of the Real Housewives of Beverly Hills It's a show with about 50 seasons. I found out due to recent research This is a quote from her I guess from the article you linked to here Henry quotes when we got divorced I got a piece of the Simpsons in the divorce settlement Nobody knew that the Simpsons was going to go on for trillions of years honestly every day. I'm like, thank you, Sam This is Bob speaking. Jennifer Tilly must be worth over a hundred million dollars.

If she is getting, uh, I guess I'm going to assume half of Sam Simon's cut from the Simpsons in perpetuity. Yeah. I mean, you saw how much like Sam Simon gave away of his wealth from the Simpsons. But though it is the developer cut, not the creator creator cut but that still has to be tons of money And I'm sure she also gets a small part of other things He had previously worked on but that Simpson's money has to be huge money Like there's other funny quotes in in it where she's saying like, you know, I don't think of myself as rich

But I guess and she says like her and her partner or whoever she's with now Like we live in this kind of small house Now next to it is a very large house, so I guess we are doing pretty good. I guess you just let those checks pile up, you bring them all to the bank one day, and then the bank runs out of money. So if you've seen, I made sure to share it online about a month ago when John Swartzwater was talking

about the anniversary of the debut of the Simpsons in December 89, and I then found the picture of the bowling alley premiere that they did it at where they're all wearing custom Simpsons bowling shirts. And it's for the premiere of the show. They think they don't know how it's going to do. And in the photo sitting right next to Sam Simon is Jennifer Tilly. And it was always fun to just say, look, there's famous actress, Jennifer Tilly. But they are the Simpsons premiere. Why was she she there she was married to Sam Simon at the time yeah and they're all that bowling alley right yeah and I think Santa Monica

but thanks to her being on the Real Housewives of Beverly Hills now Housewives viewers not just Simpsons nerds know that Jennifer Tilly is very wealthy thanks to the Simpsons in case you're wondering and our last bit of news, it's just a cute photo that Al Jean shared on Twitter. So this is a very visual thing. You'll have to go to Al Jean's Twitter to look it up. But he shared the famous 1992 writer's room photo of all the guys looking gross, eating burgers.

And then he shared a modern day photo of it 33 years later. And I mean, I guess it looks a lot cleaner, but it's great to know that that room has absorbed some of the best jokes ever written in the history of television and I noticed that the decorations have changed but the new room has the erotic cakes neon sign from the end of Triasiphor 6. Right yeah yeah that is that is a great addition isn't it I love that they I I saw Jay Kogan he replied to it and said like oh we love you guys Yeah. That is a great addition, isn't it? I love that. I saw Jay Cogan, he replied to it and said,

oh, you guys lost the air conditioner. What happened? They must have gotten central air. Because if you see in the 92 picture, there's a big boxy air conditioner in the window, pretty inconvenient or low rent for the billion dollar franchise in The Simpsons. That's not going to keep a room cool when it's got 12 sweaty Harvard nerds in it.

Who are all eating Butterfinger BBs and farting, probably not a good time. Yeah, I also thought it was cute to see the side by side. And now, Gene went to the trouble of photographing the writer's room from the same angle, just so you could see. But a big difference I noticed is, it's a proper table now that everybody sits at

instead of a ring of couches that they sit on. Yeah, it looks a little more professional, you know? And I think as those guys get older, they need more back support. They can't be sitting on these saggy couches while writing jokes. That was a fun picture that Al Jean shares. I always like when he, you know,

as long as he can remember to properly crop a photograph that he shares on Twitter, it's fun to see. Quite often he will just screenshot his entire phone and you'll see a lot of what's going on in his phone, his battery life, how many bars he's got. You'll see what he Googled for to get that image that he's showing you. His somebody needs to tell his 30-something daughter

to tell Al Jean how to properly just hold down on that photo and hit save photo that's all you have to do or crop your screenshot one of those two things We gotta learn to crop you gotta learn to crop Al But that's all that's happening in the world of Simpsons this month and now it's time to talk about what's happening in our world specifically the schedule for the month of February and we'll kick things off by talking about what the Whatta Cartoon schedule holds for that month. And in February I believe we are ending, I think we're ending the seventh year of Whatta Cartoon and it's been a long time coming but we're finally covering the Powerpuff Girls. We've covered so many things related to it. We've covered so many things that

have been created by Craig McCracken and Gendi Tartakovsky. Now we are digging into the Powerpuff Girls. We're covering the two episodes, Bubble Vicious and the Bare Facts. They're both contained within a single 22 minute chunk, but they're paired together and they're great. They really show off the strengths of that show. And we had a lot of fun returning to it. It's been the first time I've actually watched

an episode of that show in, I'll say almost probably over 20 years. It was a great time returning to it and seeing all of, I watched like about a dozen classic episodes that I hadn't seen in so long, but they instantly came back to me as I watched them and bubble vicious is a, I wanted to go with that one in particular because like it is, it shows how awesome bubbles is, you still get mojo Jojo and it focuses on the girls.

I could have picked like the villain, a great villain episode like just another manic Mojo where Mojo is the main character, but I was like no no we need to focus on the girls themselves Not the the bad guys who took over the show kind of yeah It's it's an amazing looking show and we had so much fun returning to it So look forward to that in February and as for our miniseries episodes again Those are available for patrons only at patreon.com slash Talking Simpsons. We're covering, of course, Futurama and King of the Hill. The Futurama episode we're covering is a clockwork origin.

It's Futurama's take on creationism, and I guess their take down of creationism. We had a lot of fun talking about what the online atheist movement was like in the late aughts, and that's very much reflected in this episode. Our experiences with that world, how we're kind of tired of it. We had a lot of fun talking about that. Yeah, it was interesting to even see an episode that has a few memes in it that were used by online atheists and how it feels now that online atheists,

many of them turned into the worst reactionaries on Twitter, there are. Well, yeah, that episode features this flying spaghetti monster. I never want to see that creature for as long as I live, but hey, that episode features us flying spaghetti monster. I never want to see that creature for as long as I live. But hey, that's what's happening on Talky Futurama this month. And I'm also on Talking to the Hill.

We're covering the episode, Bills are made to be broken. We're transitioning out of the three episode Peggy arc and moving more into characters that are not part of the Hill family. Looking at Bill, his legacy, his high school football records, and how he needs to maintain those

because he can only live in the past. Where else can Bill live to be happy? Yeah, we just released the one we did at Pretty Pretty Dresses to all the listeners, and I hope you folks who don't subscribe on the Patreon enjoyed it. And this is another Bill's sadness exploration episode, but from a different angle than the Christmas blues.

It was a lot more fun than I remembered it when we watched it. Yeah, and again, that is happening at patreon.com slash Talking Simpsons for people who sign up for five bucks or more. And now to date, there are over 200 of those really long mini series episodes to dig into. So check that out on the Patreon.

Also happening on the Patreon is our what a cartoon movie episode for patrons at $10 at that level, and we're getting away from Disney briefly to talk about How to Train Your Dragon, much like last month's subject, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. This also has a live-action remake coming soon, and we want to talk about the original because it's what I think a lot of people said, oh, this is the first really good DreamWorks movie. I mean, maybe you like Shrek and some other things, but this is the one that had a little more class. Yeah. It was a big turn for them and I've already started doing my research on it and

have gotten digitally from the library, the original book that it was based on. And so by the, by the British author, there's also an interesting history. While we say we're away from Disney, it's a bunch of Disney Renaissance people who got hired by DreamWorks to make a good movie. Yes, yes. So yeah, the Disney people have to be involved in some aspect, especially when you're, you need directors for your movie, you gotta headhunt.

But this is, I mean, the co-director and basically the guy who has been running the show for How to Train Your Dragon is another of my favorites in modern animation, Dean Dubois, who is an openly gay director and one of the very few at his level. And so it's more of Sanders and Dubois to talk about, which is, and it's its 15th anniversary. I have hope that the live action one will at least be all right because Dean Dubois is also directing it So we but we shall see after we look back at the 15 year old film this month

Yeah, I'm looking forward to finally watching it It was something that was recommended to me a lot and I was stubborn but now because of my job I'm definitely gonna be able to check it out So yeah, that is what's on the schedule for what a cartoon and now it's time to talk about what we've been playing and watching That's not necessarily related to podcasting and I have a few things to go over. I think the last time we recorded was right before Christmas break so I've been watching a ton of movies, playing a ton of games, I've had a little more downtime than normal, so I finished a bunch of games and Henry's been playing some of these too. So I did finish Dragon Quest III, the HD 2D remake. I had a really good time, although I will

say by the end those 1988 RPG mechanics were getting a little repetitive, I'll say. And I don't think I'll do the post-game content, but I had a very fun 40 hours and I liked it for the most part. I wish they would have put a little more work into the presentation. It's not quite at the level the Star Ocean 2 remake is or something like Octopath Traveler. I feel like with Dragon Quest they should have went all out, but it is enough to justify the price of a full game, this remake. Yeah, the time it takes is worth $60.

But yeah, you're right. There could be more visual flourishes than there are in there. And I did this. Did you turn on objective markers on the map because that really made a difference in playing that game. Yes. Yeah. I mean, I don't have time. I don't have time to figure things out. It was great when I was

10 and playing the game, but now it's just like, well, I need to get on with it and play other things. So yeah, when I did the post game stuff on it, I also hit the limit of like, oh, I don't have unlimited time anymore. I played it first when I was 19 or 18 or 19 and I did have a lot more free time then so I was like how many turns can it take me to be to the optional final game boss and this time I banged my head against it for three hours to beat him once and then the the final optional boss says or the bonus boss says you didn't beat me enough times for it to count as beating me try again and I was like no no thank you well I'm glad I'm glad you boss says or the bonus boss says, you didn't beat me enough times for a decount is beating me.

Try again. And I was like, no, no, thank you. Well, I'm glad. I'm glad you eventually walked away. That sounds rough. Yeah. I spent, I think, I don't know if I said the time I spent on, but 40 hours is all you need to finish it.

Yeah. Yeah. If, especially if you have the objective markers on and don't like, yeah, it was, it was so invented back then that it's like, we're not telling you exactly where to go next. There's like six places you could go to find this next thing. And that's good. But having it now marked on the map of just go here in this area, you'll find what you need.

Yeah, it's optional if you don't want it, but honestly, you do want it. So, yeah, I had a good time with that. I'm glad to be finished with it, though. I also I was mainly just like cleaning up a lot of games. I started in 2024 because I had to finish Metaphor Re-Fantasio, that was like a hundred plus hours, so just cleaning up things I interrupted to play Metaphor. I also finished The Legend of Zelda Echoes of Wisdom. It's a game with a great first half, but the second half is not so good.

And I was explaining to my wife my issues with the game, and she compared it to Scribblenauts, which I thought was a good comparison. Where in Scribblenauts, when you start playing that game, you're like, Oh my God, all of these, all of these possibilities, all of these things, oh I wonder what I can put in next for it to draw. And then you realize, well, oh I only need these three things to solve every puzzle. Zelda, you're not typing in words that will then generate an item. You are learning how to replicate a bunch of items in the game, but eventually over time you learn that, oh I kind of only need these five things to solve every puzzle. And it gets a little tedious because of that. And also you're not just typing in what you want to generate.

You have to select it from a kind of bad menu. So, uh, once you get to the back half of the game, you have a lot of possible, uh, things you can summon into the world. And it gets a little tiresome that way. And the game recognizes like, oh yeah, we built a game where you can kind of solve every puzzle if you know which three or four things that are basically universal puzzle solvers So then towards the end they're like we came up with a very specific thing And you are not gonna figure it out unless you go online because there are some of these that were real head-scratchers

Like I didn't know this item could be used in this way because it's only used in this way in this one puzzle So I feel like that was their solution But it had a very good first half and I'd like to see them do more with this concept but it's not one of my favorite Zelda's I'm happy I played through it though. Sounds like the Breath of the Wild style openness but for just a top-down Zelda right? Yeah yeah they try to do similar things but it is confined by the fact that uh your tools empower you way too much and you can also kind, you can also heal whenever you want to up to full, because you can just create a bed and then sleep in the bed and your hearts generate. Oh, okay.

So yeah, I wish they would have been able to think through it more, because there's a kernel of a great idea there. But again, I had a good time. I would say like B- if I was giving it a grade. And I will also say I played through the mystery game Rise of the Golden Idol. It is the sequel to The Curse of the Golden Idol, which I believe came out in 2022. I don't wanna go too far into this, but in the game, you are given a series of like tableaus

of characters like in the middle of actions and based on your examinations, you have to fill out like little essays that tell you what's happening in each tableau. And the sequel does a lot of quality of life changes. It makes things a little more intuitive. And I think I might like the sequel a little more. And if this sounds interesting to you,

if you have a Netflix subscription, you have this game. This is a game made for the Netflix platform. Of course it's on Steam if you want to give the developers money. But if you have Netflix, a subscription, you can download it to any smart device you might have as long as you have the Netflix app. There are games on Netflix.

There are good games on Netflix. And this program will probably just disappear because as you know, Henry, every company's like, we should do games. Look at how much money games make. Then they do games, give it no publicity, then immediately cut off all support when people don't care. Games are pretty expensive now. Yeah. I think I'm seeing that Warner, their head of video games at Warner just left the company, which is more of the indication that like they're on the other side of that saying we should just be licensing Batman games again and then in five years from now a Batman game will come

out that makes a billion dollars and they'll be like why didn't we make that Batman game? Yeah they always go back and forth. I think this Netflix initiative is good if it funds great indie games like the rise of the Golden Idol but I feel like most people simply don't know and there are things like Shredder's Revenge is one of the Netflix games You could they put real games on there They also make their own games based on Netflix properties But there's there's real deal games on there that you can just have and also Amazon Prime gives you free games every month and nobody

Knows about those at all either. It's crazy. How many free games everyone is constantly getting with their subscriptions I I only get those prime free games when I get I have notifications turned on for Wario 64 on Twitter that tell me about like, you know It's usually how I learn breaking game news is because Wario tweets the big ones and that's he regular monthly will do Here's the prime games download them and that's when I know how to when to check the box But yeah, no, I I rarely think about it otherwise and on that Netflix games tab like when I open up Netflix I never bother looking at the games yeah yeah yeah I mean they're not always great but if you are bored and you just want something to play

that's free you have a Prime subscription then it's just right there waiting for you so yeah Rise of the Golden Idol I don't want to go in too much detail but it's a great mystery game and I really recommend it. And if you have Netflix, it is quote unquote free, if you wanna call it that. And I gotta say, I don't wanna sound like a podcasting millionaire on top of my iFree tower, but I recently invested in a new television.

I don't buy a new TV that often, I think I get one every 10 years. In fact, it was nine years since I got my last set. It was sort of like an entry level 4K set, Abravia. That was what I got in 2016. This time I went in with my wife, we decided to go all out and to do research, I first went online and I asked, oh, what's a good OLED TV? What do you, what does everyone recommend? And I thought like, oh, I'm going to get a ton of answers. I'll have to do a ton of research. Everybody said the same thing, the LG G4 OLED TV. And by gum, they were right.

And I know at least one of those people has to be listening that recommended it. I have to say thank you because it is, it's a life-changing television. I had no idea how much a television could make me want to watch more things and play more things. So if I could recommend something, it's the LG G4. It's a little pricey,

but I am getting a lot of use out of it. And I have never had or seen a better television in my life. That's amazing. So, I mean, other than like it being, you know, 4k or an OLED and all that, is it just, I think I heard you say other times like the, the, the brights are brighter. Yes. It's the second brightest television on the market. And also when it comes to black levels levels it has the purest black levels.

The richest darkest black levels. You're not getting these muddy grays when you're looking at a black image on the TV. No, it's pure black. And I will tell you one of the best things about a new TV is no more lag on menus for streaming sites. Streaming sites load instantly and there is no lag when you're scrolling through things. Just that alone makes the purchase worth it. Oh, wow, okay, that does sound pretty cool, man. And one thing I will say about this TV, LG should pay me at this point, I must say, or at least send me something in the mail, LG. But the controller has the standard, you know, using the arrows functionality to scroll through menus,

but you hit a button, it turns into a Wiimote. You got an arrow rolling around the screen, young man. You can just point at anything you want and click on it. Oh, that's pretty nice That's pretty nice more things should be we remotes. I agree amazing picture amazing menu system Thank you everybody who recommended it when I'm when I'm 50 or something. Sorry No, when I'm 53, that's when the next TV will come and I'll I'll get the 12k. I'll burn all of my 4ks Throw throw out those 4K discs that you bought for watching on your fancy new TV.

Yes, I've moved on. But yeah, so yeah, the new TV is great and I'm really enjoying it and playing games on it and watching stuff. So to break in the new TV, my wife and I watched all the extended editions of Lord of the Rings and because we're not crazy, we broke up the second and third movie into two viewings

because each half is just a larger than average movie. They're really five movie. I think Fellowship can be watched, well, not extended, but Fellowship is, that's I think one viewing, but the other two. Yeah, we did extended Fellowship in one. I think it's like 243 or something. Though, yeah, I mean, The Two Towers is pretty long

and Return of the King quite long. I saw The Two Towers Extended Edition in theaters in like 03, and yeah, there was, I worked at a theater when it came out, and you needed an intermission in that one too. Yeah, I had not seen these movies in over 20 years. I had never seen Return of the King before. It was quite an experience.

I got the 4Ks as like a Christmas gift for ourselves. These are amazing. Like I love these movies so much. I think I put off watching the third movie. I didn't wanna see the end because I liked the first two so much. And maybe that's why I didn't want to see them again in the first place.

But now I've seen Return of the King. I gotta say though, I still like Fellowship the most. That is my favorite of the three. I like when the gang's all together. I like the seeing the Shire. I like the journeying out when everything is fresh and new, and I think it's the best standalone out of all of them. You love Sean Bean as well? Yes, Boromir.

Yeah. Two Towers is still my favorite because I do love Helm's Deep quite a lot, but my favorite characters in it is Frodo and Sam's gay adventures which is the most in Return of the King like it's the two of them hanging out and then when it's over he's like master Frodo I need to marry a woman yeah and then you you see the wedding and their children and it breaks Frodo's heart and he wants to leave the world I have to go to Elf heaven now yeah it's too ooh this that this thing that my my sting blade thing hurt not sting blade his his scar hurts too much It's not that he's heartbroken that Sam married a woman. It's a ring wraith injury

Yeah football injury now my husband actually gifted me a Lord of the Rings thing of the the forehead kiss At the end of that that's so sweet. No, I love I love Sean Astin the movie. I love Sam He's great so the funny thing about as technology marches on, certain things remain the same because I watched the extended edition and even in 4k it comes on two discs. Even in 4k you got to get your ass up, walk across the room and pop in the second disc. And like with a lot of these releases, they don't retain the DVD extras, which was like the reason you bought those extended editions, not just to see the movies with all the extra scenes, but to see like the hours and hours of bonus features.

So as soon as we were done watching the movies, we immediately went to YouTube and they're all just there, including the commentary. So if you're ever looking for that stuff, it's somebody thankfully uploaded it. That's great. Yeah, I'm glad those are saved because Peter Jackson and Weta really cared

about showing people that stuff. Like that's honestly, I was so disappointed by those Hobbit movies, but I've been sometimes tempted to get the extras just to watch it for the extras that they put on those things where they seemingly were very honest about like, boy, this sucked to make. We were in a horrible situation. Yeah, now I'm currently ring-pilled

and I'm thinking of reading my childhood copy, The Hobbit that's behind me here, and then maybe dipping into the movies just because I kind of want to see more of the world, even if it's the lesser version of that compared to Lord of the Rings. So yeah, I had a lot of fun with Lord of the Rings. I'm glad I'm finally coming up to 2003

in terms of pop culture. Also, I saw in theaters the movie Flow, which is a Latvian animated movie about basically a climate disaster and a bunch of animals together on a journey to survive. And it is not like a Disney movie or a DreamWorks movie. It is a completely silent movie in terms of dialogue, but everything is communicated very well with expressions without making the animals seem too human. It made me think of the self-control the movie Wall-E had before they eventually shunted the robot off to the fat people world and had a lot of jokes about Walmart. But Bob, how do you know what these characters are feeling if

they're not like going like, uh, that just happened? How do you know what these animals are feeling in Flow? They have certain kind of meows and barks. I really want to see it. Everybody loves this movie. It just got nominated for best animated feature. I would bet it'll lose to Inside Out 2 probably, but I want to see it though. It's not showing anywhere around here. I haven't checked if it's rentable on digital yet, but I do want to check it out.

Yeah, I really recommend it. It's not perfect, but I like seeing what other countries are doing with animation. It's usually better than what I like seeing what other countries are doing with animation. It's usually better than what's happening in the United States. I know they're always so far ahead of what we're doing in the United States and North America. So yeah, Flow was great. I also wanted to name one other thing I watched, which is Squid Game 2, which is something...

Apparently it is the number one watch thing on Netflix for weeks now, but I can't find anybody else who's watched it. And my wife and I are gigantic death game sickosos and while I will say it is not as good as Squid Game one they find enough compelling reasons to make it a sequel and have fun with the idea that it is a sequel because You're thinking what are they gonna do all the same games over again? Well, there's a lot of twists and turns about the idea of even sequel izing the games themselves So if you like squid game 1, fans of the genre might enjoy Squid Game 2.

I had a lot of fun with it and it is like a cliffhanger-y thing in which the Squid Game 3 will finish the fight later this year. Ha, okay. To quote the Halo 3 marketing campaign. That's funny. All right, yeah, no, but you're right. I don't feel, I felt like when the first Squid Game came out,

literally everybody in my feeds was talking about it. I mean, it probably didn't help that it launched at the very start of 2025 and people were thinking about other things than Squid Game 2 then, but I'm happy to hear that it continues the quality of it. I watched the first two episodes of it and then we got the first season and we need to get back to it but I did like it.

I'm biased because I love death game stuff, I love death game video games and media and it does, this is like peak death game content for me so Squid Game, again if you have Netflix watch Squid Game 2 and then play Rise of the Golden Idol and then thank me on X or sorry no Blue Sky, I'm there more than on X or sorry, you know blue sky. I'm there more than often more than on X It's funny to actually to talk about how it's not going viral I feel like I haven't seen as many posts that are like the first squid game my understanding of it and for watching the first Episode was this is a critique of capitalism, but every post was like, oh, this is about how communism is bad Like anytime I saw a post about that was very funny. People getting the exact wrong. Yeah, exactly. So I think some people are like, oh, this was so on

the nose, but honestly, no, a lot of people misread it entirely. Yeah. Yeah. Well, you know, people, everybody sees things that are like, oh, I mean, we've, I've been seeing it a lot this month, but not about Squid Game 2 of like a thing happens that is very American repressive fascist. And everybody's like, I haven't seen this since the Soviet Union it's like you can just talk about America's history guys yeah yeah it's fine that's basically it so yeah I watch a lot of movies this month I don't want to go into all of them I'm having a lot of fun just you know doing I've been absorbing a lot of media we're recording a lot of podcasts but I'm also having more downtime

because the holidays are over absorbing more media. And I also wanted to plug the Vancouver video rental store Video Cat because for the first time in, I don't know, over 15 years, we now have a membership to a video store and it is a very good video store in Vancouver. We just rented like five movies from there this weekend and it's a great store, great setup, a lot of fun merch. There was a sister store actually in our neighborhood that closed down as soon as I moved. I think it was a victim store, great setup, a lot of fun merch. There was a sister store actually in our neighborhood that closed down as soon as I moved. I think it was a victim of COVID, but this store is related to that other video store.

In fact, they inherited a lot of their collections. So we were trying to keep it alive and it's a great place to go where, it's the old video store experience. What do I wanna see today? I'm gonna look at a bunch of options on the shelves and pick up something and hold it. And it makes it more fun to pick something out to watch for later in the week.

That's awesome. I, I, yeah, I love a textile video store. I don't take enough advantage of there being scarecrow video around here. I've only been there once it's, uh, I wish it was as conveniently located. And hopefully at some point this year, they're going to expand the public transportation for the trains to, I'll be able to just take a train directly into Seattle and go there more often. Yeah, Ferzio is great.

So I guess support your few remaining local video stores if you can. And honestly, that's it for me. I'm just enjoying being a real homebody this month. And up until the summer, I'm not really gonna go anywhere or do anything. Now you and Nina have been real letterbox loons to be, I was trying to think of something to be alliterative.

Letterbox losers? No, loons, loons. I love seeing your letterboxes and seeing like, especially when you post together, like one is like three, you or Nina is like three hours before the other one and just seeing that. It's fun to read your things in tandem too.

Yeah, we're sick. We don't normally tell each other what we thought of the movie until we go off and write our own separate letterbox reviews then we comment each other's reviews. So we're kind of like Siskel and Ebert. That's right. Meanwhile, when I finished watching a movie,

I am talking about my husband, but he doesn't have a letterbox. He's like, okay, well let's have dinner now. And I go like, wait, wait a sec. And I'm like, putting my letterbox together. And I'm like, you know, putting my letterbox together for it while delaying what our next plans were. The thoughts are fresh, the thoughts are fresh. But as for gaming for me this month, two biggies.

I played a lot of Death Stranding. I finally got into it from the Xbox release of it that just happened a few months ago, a couple months ago. And I did hit the thing that people who like Death Stranding tell you, which is get past this point in, I believe it's episode two, if you can finish episode two, it actually for real did feel like I have in some cases, literally in the game, I have climbed the mountain. It's all easier from here.

I feel so awesome. Like there really is this feeling of like, oh, there's where I needed to be. It was so hard to get here, but now I can get there the rest of the way. And then an amazing like Europe, Euro pop, Indie-ish song comes in and it just feels so good. And then it hit me that like the game is just, it's a lot of missions of go to this place and flip a switch. And I love doing that in Final Fantasy Rebirth and Assassin's Creed. So I like that. I've been wanting to check that off Final Fantasy Rebirth and Assassin's Creed so I like that. I've been wanting to check that off my list since they announced the sequel because I started it when it was new

and I got about five hours into it and then I lost track of what I was doing in the game and my life was... We were recording like double the podcasts we're doing now also so there wasn't a lot of time for games but one thing is that game made my PS4 Pro sound like a helicopter taking off and now I have other platforms to play it on that are a lot quieter So before to I definitely want to invest time in that and finish that because I did like the five to eight hours I played of it. Yeah, they the series acts handles it just fine. I like it I've I'm up to episode five now if you're folks who know what the game is and that's like about about 15 hours in and I'm having a good time with it anytime something weirdly horny happens with one of the female

characters in it my husband and I do look at each other and say like you know we'll be ashamed of our words and deeds if we doubt why this is so weird and horny why why does this woman need to breastfeed a ghost why why does she do this Conan O'Brien take his pants off? No, no, it's only weirdly horny for the female characters, I have to say. Well, I shouldn't say that. No, Norman Reedus, you have a button that makes Norman Reedus either use the bathroom or get naked in shower.

So you know what? It's the one game I can think of that has piss grenades. It does. And then the other game, which I've not found any piss grenades in it yet, is Stardew Valley I've put about 30 hours into it Relaxedly I have fallen off a little bit while playing Death Stranding

But yeah, it totally clicks with me more than a than a harvest moon really ever did I think there are a little there are the quality of life things in it that click more for me though It doesn't get me the same I thought I'd really really love it because I loved the farming stuff that was in the Dragon Quest Builders games but this one there's just a teeny I it's like a nine out of ten to me instead of a ten out of ten I've seen from other people. Yeah it's it's one of the I mean I think it is the best tuned Harvest Moon game there is and you're walking into it after years and years and years of updates so that's great. I really loved

it as a Harvest Moon fan who was quickly like falling out of that series because everyone just kept getting worse and they kept starting from scratch with every iteration and never developing what they started and just like wiping the slate clean. But yeah, I played like a hundred hours of that within the first like four or five years of it being out. And I, I, I did all of the community center goals, which I guess is how you beat the game and close, but you can play it forever. But yeah, that game is amazing.

Yeah, no, I mean, I've only after 30 hours and one year of it, like back around to spring again, I totally love it. Like it can easily just steal. There were several nights where I was like, well, just one hour then and then I'll start up a different game. Four hours later. Well, I guess this is the game I play tonight. It was a real podcast editing game back when I edited a lot of the podcasts and

you did as well too, but we shared duties, we were editing everything and I needed something I could pause at any moment when I needed to go in and change something. It was almost always a turn-based RPG or Stardew Valley. Oh that's good. I, you know, I, yeah, hey I'll be editing this one. I can, I can try that with this, but yeah we both, it has been nice to have wonderful editors who assist us with this, and that we can afford. It's so great. And I guess, you know, all the other video game thing,

we, Off Mic had a small conversation about the Switch 2, but that Switch 2 reveal, I'm glad it's finally happening. It feels like a year late to it. Yeah, I mean, well, hey, if they can support a console this long and still give us good games, hell, I'm late to it. Yeah, I mean, well hey, if they can support a console this long and still give us good games, hell, I'm all for it. I guess like the Xbox 360 had about eight years, so it feels like this is now normal, probably.

Yeah, though, I mean, last year of Switch games, not that they were bad games, but if you have a year where within a 12-month period you release three Mario RPGs, that shows you it's not a priority for Nintendo. They need to release one last Kirby to make it real, right? To make the end real. That's true.

With no Kirby yet, it's not truly a dead Nintendo console. Though if the Switch, I just want them to make a Mario Odyssey 2. I just want a sequel to Mario Odyssey that was my favorite Mario game of at least 3D and they have not done anything like it since, like not even DLC. Yeah, I'm sure. I feel like that's in the cards, although based on the reveal, they're launching with Mario Kart, and that seems obvious because it is the most popular game now for every

Nintendo platform since the DS, I think, or at least since the Wii. And they only had to make one Mario Kart game for the Wii U and then continue selling It for 10 years. I looked at the list of best-selling Switch games and of course Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, which wasn't even made originally for the switch. It has sold Like it's number one, but it's number one by 20 million over the second one, which also sold incredibly well. Yeah, it's a nice reminder that, no, regular Mario and regular Zelda are not the big hit. I mean, they are big hits, but they're not as big as Mario Kart. Yeah, yeah.

But hey, I'll be waiting for that April reveal of the Switch. And then it was funny of Switch 2, and it reminded me that almost to the day of when they finally revealed Switch 2 was the eight year anniversary of me and you going to Manhattan to see the Switch. Yeah, that's true. It was a whirlwind trip that we had to convince our dumb website was important. Yes.

And we made the most of it. It was fun. It was one of the last real events I went to as a games press guy. So yeah, that was a fun memory. Well, some parts of it were fun. Yeah, hey, with enough distance, now you just remember the fun stuff.

Yeah, so that was mainly what I gamed this month. And now as for movies and TV shows, yeah, I check out my letterbox to see, like I caught up with Bob and watched Vengeance Most Foul, the new Wallace and Grumman. I really liked it too. And as far as otherwise movies,, I had started finally watching Twin Peaks, I've talked about it before on here.

And then on January 16th, David Lynch passed away. And that was finally the extra like kick of like momentum, whatever you want to call it, that got my husband and I to like, we got to at least finish up to Firewalk with me, the original Twin Peaks. And so we watched all of it. I understand why people don't like parts of season two and find it too goofy. There are so many goofy things in it that are then not followed up on and I just had to just laugh at characters go like, well, that doesn't matter anymore. Like, you know, we're done with it. Yeah, I did my journey a few years ago. I mean,

I watched season one in 2010 after playing Deadly Premonition. I thought I have to finally watch Twin Peaks. I love Deadly Premonition. I watched season one. Everyone said, well, don't watch season two. It's fine. Just watch Fire Walk with Me, which I didn't do back then. And then I did the season two rewatch and you realize that, no, a big chunk of season two is really good. I think the first eight episodes or whatever, leading up to the reveal of the killer is very good. And then there's a very meandering chunk in the middle where you get things like, I mean, these aren't really spoilers, but Nadine goes back to high school and becomes Bam Bam. And then I think it's James goes off on this soap opera adventure on his own, which is kind of dull. And then there's a whole beauty pageant

thing, which I thought was very, very boring, but then it picks up again right at the end. And then I heard rumors that, oh, David Lynch didn't like how things were going, and he walked away from the project. And I had that in my mind while watching season two this time. And then you see him as a fucking character in the show. Yes, yeah. And I kissed the prettiest girl on the mouth. She wanted me to. Yeah, that was who who pitched that? I would like to know. but yeah, I then well

You know when I worked at a video store and was renting this was before their re-release of the DVDs We just had like the season one DVDs and I think like an imported season two DVDs My co-workers would say and I took it I heard it as the general wisdom of the odds I don't need to watch fire walk with me. It's just depressing and it doesn't, it's not a continuation. It's only frustrating if you love Twin Peaks. After he passed away, many people I follow on Twitter were saying like, no, this is like one of his best films. It's amazing. And when I watched it, the parts that felt like a continuation of Twin Peaks, that was like, okay. But Laura Palmer and like Cheryl Lee, she is so good in it. It is a dark, dark, dark movie,

but her acting and exploration of trauma is incredible. I was so moved. The last shots of the film, I am so moved by it. It really got me. It's so good, you don't even mind that they replaced Laura Flynn Boyle with Maura Kelly. I think she does a good job in that role, which, very big shoes to fill, because Laura Flynn Boyle playing Maura Kelly. I think she does a good job in that role, which, like, very big shoes to fill,

because Laura Flynn Boyle playing that character for two whole seasons. And you know what, it probably helps my view of it, knowing that, one, that people, apparently, I have not seen The Return yet, but I have heard people say, you definitely have to watch Fire Walk with me for The Return, and then also,

the missing pieces are incredibly important, which are basically like two episodes of Twin Peaks amount of minutes in it. I mean, I love how much he loves fucking with people because with the movie, and this is why people hated the movie. Well, they weren't used to seeing a movie version

of a TV thing they watch for free, but he basically said, you wanna know how it ends? Well, I went back to the beginning. And then people were like, well, fuck you. And then I think people were expecting, I hear the return is great, but I think people were expecting, I hear the return is great, but I think people were expecting, you will give me the answers I have been craving.

He's like, nope, not gonna do it. So don't go into the return. This is not a spoiler, because I have only watched one episode. We started and got sidetracked, and we're gonna go into it again. But I know for a fact, you are not going to get the answers you crave,

and he will resent you if that's why you're approaching the return. I have that fully considered now. And I know that I love, but Fire Walk with me is just, I didn't care as much about the continuation or, or the, the, the, honestly, if you want that, it felt like a frustrating movie of like, there's, there's a thing in the middle of that movie that is like the tiniest tease of the continuation of the story that I feel like how could you not feel like it's Lynch fucking with you of like hey oh do you like the

continuation story here here's one little moment anyway we've all been asking how's Annie for 25 years and then I watched Blue Velvet for the first time since I was a teen and I like it much more. As a teen, I wasn't ready for it. Like I didn't get it. And it's also though funny that we've done so much podcast research that it's like filmed in the same place. They filmed the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, 1990 in Wilmington.

So he was having his Frank Booth freakouts years before Leonardo was having the crisis of faith. In the same places, in the same hot South Carolina. And it was distributed by De Laurentiis Pictures the same, within like three months of the Transformers the movie. So those are funny connections, but. Great double feature by the way.

Transformers the movie and Blue Velvet. Yeah, no, I love Blue Velvet. It was really great. Now I was a big fan. So now I've got other Lynch films. I'm finally going to give a shot to. I'd never seen ball, Holland drive or lost high. No, I did watch last day highway as a teen as well.

And was like, didn't get it either. I was dumb. I really have come to appreciate Lynch a lot more, especially because I just love things that all just ripped off David. But I also say he's not for everybody. So you shouldn't feel like a dummy if you don't get it or you're not into it. He, also say he's not for everybody so you shouldn't feel like a dummy if you don't get it or you're not into it. I think he's an acquired taste and I don't like everything he does. Okay I'm more in tune with him now than I was before. I'll say that maybe

it's with age or something but yeah I feel though that was one last thing about my feelings on having to see now all of the original run of Twin Peaks, which is a frustrating thing watching it is that occasionally I will see a twist coming just because I really love the Alan Wake games and other things, but Alan Wake, when I see a thing in this show, like, wait, oh, Alan Wake did a thing like this. Oh, they just ripped it off from Twin Peaks. So I know this is what's going to happen next with this character. I guess, I guess Deadly Premonition barred a lot of superficial things, but didn't outright steal as many plot elements. So I went in really unspoiled. Also when I watched Blue Velvet and Dean Stockwell

lip syncs to Roy Orbison's In Dreams, I instantly like shouted out like, oh, God damn it, that's why that's in Alan Wake. Like they didn't, it wasn't an original thought for them to put Roy Orbison in Dreams in Alan Wake. So now we're building a case against Alan Wake. Remedy, you're on trial. And, and I finally, I took some pictures from it, looked at it on my feed, uh, on, on Blue Sky and on my Instagram.

But after we finished it, because we live less than 30 minutes from North Bend, Washington, we went to several of the filming locations of Twin Peaks. So we went to Tweed's Cafe, aka the R&R Cafe, and we went to what was filmed to be the Great Northern Hotel and had a look at those falls. They are beautiful. Also, we were there at the most beautiful, it was cold, but a clear, beautiful day. You could see the mountains all around you. It was just gorgeous, gorgeous weather.

Yeah, it's been a dry, sunny month in the Pacific Northwest. You picked a great day to go. And I think people I had always heard and heard the warning, I heard it on blank check. Bob had mentioned it to me too, that people have always said the pie there sucks. They must have finally, I was checking their Yelp reviews, and obviously you would hope that a place that's famous

for a character saying this is the greatest cherry pie I've ever had, it may be the most famous fictional cherry pie of all time. You would think they'd work really hard on it. It wasn't that shitty. It was a decent, okay slice of cherry pie of all time. You would think they'd work really hard on it. It wasn't that shitty. It was a decent, okay slice of cherry pie. That was my review. Now watching Twin Peaks again made me realize

oh, I never really opt for cherry pie. So I tried seeking it out and you find out that cherry pie is one of the rarer pies because cherries are only in season for a certain period of time. And I don't even know if it's a popular pie anymore. So you'll see apple and pumpkin and banana cream, but cherry I found is like very, very rare, at least when I am looking for pie. And, uh, and when I had, I never ordered black coffee at places.

Uh, and I did it at this and had a cup and a half and it was really good. And just straight black coffee. I never have coffee period. And I would probably have a black, but iced, but like no hot coffee gonna do this right and it was delicious but that one while I've eaten a lot of pie and can tell you if a pie is okay or not I rarely drink coffee so when I was like this tastes good but I can't tell you if that is actually that great. You'll have to fly me in I need to know. Is it garbage Folgers are they use are they grinding their own beans what's going on? Tweeds? You would hope at Tweeds they have better, but yeah well hey when the next

time you're in Seattle I'd be up for going with you and Nina to the to some of these places. It's a quick enough Uber ride, but I want to check it out. Other than Twin Peaks stuff, I had a lot of other things, but two other ones I wanted to mention was the new Saturday Night Live 50th anniversary documentaries that are on Peacock. They're called Beyond Saturday Night. While they are the official approved Lorne Michael version of stories, there are some fun ones. All four I think are worth watching, but if you're a Simpsons fan, I would point you to the one they did on the 11th season, Lorne Michael's return year, because while there was

lots of stories they barely told, they bothered to get Terry Sweeney on it to tell his stories, and they also got got George Meyer I could not believe it when George Meyer appears on screen and they filmed it was like wow they got George Meyer he lives he does it's though though also I mean it is slightly frustrating to see Al Franken just back on these things like he was like oh no harm no foul how Al Franken's back what did he he even do, who knows? So that sucks, but oh well. Yeah, yeah.

I heard a little bit about this from you, and I'm a big fan of the podcast, Last Podcast on the Left, and Henry Zabrowski was talking about this because he said he was getting all of these phone calls and DMs and people saying, I just saw you naked, and he was wondering, what are you talking about? Well, his audition is featured in the documentary as a, this guy didn't make it kind of a gag reel and he, his thoughts were, and check out a recent

episode of the last podcast on the left side story series for more on this, but his thoughts were it's cool that you showed this, but you act as if I'm some nobody who did not go on to do anything. He was in Wolf of Wall Street. He, his podcast makes a100,000 a month on Patreon, which is pretty nice. So he's like, at least say that I'm somebody now. But yeah, as many improv comedians did

in the late aughts, early 2010s, he had an act where he just took off all his clothes. Yes, yeah. I think I've seen the Birthday Boys do that two or three times on stage. It's why we can say that only a few of our guests on this podcast we've seen nude in person and Mike Hanford is one of them. Yeah, no, I'm glad you mentioned that, Bob, because yeah, I should have followed up on

that. I'm going to listen to that last podcast on the left because it was so shocking, not because he was nude, but because yes, Henry Zabraski just appears and that's in the first episode of it where it's going on about the audition process and they talk to many people who made it and they only talk a little bit to people who didn't make it. Like they have Stephen Colbert and he's there to like review his audition and then go like, Oh, this is awesome. Like, or I should have been hired. But mainly they want to focus on the positive stories of like, and then I got hired and it changed my life, blah, blah, blah.

And then the only one of like, they actually show you a person to say that was insane was Henry Zabrowski and showing him, it was what could have aired on TV, but it's like, wow, you see his full nude body with his hands cupped over his genitals. And they just, they do act very dismissive of like, and Henry Zabrowski, this actor showed up and he got naked and you know what? We'll always remember him as the naked guy.

I don't want to give away his story. His story is great. It's like a 20 minute anecdote, but he said ultimately they were polite to him as to why he didn't get the job and essentially their statement was we don't do you anymore which is we don't have a fat loud guy we want to be a little smarter a little more political a little more focused on impressions so I mean he loved Chris Farley a lot of his physicality and sense of humor comes from that school of comedy but SNL said we don't do that anymore I think they're just afraid of more of their comedians dying. Yeah, I get that. And hey, he should now say like, it's been a while, I didn't die. And if there's somebody on his podcast with substance abuse issues, it wasn't him.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. He didn't die. And he also lost a lot of weight from since that era. I wish they admitted honestly, they never want to admit their flaws in those documentaries because they're approved by Lawrence. So there's very few even moments of, we should have hired that guy kind of regrets. Like even though they really should. But yeah, especially if you're a comedy nerd hardcore, you'll know what stories they're not telling, but there's still some interesting stuff in it.

Lastly, the finale of Craig of the Creek, a show we covered on one of the cartoon, it got canceled like three years ago and they finally are putting the last episodes out on HBO Max. What even is a show anymore? Yeah, I saw Matt Burnett who we had on the show to talk about his show he co-created. He posted when the finale finally aired on the US Cartoon Network this weekend, he was like I stopped working at Cartoon Network a year ago. That's how long this episode has been finished. Yeah, we recently talked to two different show creators, and when we asked them, when does your show air,

the new episodes, they say, I don't know. And it's due to a lot of internal politics going on. But if you, like me, love the indulgence of Craig of the Creek to older anime fans, because that's the millennial anime fans are who make the show, and you'll love one of the last episodes, which is indulgently and wonderfully a parody of the last two episodes

of Neon Genesis Evangelion, all built around a toxic weeb who learns how to have better friendship skills and social skills, which obviously I could not at all identify with. Well, it's been a pretty long run for that show, right? Because we talked to Mapper Net as it had just started. It was in its first season, I want to say. Yeah, the last season took twice as long to come out,

but they still got over 100 episodes. Like, it did get a long run and its own spinoff. It's not like there were many shows that got treated worse than Craig of the Creek, but it's just a sad ending for it of them shutting down Cartoon Network. And lastly, I'm preparing for my own trip to Tokyo. We're spending a month in Tokyo.

A month? Sorry, a week. Boy, we have to adjust our schedule. Wait a minute, yeah, sorry. That was my wish casting there of like, yes, I can't wait to be there for a month. No, we only have time for a week. My husband can only take so much time off, but we wanted to go in a very quiet time.

And the first week of February is right before the next major holiday there. And so it should be a quiet time, we've heard, and not bad weather. And another reason I wanted to go is that the Ghibli short I have always wanted to see that never is there when I'm there for the Ghibli Museum, May and the Kitten Bus, the sequel to My Neighbor Totoro that they only play there for, it's a 13 minute short, finally is playing and it's only this month of February.

And so that's among the reasons I was looking forward to going back. So how many trips has this been for you for the Ghibli Museum? This will be number six. Wow. Okay. It is. I really do love seeing the short films there and then being exclusive is, and I mean, it's

a magical museum. You're living in Hayao Miyazaki's head space. He designed it and it's curated by Goro Miyazaki, who I don't think gets enough credit for being an amazing museum, but I love being there every single time. Maybe one of these times I'll keep an eye out for the old man, old sour puss, walking around there, as Neil Campbell apparently got to see him in person there one time.

He'll be picking up cigarette butts off the lawn with a long stick with a needle at the end of it. And do not make eye contact with him. Now I'll say this, word to the wise, if you're going to Japan for hunting and everybody else, what I did on my last trip, this is going to blow your mind, is I bought practical things that I need that didn't have anime characters on them,

or video game characters, because the exchange rate works in your favor, if you're an American or perhaps a Canadian. What I did this time is like, oh, I need a lot of new underwear, undershirt, socks, and I knocked all of those out by going to Uniqlo a few times in other stores because they're normally about half the price of what you pay in America and the exact same items and, you know, dishware and a few other things like that. So I recommend, you know, do the fun things, buy the fun things, buy all your Goku's and your Luffy's and your whatnots, but also be like, what do I actually need practically? Because it will be there, it will be cheaper.

You're already there. You're probably gonna buy more luggage to ship home, and I say, go for it. Okay, you know what, I will. We actually did buy a new piece of luggage at the end of our last trip. I think, will we get more dish towels or socks because they have Mario or Pokemon on them?

Maybe, but yeah, no, the exchange rate also is another reason we were like, oh, we should do this now while the exchange rate is good for us. You're helping their economy. I'm wearing actually my Don Quixote shirt I got from one of the Don Quixote stores. Yeah, no, it's also inspiring me to go back there too. And I've been going, it's funny to see your shirt.

It's like another reminder of like, oh yeah, I can't wait to go back and explore around. There's so many cool things we didn't do last time. I'm really, I want to check out Odaiba. I haven't been there in a while and I'm hoping Asakusa will be a little less crowded than it was on New Year's when I went there last. The odds are in your favor, I think.

Yeah, so look forward to, I will try to hold back too many Tokyo stories on the next community podcast. But if you want to see fun pics from it, that's on my blue sky and Instagram, which are both talking Henry fun things don't get posted so much on Twitter anymore for, you know, I don't feel like it as much. I don't know why. It's a real damn bummer. I'll say that much on the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz comes an unprecedented exhibition about one of history's the liberation of Auschwitz comes an unprecedented exhibition about one of history's darkest moments.

Auschwitz, not long ago, not far away, features more than 500 original objects, first-hand accounts and survivor testimonies that tell the powerful story of the Auschwitz concentration camp, its history and legacy, and let's move on to talk about questions and comments that were left on the Patreon, and we're going to move on to talk about Bart's inner child, and Mike Couture says, Important note about Bob Anderson, he has not left the Simpsons. Despite no longer being an episode director, he is an animation timer on several episodes of production season 35 and every

production episode of season 36 so far. Uh, thank you, Mike. I, I, I must've neglected to see that. So I guess he has stepped down from the role of being a director and moved on to another role that maybe, uh, is something he likes to specialize in. Maybe he doesn't want to be in charge of so many, uh, cat herding activities. So yeah. I have noticed when we cover a lot of the guys who were directors in the 90s, a lot of them do transition into the animation timer position.

And maybe, you know, it definitely seems like a real veteran skill to be like an expert on animation timing that if you can get a great director to just focus on that, like it probably makes things easier for younger directors of the episode to not have to focus as much on the animation timing. Yeah, timing is very important. And I guess it really helps to have a veteran there, someone who's been doing animation for 30 years, doing all the timing.

So Bob Anderson has not left the show. That's good to hear. Meanwhile, on the same episode, C. Nadell says in my first weeks as a K through 8th school traveling librarian Meaning I was the sole librarian for five schools. I was teaching some second graders about being responsible users I started telling them about a student who didn't always remember to bring his books back on time And if the book that he happened to have was one they wanted to borrow They might feel a little sad. One kid asked what this student's name was.

And without missing a beat, I said, Oh, let's call him Rutteger. And a district legend was created that day. I used Rutteger as my own personal Donnie Don't and created a whole backstory for him. He had a little brother named Langdon, of course. And since no student in my district was named Ruddiger, he proved to be an effective and non-threatening way to talk to students about the mistakes we all can make.

Simpson's references, is there anything they can't do? That's great. I love the creation of the fictional Ruddiger, not just Bart's alias. And I guess nobody can be named Ruddiger because according to George Meier, the name is actually Ruddiger. And Nancy Cartwright said Rutteger.

And they just thought, oh, that sounds good. Just go with it, Nancy. That's, I didn't even think of how Rutteger, if you say that, like, if he made up a kid and like he just said, oh, the bad kid in class that I'm saying shouldn't be like, their name is Ryan or whatever, then there's probably a Ryan who will get picked on

based on that. And you're adding to some kids misery but by making up a rutteger that nobody could possibly be in your school district or five different schools that's a lot for one librarian. Yeah hats off to you you're doing God's work. So moving on to Boy Scouts in the Hood and Nicholas Frederick says or Friedrich says in regard to Barney and the ship I believe this is a reference to the practice of impressments where UK naval recruiters hood, Nicholas Frederick says, or Friedrich says, in regard to Barney and the ship, I believe this is a reference to the practice of impressments where UK naval recruiters often go to bars and dupe drunk men to serving in the Royal Navy and in many cases simply kidnap them. And there is a

link to a Wikipedia article. So Barney was duped after his squishy adventure. So it was, it was technically impressment that would that that one makes sense for how the old-timey naval costume he is wearing when he wakes up. It looks like he was not only just impressed, but also that he was, or if that's the right verb for that, but not only was he a victim of Impressment, but from 100 years earlier, like from a Gilbert and Sullivan musical.

I mean, that's where the verb Shanghai comes from you Shanghai someone you you lead them astray and kind of enslave them a little bit. Right that's boy that's a dark that's a dark media what I never thought of that. Meanwhile on that same episode that Komorowski followed up on we we all were having questions about like why are certain things DVD extras because our guest Patrick Hotner had just started a DVD commentary style podcast called, Hey, that's me, which they've put out some really great ones. Check it out.

Thad, who has worked on DVDs and by that I mean, Blu-rays with bonus features. He says, bonus features are the property of the studio whose release they were produced for. Not to be a downer, but porting over all commentaries for everything to streaming is so unrealistic. It'd have to be someone's full-time job clearing everything for the service. When they were ported over on The Simpsons World, it was probably easier as it was one series and a service launched by the series able to clear with everyone on staff. Yeah, I mean, we know for a fact, and it's no mystery,

companies don't want to hire anybody. In fact, we're investing deeply in anti-job programs, so robots can do it. Don't worry about what you have to do to make money. So I'm not surprised that it's simply like, oh, in order to clear this material that 2% of nerds want, we have to hire somebody at a full-time wage

or even pay a contractor. We don't even want to waste time writing up the contract and talking to a person or interviewing or whatever, so fuck it. It's sad that nobody wants to do paid to have these things happen. And I mean, also like Thad, on social media, sadly often when I learn this about this person,

when a bad thing happens to them or they've passed away, Thad shares the names of these people who are like, do you know why like this cool archival feature happened at this studio? It's because one guy was still there who gave a shit about it and made sure that the studio actually released these things. And, and when I learned about them, like, you know, this archivist who worked at Warner or wherever just passed away, it's like, well, they're not hiring to replace that job, are they? Like, it's just you, they're, they're not going to have another one of that guy.

And thankfully, I mean, I wish they would still retain these officially, but thankfully, like I said earlier in the podcast, people are doing the work of putting this stuff online, and it seems to not be policed by the studios. And even Criterion falls victim to that, you know, that has to only be on the Blu-ray disc, because like, when I watched Blue Velvet, got the 4k the new 4k release of Different Criterion. The only the movie is on the 4k disc, none of the bonus features you got to put back in the Blu-ray to see the bonus features. There was a recent I bought the recent Columbo Blu-ray release and there were going to

be a lot of commentaries but the studio axed them for unspoken reasons so I mean it's still worth having on Blu-ray but there were a lot of commentaries, but the studio exed them for unspoken reasons. So I mean, it's still worth having on Blu-ray, but there were a lot of extras that just never got put on the discs. Ouch, man, that sucks. Yeah. And I was just reminded again that Comedy Bang Bang has an entire like fourth season of extras they made that just nobody would release for them of the TV series. Oh, how much of that was actually put on disc? Up to the middle of the third season.

Wow, wow, okay. And with really good extras and commentaries on every episode, they make sure to say on the commentaries, we're doing this for free. Like, we're working at a loss to put these extras on here. Again, God bless them for doing that. We're moving on to Marge versus single, senior, childless couples, teens, and and gays and Rob McBride says

Australia had only just recovered from the entire world Assuming we all carry a giant knife and live in a billabong then Steve Irwin came along and convinced the entire world that we all Cut about in khakis jamming our fingers into animal buttholes and shouting for now Henry. Did I get that correctly? I'm not sure what this reference is. Maybe that's what he says on Yeah, maybe that's why he says on, uh... Fla! Yeah, maybe that's what he says on, Fla! Oh, boy! Like, as he's jamming his thumb up the animal's butthole in the caricature on South Park.

Maybe that's it. And Rod goes on to say, A sea captain on a same-sex date? I suppose he read through all the issues of jugs gifted from Apu and resorted back to homosexuality. So, good explanation there. And I'm sorry that the croc hunter made your country look bad for about five or six years

But he paid for his crimes. Yeah, hey at least it was a combo like his he had an American wife and his kids sound American So it's a mix of American and Australian Defaming in these characters also on that one at which I'm not gonna bother repeating the entire title, thank you, Bob. Yes. But Eric Schuman says, "'One of the longest running programs "'at the radio station I work for is Kids Corner,

"'an hour-long call-in show for kids. "'It's been on the air long enough "'that I was the target demographic when it launched "'and eventually I became the show's engineer "'and occasional on-air guest decades later. "'Thanks to Kids Corner, I've learned more than I ever expected to know about contemporary independent music for kids, or kindy, as it has come to be known. While there are plenty of folks who exclusively make music for kids, more common are the 80s

and 90s alternative rockers who, since having kids of their own, have pivoted to making kindy music. You might already know about They Might Be Giants and Lisa Loeb's kindy albums, but did you know that the singers for bands like the Presidents of the United States of America and Velocity Girl also make kindy records under separate aliases? Kindy, eh? Well I know when we did the C-Lab episode of What a Cartoon a few years ago I found out that MC Chris makes kids music now.

Oh right, that's right. Man, that's, and didn't we also do, God, now I can't remember. There was another rock star or like indie musician who then like transitioned, that we covered, who transitioned into like children's songs that were then put in movies. Like that, I, definitely we knew about

They Might Be Giants as They Might Be Giants mega nerds. So we knew about that. I actually forgot about Lisa Loeb doing that. Yeah, yeah, I wasn't aware of that. Yeah, I think, well, because I only hear about Lisa Loeb when previous Talking Simpsons guest, Ali Gertz, talks about her on Twitter really. Right, her Saddam Hussein style political clone.

Yes, yeah, it's like her identical older cousin for that. Yeah, no, thanks Eric for the insight, especially your professional insight into the world of kindy made by indie rock musicians who then have their own kids to then sell to the same indie fans who then have children as well. Yeah, it's a more organic way to force your taste upon your children.

And there was that other band that now started doing just the Chuck E. Cheese music too. Yeah, I think it's just the lead guy from Bowling for Soup. Right, right, which I only learned about their involvement from the podcast The Ride obsession with the Chuck E. Cheese animatronic band. Me too. It's good to know that the bullying has ceased, but there's still much soup to be had. They've replaced the soup for cheap pizza.

Yes. So moving on, we're going to talk about Frozen, the water cartoon movie for December. And Trisha says, Sexualizing it against the Disney movies before and after it made me realize my biggest problem with it is irony poisoning Princess and the Frog doesn't hit you over the head with the subversion and even Moana confines its irony to mostly Maui It's like the flirting versus harassment meme even though I'm probably in the minority on that opinion now Henry I have not seen Princess and the Frog or Moana. How do you view this take? I think Princess and the Frog is mostly earnest and their parody of the children's story is it is their light recognition of the race dynamic at play in it because the princess story is beloved by the rich white girl who's friends with Tiana and childhood

friends and they grow up and still love each other but the rich white girl does not understand the class dynamics but she loves the white girl princess story while being while Tiana can't like she's like what kiss a frog like she doesn't get it so that's like the I'd say the irony there meanwhile in Moana mostly a Moana herself is she's an earnest non-ironic character but Maui is the one who played, the character The Rock plays, who shows up to be like, you're a princess with two animal sidekicks? You're such a cliche.

Like he literally says that to her. I think I recall that from a trailer or something. Yeah, I mean, I did enjoy Frozen, but I feel like it's time for Disney to stop making fun of the format. I mean, well, Wish, maybe Wish was more or less ironic. I think Wish was very sincere. That's why it failed.

Yes, yeah. For a lot of reasons. It wasn't a sequel or something. No more original things like Wish anymore. Only sequels. Nothing groundbreaking like Wish. And then Joshua Marchand said about Frozen, Disney tried to do their own wicked Sands, Blackjack, or Hookers throughout the 2010s,

hiring Adele Dazeem for a similar role, like we saw in Frozen, doing sympathetic origin films like Maleficent and Cruella, and who could forget Sam Raimi's big flop, Oz the Great and Powerful, which focuses on the wizard's background. I bet they're salivating looking at all of the money the official film adaptation is raking in.

Now, Pat Oswald has disgraced himself recently on social media, but I do still like his take about the Star Wars prequels. I almost said Star Trek, where he's like, I like ice cream. I don't want to look at rock salt. So I don't really care what came before. And I'm sure Wicked is fine. But I kind of had that same mentality when it comes to this prequel material, especially when it's this unauthorized fanfic-y stuff. You know, having seen Now Fire Walk with me, the prequely bits in it are also like the last, it's like, oh, where, how did this character get to this thing? Like now you see, now you know where this character got that thing. That's not so interesting to me, but I mean,

Wicked, the film adaptation of part one is a million times better than Oz the Great and Powerful. And I say that as a huge Sam Raimi fan. Yeah. I mean, based on what I know about that movie, it was James Franco trying to destroy the entire production from within. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, well also Maleficent and Cruella, like not very good either. And so I didn't even think of those when I was talking about how in that on frozen Oh, they hire a Dina Menzel to just play a similar Role to the one she originated on on Broadway and wicked It's only one of like five things that are very influenced by wicked in the Disney canon around this same time

You know speaking of Sam Raimi I'm very excited for him to return to horror because he did the big Disney Lord of the Rings-style Wizard of Oz movie, then he went to the Marvel minds, and now he can finally just go back to doing what he's really good at. Oh, that's great. I hadn't seen what his next thing was. It's only just been announced recently,

at least within the past few months. It's called Send Help. Oh, awesome. I'm excited to see that. Yeah, I love Sam Raimi. When I watched Hudsucker Proxy, which I did finally get around to for Powerpuff Girls research, you'll hear about it on that. But learning how much Sam Raimi was involved in that, it made me love it even more.

There's so many of his touches in it. But Oz is very powerful. It's Raimi-y. Yes, it's mainly thanks to James Franco. It's bad. That son of a bitch moving on to talking Futurama that darn cats and Joshua Marshon is back who also says it's my pedantic duty to point out that the end of Bender's game all dark matter in the universe is rendered inert which may explain why Lila throws Nibbler's waste directly into the lava

pit though it doesn't explain why Lila calls it highly volatile and would need a forklift when inert dark matter is shown to crumble at the touch, but if they're happy to ignore the events of that movie, they won't get an argument from me. And yes, Joshua, for Bender's Game and especially for Into the Wild Green Yonder, watching those was like being abducted by aliens in which I had no memory of my time with those movies. I just blinked and it was over and I was suddenly in a different place. Bender's Game, the only things I remember is like the corny jokes that can't be erased from my memory

but the plot mechanics of it, that I did, did totally erase. And yeah, so when we were talking in that episode, like, wait, why is she throwing away Dark Matter? I thought that was the ship's engine. We had completely forgot that change to the universe of Futurama that the show was expressing in her throwing out the dark matter. Yes, thank you Joshua for understanding why we couldn't remember that, but I credit you for remembering it. And Joe Hodgson says on That Darn Cats,

as one of the Talking Simpsons Network self-professed toy boys, I have never had an issue with my collection and cats knocking them over, and I've had a cat pretty much my entire 40 plus years on this earth My current home is littered with figures on shelves and various surfaces and my kitty could not care less I will say the one problem I did have was back in probably 2009 when I probably unwisely Splurged on a hot toys Batman from the Dark Knight and set it up on display on my kitchen table. I was a very cool bachelor.

One of my cats who were kittens at the time actually ate one of Christian Bale's batarangs. At least I assume she did. One of the remaining ones had been chewed. I never saw it in her litter box, but I also never found it. We can only assume she passed it successfully if you didn't hear Kitty screaming.

I would guess, I don't know how big that batterang was, but it could just have been packed away and while you cleaned out the litter box, I don't blame you for not rifling through the droppings. It could have been encased in something, but yes, I'm glad everybody tolerated my hatred of cats. No, I think cats are fine. I lived with cats for a decade.

I'm living the bird life and it's incompatible with cat life and I hey I saw flow which is about a cute kitty And you and you didn't hold it against that film. No, no, no, I have nothing against cats despite all they've done to me You'd be justified and that shows you how no court would find me guilty So moving on we have talking of the hill cotton's plot Trisha says, Speaking of Bugs Bunny with telegrams, he's also the reason we associate Nimrod, meaning idiot. At the time, he was referencing a hunter from the Bible. And so I dug into this. Now, Nimrod was used as a pejorative term before Bugs Bunny used it, but this led me to believe, this research, that Bugs Bunny did popularize the term Nimrod as an insult for people.

And that is why, 60 years later, Green Day's hit album was called Nimrod as an insult for people. And that is why 60 years later Green Day's hit album was called Nimrod, thanks to Bugs Bunny. I, it was many years later in my life I knew that's what Nimrod was. There was a Marvel enemy called, a bad guy in X-Men comics called Nimrod. And it's because he's a hunter robot. Like that's what Nimrod is.

But I always thought of him like, what, the guy that Bugs Bunny always thought of him like what the guy that Bugs Bunny makes fun of or like that cartoon insult. Now like the one time my mom totally owned me and she she hasn't done this much is when I brought home the Green Day album Nimrod and I was like looking at the liner notes and she's like oh what is that and she took it away from me to look at it. She had no problem with what I listened to. And the cover of Green Day's Nimrod is like stock images of very generic 50s looking white people with an orange stamp over their face

that says Nimrod on it. And she looked at this and rolled her eyes and she's like, what does this say about society? Or something smart like that, something smart ass like that. And I thought like, now that is kind of embarrassing, isn't it? Yeah.

Dang, and your mom really got you on taste there. It's not as bad as Hail to the Thief. Oh man. I feel like Tom York should be in jail for that, that album title. Yeah, no, that's, you expect a little better. Well, back then you expected a little better from Radiohead, or I did, but yeah,

I know that Hail to the Thief, it was, at the time I was up for things that mock George Bush, but it also is like, I maybe gave it, cut it to break it, like, well, they're British, they are, maybe they have not, maybe this feels more novel if you're a British rocker than if you're an American one. Maybe it sounds better in a British accent, who knows?

Oh, and finally on Cotton's plot, we had actually several really good, insightful, though, the long to read comments on, because we both, we open up the floor to like, hey, how does this sound like physical therapy? Like anybody here wants to share their experiences and compare it to this episode. The one I used here is Icy Weiner, who says,

and almost exactly the same time this episode aired, my mom became wheelchair bound for the remainder of her life due to an allergic reaction to the hep c vaccination. What makes these two episodes so remarkable to me is the same reason I struggled to watch them when I was younger. They are such an accurate portrayal of the loss of dignity that someone experiences when they lose their ability to walk. Yeah, we had a lot of people chime in with their own stories about injuries far less severe than Peggy's like minor foot problems and things like that. And just saying, yes, even with a problem this minor, the recovery process still takes

so long. And it sounded like a lot of it was anecdotal evidence we were getting that a lot of people seem to agree with the idea of like, well, yeah, it's one, one hour a week is not enough. And sometimes your physical therapist is splitting his time or their time between a lot of patients at once because that's what the job demands. And then on top of that, it sounds like they really, you know, even more so when they can tell you watch this video online, it's just all put on you of like, well, hey, this was a good hour you've got with me.

Spend the rest of the week doing it all yourself at home. Don't go here. Here's some printouts. Here's a YouTube video to watch. I've been blessed enough to not have been injured in any severe way or even really any minor way outside of like oh I stubbed my toe or whatever but recently I got a mole removed from my face it was like a little raised mole but it was irritating it was getting in the way I didn't like how it looked so I

basically paid the price of a Nintendo switch and got it burned off my face but just having a very clean open wound on your face for that long makes you realize like God wounds take forever to heal I was wishing for Wolverine's, you know Abilities during the I don't know month and a half it took for that thing to finally like smooth over and even now it's still It's still in the healing process like six months later or whatever But like little things like that really do remind me like god damn it. It takes forever to heal from anything We're both lucky to have not needed, you know physical therapy But like little things like that really do remind me like, God damn it. It takes forever to heal from anything. We're both lucky to have not needed, you know, physical therapy. I appreciate it.

And I appreciated the insights of what it's like, especially, you know, the, the victims of the American healthcare industry, uh, to reflect on this episode, which yeah, I think I, I'm glad we, I worried before we watched it that I think like, oh, this is just like blaming soft physical therapy for like that it's not helping Peggy. But I definitely I feel much more like the idea you put out there, Bob, of like, no, this guy just has the physical therapist in this has like a dozen people he has to watch it once and he can't help anybody. It's not as obvious as they could have made it because it wasn't like really a conversation a lot

of people were having then. We're really having this conversation now. But yeah, that's all the comments from from this month that we were going to spotlight on on the episode. Yeah, and that's been a fun talk to the audience, everybody. Thank you for surviving listener catch up month. It was a rough week in early January, but maybe we brought some people on board by showing off some of the things we've got on the Patreon. We put a King of the Hill on there.

We put an episode of what a cartoon movie and Hey, if you're on the $5 level, you get that what a cartoon movie episode on the Patreon. It's just waiting there for you. Yeah. And if you enjoy those things too, and know that they are all ad free on the Patreon as well and same with these podcasts, like, and really if you love that Ninja turtles one we did and all of the, the research and commentary and history we've put into that, that's what we do every friggin month on that What a Cartoon movie with like tons of like,

oh man, the research Bob put into Snow White and right now what I'm putting into How to Train Your Dragon like I've checked out digitally from the library the original book, the children's book that will probably take an hour to read but maybe two but we're putting in, we put so much effort into those histories. And yeah, please look forward to our episode about Powerpuff Girls. I know it's been highly demanded for a very long time. And again, we are entering the seventh year of What a Cartoon. So I'm happy with that milestone, and it's good to end it on Powerpuff Girls as we roll

into year eight. And hey, we're about to hit the end of our tenth year in Talking Simpsons. There could be something planned for that. Who knows? Yeah. Our first What a Cartoon we recorded, I think you mentioned on that Powerpuff Girls podcast, it was Dexter's Lab, and now we're finally covering the Powerpuff Girls, which was like season four of Dexter's Lab, basically, production wise.

And yeah, we have really cool Futurama and King of the Hills coming as well. But yeah, that has been another episode of Talk to the Audience. We'll see you next week for an episode of Talk to the Simpsons, take care. ["The Simpsons Theme"] Wow, infotainment.