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

Episode Date: June 7, 2023

It's time for our monthly community podcast, which is great because we've got a ton to catch up on! We discuss the last handful of season 34 stories, including the 750th episode, plus a lot of talk of the WGA strike, Star Wars crossovers, and new Futurama. Not to mention we both have some exciting life updates too. Plus we reply to the many Patreon comments worthy of the First Annual Montgomery Burns Award For Outstanding Achievement In The Field Of Excellence! Support this podcast and get over 150 bonus episodes by visiting Patreon.com/TalkingSimpsons and becoming a patron! And please follow the official Twitter, @TalkSimpsonsPod!

I heartily endorse this event or product. Ed funeral attendee Bob Mackey who is here with me today as always it's Henry Gilbert and I've hidden 750 characters in this week's episode excellent find them all patrons and listeners and by the way this is our community podcast at the end of every month on patreon in the beginning of every month on the free feed we talk about what's happening in the Simpsons world and in our world and then we respond to your questions and comments from the last round of episodes and yes season 34 has come to a close people uh and other shows are being not put on hold but thrown into a bonfire as is the trend these days it's a weird month of new new simpsons and then lots of other stuff going away yeah and i had time to watch the most recent two episodes of the simpsons but henry can you start us off with the first two of the month

yeah so they they wrapped up season 34 this uh in may with four new episodes and uh the first one is called right off this episode uh which is and that's w right off uh it's kind of a parody of susan g coman style awareness scams where basically Marge and Lisa start a charity for the unhoused. And there's a joke about calling people the unhoused versus homeless. They call it the Lisa M. Simpson Foundation. But then Bernice Hibbert actually gets

like a major role in the episode. Does it handle her alcoholism in any way? No, no, that is not touched on. But it is about how high class wives of doctors start these awareness campaigns like Susan G. Komen. That's why it's Lisa M. Simpson. So it's a Susan G. Komen thing, but it's about how awareness is spread for pink washing, but then it's not actually helping anybody.

And so it's an all right episode. And then there is The very hungry caterpillar which is their lockdown episode but to not have it be about covid it is about there's an outbreak of huge number of caterpillars in town that cover up cover the town to make people have to be forced inside and they all go crazy and bart does long distance uh video learning with skinner and lisa goes goes can't stop looking at Twitter and doom scrolling stuff like that okay you know when I looked at the description I didn't think it was going to be a COVID style episode no it's it's all about lockdown yeah it's

like lockdown day five lockdown day six it's but they they make it about a funny thing I think rightly so be because if they made it literally COVID, they could not count on, what are people going to be talking about COVID in a year from now? Yeah, it was a smart decision. And I watched the next one, which is Clown vs. Board of Education. I will not give them guff for it being very similar to Homie the Clown because it's been 28 years.

You can have a similar episode, but I think they should have tried to make it not similar because um you have bart entering crusty's clown college instead of homer doing it but also fat tony's involved and yeah i i forgave them in act one by back three i was like oh you shouldn't have brought fat fat tony in here i'm just thinking of uh the mob and crusty uh and home with the clown yeah no that was the turn i was like i wasn't really i was like oh it's bart training to be a clown and it's kind of about oh then it can't bart succeed if he's at a school that actually supports what he's into but then when they want to have as usual like well what's the danger uh the mafia comes in and it's just the same old mafia jokes and i feel like al gene should be

allowed one fat tony episode a season and then he keeps keeps bringing him in like and look i we all love joe montana we all have fat tony but yeah having act three be about the the having the mob destroy the college or the kids school but i did like that it was also about how tv clowns are nothing now they wouldn't be a thing kids don't give a shit about them although i did notice that episode did have a patent reference in 2023 that's right uh crusty standing in front of a giant flag god that is such a dated see you couldn't even like it didn't even hit your brain because you wouldn't think they'd do that in 2023 no it's so lame uh we will forgive them uh and i also saw homer's adventures through the windshield glass a fun high concept episode as homer is basically gets into a car accident and then goes for the

windshield and in slow motion the rest of the episode plays out as he's remembering things we find out what got him into the car accident in the first place i thought it was pretty good although uh lizzo does a fine job in her role as a happy little elf that's kind of walking homer through his life but then i thought it was very unnecessary to have a scene with lizzo the person at the end uh in the recording booth with homer i think it might have been a requirement from you know her people or whatever like we need to see her in the show but it just felt a little cheap to me no it totally totally did i think i mean i'm sure her people liked it but also for the fox or i guess disney department it's a better clip too like they're

all saying like well when we put this in our you know what did we do in 2023 pat on the back thing are they going to show lizzo as a silly toy or are they going to have lizzo play doing the obvious thing having a flute and saxophone duet with lisa like and obviously i thought billy eilish was her best friend lisa is just floating around through all these best friends i though their trick was that it's behind the scenes where they're recording with her so it's not like the real simpsons didn't meet her but non-canonical simpsons did also they're weirdly dubbing full color animation but they're cartoon characters hmm that doesn't make sense i mean it's a joke but also uh they could have found a better way to work her in i think but but for an anniversary episode i like that it brought back happy little

elves for an important plot point and i liked that clancy bouvier was also uh or clarence bouvier was was key to the story as well he ends up in hell we find out why and homer canonically has spent 20 000 years in hell yeah according to this episode and and ralph knows ralph knows that i if i if i'm always on a watch for like a joke that makes me they have jokes that giveth and taketh away the joke in hell where they're freeing gay people from hell because they're like oh it's not a sin anymore you can go out to heaven i was like oh that's a good joke then the next joke comes a train arrives and it's the people being sent to hell because now they're being canceled and it's friggin william shakespeare for doing blackface and othello and i'm like oh come on man i think it should have been more modern

celebrities that felt a little too safe to me yeah pick a pick a recent dead like well the first guy i'm thinking of is kevin spacey but he's not dead no they need a dead celeb who after jimmy seville though i feel like not enough americans know uh they've already made a joke about john wayne being in, so just do it again. Yeah, you know what? They're repeating so much this season. And Lizzo had a fine little song. You know what?

Her musical appearance, it was the same thing that happened with Weird Al. When they have her and Weird Al's character, when they moved around, something about the faces at certain angles just don't look Simpsons to me. I don't know how to exactly put it uh we've said it before though i think they just want to be more flattering to the characters though though i like that lizzo had her you know natural body shape like i feel like that is not it would have been bs if they that that she is very you know she is very proud of her body as she should be she's a beautiful. But I'm just saying that if they slimmed her down, that I feel like she would have said, hey, what the hell?

I dress a certain way to emphasize these things because I'm not ashamed of it. They worked hard to capture her Rubenesque form. That's a great way to put it. Yes, Rubenesque. And that was also their 750th episode. And because of that, they changed the opening to add 750 characters. Is that correct? That is what, you know, I couldn't find one place that actually for real counted it.

But they say it's 750 characters. Yeah. Well, to quote Shania Twain, that don't impress me much. This is an interesting idea. They were not giving the money or time to do it because it's just the opening you've been used to for the past, what, 13 years now? Yeah, yeah, yeah. But it's full of clip you've been used to for the past, what, 13 years now? Yeah, yeah, yeah. But it's full of clip art that blinks occasionally. And all of the line weight is different because it's like assets that are shrunk to be in the background and assets that are enlarged to be in the foreground.

And I swear to God, when they're driving away, when Marge is driving with Maggie and Grandpa and the background is lard lad, I'm like, is that a still from Frankie Yak? Yeah. It's a cool idea, but they were not given the time and money to make that executed well it just looks very cheap to me they just took all of their scanned previous characters and dropped them in that you know the couple that i my favorites were that they were playing fast and loose were where some were like they're like students in the opening say the students were in school or when you go through lisa playing the sax it's a bunch of their musical uh guest appearance characters like a lot of the ones uh guys we just recorded the one for strummer vacation but a lot of those guys are in there

and lisa's but my favorite randos were when homer crashes through the garage the guy closest to him who watches him fly through it is the cl Eastwood character from Paint Your Wagon from that one of nothing. And the people in the living room at the end are just so random. It's Sideshow Mel's wife. It's Lucius Fox. Yeah. It's Bruce Valanche is there. Yeah.

Bruce Valanche is there. Yeah. It was. Yeah. Sideshow Mel's wife was the one my eye was drawn directly to. I was like, she is the closest to the family. I feel like that was their statement, too. Like, we're just going to have weird ones in here. It's not going to be all the most famous ones.

Yeah, it was. Oh, and at the plant, the Germans were there. Like, there was some fun stuff. But yes, it was. And I'm sure it took a lot of work. But yeah, I mean, the characters could move some. I mean, they're just it's plugged in assets. I think this

episode this this seemed to be written for the list industrial complex which i think has been shut down to prepare for ai to write all the future lyrics so ai won't appreciate all these references no i mean well also like i do think lizzo rocking out with lisa is also for the list industrial complex too for sure you won't believe what happened so uh since we recorded our last talk to the audience something major has happened and that is the wga strike it's pencils down for the simpsons and other wga shows because uh of lots of reasons that you can read about yourselves but ai is a big pressing factor in their lives and uh pay and all the good stuff you want when you've got a job that is creative

yeah i wonder how you know the last one lasted over a hundred days or exactly a hundred days i do think the simpsons producers are working some in a non-writing capacity to ship out these last episodes if they're not writing the new episodes for the rest of the season this could be a protracted season 35 they're on the front lines like aljean day one in new york city he was on the picket lines for the wga east side and i've seen lots of simpsons writers uh and and actors uh appearing on the picket lines and tweeting it up as well and it's especially mike scully he's he's a big wga guy so it's great to see all of our writing friends it reminds me of 15 years ago and by the way check out our episode on minion death cult their patreon uh we did an episode about the 2008

south park episode canada on strike that is wrong in every possible way yeah it's also smug wrong and smug at the same time and full of scenes of like hey remember this internet video and then it just happens yeah i think you know it's it's definitely ai is a big part of it i also have heard friend of the show nick weiger talking about how another big one is this they're trying to gig economy uh approach to writers rooms where they want to like netflix is one of the dirtiest of it apparently is that they they basically like okay you're a writer's room for 10 days you plan out your stories and then we hand you each one script and then you give us a script and then the animation just starts. And so you're only paid for the 10 days you're in that writer's room and your one script.

And that is like by writing standards, shitty pay. You get no experience. And the writer director Jason Wallner had a great series of tweets and one was incredibly dark but true in that this is all just a concerted effort by capital to reduce the value of labor in everything in every category and now it's moved on to create the creative field i mean making things has been devalued service work has been devalued now this is the last stand yeah creative work it's it's time on the chopping block yeah it's walter had such a great point too he's like i think i directed one of the most popular films on amazon prime uh in the second borat movie i don't know though because they hide all that information from me to disregard my

worth and pay me less so yeah we we wish the wj strike however long it takes and it looks like sag is about to join him too like a double strike i historically in our lifetimes i don't know if that's happened them striking at the same time so if it's ever happened i say let it go on forever i have a lot of catching up to do i have most of the colombo box set to watch and there have been so many new tv shows well for now who knows where they're going oh right that is a segue i want to go backwards though because i skipped a new story not on, but I think my brain wanted to skip it. In that there, yes, it was May 4th. May the 4th be with you.

Yes, I get it. It's as great as talk like a pirate day. But because of this, there was a new short on Disney Plus from the Simpsons called Rogue. Not quite one. And it's a bunch of Star Wars baby shit, and I hate it. And I watched this when it went live, and it's a bunch of star wars baby shit and i hate it and um i watched this when it went live and it just it's so nothing and as always the best part is uh the illustrations over the credits but you don't need to make a short to draw those things yeah that's is the

best stuff because i think it too is silverman and silverman hires great artists to work on these and they draw very funny like one joke ideas that work great as just a film strip but the actual adventures like this is kind of corny like the like it's maggie it's silent maggie adventures except for one line that wiggum says which i was like why is he even talking and you know what that sounded like hank azaria saying you know what just get a computer to do my voice for this it just it sounded so the reading sounded so off it felt yeah i agree it did feel weird though i'll i'll give it credit the one joke that made me chuckle in the actual uh portion of it the they do a star wars text crawl joke which we've seen those a million times but i did like they said nobody reads these and why does it

so i'll just complain why doesn't simpsons have its own tab on Disney Plus? And I'm like, you know what? It really should. It's true. It should be right up there in the Pixar Disney National Geo tab. Simpsons just have a tab. This is a weird thing to complain about though, but I did not understand the reality of this short in that Homer goes to Moe's, but he's also in Star Wars land, but also Wiggum is there like normal Wiggum in a cop car. Yeah. She can fly. She doesn't leave the planet, but flies to Springfield. Yeah. is rather inconsistent yeah again we all our complaints are like look i think david silverman and steve hires a great team and they do fine work with the schedule they're given but i think the concept is corny and if i can even take blame off of lg and if i remember the last one of these they did with the disney princess stuff that one was

james l brooks told him to do it and they had to execute it so i could see that james l brooks is like kids like that baby yoda right lee uh maggie is maggie maybe yoda yes sir right away sir al jean salutes him it didn't help that this was put alongside a bunch of other star wars shorts that were better i only watched the arvin one but it was really good. I fucking love that Aardman one, especially as a, slight spoilers, as a Wedge Antilles super fan. I always love seeing Wedge Antilles repped correctly. Oh, the Final Fantasy character, Wedge? That's where I know him from. Biggs and Wedge, everybody's FF favorites, yeah.

So, yes, things are bad right now in entertainment. We've talked about the strike, which is good, but they, yes, things are bad right now in entertainment. We've talked about the strike, which is good, but they're striking because things are bad. And one of those things is they take shows off of your favorite streaming networks and they just go nowhere because, hey, the finger thing means the taxes. It's always a tax loophole. We've heard enough about that they don't even release them because it can be a tax write-off,

but now we're finding out that if you delist them before a certain date, then you can get some tax money back. So it's happening to a lot of stuff. I think of the most high-profile thing, I guess it was probably Willow. Nobody watched Willow, but they did spend a lot of money advertising. There's a thing they own designed for their own network. To build up worth of a movie they own in willow yeah but i mean bob you're you're a chief willowologist uh only because i was forced to uh there's two good video games i don't like the movie very much i didn't watch the series and i mean the things that are being taken away are admittedly disposable pop

culture in a lot of cases in that who cares honestly but it's still things people worked on and made that should just be available because the company made them and they have a streaming network just stick it on there but i think they're worried also about residuals as well yeah i mean if you're a professional and your shit isn't available how can you like you know it hurts you applying to jobs of saying like well i did this well oh can i watch this of course not it doesn't exist anymore it no longer anymore i mentioned this before but i'm writing a book and uh i had to put you know a little bio about myself and as i was writing all the websites i worked for i realized oh my god they're all dead oh god it's and now that's

happening on freaking hulu and disney plus yeah yeah they used to be just uh website writing scum like us who got all of their work deleted when a website went under now why the last man can go away and earth to ned and duncanville and uh bill oakley's show he did with the regular yeah close enough yeah regular show guy yeah which i almost called it regular time regular time no yeah uh close enough i was just looking it up i was like okay you could buy seasons of it on like amazon and itunes and stuff, but it's still like, come on, man. But yeah, we have friends who worked at like high level on Earth to Ned, which I thought was a really good show that more people should have watched.

And same with Why the Last Man. Like, I feel like it didn't even get a chance. They worked on that. That comic was a hit close to 20 years ago. They worked on it for so long. And then once there's a season it like got like three months if that and then it's just gone like i think it was caught up in the whole like warner thing yeah it's so complicated to me but i know that uh that gummed up the works

for a long time yeah it's covid and covid oh and covid yeah it's uh it's rough it's rough out there for creatives, man. And there is a new Simpsons joke to argue about, although I refuse to because I don't buy any of this. But apparently Josh Weinstein, former writer for the show, discovered that people are online debating when in Mr. Plow, the crazy Volklab, I think his name is, says, put that in H. They're pointing out that the letter H in Cyrillic is actually n so he's telling homer to put it in neutral but to him he's saying it's just funnier that it's a random letter yeah so obviously the the intent was not that yes he's telling homer to put it in neutral they just chose the funniest letter that would not be on your gear shift in your automatic car and people pointed out out in replies to Josh that you can,

the dashboard is visible and Homer is shifting and both H and N are on there. So H does not represent N for neutral in, as it is on an American dashboard. So, or whatever you'd call that shit, gear shift, whatever point is, I feel like this is even sillier than the viking uh controversy but uh but yes a new classic joke argument out there i think the word

is transmission automatic transmission there we go oh i just saw one other news item uh a sad memorial uh in that uh phil hartman dead 25 years as of the day before this recording so that is a bummer and we last we recorded about his last episode in la in like 2018 i think scott gerdner was on bart the mother yeah wow that was a long time ago man yeah and we even got to talk to mike scully about his participation in a date line about hartman's uh death which i still felt that his interview was great and as was uh aljean talking about working with him. But I felt that the dateline-ification of it had to turn it into like, I think some producers working on it said, we need to dig into the story of Phil Hartman and we'll talk to his kids even and get statements from them.

But then another person at Dateline said, no, we have to do what Dateline always does. This is a story about a spouse murdering another spouse so we have to get into the dirty details and make it like that's what the last 30 minutes of it was to me yeah i guess there is a true crime angle to this if you want to approach it that way it does but i feel like it really overshadows the the man phil hartman yeah absolutely and there was a recent article about yardley smith and her new hubby because they are a podcasting duo via the podcast Small Town Dicks. It's on the Parade website.

It's very cute. It's all about being in a podcasting relationship and in a romantic relationship with someone. And I'm living it. So Parade didn't talk to me. But Nina's not on every podcast, so I understand. One of these days we'll be in Parade magazine as well. I like it. Also, it's just funny.

The Simpsons, like as seen in Parade parade magazine now Yardley actually isn't it and and also she works out hard I've she was I saw an Instagram post of her workout and she's running hard on that treadmill she is staying very active you know into her senior years so good for her yeah and I didn't know that this is no judgment here I didn't know this is her third husband i didn't know of her other two husbands but then again i don't know much about yardley smith that's right i keep forgetting about yeah that dan is the only husband i knew about and that's only because uh well before small town dicks there was some commentary where she like is talking about oh me and dan watched this at home last night and then they joke like you and dan castellaneta and she's like yes my husband dan castellaneta i like that or maybe they were just dating at the time but yeah yeah yeah julie kavner her husband just passed away i think

dan castellaneta has been married to deb lacusta for a very long time long time yeah and harry shearer's been with his uh singing singing irish wife or brit, I forget. She's in one of those episodes we talked about. Yep, yeah. And in Simpsons-related news, Futurama season 11 is starting weekly on Hulu on July 24th, and I'm going to predict that we'll cover one of the better episodes in the fall. Yeah, yeah, maybe even, well,

I'm curious to see if our pal Cody Ziegler, how his episode stacks up. I'm afraid it's a conflict of interest. We can't cover that one. Okay. So, yeah, people are speculating the writer's strike is why we're only getting 10 up front. And maybe that is the actual reason. But we've seen this a lot in which there's a 20 episode order.

Hey, it's two seasons in big quotes. It happens with this enchantment. It happened with a billion other shows. So I think this is just the two season screw job oh yeah i mean hulu does that all the time like they're very guilty of it i fully i would bet that behind the scenes they saw if the writer strike happens then we better lock this in now so i would bet it is locked in though if of course say they have a topical joke that then something changes it and they're like well shit we need to write a new joke legally i don't know how they can do that no i think the

10 episode deal is would it happen strike or no because that's just how they roll out this stuff yeah if i had to guess 10 in july 10 more in like february or something of 2024 for sure for sure yeah i think but definitely the timing of it lines up with comic-con too and futurama loves comic-con though will they appear at comic-con if there's still a strike going on what will happen yeah it's very likely the strike could still be happening and uh you know also that strike thing i saw that line there's a lot of newspapers uh or newspapers there's a bunch of media outlets. Periodicals. Periodicals.

Have you been reading the latest telegrams? They want to. I feel like they are attacking the writers for going on strike and they write these headlines of like Marvel movie can't be worked on because of writer meanies to get the fans to be mad at the writers. And one of them I just saw was they're about to start filming the third deadpool movie and the script is locked in but because brian reynolds is wga he can't riff as deadpool on the set and that's kind of his whole thing deadpool's union i'm sorry folks and it's so funny like that they're the it felt like the headline was like deadpool is ruined his tongue has been cut out by the rider strike i feel like we're really ruined. His tongue has been cut out by the writer's strike.

I feel like we're really not going to see the effects of this until the fall. Usually there's things that were in production have to come out, and then we'll see the effects of the strike. And I say, if you're worried about a lack of entertainment, hold on to Tears of the Kingdom until the fall. Just don't play it. You'll have 120 hours of gameplay to keep you busy. And then, how many movies have you not seen? How many TV shows have you not seen? Just sign up for the Criterion Collection alone and just watch one of those every week.

Yeah, I agree. Let's talk about our own personal news. And we have big news because this has been in the works since probably this Patreon account has started, since this network has started, at least. But in July, as orson welles famously said and he hated saying it that way henry and i are both moving uh close to each other but in separate places so henry you're moving to seattle i'm moving to vancouver and uh lady luck made it happen so it's happening at the exact same time and because of that there will be some changes

to the july schedule that we'll discuss next month on our talk to the audience. But the changes will not be drastic. And I feel like they will give us enough time to move to different states, in my case, a different country, and set up for recordings there. And you might not know this, but whenever I record, I have to walk over here to Henry's. It's not a big deal. But when I'm at my own condo that we just got, I'll have my own recording room, and there will be no walking involved. I can just sit down and record. It's the podcaster's dream.

I've never had a podcasting room, and I will have one soon. Yeah, I am really looking forward to having a dedicated pod. My living room has been the podcasting room for a while, and I'm looking forward to moving into a two- and having a, my own dedicated recording space too. And yeah, you know, me and Bob have, we have remote guests all the time. We've,

we've only done a few remotely, but we're pretty used to it already at this point. And we're only going to get used to it more. And we'll be living very close to each other. If I, if I wanted to fly, Seattle is a 20 minute plane ride from Vancouver, but there's a train that goes there as well.

So there will still be in-person podcasts. Um, but yeah, I don't think very much will change. If anything, we'll have time to do more. Yeah. Yeah. I think, uh, things will be produced much more often, honestly. And yeah, we, I don't think any of you folks will really notice. And we've got some really cool, uh, stuff we've been recording just this month, some great upcoming guests. And yeah, it will, it's really just for two weeks, we're going to have a ton of stuff recorded way before the move. But then during July, no, wait, sorry, in July, we're both just going to put the mics away and pack them up and then unpack them someplace else.

And yeah, I've got all these, man, I can't wait to put up my Simpsons posters and my Simpsons cells behind me and show off stuff. Yeah, it's going to be great. I'm both, and we're going to be living so close to each other too. It's going to be cool. I cannot wait.

And we'll keep you in the loop in regards to like how the schedule is changing, but it won't be that drastic. And once again, that will give us time to move, and because we'll be saving money on edits for that month, it'll give us money to pay for building new recording spaces in our own respective domiciles or dwellings, as they're called. Yeah.

Now, I've set aside a little IKEA bucks, too. There was a good deal on IKEA things. But yeah, we've got a lot of cool plans it's only getting bigger and better the the talking simpsons network folks and this has been uh something that probably in a covet free world would have happened three years ago i think yes it would have happened probably summer of 2020 yeah because i would have gotten married in april we would have started looking for a place to live and then i I would have moved. But hey, lots of things happened. You know, I like to think things happen for a reason.

But just to reassure everybody, I don't think you need reassurance. We're working so far ahead right now. We have most of June's programming recorded. By the end of this week, we'll have all of July's miniseries episodes recorded, talking Futurama and talking to the Hill. So we're going to be done with summer before we move basically we're going to try to be done with summer but i think we can do it oh yeah me too let's talk about the schedule for june uh so a long-awaited episode is finally coming to you after five plus years of what a cartoon we're

finally covering the 1987 series of teenage mutant ninja turtles the episode is episode five shreddered and splintered uh i think it's just shredder and splinter which is why i don't understand the title yeah you're right i tried to make it more of a pun or so i guess but yeah shredder and splintered yeah and if you're wondering where this is for some reason multiple accounts have the entire series uploaded to youtube i don't get it but hey go for it but it's not on paramount like all the other tmt shows i i don't it doesn't make any sense but yes this finally we're doing 87 tmt and this is the finale of the original five-parter and this unlocks the turtles for all future stuff like we've there's been some

other times we're like oh well we can't do this turtles thing until we finally do the real turtle the original turtles well now it has been done so i would bet we're gonna hear more turtle content from us after this and i mean every episode is two and a half hours long but i remember this being a very long episode yeah well we have we both had so many turtle memories we were in the exact demographic the show is aiming at yeah and for five dollar and up patrons on patreon.com talking simpsons we have our mini series episodes for june which include talking futurama covering crimes of the hot an episode that is made to let you know global warming exists except we don't call it that anymore

and we also have talking of the hill uh covering the king of the hill episode good hill hunting and we have a special guest for that one as well oh yeah look forward to that one yeah we've uh both both are already done again that's how far ahead we are those are those are both a ton of fun to talk about i really i really enjoyed all of our manhood and boyhood talks yes in uh in good hill and we're no longer holding on to our boyhoods it's important to let go of that at some point and our what a cartoon movie for june will be the incredibles we're continuing our summer of pixar of course if you want to hear the entire thing you'll have to sign up at the $10 level at patreon.com

slash TalkingSimpsons. Our last podcast was six hours and nine minutes. I can't say this one will be long, but hey, they're getting pretty long. They are getting pretty long, and Incredibles is chock full of stuff, but yeah, it's travel back 19 years to when a

film about a good superhero movie that treats it seriously is amazing and a great thing to see i'm sure i'll talk about this on the podcast but i remember being in the theater in 2001 not seeing this movie seeing unbreakable and thinking they made a superhero movie well that's pretty neat and now it's my hell i can't escape from it's every single movie and it never stops yeah though but i like the incredibles yeah i i love it and we'll look into its randy and philosophy believe us folks yeah and we uh and you know if you want to prep for it if you haven't listened to it yet and it's on the free feed our iron giant one uh which covers the

career of brad bird up to iron giant because incredibles will pick up after iron giant i'm not going to recap all brad Bird's career again for Incredibles. But unfortunately, we're going to have to talk about Lasseter as we are forced to. We can just sum him up real quick. Yeah. Perverted Hawaiian shirt baby man. Hired his crony to finally make a movie at Pixar. Let's move on to talk about what we've been playing and watching unrelated to the podcast.

My list is pretty simple because believe it or not folks uh well i've been traveling a lot in fact uh i went to vancouver and then my wife nina traveled here and we saw we hate movies live that was amazing that was so much fun they do a great live show please see them if they're in your town it's a great time and we hung out with them that was a great time but outside of all the traveling we've been also closing on a condo. We're starting the process. So I've been very busy, but I have managed to play at least 20 hours of Tears of the Kingdom.

And you don't need me to tell you it's good. I mean, it's weird to be playing this game and thinking like, this could be the best game ever. And I'm just, and I'm playing it. I'm living this existence in which I have access to the best game ever made.

And it's hard. It's hard to like wrap your brain around that actually. You know, I'm only five hours in. I, I, I'm having trouble.'s hard to like wrap your brain your brain around that actually you know i'm only five hours in i i i'm having trouble let's talk and wrap your brain around it i the physics based the the combo puzzles like my i'm i haven't fully reprogrammed my brain yet to build the things correctly maybe i do need to play on a big screen instead of handheld yeah i could not imagine playing this game on a handheld well you know when i first got it i got it the night it came out i i bought it and then flew the next day so i played it on a plane so i didn't have a big screen and uh yeah it was it was pretty hard

in handheld mode so uh i'm gonna start it back up but yes i mean it is the the hype is for real tears the kingdom is great it's crazy how it levels up all of your skills from the original game like i thought there was nowhere else to go from there but shockingly just to give one example and you've all played it but in the first game breath of the wild it's like okay you can just pick up metallic objects in this game it's like you can pick up anything and also stick it to anything and move it around and do whatever you want with it and the game doesn't break the game doesn't break it's crazy incredible yeah they have all this and it doesn't break i mean this is the dream that bethesda wanted for their uh you know elder uh

held in rank elder scrolls series of games yeah but yeah having a great time with that also a little bit of monster on the rise but not a lot of time for games i am enjoying zelda when i get time to play it tv i have finally become a man and I have now seen the entire Dragon Ball TV series. And it was totally worth it. Very little filler. It moves at a pretty fast clip. I know that's not the case for DBZ. But I'm taking a break before I move on to DBZ Kai.

The abridged version of the animated series. Yeah, you should just stick with the Kai of it. You know, the original storyline. I remember the last time I rewatched a couple of the lastai of it i uh you know the the original storyline i remember the last time i re-watched a couple of the last run of it was they actually did have like a necessary filler episode or almost necessary of explaining how goku trains with king kai uh not king kai uh king king piccolo no kami okay thank you kami up in heaven when they're training together like in the on the comic page it works great is like hey who's that adult man and they're like oh

that's goku he's a he's a full-sized man now but i liked it better in the show that they actually like give you a little bit of the training with kami uh up in the up up in heaven of course you do have to see mr popo but it's unfortunate yeah he's just there they can't recolor him yeah uh but yeah also the series ends with a filler arc that's a little cheesy but it is just goku and chichi having an adventure together and then they get married and invite no one to their wedding it's great they have to invite no one because everybody's supposed to be shocked when he's got a kid but yeah yeah i suppose again and the way it works in the comics is goku just is it is it an assigned wife and then he just kind of goes like i guess i'm married now

like i always i it always feels to me like toriyama i wonder what his relationship is like the way goku regards his wife goku is surprised with the uh someone telling him you're married to this person now it's just like oh this is what a wedding is this is what a wife does okay and she taught him a lot of things in between that's how you get gohan yeah it's true i also have watched half a better call saul i think it's a it's a very good show i don't think it's as good as breaking bad having reached the halfway point and my only issue with it well i have two i guess one is that i have guessed every plot twist but i think i might be too familiar with this kind of a show to know where it's going and i often think this is uh well it is a hour long show but sometimes i think this could be

half an hour and i would lose nothing a real hallmark of this show is like long protracted scenes of you watching a character do one thing and they don't explain why this person is doing something until the very end and it's very stylish and artistic but once you get to the 20th one of those you're like all right guys i could have just you could have just show me the end of this and it does feel like they need to eat up 48 minutes and they don't always have enough writing for that i think gilligan and his team after they did that uh that fly episode of breaking bad they thought they could do that it gave them too much confidence i think and they they they do episodes like those more often. Yeah.

And also, I've been watching season two of Beavis and Butthead. It's great. Please watch it. I want them to make more. Very, very funny. I rarely laugh out loud when I watch something alone, but my face hurts after watching this show. I got to catch up.

Yes. Henry, that's the sixth time you've said that. I know. You can't say it anymore unless you watch the show. Okay well we'll see we'll see what i have to say next uh next talk to you do you want to see them drinking gallons of horse piss well you have to watch season two oh yeah i do want to see that yes okay uh i saw a lot of movies not as many as i normally watch but thanks to nina i finally seen the sting have you? No, no, I have not. It is very interesting and good. It is a throwback to, I believe, The Great Depression, and it's Robert Redford and... Paul Newman, right?

Yes, thank you. It's been a month and I totally forgot. And guess what? They're pulling a very long con. It's such a long con that after the 20-minute opening, the next hour and 45 minutes is setting up every stage of the con it's so it's so interesting and the payoffs are great you know i know the plot of the sting because there's a lengthy season six community episode uh parodying the sting oh and also king of the hill uh act three of the episode with jeff goldblum is peggy doing the same scam except it doesn't work right right man and they have to steal his money from the safe okay i'll want that's another one i'll add it to the list it's definitely it totally works and this

made me realize like uh james earl jones's dad is in this and the other only other movie i've seen him in is a sleepaway camp oh wow i didn't know he's in that it seemed like a low for him in his career to be to be in sleepaway camp recording a movie in new jersey a direct to vhs thriller that does seem pretty low yeah i also have seen green room have you are you aware of green room uh it's not the documentary about al jazeera it is not okay it is a uh thriller i'll say uh i don't know why i wanted to watch this on my birthday maybe not a good birthday pick but the plot of the movie is a punk band they need to play a show and they end up getting booked in a uh basically a neo-nazi bar in uh outside of portland uh they play their show they see something in the green room they shouldn't

have seen and now they're stuck in there and have to fight their way out it is incredibly violent incredibly harrowing my heart was in my throat the entire time and Patrick Stewart plays a villain oh that sounds cool man I know I haven't heard of this movie at all I never want to watch it again but I enjoyed my one time through and uh Anton Yelchin is in this and I may miss him because I really haven't seen him anything except for the Star Trek movie yeah R.I.P. and that's that now I'm sad I should check this movie out yeah and I've also seen I think these are all going to be Henry hasn't seen uh yep yes I also watch because we're watching a lot of old musicals how to succeed in business without really trying very good uh 60s musical it could be better the songs

are a little meh but it stars a guy that looks so much like Dave Foley it's distracting but he acts like Dave Foley too it's great yeah I't seen this. I have seen one performance from Daniel Radcliffe was in a Broadway revival of it in the lead. And I saw his song in it. But no, I, well, you're right. You've seen a musical I haven't seen now. Who's gayer in this room? That's an important question. Yes.

And I finally got around to rewatching Brainstorm. It's a movie that I mentioned in when we covered Insane in the mainframe. And it has a very stock noir plot in which a wife wants a stranger to kill her husband. And it gets pretty zany from there. And it's directed by William Conrad. That's right. Fat Man from Jake and the Fat Man and the narrator from Rocky and Bullwinkle. He directed three thrillers for Warner Brothers. This is one of them. I hear the other two aren't very good, but this is a very little known noir that is so little known that Amazon just burns it for you and sends it to you. Wow, the guy who was the source of many a fat joke on Mystery Science Theater.

Yes, yes. The William Conrad Refrigerator Alarm. I didn't know that he had, I did not know he was a film director. Wow. Yeah, he directed a lot of TV. So yeah, brainstorm. So yeah, those are all my picks for this month. And wow yeah he directed a lot of tv so yeah brainstorm so uh yeah

those are all my picks for this month and yeah thanks to a lot of the effort from my wife we are closing on a new condo it's a two-bedroom i've never lived anything bigger than a one-bedroom in my life and all of my spaces i'm 41 folks all of my spaces have been temporary every space i've lived in i've had the thought like this is fine for now i'm not going to bother decorating and i haven't so i have posters and tubes that have been in them for 15 years and collectibles boxed up but I'll finally have a place that is semi-permanent at least uh even uh even a couple cells I've gifted you too I have at least three cells I think yeah yeah no I can't wait to see the the place once you decorate same with my next place too I can't wait to see the place once you decorate. Same with my next place, too. I can't wait to show it off to you.

Well, so for my month, video games other than Tears, I did finish Pokemon Scarlet, which was a good time. But they really got to get some voice acting in these games. When I started up Tears and Zelda is talking, I'm like, Pokemon has to have some talking. Like, characters have to talk. I like the voice acting in Tears of the Kingdom. It's the very Japanese game design sense of, okay, cut scenes will be voice dialogue. Everything else will just be text.

If everyone always talked to me in Tears of the Kingdom, I'd get sick of it. But in the cut scenes, I do like that. And I'm still very addicted to Marvel Snap. I'm looking forward to this next month. It going to be a spider verse month and a lot of my favorite spiders are finally going to get cards in the game so really looking forward to that uh as for movies i i've seen a few uh but i'll just spotlight a few of uh because ray stevenson passed away i finally watched punisher war zone i've never seen it it is it is an insane movie full of acting

that is like oh that there's big choices and then there's this movie uh but it also these days seeing a marvel movie that is a hard r when it comes to violence uh is rare to see and feel special so it's uh, you know, is, I wouldn't even call it great, but it is a fun watch for sure. And I know the woman director was basically sent to movie jail for making it. Yeah. Lexi Alexander. Yeah.

It's, uh, which is really too bad. Like she wanted to show a woman can direct, uh, a harsh action film just as well as any, any man. But,

uh, yeah. And then also in the movie theaters i saw two movies one was guardians 3 my assigned marvel viewing but i will say it actually was one of my favorite mcu ones i've seen in a couple years now like it it finished up the guardians trilogy pretty well what can i say the daddy issues and musical taste of uh james gunn speak to me on a certain level how are they still doing dad stuff in this in this movie i've seen the first two everybody's got a dad bob it's just different dad what about me well well absentee fathers are part of it now

like basically rocket raccoon has some dad issues he has to sort through and uh andrax and also you know half the characters have dad issues they have to go through and uh andrax and also you know half the characters have dad issues they have to go through what did miller and lord write this well i did i did watch cloudy with a chance of meatballs as well which is also a heavily dad issues movie it's you know for being from i i think i believe it was 2009 it got ahead of the curve of like parent apologizes to you media it smashed the champagne bottle on the parent apology ship. But it's a lot of fun because it is, it's basically a PG episode of Clone High, which I'll get to that in a sec.

But in the theaters as well, I saw Ponyo or Ponyo on the Cliff. I hadn't seen it since it was brand new in the US on Blu-ray. I'd never seen it on the big screen. And I always thought it was like a bit slight after seeing in the theaters i still it's kind of fairy tale quality i get it it was it was miyazaki trying to really get back to like his kids movie roots like he was feeling it it absolutely feels like a guy plotted it as he was writing it because it just goes nowhere but seeing it sounds like him seeing it on the big screen one of the best things about it is an animation showcase is they draw a ton of tiny things

moving at once and when it's on a big movie screen you can really appreciate all the little blobs blobbing about in it now you said you never saw it in theaters uh i was just reading about disney's relationship with studio ghibli because people on discord were talking about it and i was like yeah whatever happened there and i was reading that with most of these movies they were put in maybe five theaters just to say it wasn't a theater so we can nominate it for things if we want we could submit it for things if we want but they just totally mistreated all of these movies outside of spirited away and i think like arietti was the one where they tried to give it a real release and i think there was a pixar short before it yeah and that was the one they also changed the credit music on that i like

was furious in the theater when i heard that they did that a lot though uh yeah but this this one i hadn't seen it in a while because i knew it had been a while since i'd watched a disney dub of a ghibli film too which usually they keep the original music intact on the Japanese side of it anyway. I just remember having to drive multiple cities over to see Spirited Away and Howl's Moving Castle. And now like every time I walk by one of the few open theaters, they're always showing Kiki's Delivery Service

or some Ghibli movie, which is great. It must make huge money for Fathom Events because this year they're doing it there's a monthly new replay of classic uh ghibli films though it is almost entirely miyazaki directed ones like and i i get it people are more likely to see lapida than they're going to see uh pom poco or only yesterday like i get that or even whisper of the heart's not in the list at the same time i don't think they would even know if you didn't tell them yeah oh the regular public they'd be like oh me he's a hockey director pom poco the pigs is what i call them though it was

pretty great seeing whisper of the heart with uh rebecca sugar's great intro to it oh it's still there yeah okay well actually no i mean in the past okay you can watch it online though uh and lastly of tv things, I finished Barry. Great show, great finale. I would say season, I'm not saying any spoilers. I'd say, if I were to say what my favorite season is, season three is the best season. But season four, I think, is a great finale. It may be divisive to some, or divisive, but my favorite character, Hank, had some great

scenes this season, and I wish it got nominated for Emmys because there's some acting ass acting in the show, even though it is a comedy. I do want to see this. The good news is I don't have to watch Succession because everyone just tweeted, wow, what a great ending. I can't believe X and Y happened. Truly amazing television. Just like, well, never need to see that. Thanks. Yeah.

When Z did blank, I thought it was so crazy yeah i i fucking cannot stand yeah it's insane what people do on i mean people like well we all watched succession two hours ago right time to say can you believe this guy did this in the last scene of the whole show or like no actually the worst is okay this is a normal thing to say if you're on twitter and i'm on twitter too much i I know, there are spoiler tags. You can put the not safe for work tag on the fucking pictures you're putting up. I know it's technically made for nudes or whatever, but put it on. If you want to show the last scene of Succession because you think, what an amazing shot, the greatest shot in television.

Better take a picture with my phone. Then fucking make it not safe for work that's all i asked yes you know who spoiled the ending for me of that show uh comedian julie brown well i did not expect that because i follow her on twitter and i was like you're like 66 you don't know how the internet works i'll forgive you i you know that makes me even more mad at the millennials in my feed who tweet out the thing. And I watched first two episodes of New Clone High. I thought they were really good.

I thought they were really good. I don't know if you've seen them yet. I have downloaded them. I have not watched them yet. All right. Because, well, in Canada, no Max. You're going to have to. Yes, I can watch them, but Nina can't.

So I snuck them across the border. They're really good. There's only a couple jokes in the first episode that make me go like I get it you have to make jokes about cancel culture or whatever so there's a little but it is really good and the second episode feels like real clone high to me great that's great and and I like the new characters and even the animation I think is well done and lastly I've been watching a lot of old Conan bits and I just wanted to say I pulled up a big compilation of scenes of brian stack playing both the door-to-door salesman and the ghost crooner

was he also preparation age preparation h raymond no that's a different guy okay i like that guy too uh but brian i i added brian stack on my appreciation of it he's like thanks and yeah he he liked it back you know what he's up to lately or for the past let's say 20 years you know i think he is softly retired he did work on colbert i know that like he he left he did not follow conan all the way to the end of conan but i believe he then went to colbert and i think too he wanted to move back to new york and so that's why he went to colbert uh but let's see what his twitter profile says here by the way preparation h raymond is uh brian mccann oh okay uh but so

actually he bio says he is still a writer for colbert so there we go how do you like that you think it'd be better yeah well yeah i mean it comes down from the top it'll never outlive that clip of nancy pelosi and chuck schumer showing up at his door where where the party starters were the heads of the party is that how you said it uh and uh and lastly folks if you're in the seattle area speaking of seattle i believe there's still tickets available so i'll promote it again for our pals bill and josh mission hill is touring around the these great states of ours showing episodes in in group settings on the 16th they're doing one in los angeles and then they are flying straight to seattle for june 17th that's saturday june 17th two shows in seattle i'll be there i've got my tickets uh so you know maybe even say hello to me

there i'll even be uh bringing down with me my original copy of the i married a gay man from space table table read script you know uh the funny thing about shows like this is that we are spotted at them and we're not even famous but i think let's just say we all have a very distinct look to us especially when i'm there with my wife which is like well you're the two most different looking people in the world together so that has to be Bob and Nina that's yeah it's true I Nina's also made a great point when she draws us in cartoon style she's like well you guys do look like cartoon characters so but but yeah so hey if you're the mission ill Seattle show be you know say hello uh let's be friendly yeah let's move on to comments for Talking Simpsons, the first batch are about

Bart's friend falls in love. And hey, speak of the devil. Nina Matsumoto says in response to Henry saying French Canadians probably wouldn't pronounce about as a boot. I actually think they're more likely to do that because in French, OU is pronounced ooh. For example, souvenir, art nouveau, and

souffle, and the l'ouvre. But I've never been to Quebec or Quebec, so I can't say for certain. I remember in high school asking my French teacher if she knows a song, Dominique, and she certainly did. She sang a few lines for me, and that's from Nina. So that shows you French Canadian teachers, they love singing Dominique. They got it right in that Simpsons episode. But thank you, Nina.

Yes, I was. they got it right in that simpsons episode but but thank you nina yes i was uh maybe the british canadians are getting all the the flack for these uh french canadians with their ooze it's time to watch yoga hosers no you'll have the definitive answer you know clerks three almost killed me i think yoga hosers would turn me into just dust if i tried to watch it i know i i would definitely rather watch tusk than than that i feel like tusk could at least be like somewhat entertaining though now what one of the co-stars is johnny depp's kid in yoga hosers right and she's about to star in this new teen sex show from the euphoria guy with oh there's a new i can't even keep up with all these teen sex shows or maybe it's a

movie but yeah it's like a max original and people are talking about it because it's it's horny like euphoria but it's about a basically it stars the weekend playing kind of himself and and his girlfriend is the johnny depp's daughter and there's a lot of nudeness in it apparently but anyway sabrina says about that same episode my nine-year-old son has been using talking simpsons as a sleep podcast lately on a recent vacation he had trouble falling asleep in the hotel room so he asked me to keep my podcasts on for him I chose an old episode and we just let them roll all night ever since then he has been playing episodes for five to ten minutes before bed every night he has a history of being a terrible sleeper but this podcast has actually been very helpful for him. It's a strange added benefit of my subscription.

So that's great, Sabrina. I'm going to say that's great. Number one. Number two, we're sorry for swearing. Yeah. Number three, we don't know his name, but hey, Mason, thanks for listening. I want to say Mason. Yeah, that's what I was going for.

Yeah. No, that's great. Yeah, I am still a podcast sleeper. They help me go to sleep still. And it's a good sleep. When the music, when I have a podcast stop in the middle of sleep, it wakes me up. Like I actually can't, when it's silence, my brain goes like, wait, silence, wake up. Something's wrong.

Is that healthy though? You know, hey, I get a good, according to Fitbit, I get a good night's sleep. It's given me a good sleep. I need the soothing hum of a fan. Well, I do have a fan. Oh, my God. How many noise sources do you have? Just those two.

You need a barking dog? Oh, actually, my CPAP should count as a third noise source, too. Oh, my Lord. So, yeah, it's actually, it's a lot of noise when I sleep, but no snoring, thanks to the CPAP. If you went in a sensory deprivation tank, what would happen? I mean, I've been scared to try it. I like i would go insane i'm scared fair enough let's move on to papa's got a brand new badge a diamond fight says watch this with japanese subtitles and they slightly modified the ricky martin joke i wouldn't have expected his name to carry much

weight in japan but they left him in and removed any mention of girlfriend simply suggesting the aca is working harder than ricky himself this is bob speaking girlfriend, simply suggesting the AC is working harder than Ricky himself. This is Bob speaking. Willie says the AC is working harder than Ricky Martin's girlfriend. I think he even says hey-o. But in the Japanese dub, they cut out the girlfriend part of it. So maybe they didn't get it. It's possible the localizer didn't understand the joke.

Instead of being homophobic, it's just a compliment. It's like this works harder than that hardworking performer, Ricky Martin. He was very hardworking back then. Jessica S says in that episode regarding the final scene, setting aside the tiredness of the song, I love me an innocent morphing into mischievous Maggie. Look, it's just so cute the way they draw it. The Clockwork Orange parody comes to mind as well. And I'm pretty sure there's a dozen others i'm missing off the top of my head so yeah look maggie maggie the mischievous it's nice in small doses though we just keep getting heavier and heavier doses of it in these maggie shorts lately yeah it's a little too much although i forget which season it was it's when mr burns comes over he's like oh it's the baby who shot me and maggie does the finger gun at him yeah it's like oh yeah they ask him

like oh you mean maggie no the baby that shot me no And Maggie does the finger gun at him. Yeah, it's like, oh yeah, they ask him like, oh, you mean Maggie? No, the baby that shot me. No, I mean Lisa. Yeah, that's it. That's right. I think it's season eight maybe. Let's move on to Brother Can You Spare Two Dimes? And Harry Thornton says,

thanks to an in-depth article by Mike Broderick for screening the past, we know what Stanley Kubrick thought of The Simpsons. Quote, Kubrick daughter's Katharina had confirmed that her father was quite a fan of the show and chuffed at the references to his movies his longtime personal assistant anthony frewin also recalled quote stanley thought the simpsons was wonderfully funny and inventive how it satirized so many aspects of the american dream uh and then there's a full link to the article in the patreon comment but yeah that's very cool i thought i had heard something somewhere about Kubrick enjoying just TV in general,

but also The Simpsons. Yeah, I loved hearing that he was well chuffed about it. I mean, because he lived in England for a very long time. People thought he was British. Yeah. I mean, isn't that insane that he, instead of filming in New York City, he just built blocks of Manhattan in a film studio in london that sounds like a blank check to me yeah i i mean i'm quoting facts i know from the

blank check about eyes wide shut yeah but uh but yeah i'm glad to know stanley kubrick liked the simpsons and uh locker us says on the same episode come for the episode history and commentary stay for the simpsons character sperm design preference personally i'd like to see crusties because remember this ain't makeup man so his sperm would be quite pale that's for sure paler than the normal sperm actually i want to see a gallery exhibit that's just simpsons as sperm walls and walls of simpsons as sperm paintings the sperm heads become the heads of the simpsons that that should have been their 750th opening just sperm heads of every character 750 sperm i mean it's 2023 just make it the parody of the opening of look who's talking that is just old enough for al jean to want to do absolutely

not old as old as patton though again come on guys uh moving on to trios before 13 and eric schumann says according to the horrible ghouls themselves record of the year deals with a specific recording of a song and recognizes the artists producers and engineers who contribute to that recording while song of the year deals with the composition of a song and recognizes the songwriters who wrote the song nothing confusing about that now eric i think my confusion was between record and album that's that's where i was drawing the distinction okay that's though that is record versus song is like well so it could be potentially something that is a great song they then go like well that's a good song like written but the recording stinks like this would never win record of the year it's sort of like best

picture and best director where it is kind of weird if they don't both win yes yeah like like yes yes uh and then also in 2013 joe hodgson says oh boy you stumbled onto ninjara from tmnt adventures she's a weird one first of all she is a fox and is part of a clan of fox people from the archie books the archie books started off as a comic form of the show or an interpretation, but quickly found its own niche under the direction of Stephen Murphy that made it far more mature than the 87 cartoon. Ninjara was a joint creation among the staff, but she's most associated with artist Chris Allen, who admits he feels a certain ownership over the character, but he doesn't outright own her. Mirage was also about the creator bill of rights

and was pretty welcoming to artists, which is probably why Alan Murphy was able to do some side non-Mirage content featuring Ninjara that was more explicit, and a bunch of fans incorrectly think that she is no longer the president of the franchise. When Viacom bought out Mirage, they had to individually buy the characters from the creators,

but Murphy, who actually owned her, declined their offer for her for some reason when idw wanted to bring her into the books they had to create a new fox character named alopex uh that would also become raf's girlfriend down the line alopex was also included in the 2012 cartoon but injara is effectively off limits when it comes to the viacom nick presumably because they don't want to have to pay for stephen murphy was working has a working relationship with tmnt so i don't think he'd stand in the way of her being reintroduced but for viacom it's cheaper to just have the knockoff and be done with it needless to say there's a lot of vocal fans that reject alopex and want ninjara maybe they'll get an action figure someday for their troubles so

there that's a whole bunch of ninjara history from our one-off talk about the ninja fox girlfriend of rafael i think someone posted an official picture of uh raf making out with one of these two characters in our discord from the comic i saw that too yeah Yeah. It's like they're eating each other. But yes, thanks for the Ninjara and Alopex info dump. Yes. I've learned so much. Sadly, I learned this after we recorded our TMNT episode, but we barely even touch on the adventure series. I was flipping through some old adventure books recently, which they're mostly reprinted

right now. Oh, the Ninja Turtle adventures? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. They have to take the Archie branding off them because it was just they're mostly reprinted right now. Oh, the Ninja Turtle Adventures? Yeah, yeah, yeah. They have to take the Archie branding off them because it was just, they're owned by Mirage,

not Archie anymore. And they don't have the Archie crossover books in there, but most of it's in there that I remember from my childhood. You know, speaking of turtles, I'm really glad we covered the first season of five episodes because on a whim,

I put on season two, episode one, just to see what it was like and god the drop off and everything is precipitous oh really it is so bad compared to the first five i haven't watched that in such a long time i should have figured like the the budget is probably like less than half per episode by by season two everything is bad and wrong the first five are amazing let's move on to what a cartoon movie little shop of horrors and sean riley says for the high school productions of the show from when i was in high school in the early 2000s the teacher wanted me to be the voice of the plant because i can do funny voices but i am not a singer so i declined when i saw the show later the actor who

did a really nice job replaced the swearing with tough toenails or no spit which if i were in his place i honestly wouldn't be able to resist saying the bad words. Me neither. Hey, you're on stage. Are they going to give you detention on stage? No. I say roll with it. They got to finish the show.

Like, yeah. And boy, think of the laugh you get if you said tough titties on stage. I guess tough titties comes first before no shit. No, tough titties is at the end. So then I guess it's no shit. You'd only get to say one of those, I think. You you know i saw a high school production of this and i don't remember what they did so i'm sorry i cannot provide information but i think they probably censored

it you know the the berkeley playhouse i think they did the swearing i'm pretty sure they kept that in but uh well it was performed by adults for adults that's true yeah but it well my matinee had a lot of kids in it uh i think both of the ones i went to had kids with them but hey they know what they're signing up for and i think it also had the family of the guy playing seymour krelborn krel krelborm as well yeah krelborn or yeah you're right yeah so also on the movie kevin nash and not the pro wrestler uh says i was a huge fan of sctv and rick moranis i even have a bob and doug mckenzie action figures yes they exist when my kids were young they thought he was a huge star

because of ghostbusters and the shrunk movies they love this movie too i'm not sure how they would react to the original ending i'm not sure how i would at the time rick moranis was one of my favorite actions in the 1980s i wanted to see him get the girl in the end or the beer truck full of elsinore yeah i could uh yeah i do i do wonder what kid me would have thought of that ending would i have watched the movie a million times if i saw rick moranis get eaten i i don't know yeah i wonder you know what i didn't mention on the movie podcast something that popped in my head is that do you remember remember when Rick Moranis was one of the few victims of the knockout game? That's right. The real knockout game happened to him and everyone was like, kill him, kill the man who hit Rick Moranis.

I mean, yeah, I think we all united online. Like, I defund the police, except the cop who will arrest this man. Yeah, fund just him. So we're moving on to what a cartoon, American Dad episode, Gold Top Nuts. Henry, since this episode is aired, since we gave you a hard time about not enjoying the delicious nuts that nature gives us in so many forms, you have a nut report. Yes, I have bought a bag of a couple of bags of mixed nuts recently, and i've been enjoying them in moderation i've been really counting calories lately but uh they they are a nice little cruncher and also you know because of how crunchy they are i can slowly chew on them instead of like eating them really fast so yeah they're meant to be they're meant to be savored so you said they're mixed nuts do you know what

nuts are in the next boy you know what a lot i should just grab them let me grab them real quick here okay so i'm holding them in front of me, folks. Deluxe mixed nuts. I'm seeing Brazil nuts. I'm seeing almonds. I'm seeing macadamia nuts, cashews. A pecan is in there. And yeah, this is good.

Yeah, and I wanted to get them because they were deluxe. But yeah, they did not have a can. There were other cans there, but I was like, I don't want to just go straight to planters. Let's get a deluxe instead. And if you're worried about sodium henry they can come unsalted too oh yeah i should have done that actually yeah this is the roasted and salted kind i think the ones i've been i've chewed on so far uh i think hazelnuts i think are my favorite just because i do really like creamed hazelnuts like you know the uh what nutella that type of deal yes i like that flavor you know

uh since we did the episode and since you had your revelation on the air i just have noticed everything i eat has nuts in it like everything around me just there's nuts in everything you're a bit you see i i again i think i said it on the episode but another reason we didn't have mixed nuts around the house is because my brother is allergic to peanuts so you don't have that's rough yeah and it pretty much extends to most mixed nuts though he loved pistachios those were a favorite not to dwell on this too long but because you told me that final fantasy 7 remake thing uh you kind of put the idea in your head your teeth would break if you ate a nut um there's a gag in that in which yuffie gives people a food item and they chomp down on it and it hurts their teeth

because they're not ready for how hard it is. I hate to tell you this, Henry, it's a bean. Oh, it's a bean. In the game, it's a bean. You projected your fear of nuts onto this innocent bean. You're right, man. I was that scared of nuts. I should have been scared of beans.

Yes, start fearing beans. Well, I mean, i i'll eat some beans but usually it is uh they are boiled and otherwise heavily prepared i do not eat an uncooked bean i mean nobody's eating uncooked beans because you're supposed to soak them overnight if you want to prepare them if you don't get them in a can that's why i'm in a dry bag that's why yuffie's a weirdo yes yeah uh okay so i'm happy with your nut progress henry uh moving on so brian horton says regarding american dad getting renewed at least on tbs i found this roll street journal article interesting the key points being these quote senior executives oversee the tbs channel were asked by discovery executives if they could

get out of a two-year contract for the animated program american dad, which is made by the Walt Disney Corporation. According to people familiar with the matter, the plan didn't go forward and, quote, at the Turner Network's TBS and TNT, the bulk of the original programming team was let go, sending a signal to the remaining workers in Hollywood that the channels were out of the scripted content business as part of the cost cuts. However, Turner's agreements distributors have covenants that call for original scripted programming. The comment goes on to say, so WBD already thought about killing it, but they are also contractually required to make some amount of scripted content.

If American Dad survives the TBS, it might just be to help fulfill that requirement. Wow. So for it to count as a cable channel on cable services as as it is contractually existed it has to have written scripted content on it to be really tbs or tnt so wow then then american dad gets to just stick around as like it's old reliable they'll pump out the however many number of new episodes we need to count as a real channel and how many hours of aew are on one of these channels 20 a week uh it's about to be five total a week okay is it tnt or tbs it's two hours on tn tbs and soon to be in mid-june three hours on tnt currently it's one hour on tnt

but they're about to add another show with my problematic fave cm punk which look i can't we don't have five hours to go into that but my message to him have a beer you'll feel better therapy and a beer i think are both needed for him but yes i that that's really interesting to know that of course our assumption was was right that discovery is like we got to get out of this we don't want to pay for this but then they find out ah shit we technically have to have scripted programming uh which yeah that that's the secret of cable right well not secret but it's related to the wga thing most channels are slowly but surely gradually getting rid of scripted stuff there it is seen even for the prestige bucks of it or getting emmy awards they don't see it is

worth it anymore they're like we we don't need that like they don't see it as worth it anymore. They're like, eh, we don't need that. Like, they wouldn't make a Breaking Bad now on AMC. Oh, there's no way, yeah. It'd be like an Apple TV Plus thing, which is where actually the Breaking Bad creator went to make his next show. Oh, I didn't know that. It hasn't been announced yet, but he has to deal with them. Yeah, I was watching, I never watch reality shows that often,

but I did watch the latest Love is Blind with Nina because she was sick and we were traveling and it was that was new and she was a fan of the show and it made me realize like god this is so cheap because nick lachey is the host with some with some woman i don't know her name but they show up for maybe one percent of the show to the point where you forget the show has hosts it must be something that can be filmed very quickly yeah yeah i i just watched the the reality show the trickrixie Motel, about Trixie, the RuPaul drag race winner, opening a hotel with his husband or longtime partner. And it really got me.

I was like, oh, yeah, this is why reality shows work. But now, just as a side note, frigging Max, man, when I go to Max now, it's all just everything's in the same trough. It used to be when it was HBO Max, there were gradations. And even the tabs, you can't go to the Adult Swim tab anymore, the Ghibli tab. There used to be a Turner Classic Movies tab, too. None of that anymore. They want it all on the same level. So when you see, here's all the new stuff, you're seeing succession right next to like five reality shows that i have never heard of before but they are

presented like for a second after you're like wait that's not a scripted thing that's some reality shit like it's so strange not to dwell on this for too long but it's so strange that currently without any argument the best streaming service with the friendliest interface that has the most customizable options is youtube yeah yeah you can make playlists you can add things to different likes and favorites lists you have complete control of everything in front of you instead of just the the the platform showing you what it wants to show you next it lets you get to the end of a video without you having to grab a controller and say no no credits i want to see the credits god right god and no youtube it's it's totally worth paying for if you watch things on youtube and most things are

on youtube now yeah it tons of shows that are not claimed by a subscription service they're just on there too like the turtle stuff yeah it's uh but hey on max i could finally get myself an avatar picture currently it's amethyst from steven universe oh i forgot you couldn't do that for a long time yeah it uh they finally upgraded it so is all that problem on max totally worth it um all right so also on american dad our good old pal thad kamarowski says it's funny the missus and i are watching king of the hill and american dad almost daily is actually making my appreciation of the Simpsons deplete. You kind of almost hit on it on the intro, but both represent a far better ink and paint sitcom than the Simpsons that aired are airing alongside them.

American Dad has always experimented and tries. It deserves a far better status than one of the Family Guy's dumb cousins. And King of the hill and american dad have their share of duds but i've actually shut off episodes from the second half of the simpsons life last week's was a record of 30 seconds if american dad had a different art style than family guys it might be appreciated more but alas mcfarland blandness always wins out the bit with klaus crashing and exploding after his sanctimonious how dare dare you, is the best part. So, yeah, I think he has a good point of like that if American Dad didn't look like Family Guy and we didn't all make the surface level reaction like, oh, it's just more of this McFarlane crap.

Yeah, I'm glad people enjoyed that episode and it helped a lot of people realize that American Dad is not what they thought it was. If they didn't know by now. I think we really pushed more people to gold top nuts at the very least yeah moving on to talking futurama the episode was jurassic bark and alex actually says uh bob mentioning evergreen made me think of this i went to evergreen state college from 2011 2013 and i actually got to see matt graining do a panel with people in the animation cartooning world who were alums, including Craig Bartlett from Hey Arnold, and that was Matt Groening's former brother-in-law, I think.

Yeah, I guess. I think they were brother-in-law at the time, too. Matt Groening signed a bunch of Simpsons comics and was very nice. I was able to find the full video of the panel if anyone's interested. It's called Animation, Comics, and Graphic Novels, A Great Evergreen Tradition.

And there's a link to that panel in the comment, or you can just Google that on YouTube. Yeah, I'm going to give that a watch. Also, you know, that mention of graining reminded me that our pal Thad, I believe, has worked a lot with the Restoration of Fleischer Brothers shorts that's been going on lately. And I just saw that group,

they tweeted that they had a screening of some recently restored shorts in Los Angeles. And they're showing like, oh, it's a full house at this theater, this little black box they're showing it at. And they say like in the audience were Paul Dini and Matt Groening

to check it out, to see all the hard work they'd done on on restoring the fleischer cartoons to be in that room that would have been so cool man how i think we have only seen one of those events in the bay area and it was seven years ago that looney tunes won the chuck jones one that was great those those cartoons are meant they were made to be seen we're all used to watching them on a TV as children or adults. But they are meant to be seen by a theater audience who all laughs together. Also, our second Nina Matsumoto quote this week.

It's likely Seymour was more inspired by Greyfair's Bobby, not Hachiko. I immediately thought of Bobby when I saw this episode because Seymour looks like him. A little scruffy, mustached terrier bobby stayed by his owner's grave for 14 years he would briefly leave once a day to eat whereas hachiko lived with his new owners and merely visited the train station daily at the hour his previous owner usually came home not to downplay hachiko's heartwarming loyalty but a lot of people assume he stayed at the station which is not the case i'm glad the truth i'm glad the truth is coming out about hachiko yeah you know merely a commuter

for loyalty you know we've let the we've let the statue build him up too much for us that yeah gray fairs bobby i think it's gray friars oh gray friars okay sorry gray friars bobby much more uh he is more loyal and good dog if this is who is the best good boy then I I would guess uh Bobby is the goodest boy we're finally taking down Hachiko moving on to Talking of the Hill nine pretty darn angry men and Patrick McClafferty says 1998 was the first time I really became aware of Black Friday as an actual thing my mom had gotten up extremely early to get a reasonably priced for the first time that I remember dvd player for my dad for christmas that day then the family went to the mall later that day and related something henry brought up we tried to go to a movie and everything was sold out

it's crazy it was those black friday and christmas day like those are the only days where like no literally every movie is sold out or close to it you'd have to say like this very unpopular movie is the only movie you're gonna see if you as a family want to see a movie today you're gonna have to see the one that nobody bought tickets for and or it's gonna be my giant also i think 98 no 99 was when i first got a dvd player it's 99 or two okay no 2000 that's when i first got a DVD player. It's 99 or two. Okay, no. 2000, that's when I finally got an affordable DVD player because I was watching 1999 films, Fight Club and Gladiator as some of my first DVDs in the year 2000. One thing, actually two things.

Number one, I was actually correct. My giant was a 1998 movie. I can't believe I got that right. I've never seen it. And I got my DVD player in 2000, the summer after i graduated from high school and it was almost 300 and it was refurbished that's how expensive they were back then no wonder the ps2 sold so well yeah also on that episode riley hall says riley the bud tender here and

420 is our black friday except it's not the only profitable day for the store we work from open to close and have to wait until after work to partake. It can be overwhelming, but you're so busy the day kind of flies by. Then my coworkers and I had a celebratory smoke sesh and hit up the local watering hole. I can confirm that most regular users didn't realize that it's 420 until they asked me why we're so busy. I'm wondering if 420 will have any relevance in the next decade with just how available and legal weed is i know not every state but still it's everybody i walk by smoking weed everywhere so i feel like we do we need a day do we need a day for this i smell it

everywhere yeah around here which yeah which is cool i'm not saying it's not but yeah once once it becomes legal do you need like i mean there are but there are lots of drinking holidays so maybe it'll just turn into just the more the saint patrick's day uh once it's fully legal in these united states that's when all the posers abuse substances on saint patrick's day in 420 that's what i'm gonna say i i love the regular users come in or or should I say losers? No, they're users. They're coming in, and they don't even know. They're used to getting stoned so often that they don't even know it's 420 anymore.

Now, I will say I'm a hypocrite. Did my roommate and I make a gravity bong out of a Gatorade bottle on 420 one year? Yes. Was it the year 2009? Also, yes. I have grown as a human being. Hey, and it was illegal back then, so you were kind of a cool outlaw. It was a felony in Ohio.

Wow, even in Ohio, not California. Yeah, yeah, it was Ohio. All right, yeah, yeah. And the weed was awful. And now it's too good, so I don't even do it anymore. I've heard that. I've heard that from a previous guest of the show, Matthew of Botchamania. He was talking about when he i i saw him in vegas

like four years ago at a wrestling show and he was saying that him and his pals who flew over from england they were warning each other of like it's legal here but it's think of it like amsterdam it is way too strong don't think you're smoking the shitty weed you can buy illegally in england it's it's not like grown in some dirtbags trailer and then like shoved in a sock for eight months it's made by scientists in a lab to fuck you up though i get you know we say oh it's getting more and more legal not if not if the santa says anything to say that's true what's his excuse uh that the i think uh it smells vile yeah that it smells too gross yeah what is going to be legal in florida by the time uh we get to the primaries uh i pray for

all of our florida listeners yes yeah please uh stay stay safe yeah actually he's not gonna make it to the primaries what am i saying i think he i think he can make it to the super tuesday i bet you he'll make it he'll waste a lot of other people's money getting there too it's gonna be great moving on to uh a lot of stuff talked about this week i blab about batman on leather wings and blake r says playing the freakazoid how toyota can you get clip in my head during most scenes involving the batmobile and yeah there's about 90 seconds of batmobile action in this but it was the debut of the car in the series so i kind of get it but also they did want to sell toys and you could definitely imagine clips of it are taken out and used in the commercials for the Batmobile toys.

We're about to see the movie, the 1989 Batmobile. Bob is front and center in the final trailer for the Flash movie. So if you want to see the Flash movie before Ezra Miller strikes again. If you support it, you're supporting Ezra Miller. You know, it sounds like they've calmed down everything's fine yeah uh yes uh but yes i i might see it uh but uh not legally i'll say i i skipped the last couple i didn't watch shazam or black adam i'll tell you that here you missed nothing yeah i oh i did see fast x i forgot to say that in the movies i watched all right yeah fast is losing its steam for me a little bit only 10 movies in their problem is and this is no

spoilers for fast x this has been a problem i've had since i believe the seventh movie when they decided that they were going to make jason statham's character a good guy that was when the jump the shark it's no like physical feat in it because it's like yeah this is a cartoon it is that when they decided that the guy who killed with one of their best friends would become a friend again it's like well that means you got to unkill the guy he killed so and it's just you have to work backwards that it removes what few stakes there were in the fast series it just feels like you can watch them paving the road to future sequels in these movies oh yeah yeah and also like as a credit to vin diesel's ego as well like i i was looking at a big screen so many times

thinking like his face just doesn't look right i think they put too much smoothing on his face or something i definitely i have heard uh they digitally decrease his gut uh as well in in the film you know i hear that's secretly happening with all movies for the past five to ten years and just no one talks about it yeah i think you're right yeah they i mean they already have all the botox well they also need the all these digital face smoothing like every everything's fake but uh but yes finally our last comment on uh all of these podcasts is saya clark with an interesting bit here about the, we talked about Rene Auberjonois'

medically assisted suicide. It's called end of life treatment. End of life treatment, yes. But an interesting insight into it saying, medically assisted suicide is a nuanced topic and while I agree that it should be legalized, the current system in Canada has been used to pressure people to choose this

option instead of being a burden on the state and their families, unquote. Disability activists have been fighting this for a long time now. Basically, it seems a cost-saving measure and a way to impose austerity rather than an ethical option for people with no alternative treatment. And it is being pushed in the U.S. now for the same reasons. Some politicians see it as a cheap alternative to actual health care. I know the host mean well, but it's not as good as it sounds. Yes. Also, a Batman podcast is not the place to discuss the pros and cons of end of life care or whatever you want to call it. Yeah, I should have assumed that an American or Canadian government would practice it in not to the best way all the time

for sure yeah i should have realized that but i mean uh but but i agree with clark that like yeah it should be legalized but if it's being used as part of the like monstrous austerity programs happening in so many places like well instead of giving you like the good help we used to give you what if you just like died or stopped eating or had to go to work or whatever any of that shit and i'm i'm honestly sure like some insurance companies would want you to suffer more it's like oh we get five more years of payments out of you yeah that's true i'm belling up to the bar now yeah you know what in canada then it's more the government saying hey we want to get you off this health care. Yeah, it's true. But thank you, Saya Clark,

for that interesting extra insight into it. And so, yes, a fun May. We've got a fun June coming up with lots of great stuff. Once again, we're covering Ninja Turtles. We've got great episodes of Futurama, King of the Hill to talk about, and also some big guests coming up. In fact, I think at least one new guest is coming up in June.

Oh, yes, yeah, and a couple, and a couple and a few great returning ones too yes so thanks for listening we'll see you again next month for another episode of talk to the audience take care Wow. Infotainment.