Talking Simpsons - Talk to the Audience?!? - January 2026

Episode Date: February 4, 2026

We've reached the end of the month (and the beginning of a new year), which means it's time for another episode of our community podcast! This time around, we discuss the most recent Simpsons episodes—before the upcoming drought—and news about another upcoming Simpsons movie: Boots Riley's silver screen adaptation of Mr. Burns, a Post-Electric Play. And, as always, we read and respond to your comments and questions from the last round of episodes. It's all happening on Talk to the Audience: the podcast that's even more fun than Unnecessary Surgery Land! 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!

I heartily endorse this event or product. Ahoy, hoi, hoi, everybody, and welcome to talk to the audience where this is Always Death. I am one of your hosts based on an off-Broadway play, Bob Mackie, and who is here with me today, as always. Henry Gilbert, still waiting to be adapted by Boots Riley as well. We have the same joke because there's very little news this month. And yes, this is Talk to the audience. It's our community podcast. On this podcast, we talk about what's happening in the Simpsons world, what's happening in our world.

And then we spend the rest of the podcast responding to your questions and comments left on the Patreon. And yes, it's a very slow news month in the world of Simpsons. We have two new episodes to talk about. And essentially one item and I guess 1.5 news items, we're trying as hard as we can. The New Year has started. Frankly, everything is terrible in the universe right now. And even the Simpsons can't bring a smile to our faces unless we're watching the old episodes. Yeah, January, 2026 felt like it had eight major news things happen every day.

but not in the world of the Simpsons, only in the world of horrible things happening all the time. Yes, and let's get started with discussion of the new episodes. The first one is The Fall Guy, Yay, aye, y. So in this episode, it's a parody of the recently made The Fall Guy movie, which was a remake of a TV show that I think no one was really aware of. I've never seen an episode of that. I don't think many people even saw the Ryan Gosling and Emily Blunt movie either of The Fall Guy,

but it's a interesting one. It feels like what happens with a lot of Simpson's episodes where they see that an old thing from their childhoods is getting remade. And so then they get to make an episode about a 70s thing, but they're like, no, no, no, this is about the thing that just got remade, not the 70s thing. And there are a lot of guests in this one because bumblebee man is now voiced by Humberto Veles, who is the longtime Latin American voice of Homer.

So is this the first time Hank has not voiced Bumblebee Man? No, that one, I should have looked this one up, but Bumblebee Man in the last few years has definitely not been voiced by Hank Azaria. He was replaced, but I think this is the first time Humberto Veles has taken over the voice for him. Yes, since 2020, he has been played by Eric Lopez. There was a 2020 edict in which they recast all of the non-white characters who are played by Hinkzeria for the most part. But this is like the biggest episode Bumblebee Man has ever had. the hires Homer to be his, you know, stuntman. I think it's clever that they then picked, you know,

as a credit to all of their, you know, Mexican and South American fans who, to them, many of them who are our age, Homer Simpson sounds like Humberto Veles. They're like, well, isn't it funny that he's now sharing scenes in a undubbed Simpson's episode with Dan Castellaneta as Homer? It is great he gets to do this. I wish the episode was a little better because it does remind me, a lot of both the Homer they fall and Homer Palooza in which Homer's new job is one that could endanger his health and possibly kill him and March has reservations. I know there are only so

many stories, but I just kept thinking of the better version of this. But it was cool to see the Latin American Homer voice highlighted because, like you said, Henry, a large portion of the world thinks of him when they think of Homer, not Dan Castaneta. And he wasn't the only one of the Latin American Spanish voice actors in there either. There was Patricia Acevedo,

who is long-time Lisa, and Claudia Mata, who's the longtime Bart. So you've got in minor roles in the episode.

More just as like little tidbits for people who know the Latin American dump, which I did not. This was all news to me when I

looked at the credits. And the director Alejandro Iniaratu. Did I say that correctly? I think it's Iniaritu. Iniaritu, sorry. Okay.

Yes. There's a lot of vowels in there. I apologize. weirdly Homer calls him out as the director of the Revenant. Has he directed anything since then? Well, I know he is directing the film Digger that stars Tom Cruise. I know that's happening.

But in between that and the Revenant, wait, Birdman was after the Revenant, wasn't it? Yeah, so he did Birdman. I think so. No, I think it was right before The Revenant. I mean, I'm looking at, so everybody, Wikipedia is here to stop everyone from screaming. Birdman, 2014, The Revenant, 2015, 2022. Bardo. And 2026 Digger.

Okay. I had missed the one in between there, that Bardo. Henry, you have not seen Bardo false chronicle of a handful of truths? To be honest, after Birdman, I watched his movies up to Birdman, and I say this loving Michael Keaton and wishing he had won an Oscar for that. That movie was so goddamn pretentious. I just could not. It was too much for me. It was too much for me.

When he is yelling multiple times at critics, for like, you critics, you don't make anything. and yelling at his daughter Emma Stone, you guys just care about going viral. It's like, God damn, this is just boomer complaining the whole movie and in pretentious ways. Birdman did not star the birdman I liked so I didn't see it. Perhaps Digger will be better. Who knows?

You know, also I'm behind on the movies of Johnny Knoxville. I've missed the last couple of jackasses and he was also in the episode. Yes, not Latin American as far as we know. But this episode is just stuff full of guest stars. Yeah, I appreciate the effort they made to have some legitimacy to story about like the

Simpson's most major Mexican-American character in Bumblebee Man, which is a very silly idea if you know the history of Bumblebee Man. But he is, and I think they put effort into that, but basically they replace the cannonball of Homer Paloosa with a giant pyramid that they instead fall down. Yes. And this one was dedicated to Rob Reiner,

who was a guest of the show at some point. And definitely a longtime friend of him and Brooks and everybody. all worked in the same circles for basically since they were all youngsters working in television in the 70s and in 60s. And so that was the fall guy. Yeah, yeah, yai. Up next we have separants, which I will admit I am a fraud as a podcast host.

I did not watch this for a very good reason. My wife and I want to watch Severance. We both know nothing about it. Absolutely nothing. So I did not want a parody to spoil that experience because I know it is a show that's full of spoilers, full of twists. But Henry, what was your experience? with this episode? Well, it's funny that, yes, I did watch it, but also have not seen severance.

I have only picked up context clues from other people talking about it. And so now I think you maybe made the right choice, Bob, because the episode is not just by being a parody of severance, I think it will give you context clues for things that will be like fun mysteries that you could discover by watching it. But also, it's even about like it being a mystery box and like the resolution of the episode is kind of putting mystery box shows on trial in general, which then it's kind of them accusing like, okay, does thing X from Severance really make sense kind of thing? Those are a lot of the jokes in the episode. I like the idea behind it.

Maybe I'll circle back around to it when we watch Severance. That's Apple, right? Yeah, it's an Apple TV plus. Okay. That means Torrance. I think they've now changed it. I think they got rid of the plus. I think it is now just called Apple TV.

I feel like everybody. has Apple TV because they've purchased an Apple product, but I recently bought an Apple watch because my Fitbit died. It doesn't give me anything. It's like, do you want Apple music? And I say, go to hell. Where's my six months of Apple TV plus premium? I do have Apple TV and never

watch it. And I have it because I forget I have it because I don't pay for it. Well, I mean, I do pay for it in that apparently whatever level of Verizon I use for my phone includes as a bonus Apple TV. I've had it for months And I've been meaning to watch like the Martin Scorsese documentary on it. I've heard very good things about that.

But the only thing I've watched on it this year were two of the Peanuts holiday specials, Thanksgiving and Christmas, because that's where those live right now. They're hold up on Apple Plus. Wait, Apple TV Plus? Apple Plus? I think it's just Apple TV. I think that's the current, but you can never keep track of the branding. What I do know is Zach Cherry appears in this show playing basically the character he does on Severance,

which is a very strange. Like normally they don't do that to have like a one-to-one guest star kind of thing. And this episode was devoted to or dedicated to rather John Albarian who, as best as we can determine, he worked on the Simpsons DVDs. He seems to be a documentary producer

based on his IMDB credits. I could not find a proper eulogy online looking for it, though this could be one of those things where the Simpsons dedication comes before even the eulogy writers can get to it. But based on his IMDB, the only real Simpsons credit I can see in there is He won an award for, I think, it's the season six,

Simpson's DVD special features. And I had seen on one message board saying, like, he had worked on, you know, doing the interviews or working with the crew on behalf of Fox to, like, get interviews and other produced special features for the DVDs. Okay, I see. Hey, I've been watching that DVD again. Great DVD sets.

One of the best. We actually know his work pretty well, I think. So rest in peace as well to John Albuy. as well as Rob Reiner. So not a lot of news, but we can re-announce that the next episode that will air will be coming on February 15th. It's called A Rational Treasure,

which is being advertised as the 800th episode. We know that's not true because guess who's coming to Skinner, I guess technically was the 800th episode. And it turns out that the four episode discrepancy between that one and this one is probably because there are four Disney Plus exclusives

that don't count as part of the total episodes aired count they're doing with this 800. I don't know what their metric is, but it's still a big cheat. Yeah, when I looked on, the numbering is very good on list of episodes on Wikipedia, the Wikipedia list of episodes

for each season of Simpsons. And yeah, when they call Skinner 800 broadcasts, but 800th made, but 804th is the actual 800th episode. It is because it was those four episodes, the two-part Christmas special, the one where,

Lisa goes back in time with Joseph Gordon Levitt Burns and the Animal Planet one or the National, whatever, the Nat Geo one. Those four did not broadcast, so Fox is not counting them as towards 800. That is their choice. This is a Fox count, I guess so. I mean, it is really, it's up to Fox to promote this. So this seems like it could be more of a Fox network choice than a Disney choice on the numbering of Simpsons. I see. Well, I'll still be celebrating. I'm not canceling my 800 episode party. Everyone is still invited. Oh man, I'm going to be out of town on February 15th. I'll have to watch it the next day. You know what? I'll be in the home of Mac raining and where the Simpsons were invented. So you know what?

In a way, I will be celebrating 800 episodes of Simpsons. The perfect place to be. And we are down to our last news item, which I feel like is the most exciting one. So it was recently announced that Boots Riley, the director and I believe writer of Sorry to Bother You, he is adapting Anne Washburn's Simpsons-Theme Mr. Burns play called Mr. Burns, a post. electric play. So in this play, it's about the post-apocalypse. And as far as I know, it is about how Simpsons episodes are now passed down as mythology and the play ends with a recreation of Cape Fear

by the storytellers, the Simpsons episode. And I don't know anything about this play. All I know is Mike Reese says, it stinks. He was not a fan of it. Both times we did Cape Fear, we've had listeners, comment and say, like, oh, you guys should watch this. I've never been aware of when it has been performed anywhere near me. I know it has been, and I could have gone, but I've missed out on it then. Now this will finally give me an excuse to do it. I think, I mean, based on Sorry to Bother You, I would say Boots Riley, seems like a good fit as a great comedy director who also has like a really good sense of like social justice and satire, I think, too. This news came out a good time for me personally because I had just rewatch, Sorry to Bother You within the past month. My wife had

never seen it and we both really enjoyed it. I think it really holds up. It's easy to be like, I'm a smug guy from the future. Let's see your old satire. But no, it really does hold up, except now I feel like it's a little naive in the fact that CEOs no longer want living things as their workforce. They just want computers. So that's why it's like one step behind our current nightmare reality. But I feel like there's so much in that that's still wonderful, still holds up.

And I realized that I completely missed the thing he did between, sorry to bother you, and this upcoming project was a TV show called I'm a Virgo, about a 13 foot tall teenager in Oakland. I had no idea this existed. Like most streaming shows, it comes, it goes. They might promote it once when it launches. But yeah, I'm interested in digging into this, too, because there's like an unseen Boots Riley project, seven episodes. I'm a real Boots Riley poser as well that like I knew about it from when it launched. And I just, I never made the time for it as an Amazon Prime show. I saw clips from it that looked very funny. Also, he's selling it to me. I'm a Virgo too. I should be watching a show about

Virgo's. Obviously, it's made for me. Usually, when I'm watch older political satire or cultural satire. I'm less the smug guy from the future and more the depressed guy from the future because and sorry to bother you, there's still the working idea that no matter how bad things get for you, you can always just kind of work at a call center. That's always like the lowest rung, this dead end job. We don't have those. We don't even have those anymore.

That was what was happening in my hometown when I left in the early 2010s. Like everybody I know had worked at a call center, had the opportunity to work at a call center because they were just taking up all of the abandoned office. space. And the movie, sorry to you really spoke to us, too, as like, we lived in the Bay Area at the time. Like, we both lived in Berkeley right next to Oakland, where the film was set.

He definitely engages with, like, the sociopathic tech bro culture that was, has effectively ripped apart the city entirely and eaten its soul. It's funny, he found Army Hammer, a real evil man to play the evil Elon Musk type in it. Now,

really evil, do we want to go that far? He just got has a really weird kink about role-playing eating people. That feels like the tip of the iceberg on these things with him. I don't know. The jury can be out on whether he's evil. Yes, I really need to watch I Amargo. I mean to have seen it by now.

I think I've told this story before, but I've seen Boots Riley in person. I happen to go to the same screening of across the Spider-Verse at an Oakland AMC theater that he was at. I was filling up my drink at the soda machine, and there's just a buzz and then I turn around.

I see his giant hat first. He's wearing the giant hat out to this. He wants to be noticed. So I didn't feel like too much of a jerk to be like, oh, you're great. Thank you. You felt the boots buzz. I did feel the,

and I mean, it did feel special of like, wow, I am watching, you know, the Miles Morales Spider-Man film with Boots Riley. Like, it felt more special in that way. I think, yeah, I saw it in San Francisco, sorry to bother you. And Boots wasn't there, but his spirit was.

It was a fun experience to see that. It was a real gut punch to see that. actually in San Francisco. I didn't see it until digital, like the year after it came out, but yeah, I was still there too. It was a real gut punch. So I'm interested. Now I'm kind of glad I waited this long.

I am going to wait continuing until I see this. I'll say another thing I like about Boots Riley, getting to adapt this is that it also does feel like kind of a middle finger to Disney. I would think he is not producing this with Disney and he is counting on, you know, parody law or other type of fair use coverage to get away doing this. He'll have to call it Mr. Snub. I'm curious just to see how he legally navigates this against the scariest entertainment lawyers that probably exist at the Disney Corporation.

Yes, and the reason why we talked about Sorry to Bother You for five minutes it's because, well, it's a great movie, but also that's it for Simpson's News. Yes. Hey, Bob, there's a new soap out there from Dr. Squatch of Simpson's Soaps. Did you see this? You know what? I can wash my butt without a cartoon character being on the soap. That's fine. But what if it's Bart on it and it smells like?

a squishy, huh? Do we even know what a squishy smells like? What's a green squishy? Oh, sure. I guess the green squishy smells like lime, you would think, right? That's, I think, the greener is. Maybe apple. I don't know what's going on. I miss my Sydney-Sweeney bathwater soap and I'm boycotting the company. Oh, also, hey, I've got another piece of news.

Keep an eye out at your local stores, guys, because people are marking down some post-Christmas toys. I am holding up a $3 bar to the daredevil toy that I had picked up at a local shop because they are heavily marking down the Jack's toys. That's like the kind of stuffed animal version of him. Yes, it's such a throwback because hard plastic head while soft body, just like our childhoods, which I assume is why they made it that way. I see. Well, I saw someone on our Discord point out that they picked up a Lenny for like $7.

So find the Lenny. If the Lenny's are out there, nobody wants Lenny. I saw like the Simpsons couch too, but I was like, I don't want that for the Jack's things. Believe you me, if I had seen six. sandwich Homer from the Jacks line. I'd have bought that in a second. But I didn't find six sandwich Homer anywhere. And I just don't know if I want to pay $25 to get them on eBay. Will I cross that line, listeners? Wait and see. I guess final news item, I'm looking at this soap. Donut

delirium is the other soap flavor, sense, brand. For Dr. Squatch, right? So yeah, I guess I suppose that covers two demographics then, right? They figure the young people want Bard and the men want Homer, I'm guessing. Maybe. I think these are all for different kinds of 40-year-olds, honestly. Yes. The men you have to trick into washing themselves. For either the wives, girlfriends, or mothers of many Simpsons fans who need to convince him. You like Homer. Can you rub Homer on your body when the water is running over you? There you go. And they throw them a treat. Homer would really like it if you scrub between your ears. Yes.

Okay. Anyway. Enough about the soap. So we're going to move on to Talking Simpsons News. And first up, our schedule for the month of February. And we're kicking things off with a new episode of What a Cartoon. We took a brief break as we normally do at the beginning of the year. Now we're back. We'll be covering the classic 80s cartoon gem and the episode The Fan. And the reason we're doing this is because Dan McCoy from the podcast, The Flop House, reached out to us and he wanted to do a gem episode with us. So Dan's on the show. I think it's like two and a half hours long. And it is a gap in our 80s coverage on What a Cartoon. So I think you're going to have a lot of fun listening to that one. A lot of talk about how it came to be about all the toy cartoons of the mid-80s. and also mid-80s pop as well

and the episode the fan is a really wacky one that we had a lot of fun talking about in just a loving goofer bout way. You can find it on 2B you can find it on YouTube. The gem series is very available. Yes, very available. And then for our patrons at patreon.com slash talking Simpsons we have our typical miniseries episodes. The first one, Talking Futurama will be covering

Yo Lila Lila. It is an episode about Lila obviously in which she creates her own children's show but mostly it is a parody of the late 2000s, early 2010s show Yo Gabba Gabba, which I guess is now a current show because the new reboot season, the second reboot season is about to launch as this podcast does. So everything old is new again. And we had a lot of fun listening to this one or sorry, watching this one. You'll have fun listening to it.

Me as an elder millennial getting to really experience Yo Gabba Gabba for the first time this episode. And also it's got a lot of fun like jokes about the Nickelodeon and other. kids' entertainment of the aughts, too, in there. And we're talking to the Hill for patrons. We're covering high anxiety, the second part of the two-part murder mystery. I don't want to say much about it. I love how this resolves in a very anticlimactic way. And it is where Hank Hill smokes weed.

You've seen the gifts online. You've seen the pictures. Now you can hear us talk about it. And will I learn the right tips to buying things on eBay by watching Gail buy weaibles in that episode? Learn your own tips and tricks, too, listeners. Now you need a bot to watch your evil weevil auction. Yeah, the eBay is honestly, like, I just use it as add to cart buy instantly ones.

It's been a long time since I have even bid on an eBay thing because you just get sniped at the last second. There's no reason to even invest yourself in it. And what a cartoon movie? Well, last month for What a Cartoon movie, we covered Sleeping Beauty. Now we're covering the exact opposite of that film because you've been asking for it, I think maybe. But we're covering Shrek 2. Five years before this, we covered Shrek 1 for its, I want to say, 20th anniversary. Is that something right?

Yeah, yeah, it was. Yeah, for 2021, it was the 20th anniversary. We're just missing the 20th anniversary of this one. Well, actually, no, we're missing it by two years. But Shrek, it's time to finally do Shrek 2. Also, is Shrek 5 is on the horizon. We may as well start with Shrek 2. I have heard, I have only seen clips of this.

I've never watched it all the way through. I have heard from the younger people than us. The Shrek 2 is the best of the Shrek's. I've heard this. Interesting. I know nothing about it. We'll be in a better headspace than when we cover the first Shrek, because when we covered the first Shrek,

I had just seen my wife. We were living separately because I was in America. She was in Canada. We had to spend nine months without seeing each other because of the pandemic. I got to see her for a month, and then I had to spend seven more months not seeing her. And within that seven months, we were covering Shrek. And I just remember like, man, I'm just watching Shrek over and over.

This is not ideal. But, hey, but my wife does refuse to watch Shrek too. So that will not be part of the equation, although I feel like I'm not going to enjoy this movie. We'll have fun talking about it, though. You're watching the first Shrek jealous of Shrek and Fiona's love. and being kept away from your Fiona. Yes, I was butting into an onion and crying tears of onion-based sadness.

I know this is the one where we get introduced to Puss and Boots. I know that. This is where Puss and Boots joins the series. And maybe if we ever do a third one of these, not maybe, when eventually we do a third one of these, I think I would rather just skip straight to Puss and Boots 2, which was a good movie. If we do a Shrek movie every five years, I think we can get through them all. Yes. By the time we get to Shrek 5, they'll be up to Shrek 7 with the AI generated voices.

of all the main cast. It's likely, it's likely. And so, yes, if you are on the free feed or the $5 feed, you'll get the preview of our Shrek 2 podcast. If you're on the $10 feed, though, you'll get to hear the entire thing. I'm guessing probably five or six hours about Shrek 2. Can you stand the excitement behind that?

Since the movie is all built around, I would bet tons of references, I'm going to have to pause every second to be like, well, this, of course, is from this movie that was popular in 2003 that no one remembers. I can't wait to cover it. And yeah, that is our schedule. a fun February getting back to our regular regular scheduled podcast. And now it's time to talk about

we've been playing and watching that's not related to podcasts. I have very little to talk about because I've been playing a few very long games watching a lot of things, but it's been just a month to decompress and chill out after the holidays. And honestly, we spent a lot of December just catching up with our recording backlog because of all the sicknesses and the broken bones and the other things that were happening. So now we're in a spot where we've worked ahead a few weeks and we can just kind of take things a little easier. So for me, I have been playing Balders Gade 3 with my wife. It's been a great experience. We played a lot of it over the holiday break. And now every Thursday, we have a little night we like to call Baldur's Date, which we play the game for three or four hours.

Although if you have a wife, you don't have date nights. It's just this person you hang out with all the time. But we try to be cute about it. But we're having a lot of fun with that. I like just the amount of coordinating enough to do when you have another player on board with all of the decisions you make, everything you do in the battles. Bouldersgate 3 is such a like dense, long game. It's hard to even discuss in broad strokes here on the podcast. I'm just really enjoying it. Finally glad I'm getting around to playing this game. A game that came out at the worst possible time when I was moving to another country and then immediately doing a bunch of conventions after that. Yeah, I guess I'll mention like that's the only game I was playing this

month as well, really, other than a couple of phone apps. But like yes, I promise I'm not copying you, Bob. I was just, my husband and I, we had bought Baldersgate 3 over a year ago after it won the game of the year stuff. But then we found out we couldn't. He wants to get trophies. I want to play it on the Xbox. And there wasn't cross-system play until a few months ago, I think. So once we could finally have, we hated playing at split screen. I don't know if you play at split screen. We play it on a different. Yeah, yeah, separate screen. And my wife, Nina just got a new gaming PC's. I'm super jealous. Okay, Bob, come on. What type are you? What's your class? What's your race? What's your race? race. I'm a wood elf, Druid. Oh, cool, cool. Oh, man. And I'm a lady.

Oh, a lady. Wow. There's sexy Druid, male druid, who can join your party, who we're really into. But my character is also a wood elf, yeah, wood half elf, but ranger. I want to have a ranger because I wanted to, instead of become an animal, talk to animals and summon animals. Yeah, I do the

talking to animals, too, with my character. I think we're like 33 hours in, but it feels like it made a lot of progress, but then when you see just how much of the map, you've uncovered it, like, wow, that's not a There's just so many people to talk to, so many decisions to make, so many just little intricacies to the world. At the 50-hour mark, we just passed the 50-hour mark because we play a few times a week and a bit on the weekends in the last few weeks. And when we got at the 50-hour mark, we entered a new chapter of the game that actually felt like, did the game just begin now? I thought we were playing the game, but it feels like the game just began at 50 hours.

It's not really like that. Like you could have alleged that of say Dragon Quest 7, but it is interesting that it just feels like, wow, this game really opened up again. Yeah. A whole other level. It's crazy. We're going to be playing it for the rest of the year. So that's one plate I'm spinning. Another plate I'm spinning.

Another very large plate is Death Stranding. I talked a bit about it last month. Henry, you've talked about it on this podcast. But I am now 80 hours into the game. I might go on to 100. I'm really getting into building all the roads and building up all of the ratings on all the bases. in the game and everything like that. I'm really into the, like, asynchronous multiplayer

where people are helping you, you're helping them, but you don't really sense each other's presence until you come back to the game and see, like, oh, someone fix this or someone built this. So, yes, it's a very rewarding game. And looking forward to playing two, although I'll need to take a break. I hope they don't announce, like,

the director's cut PC version until later in the year, so I could take some time off of this. But I got more into it than I thought I would. It's also a much longer game than I thought it was, but I am not bored yet. But I feel like I'm closing the distance between myself and the ending. just the satisfaction of like putting in enough resources to make the road build you feel like a good person like that's how the the hideo kajima plan worked like i was like oh the road is built now i can drive on it and things are easier for me and other people i feel like a great guy i really did something in this digital game and building community so yeah looking forward to the sequel hitting more platforms than i can play it and more people can play it and so in terms of watching stuff only a few things to note here i did want to make it

mention, I finally watched Quiz Show, the 1994 Robert Redford movie. And what blew my mind is, for the past 32 years, I guess, I thought this was a black and white film. I thought it was, oh, it's a real throwback. We're filming it in black and white. And that is because the critic parody depicted the film in black and white, because it was showing footage of the game show in the parody, which is a black and white show. So when the movie started and the prolog happened, I was thinking, okay, it's going to go to black and white. And then I turned to my wife and I was like this is not a black and white movie. I had this misconception for 32 years.

Did the critic sketch at least make you know how sweaty every character was going to be? Did it predict that correctly? You know what? They weren't as sweaty as I thought they would be. So whoever wrote that part of the parody really focused in on the sweatiness. There's just some light dabbing here and there. But of course, the joke and the critic is the Chris Farley parody character is the guy trapped in the booth. And because he's so sweaty, he's like swimming.

in the booth, the quiz show booth. I'm interested to hear your takes on it. I have not seen it since I watched it on VHS in the 90s. So it's been a very long time since I watched quiz show. It was now to think about like, it's talking about 50s game shows in the 90s. It would be the equivalent of talking about 80s things now. Like I guess I'm calling it Stranger Things, really. Yeah, I mean, Hank Azaria is in it.

There's a Simpsons connection. Hank Azaria actually has the final line in the movie, which is shocking. Wow. I had forgotten this. And yes, Quiz Show, great movie. And if you don't know the story, I only know like the broad strokes.

I only knew the broad strokes of the story. There was a quiz show. There was some fraud behind it in terms of who was given answers to questions. But the way the movie like reveals the truth throughout the film in these little moments, it is like very well deployed in terms of like letting you know more about the story when you need to know it,

not like giving you all the information that is available to the filmmakers. Withholding until the surprises are really surprising. So yeah, quiz show. great film. I recommend it. It's great to see Hank Azaria in the 90s because I feel like he had his shot and he never really hit the big time. I mean, he had the bird cage, he had heats, he had this, he was Hollywood dog, but things fizzled out. And I wonder if when he was in all these big movies, I was really thinking like, did the Simpsons producers think we could lose Hank? Hank is in a Robert Redford movie. Hank is in a Michael Mann movie. In the early 90, like I guess he would have been in Quiz Show where in the season six we're covering now. when they were producing it, that's when the movie came out, right? Yes, yeah.

So, yeah, whenever I see Hank in the 90s thing, I'm thinking, what episode did he just record? Who was he playing? You can see why that fizzling out probably led to the train in his relationship with Helen Hunt, unfortunately. It's not like Hank doesn't get work anymore,

but then you see him on YouTube, like just doing funny voices, and you're like, wow, Hank, I bet you didn't see this would be your future. He's also traveling around America, covering the boss. He's also doing that. The boss?

Oh, oh, Bruce Springsteen. He's got a Bruce Springsteen cover band, yeah. Yeah. I'm glad he's found his niche is what I'm saying. Like, Prestige TV, doing character voices while reading funny quotes, things like that. But it's just fun to see, like, you're watching what could have been the ascent of a name that's a name we know beyond the Simpsons. And I also saw the animated film out of Japan. All You Need is Kill.

It is an adaptation of the light novel that the Hollywood film, Edge of Tomorrow, is also based on. This feels like a more. more direct adaptation, and I did enjoy it to a point. It's just a little above average, and honestly, knowing what I know now about the source material, I appreciate the changes they made to the Tom Cruise movie, which is a great film. Okay, I was curious what your thoughts were on this, because, yeah, I've only seen the Tom Cruise film and not read the light novel it was based on, or I think it got a manga adaptation as well that I've seen some... Yes, it also got turned into a manga.

And now a whole anime film, like the trailer, I saw, did it seem like it was like movie budget or did it seem like kind of like a lower budget film? It's definitely movie budget. I say the animation looks really good. My only issue is the light novel came out in 2004 and in the

passing 22 years we've seen a lot of people play in the time loop space and do interesting things with it. And here it's locked in and it's most basic formats and so it's by default not as interesting as it could be and I think what Edge of Tomorrow does is add details to the character

and their relationships that makes that story more interesting. But in this movie, you are essentially just looking at two characters for about 80 minutes. And there's not really enough to them to make them interesting. I say it's worth watching for just the animation alone, but don't expect the time loop stuff or the character stuff to really knock you out. It's unfortunate for the novelty factor of all you need is kill that, at least from the American media side of things, both in TV shows, movies, and video games, there have been like seven Groundhog Day things every year in the last 20 years.

Yeah, and I'm a big sucker for time loop stuff. I love it. I love seeing what people do with it. And it's unfortunate that we got a more direct adaptation of this thing so late after so many people have, I won't say, have stolen the idea, but I've taken it and run with it and done more interesting things with it. So there's that. I also saw for the first time, we'll talk about it on an upcoming episode, but the Tim Robbins movie Bob Roberts, which is incredibly unavailable, not available for streaming or renting anywhere, even digitally.

I watched a Vimeo link, which was a trip. I've not done that in a very long time, like some VHS rip that was uploaded to Vimeo. And I did like it. I will caution everybody. I'm going to say this on site to Bob Roberts. One thing about this movie, it's not the comedy. You will not be like laughing your ass off.

You won't be falling out of your chair like this is a Christopher guest film. It is very, very, very dry. But in that dryness, it is able to create a very thought-out reality. So I feel like that is a strength of the movie, but also kind of a weakness because it is a gigantic bummer, even though I'm clapping because it agrees with me. The movie agrees with me.

Yeah, I watched it for the first time, too, and I really did love it. I didn't. I wonder how funny it felt in 1992, like, where it did things, because unfortunately, by being right about things over 30 years ago,

the things just got worse, and so it is predictive satire. in that way, I think. But, like, there's a few speeches in there. The one that made me rated so highly on Letterbox was, like, I was, like, on the verge of tears at the end of the movie, to be honest. Like, John Carlo Esposito's character has, like, this speech in the movie that just, like, kills me that, like, truly really got me.

Like, it's on YouTube. It's a great, at least in the U.S. it is. And, man, seeing, like, Ellen Rickman and Ray Wise together is, like, the twin evils of his campaign. And also, it's a parody of a conservative. conservative that doesn't want you to fucking laugh with a conservative. You are supposed to hate him and you are supposed to see what a

fucking Nazi he is. That's what I like to. It's not about being funny. You might have seen like a poster of the movie or know the premise it might think like, oh, this is like the politics version of Spinal Tap. It's not that. And at best, like, the jokes you will get out of this are like MPR style soft chuckles. I think

too. I didn't look too much into the production. But it feels very tightly scripted. Not like, you know, the Christopher guest or Rob Reiner style of mockumentary that they made so famous with Spinal Tap. Like this feels the characters are saying long speeches that they were written to say.

Yes, I like that the movie agreed with me, by the way. I like what every movie agrees with me. It makes me feel better about myself. But I was like, I guess it's a weird movie to watch in this month in history, because it's like, I want something a little more uplifting and, I mean, not to spoil things, but the movie does not end on like a positive note for the viewer, is what I'll say.

Though, you know, the fun of seeing like, wow, that's Jack Black. Look at that. Wow. Yes. Although I wish, again, you can be the smug guy from the future saying, this is a little dated. But I feel like, boy, we were promised photogenic fascist and we're not getting them. I'm seeing these melting lumps of flesh. Wounds are emerging from their skin.

They're like weeping pus as they ooze their way to their next event. They overestimated the charm necessary to be a fascist in America. That's the most dated thing of a satire that's like, well, this entertainer had to be like the sharpest, most charming handsome young man ever instead of like, no, it can be a senile, rotting old child molester and still get away with it. Yes. Yeah, I feel like, boy, I wish we had known ahead of time because you always would hear like, watch out for those smooth talkers.

They're going to, you know, slime their way into the White House or whatever, positions of power. And then we have things like the phantom menace, like, oh, the secret political machinations that are controlling things behind the scene. Really, in real life, we have the obvious menace. Yes, yeah. If there ever were masks on them, the masks are. left behind like 10 years ago whenever mask off happened. We at least gave them the credit of trying to hide their slime

but they're like, no, here's our slime. Look at it. 20 years ago, we put a lot of effort into learning like what were the code words for like being racist. We didn't think of like, oh, this is what a Republican, this is what George W. Bush means when he's like being racist towards all brown people in America. Now you just have the

squads rounding up everybody who's the wrong skin color. It's true. I mean, if you want to hear more political talk and I know you do, listen to the side show Bob Roberts coming later, I think in February, our episode on that one. Yes, we've got a lot of cool guests coming up, guys. We're working ahead and got some great stuff coming. You'll either add more pins or remove pins from your Bob and Henry Voodoo dolls when that episode goes live.

I apologize ahead of time that, yes, the episode that's about Watergate and Rush Limbaugh will have political talk. We have to avoid it. We can't avoid it, rather. And that's it for me. I'm enjoying luxuriating in the very slow period of January. And never looking at news, by the way. I can jump in for about five minutes. I'm like, nope, I'm going to do what I can.

make the world a better place with my tools available. Thank you. I'm done. For me this month, I played Balders Gate 3 a lot, but we talked about that. It's been great. And a nice thing we've done a few nights a week now for the last few weeks that I've really enjoyed of like husband bonding time is we eat dinner with watching an episode of Star Trek the next generation and then we play Balders Gate. Like it is a very nerdy evening for us. And we decided last year we watched all of Twin Peaks. And so this year we decided to take on an even bigger project. My husband had never seen any Star Trek, really. And he works with a lot of people who also are huge Trekkies, like especially of the TNG era. And so we decided like, while we could pick and choose episodes from the first couple of years, and then start with the good stuff, we decided no, let's be complacentist about it. So we're watching from the beginning,

and we're 18 episodes in now on the first season of Star Trek the next generation. Yeah, I've said this earlier, but you should definitely check out the We Hate Movies miniseries, The Nexus, and that'll help some of those bad early episodes go down a little smoother with their many jokes. I've listened to a couple. Man, so many, I remembered the pilot, and there's a few episodes of when they came out, and I just see, you know, the preview image. I'm like, oh, yeah, I remember this one. But I think like at least 10 of them, I have not remembered at all. And most of the time, they are like, we're going to the sex planet. But then the God being showed up and kidnapped. after a woman. And including like, the third episode of the show is maybe the most racist Star Trek

episode that's ever been made, I think. Yeah, the roughest stuff comes so early. And then unfortunately, you have to deal with a season with no Gates McFadden. Yeah, I'm not looking forward to that either, as I recall. I have watched season three to seven episodes here and there in my life since the 90s of just like, I like Star Trek just fine. I watched it all when it was new in the 90s, but didn't really keep up with it and rewatched NextGen. Wait, you watched it all in the 90s? You were like a big Trekkie?

My mom was a big Trekkie. Okay. I jumped on with her in the third season and we watched it pretty regularly together up until the end. And same when D-Space 9 started. We watched that together. I watched the first season of Voyager

and then fell off. But yeah, so, and then in season three, I would also watch the old episodes that would rerun of NextGen. So, yeah, in the 90s, I was like they were day one for every TNG. movie in theaters too.

Okay. Yeah, it's funny. You started watching it and then Red Letter Media started putting out their videos about Deep Space 9 and my wife and I are watching TNG to keep up with the We Hate Movies Project, but I was also thinking, what if I watched Deep Space 9 again? Because I watched like the first couple seasons of that as a small

child who did not live in adult life. And now I want to go back to it and appreciate political commentary and the great storytelling instead of just watching as an 11-year-old look at the monster makeup on everybody. I have mentioned that we could when we get to it. deep space nine aired concurrently with the end of next gen, so we could start watching, you know, like, okay, this was, you know, alternate in airing order of D-space nine and next gen.

But I think right now, my husband, I think Moore wants to just finish TNG entirely before starting Deep Space Nine. It's been a good watch so far to see back when Gene Ronbury was alive to add weird sex things to add too many episodes. Yeah, I said this on an episode. earlier podcast, but it's the one show that got better when the creator died. I kept having to like my minimal amount of Star Trek trivia, like nudging my husband, like, hey, you see Deanna Troy's hot mom and talks about how everybody fantasizes about her and she wants to get naked.

That's Gene Ron Barry's wife. He is really attracted to her. Like, that's what this is about. She was Nurse Chapel in the original series. So he was like, hey, look at my hot wife even in the 60s. He's a horny guy. It's just how it was. I'm looking for it. It sounds too me. I look forward to when he is no longer a creative influence on Next Generation. We've both been watching for the second season of Fallout. It's been pretty good. Yeah, I think I'm three or four episodes in, and I am really enjoying. I'm not usually a fan service guy because I'm like, oh, okay, I'm already here.

You don't have to kiss my ass. I'm here for your program. That's fine. But here I feel like the fan service and the references to New Vegas are all deployed with a lot of thought in ways that are constructive and add to the storytelling. So it's not just like, oh, my God, they showed the thing from this part of the game. It's more like, well, this thing from the part of the game functions as an element of the plot. So it's not just like wave jingling like fallout keys in your face.

See, I am such a fallout dilettante. I played one and two a million years ago in the 90s, like borrowed a friend's copy. And then three didn't really catch me. And then I didn't give New Vegas a chance. And then it also like I was a professional games guy then and just it was hard to find the time for it. And so my husband is doing the Star Trek thing to me of saying like, oh, you see that, you know, the giant. Dinosaurs that is in this shot in the first episode of the new season. That's a big landmark in Fallout New Vegas, except it's turning around.

Except it's facing out towards the landscape, not towards the motel. I send a death threat to the creators of that show when they flip the dinosaur around. You have been stalking Jonathan Nolan to let him know the mistake you made. No, I understand changes like that. But yeah, I just, this came at the perfect time because I just replayed Fallout New Vegas in like 2023. Irresponsible because it's a 100-hour game. I think I played 120 hours. the DLC again. But now they

make the entire season around New Vegas. I think, I feel like now finally something is made just for me. And also, I just love Walton Gagins. Like, he's great. So is the main actress in it. Ella, Ellie, God. Ella Pranelle. Ela Pernel. Big eyes herself. And perfectly cast to be the daughter

of Kyle McLaughlin. Now that I've seen all of Twin Peaks, they're definitely trading on the wide-eyed innocence of Dale Cooper as something that's kind of in her character in the series, too. No one has wider eyes than Ella Pranel. It's a little disturbing almost. Ella Pranel has peepers. Peepers to watch.

The other TV thing I want to let people know about is it's now on HBO Max, and it's definitely worth a watch just to support it to try and get them to make more of this. Adult Swims, the Elephant, is a very clever concept of three shorts in a 22-minute thing that are technically interconnected. The first one is by Pendleton Ward, the creator of Adventure Time. The second of the middle section is by Ian Jones Cordy and Rebecca Sugar. And the final third is directed by Patrick McAil, the Over the Garden Wall creator. And it's really fun.

It's an interesting art piece. It is like a pretty heady. It reminds me in the best ways of anime anthologies of the 80s like Robot Carnival. And also of watching like Liquid Television. Like, oh, you tuned into Liquid Television late at night. What is this weird stuff? Like it's a great throwback in that way. And I'd really love for Adult Swim to be able to make that as a series of just like,

this is just the experimental series where they let artists who have been laid off by Cartoon Network actually do cool stuff again. Where can you view this? Did I miss that? Oh, HBO Max. It's on HBO Max right now. It aired on Adult Swim and was pretty quickly on HBO Max. And for me, that means Torrance.

Yes. I bet you can find it elsewhere too, for sure. But if you want to do it the legal way, HBO Max. I saw a couple movies you saw as well, Bob. the Lupin III or Lupo 3rd. They write it weird, but the immortal bloodline. Yeah, if you don't mind me jumping in on this, Henry, I felt like it was fun to see Lupine movie in theaters,

which I've only seen Castle of Cagliostro in theaters, which is the only movie with Lupin in it. They put in theaters because of Miyazaki, obviously. This one, I felt that the serious tone didn't really work for me because the things that happened in this film are insane, even for Lupon the 3rd. There's like supernatural elements. There's like Dragon Ball Z elements in it,

And I feel like, man, I just want everyone to be funny and have fun, but it's just very grim dark. And there are like two tiny scenes in which Lupin makes Lupin style expressions. And you're like, oh, that's what I'm here for. So this didn't really work for me. Some good animation, some good action scenes. But I don't think I like the serious Lupin III more than the wacky, whimsical. Not even like, the Miyazaki stuff is fine, but there's other Lupan iterations I like way more than this current one. You know, I didn't like it as much.

I don't know if you saw the preceding ones in this series of not just the Fujikomini TV show, but also Gigan's Gravestone or the bloodspray. There's like a bunch of, this is like following up on a bunch of other movies about certain characters of the group. Goemann's blood spray. That was the other one I was thinking of. Yeah. That's my favorite of them. I think what was good about those was they got to spotlight like, well, this is Gigan's movie.

And he's given a rival who nearly kills him and can he finally beat this guy? And same with like, Goaemon's bloodstores. spray he's given a rival who is like a gigantic Canadian guy with axes like can he beat this guy and the Fujiko one was less good I feel like and now this was supposed to be like all right well this is Lupon's story oh and they didn't as any got a one as well and then this immortal bloodline was supposed to be Lupon story but it feels like they got just too goofy it's too it's just too silly also it's like it's really just about mystery of mama and I'm just like is this meant to be a prequel to Mystery Amamo, or are you guys going to remake that next? That's what I can't tell either about

Yeah, which is the first movie, right? The one that came before the Miyazaki film. Yeah, the very first theatrical movie, so it is supposed to like complete a loop, I think, which is also why it's like darker because it's supposed to be like, well, you know, Lupon and his friends got sillier once they got to have a TV show, but this is when they're younger and before that. And also, Fujiko didn't get to have one cool moment. She gets stripped naked very quickly and then kind of does nothing the rest of the She kind of looks different in every scene. My wife pointed to that in her review and I'm like, yeah, you're right. Sometimes I'd be like, well, who is this woman? Oh, that's Fujiko in this scene. And I also watched the Oscar snubbed and no other choice. I saw that movie. That was so good. I liked it

so much. I read the book it's based on. It's called The Axe by Donald Westlake. It's different enough, but they all follow the same beat. Sorry, I didn't want to take over here, Henry. I really, really, really like this film. I did not read the book. I had only knew it was adapting something when I saw the credits in the theater. This was great. I also really enjoyed it. I mean, it's like, I guess, kind of like Bob Roberts warning, not a feel good film. But I mean, I would think.

But a lot funnier than Bob Roberts. I was laughing a lot in the theater. A lot of laughing in the theater in mine. My midday screening of it I had with me and several, like about six Korean people, I think. Me and six Korean people in my theater. It was a full theater because there weren't too many screenings, at least initially. So you felt the entire vibe. There are moments in the movie.

I heard an entire theater gasp at once. That was a great feeling. I was jumping out of my seat a couple times that like shock in things that have, and a great story, great mystery. And yes, hilarious. I don't want to give way too much of the plot, but both it and the axe, the book it's based on, they really depict masterfully the amount of psychic damage you take by being unemployed for a long period of time. I have suffered very long periods of unemployment. Listeners, please do not fire me. And I know exactly how that can eventually drive you to murder.

If you guys do fire us, we're going to have to start taking out other podcasters to get back up the charts. And then lastly, a movie I saw just, yeah, two days ago was 28 years later, the Bone Temple. I saw that one. And to me, it does feel more like an epilogue of the 28 years later movie from just like six months ago. But I did really like it, especially like the stuff, the refined stuff is the best. I love his character rules. my favorite part of 28 years later the preceding movie and now this one is like

kind of his movie I mean it's called the Bone Temple the place he lives in so I don't feel like that's a spoiler no I want to see this although I feel like the 28 years later misled me by not telling me up front it's part of a trilogy well now you're a little more prepared for what you will probably get at the end of this movie yeah this is going to be like a streaming movie for me although I love the phrase the bone temple and now on social media we're all big fans of saying, I hope it happens. We all know what we're talking about when we say, I hope it happens.

I think we need to change that, or at least make an alternate version. I hope he goes to the Bone Temple, is what I'm going to say. You know, that would give him more dignity than he demands, I think. Jack O'Connor, who he's kind of, he's playing a different head of a violent group of people, but he's just as good as he was in sinners. I'll say that. Okay. So thumbs up to Bone Temple. Some people liked it more than 28 years later. I liked it a little less, but I did like it. It's good. Other than the rest this month, I've been at home and dealing with a broken water pipe in my closet that led me have to empty out my entire closet for a whole week and was driving me crazy. But it was your apartment's fault. It was.

I've still been too lazy to make the insurance claim. I have to go to the website. I have, you know, we have like renter's insurance that we had to sign up for to move in here. I just haven't bothered to like because I did have like two boxes of stuff that I wasn't using and should have just thrown away. but now, now that they actually were legitimately water damaged, I shouldn't just toss them without trying to get some money for it. Some claims adjuster might be listening to this. Hey, I'm saying an honest thing about a thing I am definitely owed.

I'm not saying I mess things up. No, the water damage did and you owe me money. I'm telling you. But that's everything I did in January. Now let's talk about questions and comments for the last round of episodes and start with Talking Simpsons, the episode, another Simpsons clip show. And first off, special thanks to Brian Horton for finding Henry's requested

Ella McKay promo that called Brooks the co-creator of the Simpsons. I think you mentioned this in one of our podcasts. Oh, it was in this podcast, duh. But what was the context behind this? Yeah, it was. I had seen the Julie Cabner promoting Ella McKay stuff and talking up how the connection, you know, easily using the Simpsons to promote El McKay. And in the very first one of them I saw, she called Brooks the co-creator of the Simpsons.

And it set it in writing next to him. You know, we know that. That's not how he is credited. It's not the, you know, agreed upon crediting for it. And then in the second one I saw, he was correctly called the executive producer of the Simpsons. So it made me wonder if they had like taken it offline because of that mistake. And then Horton found on YouTube, and I believe links to it in the comments, the one that's confirming for me that, yes, they still have it up, or at least back when Horton found it, one where he is mistakenly called the co-creator of the Simpsons.

Also thank you to Brian Horton. And by the way, L.M.A.K. coming to Disney Plus on February 4th. That's pretty quick. Wow. Yeah. To be fair, it was in theaters for about 10 days. That is ultimately why I decided to see it. In one of those 10 days, I was like, if I don't see it now, I'll never get to see another James L. Brooks movie in theaters. It was the choice I made to waste an afternoon with LBK. He could surprise you. Don't count him out. He might be 87, but...

95, he'll finally really make that great film again. Let's move on to comments for this one though. Mike Kature says that scene of Bart coming out of a flashback where they zoom out of his pupil is actually reused from that huge deleted scene in Cape Fear where he suspects grandpa of sending the letter. Since that whole scene was replaced with one that was clearly animated in post, it's interesting that a clip from that scene found a home in an episode full of shots that feel entirely reworked in post. Also, you guys were so close to finding the...

Mmm, chocolate. It is indeed what sets up the land of chocolate clip in the April Fool's clip show where Homer is motivated by the hospital's vending machine for the first time. Yes, thank you, Mike. I typed in chocolate

and I only got scenes from the land of chocolate and that's because Frinkiac is not always like fully lined up with which frame the line of dialogue is on. You often have to skip ahead

or forward a little bit. And so I missed Homer in front of the machine that will then lead to the land of chocolate fantasy. And same with that Cape Fear one. I had, when we did Cape Fear, like we both watched

the deleted scenes usually, and I had captured the deleted scene for that one of him. It's Bart remembering when he tortured Grandpa by stealing his spittoon, and then it zooms out of his eyeball. And I should have caught that that's what they were using to get them out of Bart's memory of Sarah Gilbert breaking his heart. Right. Yeah, I like how they were even digging into unused footage without us even knowing. So that's pretty cool. And also on that episode, Silky PJ says, 2025 was indeed a heavy year for Stephen King. A few others, from this year were The Life of Chuck, which was the big sentimental turkey made by Mike Flanagan. Osgood Perkins's The Monkey is also based on a King's short story and then tangibly related,

but the Black Phone 2 is based on a series written by Joe Hill, aka Stephen King's son. Perfect for these horrible times. What, the Black Phone one? Or just like Stephen King being more popular than ever. I mean, it was pretty fitting in 2025. two different dystopian fascist future films came out based on King Works. Well, now I can tell a story because I met somebody who was in The Monkey. The Monkey was fine. I watched it last year, not in theaters, but then I saw an Osgood-Perkins

introduced screening of some film earlier in the year. So I've had experiences with these two realms. But I went to see Frozen, the musical, the musical version in Vancouver. And I'm coming back to my seat with my wine at intermission. And these two old ladies, addressed identically, call out to me, like, oh, excuse me, excuse me. I don't know what I'm. I'm in for. And they were like, we're actors. And I'm like, okay, very good. That's great. And I'm not sure like what they're leading to. And they tell me, you look like a very famous person. And I'm thinking, what could it be? Is it Wes Anderson? Is it John Heeter? Is it Beck? What do these two old ladies? Who do they think I look like? Which new one I'm going to hear? And one of them says, there's a very

famous playwright named Oscar Wilde. And you look just like him. And I'm like, well, you're You know, very talented, and he's very handsome. So thank you, ladies, and I take my seat. I've never gotten Oscar Wild before, but then I look up in a picture, and there is some resemblance there. Yeah, yeah, that's a very nice compliment, I'd say. The iconic dandy, and, like, they're comparing you to him. I'd say your hairstyle definitely fits with his, I think. I am an iconic dandy.

Now, these two women made me think I was going crazy, because before I talked to them, I was in the lobby, and I'm facing one direction, and I see a woman, and then I turn around, and I see. that same woman. And I'm like, okay, that something explode in my brain? Do I need medical attention? What's going on? Is there a mirror in here? I think nothing of it until they call out to me and I realize, oh, it was two women. It was actually two women. So these two women who dress identically. And the reason they're connected to the monkey is they're both actors. One of them was in the monkey, but they play old lady twins in things going back to the 90s. Wow. Wow. Man. I guess in tons of stuff that's filmed in Vancouver, if they need old

lady twins like they're the people you call? Yes, exactly. And I guess if you want to look up to see where they are, they're in the Life is a Highway video 30 years ago, back when they were probably like in their late 40s. I mean, that's also adorable that when they go out to see you know, to the theater,

that they are dressing identically four of that too. Yeah, sorry, I'm trying to find their names and yeah, I guess I can't find them right now, but yeah, I guess notably famous in Vancouver twin lady actors who will often tell strangers they look like Oscar Wild. Very fun.

Maybe they're in the peacemaker show and I didn't even realize it. It could be. Possibly. And I wanted to look these two ladies up because they were so delightful. They are Jacqueline and Joyce Robbins. They have their own Wikipedia page. They're 76 years fun. And they're in a whole lot of stuff dating back to like 1976. But they mainly started getting hired in the 2000s as like we need two old ladies who are also twins,

mostly in horror movies or comedies and there your go-to gals. So wow, you met some real celebs there. Maybe when they said we're both actors, they expected you to go like, whoa, I know you. You're in that one thing. I wish they would have told me because I had just watched The Monkey not too long ago. And also, I wasn't sure if they meant like stage actors. But I think they might assume I would recognize them from something because that's what they led with. But they were delightful.

Delightful ladies. Well, now keep an eye up for them the next time you go to some legitimate theater in your neighborhood. Mm-hmm. I will. And now we're going to move on to She Used to Be My Girl. And Patrick McClafferty says, Producing Parker is an awful show. It was a terrible mix of 30 Rock and Family Guy.

A friend group used to do a group watch of adult animated shows like Duckman and the Critic, and producing Parker was thrown into the mix at one point. It's been a thing I occasionally joke about with the Canadian anime fandom discord I take part in, as the American dating a Canadian as well as the expert on more obscure a jump series when CanCon comes up. So producing Parker, was that something that Kim Katrall was involved in? Yes, yeah. I was trying to find any other animated like voice. voice work she had done because she hadn't done a lot of it. And that around the same time this episode aired, she was in this Canadian adult swim style show called Producing Parker, which,

yes, I had only seen pictures of somebody else compared it, I think, to like the e-commerce commercials of the day of like it looked that cheap. It looks like, yeah, I guess they got two seasons out of this. Well, you know, that Canadian content law is how it works. That's, oh, fuck, I should have mentioned. He did a rivalry. I watched all of that. I consumed it immediately. That's a a great show. I should say that. You know what? I looked into that because I'm like, what is everybody talking about? I didn't know it's based on a series of sports-themed gay romance novels. Yes, yeah. It's series. Okay, quick. The K&Con reminded me. Thank you, Patrick. But the, yes, heated rivalry. I hadn't heard of the book series either. Once I watched it, like, look,

I would say it is written by somebody who is well-versed in the erotica tropes of online fiction that maybe I have read at one time in my youth. So I kept going like, oh, well, this is how this character is going to be this one or that. It kept seeing those tropes hit in a big budget TV show that also like, I mean, my husband kept saying like, I feel like we're just watching softcore gay porn now. Like that's what we're watching. It's gay porn where you're not going to see a penis. But otherwise, it's a lot of sex. You know what? I like the Canadian content laws. That means more jobs for Canadians like me. It is heavily Canadian. Bob. There are multiple episodes, including one that I feel was mainly made to say, hey, if you can

buy a second house, buy it in Ottawa. Look how beautiful Ottawa is. Ottawa, guys, Ottawa. It is gorgeous. If you want to see Hot Hunks getting down and also talk about how beautiful Canada is, check out heated rivalry. But okay, so,

on that note, Andre de Silva Perella says, The Four in March who passed away recently was Beatrice Picard from the French Quebec dub. She was a monument in the province theater scene, Her passing was widely covered here, so I didn't fall for the clickbait this time. We talked about how there were clickbait headlines of like they made it look like, you know,

they could literally say the voice actors of Marge passes away. The headlines winking at you. Yes, yeah. I was happy to see Andre give us some extra insight into the passing of Beatrice Picard and some of her background. So unintentionally, she used to be my girl comments are very Canadian focused. I did not plan on that. Next, we have Itchy and Scratchy Land. And Echo Simmeron says, in the Forts the Horizon game,

you can set your driver's name to whatever, but they recorded the in-game GPS thing a bunch of names, and Bort is one of them, but BART is not, and Henry found a funny Reddit post of a real BART complaining about this joke. I feel like this is Bob speaking. If your name is Bart at this point,

you've gotten used to all of the jokes. You've gotten used to getting the short straw because it's like being named Homer. It's pretty great that in Forts of Horizon, they made it to the joke. They made it the joke that you couldn't get a BART license plate, but you could get a Bort one, and that it actually is affecting real Barts.

Bob, have you played any of Forts of the game? game. I've played them the tiniest tiniest tiniest bit. Yeah, I guess your name is your license play, but it does say your name constantly. So I played the Royal Street one last year. I never experienced a series before I wanted to play a racing game. It's a lot of fun, but the game is like constantly glazing

your ass because, and it knows your name too. I don't really fall for it, so it's like, awesome job, Bob. Let's go find some new races, Bob. Oh man, Bob, you're doing so great. Like, the game is just constantly complimenting. I'm like, enough. I think they just announced a new fortsa that is

like all set in Japan that might pull me in my weebness to at least give it a shot on GamePass, which I'm still a subscriber too. You don't have to use it. Pretty lightly use it, but sometimes I do tell myself, well, I mean, I paid for it already. I say give publishers money directly, especially little ones. Little ones like Microsoft. Not like Microsoft. Well, and then this week, like Ubisoft and now it's like they don't do anything.

Everybody's, it's a race to the bottom of major publishers this week in video games. Ubisoft is like we put out one 300-hour game every year. Why does no one care anymore? If we cancel six more games and only focus on another 300-hour game, and maybe then you'll finally care. Sabrina also says on that episode, I drove from New Jersey to Orlando in 2019. I drove instead of flying because we stayed off property

and I didn't want to have to rent a car. A friend suggested I get an audiobook for the drive. Instead, I looked for a new podcast, and that's how I discovered Talking Simpsons. Yeah, you know, I guess we were poo-pooing driving to Disney World from a northern state, but if it gets you into our podcast, possibly as a patron, I'm all for it. No judgment at all there, yes. If you're driving to Orlando to do anything, listen to our podcast, you get a free pass from us, whatever you do on that.

Tell your children, shut up, Bob and Henry are talking. They're my children now. And then you drive off the cliff. Up next we have, what a cartoon movie, My Neighbor Totero, and Nina Matsumoto, says it's a minor nuance, but the Japanese term for wooden line reading, Bo Yomi, translated literally as stick reading, not stick acting. It means reading something monotonously without much emotion, and it's often used to describe flat voice acting,

but is not exclusive to acting. You can read a book out loud or narrate something in a wooden manner too. And yes, Miyazaki needs to stop inviting his non-actor pals to be in his movies because Itoi and Ano are not great. The cakes, the boy, brings over, are Ohagi, sticky white rice coated in red bean paste. They can be different colors depending on. on what else they're lightly coated with.

They're easier to make than mochi, so moms and grannies like making them. And Nines also says, for me, Chika Sakamoto is notable for voicing Nuriko from Fushigi Yugi. Yes, I miss that in Chika Sakamoto is the voice of May in the film and identified her other roles like in Digimon and completely overlooked Noriko. I watched Fushigi Yugi back in the 90s. It's been a while since I've seen it, but I had forgotten. And Nureka is a great character, too. I really like them. But yes, they...

And also now, finally, I know what those cakes were that they were having in the film. It was not mochi. Now, I don't know if I've had Ohagi. Maybe I have, maybe at a convenience store snack during some Japanese trip. But if I haven't before, it's on my list of snacks to try.

I'm not sure I have. But lots of things use rice and red bean paste, so maybe... Alex Irish also says on Totoro, I can tell you an amusing anecdote from a former boss in mind. They used to be a member of Up with People. And during a Japan tour decades ago,

a Japanese lady sung at him the Totoro song, owing to his large physique. This was his first exposure to what Totoro was. Mine was the Fox VHS cover in the 90s, but I didn't get to see the actual movie until the 2006 DVD, and it wasn't what I was expecting. I was halfway expecting the epic tone

of Spirited Away or Princess Monanoque, not necessarily in content, but instead it was more akin to a Pikachu mini-moofy. Interesting. Well, Alex, I'm sorry you got roasted, but at least it was a fun reference. It's fun to tour to take the Christian-adjacent conservative American singing group up with people to tour Japan with that. How receptive were the Japanese to up with people? Pro or con, I wonder. I don't know. They might like their chipper attitudes. And to see, like, the comparison of the Pikachu mini movie is funny because, yes, I remember going to see the Pokemon the first movie.

My mom went with me and my brother to it. Yes, I was 17. And when we saw it, it starts with, like, a mini movie of Pikachu going on, like, vacation. And the thing is, like, it's all with the Pokemon and there's no, like, dialogue said. And it's just Pokemon saying their names over and over again. And my mom said that by the end of that, like, 15 minutes, she felt insane and wanted to leave the theater. It was driving her crazy. I think I mentioned this before, but that was my first movie date with a girl.

And I thought, wow, this is what adult life. is like. I'll go to, hey, and you just went to anime again a few times this month in the movie theaters with a girl. So it happened. These trends are continuing. Moving on, Futurama, talking Futurama, the episode was called Utopia. And Nina's back and she says that no one is hired to add borders to the bongo comic covers

for the calendars, as Bob speculated. The covers are drawn with plenty of coverage on the sites to begin with to account for the different print dimensions of the UK releases. The full images are closer to a square, so it makes sense why they be reused for wall counters. Thank you, Nina. I did not know that. I wish there were original artwork done for the calendars, though, still. But I guess once those Bongo comics come out, they're never seen again.

So you might as well reuse the art somewhere, especially now. Yeah, fortunately, other than the fancy hardcover repackaging of some of their best comics, a lot of Bongo comics are not very imprint these days. So taking them and reusing the great covers as calendars, I get it, especially if you're like, you're Matt Graning, you owe the rights to all the Bongo comics and you're publishing the calendars. It would seemingly not cost you anything extra to reuse the art as

the calendars as well. And I just put on my 2026 calendar. There's not a border on a month image this year like I saw in the preceding years. The first one, it is just a recreation of the stupid, sexy Flanders moment, and it goes all the way to the edges. There's no borders

around it. It's just a full square image on the page. Interesting. Okay. I didn't know that. And Purple Comet says It's so funny that Shasta McNasty comes up in this episode. LaBarbra says it as one of her taunts in it. Because the recently deceased Scott Adams blames it for the Dilbert cartoon's cancellation. Shasta, as it was later called, was Dilbert's lead-in. So it's not a stretch to say that the terrible ratings and reviews prevented the cartoon from ever getting off the ground.

Nathan Rabin reposted his review of the Shasta McNasta series, and it sounds dreadful. Yeah, Shasta McNastie is just a lot of. It's fun to say, did not amount to a good TV show. And, yeah, Dilbert, I'm not sure if I would blame Shasta McNasty, but Dilbert did not feel like a good fit for the UPN demographic. And then he said some, I don't know if they were borderline racist things or just racist things about how the direction UPN was going and how it wasn't a good fit and how they were prioritizing certain ethnic groups over, you know, purebred white Scott Adams. I believe the late Scott Adams alleged it as a kind of a white racism, I think he said it was and that he suffered from it as like taking that. a black TV show stole his perfectly great white TV show.

And that is hardly the craziest thing he said in the last 10 years. I'm going to say, rest in peepee, you made me sleepy. Yeah, speaking of the Dilbert cartoon show, too, I saw Larry Charles, who like co-created it with him, who seems like a good guy and still funny and not crazy or Republican. Like he was reflecting on like, yeah, Scott Adams seemed like a reasonable guy in the 90s and went crazy and it really disappointed me. I couldn't believe my friend went this nuts. At the passing of his friend, he could only express really befuddlement and passed about it. Yeah, now that the stink of Scott Adams has gone, although maybe, you know, he's a corpse now, so he will smell a little more than usual.

We can cover Dilbert. It's finally we can. Maybe I'll pick the episode with Stone Cold Steve Austin in it, so that way I can get in pro wrestling chat as well. Fantastic. So moving on, our last set of questions and comments comes from King of the Hill, hanky-panky. And Echo Simmeron says mixing mayo and ketchup is pretty common, as it's the basis for fry. sauce. Add in a few extra seasonings and you get Thousand Island dressing, Russian dressing, Big Mac special sauce, cane sauce, and a few others. Terrible substitute for barbecue sauce, though. And yes, thank you, I

Kosemar. Like I said, it is now, I guess Heinz wants to call it Mayo Chup, which is the version I see in stores. But these two miracle ingredients can create so many different sauces and slimes. With my childish taste in things, I very pro ketchup and very anti-maneys. So the two of them together just sounds to me like it's destroying a good thing. I like raising can't sauce just fine. Thousand Island dressing or Big Matts sauce. Not so much there either. And of course so as a weeb, I have learned

to like the sweeter Japanese-style mayonnaise, very different from American mayonnaise. I don't think mayonnaise is for the distinguished adult taste buds, though. Well, yeah. In my baby mouth, I never liked mayonnaise, though. It was like yuck. It's just yucky to me. Long ago, I have graduated from

mayonnaise to Miracle Whip. It's got that tangy zip sandwiches crave. And then finally on hanky-panky DeVeno says, or DeVino, they say, great episode. This listened through, I just caught Debbie polishing the doorknobs as a joke. Not sure if it's explicitly mentioned, but I can imagine how that conversation went between her and Liz. And yes, it's Debbie is polishing knobs. She is a knob polisher. I am going to say that is probably an intentional dirty joke from the creator of Beavis and Butthead.

Yes. Otherwise, it would not be so big. visible in the background. So I think she was called a knob polisher by Ms. Liz. And she also is like on her knees doing it as well. It's the posing to. Yeah. They knew what they were doing. That's it for comments from this month. A lot of great comments from everybody in there. Yes, thank you. And yes, we are getting back to business as normal. We have powered through our recording backlog. We've worked ahead for a few weeks. And now we're just settling in for another great year of Talking Simpsons. and I'm really looking forward to February

a lot of great stuff happening including Shrek 2 which I will say is great because we're talking about it. It's been a minute since we've said the name Jeffrey Katzenberg in a What a Cartoon movie podcast. Finally, it shall return. He was alive when Sleeping Beauty was made

but I think he was probably 13 or something. He was too busy focused on being like horribly bullied and eventually turning that on the people who bullied him. And also Jim with Dan McCoy, I'm really looking forward to folks hearing that one and hopefully continuing the precedent after Mike Lawrence of our famous friends can tell us that they want to do a what a cartoon and we will do it. Yes, like we said to Dan, if you are on a popular podcast, you tell us what to do.

I mentioned on that podcast, if Griffin Newman knocked down our door and said, you guys are a family guy podcast, we'd say, yes, sir, and we do it. And lots of great guests coming up on Talking Simpsons as well as we enter season six, the best season of Simpsons ever. And we're in a stretch of episodes that I'm just like, everyone we cover, it's the longest notes I've ever written it feels like. Me too. But also I am like, how are these like five episodes in a row, the greatest episodes of Simpsons ever? It's insane. It's a crazy stretch. But yes, thanks everybody for listening. Thank you so much if you are a Patreon. And we will see you again next week for New Talking Simpsons. And next month for another episode of Talk to the audience. And we'll see you then.