Talking Simpsons - Talk to the Audience?!? - May 2024

Episode Date: June 5, 2024

We had a huge May of Simpsons news to deal with in this extra-long community podcast! Not only the season 35 finale and a new Disney Plus short, but also a ton of headline-grabbing interviews that sparked a lot of discussion. Then we chat about all we watched and played this month, tease some upcoming podcasts, and (as always) respond to our favorite Patreon comments! 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. Ahoy, ahoy everybody and welcome to Talk to the Audience where this is always death. I'm one of your hosts, Bob Mackie, standing here in my backyard with Hank Hill and Elsa from Frozen. And who is here with me today as always? Henry Gilbert saying hello to Bluey's dad. And yes, this is our community podcast. It launches at the end of the month on Patreon. The beginning of the month on our free feed.

And in this podcast, we cover what's happening in the Simpsons world and what's happening in our world. And then we wrap things up by talking about your questions and comments from the last round of episodes. And this is an incredibly busy news month because we've reached the end of a season and then all these interviews are happening and people are dying. It's a real calamity, but we're going to get to the bottom of things on what I assume will be a three-hour podcast.

Yeah, as I compiled the news, I had to condense it some because multiple people gave multiple interviews with three new stories in each interview and so it was that's on top of there being three new episodes this month and a short and oh there was a short and it came and it went and it'll just be a little thumbnail on disney plus forever yeah i i hope to never see it again but i but i'm getting ahead of myself here. Yes, so we have three new episodes this month, at least since our last podcast went live, our last talk to the audience. And the first one was The Telltale Pants, written by Al Jean. It was a very standard Homer and Marge have a fight episode, which now stands in stark contrast to all of the wild things they're doing lately. I thought this one was perfectly fine, although I did note all of the two old references

that were being worked into this. I didn't know. So there is an Elton John parody sung by Kip Lennon, who is finally credited in The Simpsons. Yeah, no, that was nice to see that he was the Elton John singer on it and that they're not making Dan have to try to sing it. Well, no, wait homer does sing it but the elton john sounding guy is is kip lennon yeah uh but other really old references that have been

done before by the simpsons there's a psycho parody and there is a parody of you're a mean one mr grinch which they had already done in season 15 yes it's been 20 years but i feel like we gotta we gotta get away from this i'm surprised there wasn't a batman 66 reference worked in there somewhere how did al jean hold that back yeah i do think it's a little i mean in the process wise i do not like that al jean goes from show running the show to just show running his own set of episodes to now it's like now just now writes like two episodes a season and they're his shows i'm like why why are we doing this like he there's only so many Simpsons scripts in a year and it hurts us doing break my wife please which we haven't posted that one yet but when we were recording I was like man the telltale pants is just like a worse version of this season 14 episode oh yeah

you're right I was I was just watching this on the elliptical machine and something was scratching the back of my brain didn't we cover something that was almost identical to this and and also you think marge is right to spend money on herself for once homer easily has spent eighty thousand dollars on himself during different plot points in the show so selling homer's pants i guess too it algide has a preoccupation with the origin of homer's blue pants like or what they are he really gets a lot out of blue pants yeah in in the story uh homer rips his pants instead of having them uh you know fixed or repaired or whatever tailored marge sees based on an antiques roadshow parody his pants are worth a lot of money she pawns them and then

buys a very expensive ring which she then feels guilty about meanwhile homer is enjoying the sweatpants life so it's not really affecting his life in any serious way and there's a little oppenheimer kind of thing worked in there that i thought would be a bigger plot i was kind of excited about that where burns is a little resentful of the all the heat oppenheimer's been getting and they were contemporaries i liked that joke though that was it was a smith Smitherson burn scene which leads you to think about how they sound in it but it's not a bad idea and of course like Al Jean being a science nerd he loves that Oppenheimer is a thing he can talk about again like we we also talked about out in the April Fool's episode there was a full Oppenheimer reference of I am death destroyer

worlds all that stuff which if they had put it in the episode, then last year people would have been saying Simpsons predicted it for the Oppenheimer movie. You'll find that there's been many Oppenheimer references over the past 80 years. You know, if you build an item that changes the whole world for the worse, people tend to remember you. So that was the telltale pants.

It was okay. I thought it was fine. I wasn't groaning too much, although some of the two overused, two data references do grate on me a little bit. I think there was even a reference to the David Caruso putting on the sunglasses and the, yeah! That was in there, and I think I saw that, I think Matt Selman said on Twitter that that was one of the most expensive two seconds ever because they paid for the real Who song to use it. Not worth it for that, don't know 2005 era internet joke it's so old but i mean aljean probably thinks that's hip and new like that's it sorry last thing

on that one is that i think that aljean by the end of it he realizes he has repeated this so much and that's why homer just internally thinks wait why am i even going to have a fight this time i've done this so many times screw this i love you wife that's it i'm just worried we're gonna see chuck norris jokes next year if they're if they're returning to the david caruso flipping down his sunglasses well it'll in 2033 we'll get a salt bay joke from aljean's next script yeah i can't wait i can't wait so the next episode actually i really like the tipping point it's homer he is upset by all the tipping culture in america and how it affects him he accidentally leaves a ten thousand dollar tip on a bill and he becomes a celebrity based on

that and then he retreats to little europe i guess is the the district in springfield where there is no tipping and he learns about the european way of life It's a great slightly leftist episode of The Simpsons that explores the purpose of tips and how things are much better without them And how it often, you know influences things like poor treatment of workers and it shows why health care factors into that in some way So I liked the message. I think maybe it was a little too schoolhouse rock with the song but other than that most people had a negative reaction to it on twitter just from the dj crazy times tiktok people being in it they thought that was like corny or stupid i mean that was oppositely compared to what we were talking about the aljean episode this was them taking a thing that was like viral over a year ago and sharing it, but not like too old.

But I can see why people think that's a Simpsons jump the shark. But you're right, Bob, that everything turns into Schoolhouse Rock. It's just like on the John Oliver show, which I I've seen segments of it. And I think it's not a regular watcher, but I think it's funny. But they do have to like just say comedy breaks. Now we have to explain literally how this works to you. This is a presentation now. You could make your point without being so didactic.

That's what I'll say. But I do agree with the points. And you and I both went to Japan. They have great customer service there. Tips are not a thing. And I've had Homer moments where now tipping is everywhere. And I do tip. But sometimes I'll be grabbing like a can of coffee

or a bottle of water from a restaurant. I'll just go in. And because it's a restaurant, the tip screen is there. It's like, well, you're just bringing up my water. But then I think I can't be an asshole. The minimum wage is too low. It's all on the consumers and I can afford it. So I'm going to do it.

But I hate having to have those inner dilemmas when I'm just like well i'm doing all the work here it does feel like one of the better ways modern simpsons can start with a story of what is a current thing that is happening now that is a universal experience or not fully universal but like if you're a upper lower middle class type folk like Homer, you have been through this of the tip screen at a place and feeling like everybody's watching you to see if you're going to hit over 20% or what you're going to do. Yeah, yeah. And they didn't cover this, but it is a fact that after the pandemic, all customer service is much worse, not because of the workers, but because companies realize like, like oh we don't need anybody to work here that could just be like one server who's also getting drinks and ringing people up it's just something i've definitely noticed post uh lockdown it's just people no one is getting hired for anything and every every restaurant you go into the service is now way slower and way worse

it's weird like at amc i just experienced this i i don't know how this was new to me at an AMC theater. And I've been going to movies post pandemic a lot, but at one, I just went to this weekend. They have, they still have the concession people, but you buy the thing through the screen and you don't talk to anybody. A person hands you something, and I say this as somebody who worked for two years in an AMC concession stand, so I'm looking at it from some level of experience. This was 20 years ago. But you went from eight people doing something to six people doing something worse, and I know that's not what AMC gives a shit about. They care that they paid two people less. It didn't make things work better it was still you just then get in a second line to be handed your soda cups instead of uh having it handed to you directly by a cashier wow i have not been to a uh a screen

order movie theater yet i mean i've noticed over the years that there's maybe two people working at any movie theater at any given time unless you go to the alamo draft house style ones where they take your order they bring it to you but it it just feels like that is the most skeleton crew operation on the planet a movie theater these days oh yeah i again it was torturous for me 20 years ago now i can't i can't imagine how much worse it is but yeah i did like the tipping point yeah it was good to see you know the fun internet comedy people get get a little spotlight even though the meme is pretty old. Didn't like how it was a little too preachy for me, much like Ziggy, but ultimately I

agree with what they were trying to say. And I'm sad that I missed Bart's Brain. That is the season finale. This season is ending with 18 episodes because of the strike, likely. It seemed like a great premise, but for whatever reason, it did not hit my Disney Plus app, even though the episode's been out for more than a week now. Oh's weird yeah it's i liked tipping point more i think that was my favorite it definitely doesn't feel like what they plan to be a season finale but it is a bart focused episode i think nancy does a good job in it uh and that it basically starts with the idea

that bart buys a human brain from herman so we also go go back to Bart going to Herman's military surplus store was a fun kind of return to form. And the danger in the episode is that Bart gets too obsessed with his brain and they worry that he'll become brain boy like comic book guy. Like you're going to be defined by a characteristic like comic book guy or cat lady. Squeaky voice teen teen sarcastic voice clerk so it it was uh it was all right but i think they didn't have enough to do with it and also they they they did have a couple good jokes with bart's new ish teacher who's just the normal teacher the

kerry washington voice teacher in it uh she she has some fun they are trying to find a way to be funny with a character whose flaw is being too good at their job which that is like a standard in comedy now but less so for simpsons yeah i ultimately i prefer the jaded teachers who are just drinking and smoking during the day but i guess it's a it's a newer idea for that setting the most memorable joke in it to me is bart says a mean thing to her saying like, she's trying to take away his brain after being very supportive of it. And then he says, well, you wouldn't even care about us if you weren't using us as a replacement for a family.

And then she breaks down crying and says, I shouldn't have told you that we were trying. And then the kids all comfort her. That's cute. So I guess we won't be talking about new episodes until perhaps September's episode of Talk to the Audience. Or October's, who knows? Only 18 broadcast episodes. And you gave me a crazy stat about how many were holdovers even for this season.

So that means there were like a dozen new episodes for production season 35 that have aired it feels like at least for the past 10 years half of the episodes for any given broadcast season are holdovers from the previous production season and even in our current timeline of talking simpsons we're noticing more and more holdovers every year so eventually they're building up quite a supply throughout the seasons i was looking forward to season 15 stuff we're going to be covering. And I was again reminded that like between season 14 finale, it is June, July, August, September, October, five months. And then at the start of November is when season 15 begins with Treehouse. God, I guess I guess there at that point there was some sort of contract negotiations happening, too, I think, for season 15. The voices thing started

coming up but that might be 04 but hey we'll figure that out when we get to season 15 we'll get to it so yes there were three new episodes unfortunately there was also a new short called may the 12th be with you uh it was a mother's day short uh released on may 10th go figure i guess they wanted to get ahead of mother's day it just made it more confusing as much as i like how uh stupid the title is they should have released it on may 12th but yes if you've seen any of these shorts that combine simpsons with star wars and or disney princess stuff you'll know what it is it's like can you believe this person is interacting with sideshow mel can you believe this is happening and this time around people were really noticing how kind of cheap

the short looked and you know this is no no insult to David Silverman, of course. Based on me going to a speaking event he did, he was very shy about saying this, but he did tell us that he's not usually given enough time for these things. And it's never been more clear with this. And I think with this one, I don't know if you agree with me, Henry, I could definitely see the boot of Disney stepping on the Simpsons' neck with how all these characters are drawn. They look like clip art, and at best they're maybe given 10% overbite, but I'm noticing, oh, so many of these characters just have typical Caucasian flesh. It's not the yellow flesh. I'm guessing that was a Disney rule, and so many of them don't even look changed in any way especially like characters like the incredibles uh those characters i just noticed more than ever i feel like they they're being forced to keep on model and have less fun it's it's weird i noted somebody made a point that they yellow skin can be applied to star

wars characters so it seems like the star Wars brand will allow them that, but the other departments in Disney won't allow yellow skin on Elsa or on Moana. Actually, Moana wouldn't follow that rule. Sorry, that was a bad one. I should have said only white princesses. Ariel can't be yellow. Oh, well, geez, now I mean old Ariel. You know what I mean. Yeah. Somebody online, and I'm sorry, I don't have this information in front of me. Somebody on Twitter basically redrew the frame of all of the Disney characters in the Simpsons backyard.

And they thought, okay, here's a better way to depict them in a way that's more true to the Simpsons. And I thought, wow, maybe this is a little unfair. I don't know how long they spent on this, but it was a huge improvement to see, oh, here's what you can do when, the boot of disney is not on your neck forcing you to make all the characters as recognizable as possible and one thing that i mean these shorts are not for us frankly they're not for anybody and we later learned that they're actually commercials the commercials you pay for that that's how they're classified but stewie's

there and then there's like a scene with stewie and i I thought, guys, you played this card 10 years ago. I mean, technically Family Guy played the card because Simpsons Guy was a Family Guy episode. But this isn't cute anymore. We know we've seen them interact. It's fine. And then, like, you know, I think Peggy and Hank are standing around with Bob's Burgers crew as well. Because they're the Hulu section of the party. I mean, I think Al Jean included Stewie just to have some fun with somebody.

Like, you can't do a – Homer can't say anything even slightly sarcastic to a Disney character. But if it's Stewie and Seth MacFarlane's there, then Homer can be like a cheap laughs kid. Like, he can at least do a sort of mean joke. Now, on the style-wise, how it's drawn and everything's kind of off-model, I think David Silverman knows how to make it look better and would. But yeah, I think it's two things. I do think it is all of the Disney departments have to sign off on every single thing, and that already would create a crunch on time.

And it's like, well, this got approved. If we wanted to add better shading to this then we gotta spend four more months of approvals on this but i also was looking at the timeline the rogue not quite one was the last one of these they did a year ago for may the fourth last year in 2023 and i do wonder if there would have been one in the middle if there had not been the strike yeah i bet i bet or maybe they just didn't get any emails on their Cameo account saying, Taylor Swift wants to hang out with, let's say, Barney. Can you make us three minutes on that?

And I also did see it as a commercial of like, probably because I was thinking of it more since Jenny Nicholson, the YouTuber, put out that very good video on the star wars hotel i was thinking oh this is such a commercial that marge goes to goddamn batu for like it's her going like yep i'm going to disney world with my family as families do when they're happy families and at best the jokes are it's hard to park parking takes a long time but that's true of every theme park so they're not they're not taking down batu it we said this when we did the podcast the ride on simpsons ride but it's full of jokes in that ride of like aren't theme parks stressful to be at as a family don't aren't the

isn't the food too expensive aren't the lines too long they could if that ride wasn't a disney park they could never make those jokes yeah really disappointing uh and we'll get to it later but yes these are commercials they are classified as commercials professionally and i mean that's been my joke all along that i was kind of half meant but now i feel secure in the knowledge that these are all just ads and again they shouldn't be on a paid service they should just be on youtube for free because they are commercials to be that's where they used to be yeah so yeah uh i don't think anybody likes this do you like this listeners let us know no no one could possibly like this what joy does anyone find in seeing a simpsons character next to any other thing i i don't i

don't care anymore i barely care it's been four years now five years yeah yeah it's been five years yeah maybe there's a tiny a tiny bit of novelty just to the idea it just immediately evaporated now they keep playing the same card i don't care if homer hangs out with goofy it's stupid also when goofy is voiced by dan castellaneta and not bill farmer then i know it's not real goofy get bill farmer to do it but i i bet i bet the disney department's like well no that would confuse children too much. You can't have a Bill Farmer voiced goofy drinking beer with Homer. So enough about our anger over the short. Let's talk about some recent Al Jean comments because he was doing a bunch of interviews to promote this short.

And we have a lot of fun quotes from Al Jean here, including him taking issue with the new Family Guy time slot. He was not being super forceful about it. He just said, I think it's a mistake and it should go back because the non-simpsons news is family guy is moving to wednesday and even worse for family guy it's not coming back in the fall it's coming back in mid-season it's going to be the first time family guy has not been on the fox schedule in the fall for 20 years that's nuts to say that that's how long it's been since the return of family guy that that did lead to an interview later why family guy this means a bad thing for simpsons 2 but at least gene did

have nice things to say about getting seth mcfarlane on there that he was totally ready to play ball and instantly was like yeah i'll do that yeah yeah yeah it's nice to see that they uh the any animosity between the simpsons and Family Guy is long over. It ended with the Simpsons guy. I mean, I think formally that was the raising of the peace flag. They knew Family Guy was here to stay, so they better just get used to it. So other comments saying that Al Jean is on board with a Bluey crossover because they're both doing great on Disney Plus. Al Jean always has rankings and numbers and stats on hand, and I think he said,

oh, we're normally the number one and number two show on Disney+. I find it funny. The one joke I did enjoy for a short, which might have been in the last short, it was the joke that was basically saying, why don't we have our own little panel on Disney+. It's so weird that I have to search for Simpsons every time I want to watch Simpsons on Disney+.

And seemingly, it's the most popular television show on the entire platform. It is. People would quit Disney Plus if it lost the Simpsons from there. I've learned at least in my app. I don't know if it's this in the Canadian version, but in the top carousel of things, advertising almost always the last one will be Simpsons. So if i just want a quick go to simpsons i just tab through that really fast and i get to it that's not the same for me and what's going on over here i like i feel like they that might be just based on what you watch it might generate those but there's no official like mega panel for simpsons like there is for other things on disney plus whatever you call that kind of thumbnail, the prominent thumbnails.

Simpsons should get one just like Pixar. We agree with this, yes. People have told us to do Bluey. I see some Bluey chat going on Discord. I'm sure it's a fine show. Maybe we'll cover it someday. But people really like it. Parents especially like it.

But people who are childless also seem to like it. And I hear it's a good-natured show with some adult jokes. And it's very, very popularnatured show with some adult jokes and uh very very popular and uh very australian as well i have also seen some some uh artists in my feed really like bluey's dad oh really yes what are they doing to that that dog uh he's a dog man an adult dog man but they well i i'm not saying they draw sexual things with it but there's just occasionally i will see artists who draw other things like the guys who like draw senshi from delicious dungeon and they like him

they then will draw bluey's dad i was like oh i guess these guys like bluey's dad now i didn't know bluey's dad was a gay icon i'm learning so much uh so yeah aljean is on board with that i assume there'll be at least a couch gag in The Simpsons future. They love doing crossover couch gags with Rick and Morty and other things. John Kay, famous cartoonist. Yeah. The Australian animators, too, who make Blue Eve, I assume Aussies love The Simpsons. I've never met an Aussie who doesn't love The Simpsons who's in my age. And then we have news about a Simpsons movie.

I guess there's always news about a Simpsons movie uh i guess there's always news about a simpsons movie because whenever al jean or matt selman they're interviewed the question comes up what about another simpsons movie according to al jean it is tied to the fate of inside out 2 because i wasn't super aware of this and i should have been but disney and pixar's movies have been really stinking up the box office lately uh and there is a there's a chart on the screen right article you sent me henry just breaking down here are the last five or six years worth of movies here's what they cost here's what they took in and i was uh kind of shocked as to how bad they're doing and

then you know but there are so many movies i forgot about i forgot elemental was kind of a surprise hit that turned itself around after a month of floundering at the box office yeah i i remember thinking elemental when it came out like oh this uh and not to say that i've heard people even love elemental but i i did hear people say it's not as bad as you think but then yes it ended up making you know hundreds of millions of dollars globally like it was a success but pixar is in a weird place right now like they just did big layoffs for the first time I can ever think of that happening. I don't know that for sure.

But then all of their originals that they did, those don't get to be put in theaters. And if you look at the announced films they have, it's mainly sequels. And that's what they're doing now. Yeah, I remember it was when one of the pixar movies was failing miserably uh it might have been elemental it might have been something else maybe lightyear or something like that but as soon as that happened they made an announcement don't worry toy story five and six are coming we're making sequels to everything yes right i can see why gene is like well if inside out two does well though i'm sure this is just his new adjusted version of the question he gets a million times about doing a second Simpsons movie.

Selman said it in a different, I actually forgot to clip that out, or I didn't get that, but Matt Selman did several interviews this month, and one of his points was, making the Simpsons movie is not the same as making three episodes, even though it's as long as one. It's the same as making 30 episodes, and we don't have the ability they're not ready for that kind of workload again yeah yeah and i mean it was a big deal for fox to make the simpsons movie i don't think disney care would care as much because they're like well we have oscars we we we make animated movies it's not like an event for us we've got two of them a year mostly yeah yeah there there hasn't been any follow follow up on that one rumor that they that Disney was trying to get James L. Brooks to do a second Simpsons movie if they approved his other movie that he's currently filming right now, which is crazy. That's true. Yeah. I mean, yeah, I guess he he recovered from what the hell. How do you know? Right. Yes. That's OK. What the hell? It's yeah, it's one of the most unmemorable titles of all time.

Congrats to the Simpsons, by the way, in our next news item, because they won a new award. No, not an Emmy, not a Grammy, not even an Oscar. Why? It's the Clio Award for Advertising Excellence. Yes, they took home the bronze for their Billie Eilish short from, I think, last year. And I was looking more into this. Previously, they won the gold award for their Baly eilish short from i think last year and i was looking more into this previously they won the gold award for their balenciaga short which is not on disney plus it was one of their their famous cameo shorts where they were just hired to promote a brand and i think it's probably just on youtube now you know that when you bring up that balenciaga thing that does show me the difference between their corporate masters on these paid advertisements

because Balenciaga wanted really great animation and I think they gave it to them in that short. It is so much better animation in that than in May the 12th Be With You. Yeah, and again, I said this earlier, but yeah, these are officially commercials. All of our inklings were correct. And they were so obviously commercials that I didn't need someone to tell me. But I like that they're officially being recognized. Yes, these are commercials that win ads for commercials. Disgusting.

It is funny for Al Jean to tweet out an award he's proud of. And he should. Yeah, you win an award. You want to be proud. But to do that, you do have to admit, yeah, I make commercials. Like, I'm a maker of commercials. And, you know, I admit, yeah, I make commercials. Like, I'm a maker of commercials. And, you know, I'll be a hypocrite.

I'd rather see a Butterfinger commercial with great animation or a Simpsons video game commercial or KFC commercial with great animation. What's going on in the 20 seconds or 30 seconds of, let's say, the Bart versus the Space Mutants commercial is leagues beyond what's happening in any of the last five years worth of shorts man the one of bart bouncing around in his uh in his bed playing the video game and he's having so much fun like man this is so that looks so much better than any 30 seconds of the disney shorts they used to put work into these commercials damn it and because back then the thought was oh if a kid sees a commercial animated it has to look better than what they're seeing on the TV show. If it's in the middle of a cartoon, it has to look better than the cartoon the kid is watching so they'll remember it. But now there's no premium on good animation. I think, honestly, the most shameless one they've done so far is the one for that Italian singer.

I always forget his name. But the short was just he shows up at their house he sings a song as they sway back and forth and then the short ends there's they don't leave the living room it's it's it's so cheap and so obviously promoting this guy and his kids and whatever album was out that holiday season yeah the holiday album of the of the italians yeah and it's just every easy joke yeah it was that that was the worst the billy eilish one seems much better it that deserves a bronze cleo yeah by the time we get to the infamous lady gaga episode we're gonna say oh we've we've seen so much worse when it comes to

lisa's now friends with new singer who's very hot right now we will definitely not be saying that that was the worst episode anymore once we get get to Lisa, Lisa goes gaga. So Harry Shearer has been in the news lately. I believe it's because he's giving interviews about Spinal Tap 2. Is that correct, Henry? Yeah, that's the main one. So the big interview was in the London Times or the Times. And, of course, Harry Shearer is going to do an interview with British people before he does with Americans.

He's that kind of snob who lives more of his life in England than America. So that makes sense. And of course, if you ask him about The Simpsons, he's going to punish you. He's going to say in his head, how dare you? You know I'm more than this. So he wants to basically give you the worst possible impression of how he feels about the show, which is what he has been doing in every interview for i don't know 25 years at least like that when i've re-watched that inside the actor studio i again am just in shock of it as he's acting so positive about the simpson he loves it

and it's because he's you know getting his ego stroked by a man older than him who is it a fancy thing he actually cares about otherwise yeah he thinks he thinks the simpsons writers are worse writers than him he thinks they're he's funnier than they are and any choice they make he hates and he's been shitting on it for for 30 years but this new one i hated that him being his usual like snippy little bitch is then turned into like the anti-woke bob uh pulls it up yeah and it was it's his fault for you know not choosing his phrasing correctly i don't know what his actual thoughts are on some of this but yeah it's come up in i don't know three or four interviews so far they're always asking him about the recasting of certain

characters and this time he provides a little more context he said dr hibbert i based his voice on bill cosby who was the whitest black man in existence so now there is a black guy doing a white guy's imitation of a black guy doing a white guy's imitation of a black guy who sounds very white and he thinks oh isn't that silly and i think it's more like oh you're just imitating me which which i think is the the heart of the matter and then and then i think there's some vague comment like where harry share said i think people say the show is woke now yeah that that's what he said yeah and it's just uh he should i i mean i think personally he is uh my uh guess is that he doesn't like being recast in anything he both hates doing the simpsons or is tired of

it and won't turn down the money but he also doesn't like anybody taking his job for for any reason because he takes that as a reflection on his skill but also he also he's old as fuck and so he thinks it's overreacting to have a black man voice Hibbert and Carl now. You think he would like doing less work on The Simpsons and I assume getting the same amount of money, but he thinks so highly of himself. He's like, well, why would you replace me? You're just paying someone less to impersonate me.

That's insulting. So you're never going to get anything good out of a Harry Shearer interview. you're never going to get anything good out of a harry share interview you're just going to walk away completely disappointed which i i love him as a voice performer so much i i love his work on the show up till a point but uh as a person he is always consistently disappointed me he is a huge grouch and a jerk and all of his stories are like oh this guy was mean to me this and it you think of that quote of if everybody you meet all day is an asshole you're the asshole like that that old saying and it's also funny that that came up just

as normies outside of our simpsons fandom who do not regularly watch the show were seeing clips of harry shearer in the show this recent ones and going like what that's what burns sounds like yeah sounding like i'm mr burns and yeah it was not i've heard him sound better in recent episodes that was just a rotten take that they i guess they couldn't do another one with him but yeah uh we we talked too much about how old the voices sound but now that it's reached norm we got sick of doing that now the normies are starting the discussion uh by normies, I mean non-podcasting freaks. Yes. Yeah.

Regular people who just check in on The Simpsons every now and then. Like as a normal person would. Yes. So yeah, that's some Harry Shearer snark. Matt Selman is also doing interviews with a lot of different fun things to say about the show, including how he's getting more experimental. It's on purpose. He's got to keep the show fresh he flat out said we can't write the same kind of jokes that are being memed by uh your dad we can't do that anymore so we have to innovate in different ways with story ideas high concept ideas and so on that memed by your dad lie that one struck a

little like oh yeah that is i guess what he is saying to people who are like are you like 18 to 30 at 25 then your dad is the one sending simpsons memes to you and your the kids are like what is this is this somebody poorly drawn bob's burger thing i've never i've never seen this man in my life you're gonna lose your kids now even if you know how to do like spongebob memes probably like your children will be like oh spongebob that's old spongebob's are boomers now but he like oh spongebob that's old spongebobs are boomers now but he did also mention that in the cnn interview he mentioned the importance of hiring young writers which again that is he's not saying al jean didn't hire young writers but also al jean didn't hire young writers it's true yeah there's a lot of people approaching and over 60

on the staff but they do highlight a few of the people much younger than that, which is nice to see. And he did say he gave a flat out no to the idea of recasting cast members who have gotten too old in the estimation of the public. Also, he was a little salty about how it's so easy to make Simpsons AI images now and get them to do whatever you want them to just to make up a fake predicted story. Yeah, he is. He's getting really sick of it now yes i hate it every time i it gets worse every time i do the research for news for this that it's like now the headlines are no simpsons didn't predict thing that just happened and then they have an clearly ai generated image from an us of a simpsons thing with in this case this month it was p diddy and all of his horrific crimes like simpsons didn't predict that and then they show like obviously a picture like god fuck this like

i hate this world you know it is it is frankly startling how well ai can reproduce simpsons and make make new ideas based on prompts because it comes up on instagram every so often and maybe maybe i follow one of these accounts because it makes me laugh sometimes. I'm guilty of this, folks. They will produce images of what looks like an episode that aired in 1993. Everything, how the characters are drawn looks correct. And I'm thinking like, I think maybe the show should take a note

from these AI images. It's like, you can still make it look like this. You can make it move like this. We said it when they've done the joke, fake flashback scenes to old from the first decade episodes like yes this all it tells me is you can animate it like this you just don't like but you could i mean i do like watching the new episodes but when you when you see the old stuff you're you like i want the big pupils back i want the the strong poses back and then we talk

about how they yeah they do try hard they do do simpsons sakuga simpsons nice flourishes of animation but it's all like too many frames not not no like smears or anything like that so it just feels kind of like goopy i think it was the tipping point episode there's an entire parody of the austin powers opening and technically right a lot of people worked very hard to have homer and a bunch of people do the dancing the right way but it just felt like oh you worked hard but this this would look so much different if it was hand-drawn it would be better there'd be fewer frames there'd be stronger poses and i i don't i don't i hate saying that because it is insulting the artist but i hate the tools

they're forced to use they work very hard but in the wrong direction yeah in some cases with the over animation or the very good animation but done that it's like saying like oh you built an amazing boat but i needed a car and like that's this needed to be a car not a boat and we covered this last news item uh a little earlier but yeah family guy is not going to be on the fall schedule it's being moved to mid-season wednesdays and 2025 to make room for sunday's new bento box blowout or whatever they're calling it to pair shows with the simpsons like i was looking into this remember carpopolis well they aired 23 episodes this year it apparently does all right in ratings like it and it got renewed already but yeah it's been it's been clear forever to

the point the deadline interviewed the fox executive who said like no no no we're very happy with the simpsons and family guy and bob's burgers but this is clear when you take the animation domination block of two hours gives you four half hours you can program and you use simpsons and bob's burgers to uplift your new things that you hope to eventually replace simpsons and Bob's Burgers. And if you get rid of Family Guy, that opens up one new thing for the bento box hour, be it Grimsburg or Universal Basic Guys. The Housebroken show just got canceled, but they're trying a lot of different animated shows. And it seems like Crapopolis might have actually stuck.

Interesting. Well, they renewed it for three seasons before it aired i think because it was originally the nft show back when we were going crazy over that stuff yes but right i follow a lot of animation people on twitter and i have heard some bad things about bento box in terms of uh the work conditions and so on i realize i realize every production is different i will say living in vancouver i've met a lot of people that work at tipmouse and i hear nothing but good things about tipmouse really that's good to hear that's nice and just on the final product like i really like what tipmouse does i mean i've seen good bento box stuff too i don't want to say like bento box is ugly but i especially now that they are the fox tv animation machine, they got to produce and they got to produce fast. And now that I think about it, when we covered Bender's big score, it was the Fox Network people who were the shitty people they hated working for at Fox.

And now it is the Fox Network people who are the ones running the bento box shows. Yeah, that's right. I forgot. So wait, Fox owns bento box shows yeah that's right i forgot uh so wait fox owns bento now yes they bought bento box disney owns bob's burgers and all the bento box things made before fox bought it but the fox network owns bento box to make shows that they own like housebroken duncanville crapopolis universal basic guys grimsburg and whatever else is coming you never i've heard of all of them except for universal basic guys which did that start airing i think so or maybe i'm i've i definitely have seen ads for it i remember it because it's based on the idea of like what would universal basic

income be for like dumb dumb homer types yeah i've not heard of it although i recently saw an episode of koala man uh it was it was a laundry folding show and it's basically like what if smiling friends was animated like low budget family guy i thought it was very funny but uh it just it looked bad it looked like let's let's take the sense of humor and make it in the cheapest way possible it it did look pretty cheap to me yeah i i agree the the okay so universal basic guys and the hoagie brothers or it's about to begin airing okay so never mind the point of this is so fox can get the shows they own on on the air and uh put less attention on these disney

owned shows oh yeah actually now i say i this is why i thought it was on the air because universal basic guys has already been renewed for a second season before the series premieres. How does this happen? Well, we've complained on the opposite side of this. X-Men 97, it seems like it didn't get renewed until a month before it aired, when they really needed to get the shit moving faster. And then Invincible didn't get renewed until after it aired so you do need to if you really want to have it have a new season the next year you got to renew these things fast sure sure and hey yeah you're right i do complain when there are i don't know eight

episode orders of things it's nice to see investing in television shows so people can stay employed longer though i don't know what the deal is with this universal basic guy show it's just that or how good that grimsburg show was which was just you know a built around john ham cartoon so moving on uh tim long in a letter to variety or email to variety sort of apologized for the death of larry the barfly from an episode earlier this season it was it was kind of an apology but it was more like him explaining here's what we did and why we did it and i i think anyone who was offended might have been coming at it in bad faith i can't see anyone who would actually be upset about this i was only mildly upset because i thought the episode veered off into wacky town in the third act and i think you agree with me henry

where yeah it was an observational story about the death of a friend in a road trip episode which i do like and then it became like a jewel heist thing. It did not need that. And they write Barney out of it, too. Like, it's just so lame. Yeah. No, that's all he should apologize for. He should apologize for the third act.

That's what he should apologize for. To us, personally. personally i i think i saw matt selman say that he or show a post that in whatever tv guide is now that that larry's death got a jeers as well oh wow tv guides still exist and they're still jeering this is how i found this out unless unless matt selman made a fake jeers and shared it as a joke and i misunderstood jeers to this rusty third act is what i say uh so that's enough of that you can read that online if you want to uh i don't think anyone was seriously mad about it and by the way the simpsons are back on butterfinger bars because uh inexplicably the candy's 100 years old i didn't know the candy was that old but yeah it's from 1923 and they're going to be back on butterfinger

packaging for their the 100th anniversary which i guess they missed but hey better late than never maybe it'll be like how disneyland has like oh it's the 100th birthday of walt disney for two years or whatever so it's it'll count as 100th forever but it's fun to see the simpsons back on butterfinger bars that the advertising is so connected to our youths and also our college years because that's when it returned to it though the sim Simpsons were covering in the 13 and 14 years when they are free of the Butterfinger advertisements. And we've even seen deleted scenes of more jokes they've done of like, Butterfinger is garbage. Don't eat it. Bring back the BBs, I say.

Whatever. Did they lose the BB factories? Is this the same deal of like those PB crisps that they say they can't make anymore either it could have been uh sir too many stupid children are choking on these i bet you're right those darn children buy a butterfinger with bard on it and pretend it's 1993 it'll be fun and uh we have more uh news yardley smith is in the news because this is interesting i feel like this new story is more about yardley smith's tax return than it is about anything real because Yardley Smith already has a business that produces podcasts. And now she is spinning that off into a subsidiary of that business, which will produce more podcasts. So I feel like we're just learning more about like,

what's the most tax efficient way to do podcasting? I guess her accountant told her like, you should just have a podcast network. But she's launching a second show on top of her small town's dick show, which is Can't Yardley Wait, which by the description of it, it sounds like your typical celebrity interviews, celebrity friends things, which, you know, that's nice and all. I just I don't listen to them as much. I listen to them some at the start but that kind of is so many podcasts now that i i get kind of tired yeah unfortunately those are the most popular ones uh that's what conan does i mean she could not avoid can't yardley wait that is a killer

podcast title finally people will know how to pronounce her first name i i did it for the longest time too uh even her i think I took watching several interviews of her saying, like, everybody calls me Yard. That's my nickname. Apparently this, I guess, Paperclip Limited was her old, Operation Paperclip is what I call it. That was her old business, which still exists. That was the one that produced Small Town Dicks

and something called The Briefing Room. And it is funny to see in this article, Small town dicks has been renewed for seasons 15 and 16 you're making the podcast it's like us saying talking simpsons has been renewed officially hey well i guess that's why we're not getting headlines in the hollywood reporter and she is that's true that's true i mean i'm being i'm being a little silly but you know good for yardley i respect the hustle i respect her uh she could easily just like wallow in her or like dive in her simpsons money and swim around in it all day but she's having fun and doing cool uh true crime stuff so good for her harry sheer is giving shitty little interviews and she's doing fun true crime stuff yes yeah she's living her best life by the

way i saw a very irritating magazine cover uh and i love conan o'brien uh i forget which magazine this was i'm pulling it up on my twitter now and i'm vamping to kill time but oh yeah it was variety i guess the magazine version of variety but it is another story about uh another celebrity invented podcasts you never heard about them but this guy invented them and it's about conan and we should celebrate the success of conan i'm happy he was able to move to a different medium that's much smaller and get even richer. But I feel that these articles are always so disingenuous and I hate them because the Variety magazine cover is Conan O'Brien and it says audio boom.

And it's like the subheading is how Conan transformed this niche industry into a viable business. And Henry shaking his head on the Zoom call or sorry, this is Zencaster, by the way. This is ultimately a story about, hooray, the traditional ad model works for this guy. That's all there is to it because the ad model didn't work for us, which is why we couldn't work at websites anymore.

We had to adopt a subscription model and that has done very well for us and very well for a ton of people. And it is frustrating to see just like, oh, this rich guy got richer, so now it's real. Now we can call this a real business. Yeah, it's always, always so annoying to see those headlines. And I feel more betrayed when it is somebody who I like,

like Conan, that they're attaching it to. I would bet if we joked around, Conan would joke around about this too. I don't think he really believes this but i do think conan's agents and managers perhaps gavin pallone was able to spin this to uh mainstream media to be like hey my client did a really cool thing that's never been done before even though it's been done by many people but if you're a writer for variety who doesn't give a shit people but if you're a writer for variety

who doesn't give a shit about podcasts and you're a lazy writer perhaps then you just go like well yes i guess he did completely transform this podcast industry that i never pay attention to i mean ultimately the you know the rising tide lifts all boats it's good for conan to be into podcasting because people if they're like oh podcasting that sounds fun they find a conan podcast maybe they'll find ours i mean he's just bringing more people there but i feel like they're ignoring the history this is not just about us but we've been doing this for uh almost seven years full-time as our full-time jobs and that's incredible but there are people that were doing this long before us as their full-time jobs because the other mediums failed them the other

ad markets failed them and they found this and it's worked out so well for this so i think when you ignore that history you're really doing a disservice to why podcasts are great it's they're not great because casper mattresses can have conan read an ad they're great because you can do anything with the medium anything you want if you find 2 000 people or a thousand people they will pay for your lifestyle and for you to continue to be weird on your show that's what's yes that is such the beautiful thing about podcasting that people don't celebrate enough. And yeah, I mean, it is very self-centered for me to feel this way. But yeah, I mean, I remember this is making me think of other terrible podcast articles, but there was

one, I feel like three, four years ago in the new york times which was about how like people did somebody started their own podcast like some person who's not famous starts a podcast does six episodes and like where's my ad deal and they're like well yeah we recorded on an iphone in a meeting room like that's what we did it's like well yeah nobody gives a shit about you that's why i like but so you think everybody thinks they can do a podcast but then they also think only a celebrity can do a podcast that is a success yeah and we could tell people that uh unless you're very big like conan big mark maron big joe rogan big ads basically bring in about five to eight percent of what a nice patreon brings in it's not a lot like we could not live off of ads but again i feel like when they're celebrating

conan they're celebrating the traditional ad model which is what a variety needs to survive as well they're all counting on someone buys an ad you read the ad and you get money and it's all ad supported uh we have learned that podcasts can operate in a different way and it can be very good for a lot of creators you know i think also too the variety notices that private equity and hedge funds they're getting interested in podcasts on that level and that's why they care they see that that's where the money is going from the investors is into conan style podcast yes it just i mean we were both there not to go too long about this but we were both there in the early days of podcasting i I felt like I showed up pretty late by doing it in the late aughts, early teens. But our bosses were like, podcasts are a huge waste of time.

We shouldn't have never started one in the first place. But I guess people like them. Do them on your own time and don't let it interfere with your important job of writing articles we'll delete in five to 10 years. Yeah. No, every boss thought podcasts were a stupid side thing that none of them knew how to monetize it. And then if you told them, they didn't want that. So when I got to be on my first podcast in like late 2008 or early 2009, I definitely thought, well, everybody's done podcasts now. And this was like four years into any podcast existing. podcasts existing yeah i mean again i'm happy for conan i'm not like salty i'm very grateful for what we were able to do but i wish the the history of podcasting was told in a in a more sincere way that's not about like oh now celebrities care about it now we can talk about it it was before

it was all these stupid nerds and their patreons whatever those are yeah or it's uh left-wing commentators we will mischaracterize as fascists who are the top patriots. They do that too. Yeah, and when I make the joke about how Conan invented podcasting, I'm stealing Scott Aukerman's joke from a decade ago when everyone was freaking out about Serial and he was making a lot of jokes. Oh yeah, that's the first podcast, Serial. That's right. We're just following in their footsteps. At least, you know what, I guess I should be happy that people are using Conan as the launching pad for this instead of Smartless or an even worse show, I suppose. Yeah.

I mean, part of why I like Conan is his physicality and his body language. So I get none of that from the podcast, so I'm not that interested. But I think he's doing a better job than a lot of these, like, I'm funny and I have friends kind of shows, and I'm already a celebrity kind of shows. Those don't interest me at all. Yeah, times I have fun in seeing Conan clips in his interviews, and he still is. I mean, also, Conan's a great interviewer, but also that he, my favorite ones that I've seen are when he has on, like, Jim Downey, a guy who isn't going to bring in a ton of downloads, but they're going to have old man conversations about writing at snl in the 80s which is like as a comedy nerd i want

to hear that oh absolutely yeah so yes congrats to conan but uh i'm gonna give jeers to variety i can do a jeers variety has a lot of bad coverage yes uh hey that's a great photo of conan i gotta say if you look at that cover enough enough personal gripes aside uh now we've got a death he was never on the simpsons but he was associated with the simpsons morgan spurlock uh passes away the uh the formerly famous documentarian behind supersize me he recently floated to the surface of uh our attention because he metooed himself yeah in 2017 he metooed himself oh it was that long ago wow okay yeah so he i was looking at his timeline i couldn't believe it so that he so basically the uh he he had been working with the simpsons since the 20th anniversary special which was called the simpsons 20th anniversary

special in 3d on ice and then when they wanted to do the 25th anniversary fake documentary about Homer at the Bat, Springfield of Dreams, The Legend of Homer Simpson. That was done in 2017. And by October of 2017, that is when Morgan Spurlock posted a message listing the offenses he had done of either cheating on his wife or sexual harassment or even a sexual assault claim that was made against him in college that basically was the end of his career it was like people were like oh wait you're admitting i think he thought i look i don't know what to say what he thought but it didn't it it led to the end of

his career he basically didn't do anything after that surprise we were surprised by right around the 20th anniversary of supersize me which is why people were talking about it on social media again yeah then he passes away out of nowhere for well not out of nowhere to him he had been suffering from cancer but it was announced he had just passed away from cancer at 54 yeah it's uh there was a real re-evaluation of how bad that documentary was and how classist it was and just how it was also disingenuous i'm using that word a lot this week i didn't just find out about it by the way and that he was a severe alcoholic and that was affecting his body uh probably more than eating mcdonald's every day yeah that was the biggest post i had seen people bring up like that he goes to the doctor for supersizement he's like oh your liver

is in really bad shape and then people say we learned later he had been a chronic alcoholic and that his side effects were likely from that and not from eating McDonald's. And it's like, McDonald's does suck. I don't want to be McDonald's defender, but yeah, a classist is a big, it was a bad part of liberalism back then and now of like, yeah, big sodas, big French fries. That's what we got to fight with all the might of the Democratic Party. Yeah, it was really so much about identity politics. I was kicking it around in my head for a long time trying to figure out the best way to say it. But Drew Mackey recently tweeted a thread that Guy Branum, I believe the comedian Guy

Branum, tweeted about it. I'll just read a few of the tweets because I think he sums it up very well as to what Super Size Me was. Super Size me was never a film about corporate greed or american industrialized food it was about class immorality it was about the dumb things the poor do to destroy themselves in a cool hipster who walked through the fire but escaped the lie because he had a cool mustache uh morgan sporlock asked us to believe that his body was torn apart and nearly destroyed by dmc donald's a thing he rarely recognizes other people do daily and he shows us other trashier poor people who do it daily but survive fine and it's it's a big thread about how it's all about identity politics at the time and i think a lot of that was wrapped up in and i can i can think about myself 20 years ago where i am politically impotent i have no power politically

george w bush is in the white house so i'm going to eat and consume the correct things to be a good person. I'm going to watch the right TV shows. I'm going to eat the right food and listen to the right music. And that can just make you insufferable. But it comes from a place of powerlessness in a very long time but yeah the doc is saying you shouldn't eat these things we can't change mcdonald's or we can't change this business you shouldn't eat it now i mean it did affect mcdonald's like they got rid of the supersized brand and not that not that anybody eats any better now than before i don't think but it did have an effect and not unlike michael moore uh around the same time and he was just doing a michael moore type documentary then tons of people showed up with their also disingenuous faux centrist uh well centrist but faux uh rebellious documentaries that were supporting like you know charter schools or invading countries or whatever yeah it was all

hot on the heels of uh michael moore right yeah yeah it was i mean it came out in 04 and bowling for columbine was 03 like it totally fits with it like that's that's what you do you can make these fast now something like super size me doesn't even like that's just youtube essays now like it has been for a long time these aren't movies anymore yeah and hey i can watch a three-hour youtube essay about i don't know a star wars hotel room it's four hours oh four hours i'm sorry instead of this guy uh not not being very honest about fast food yeah and of course aljean tweeted a tribute to him that he was a good friend of the show and all that which uh and then you know i feel but i'm sure aljean liked him or like spending time with him and sure

aljean is sad that morgan sprawl passed away i understand that uh he was so sad that he didn't know how to crop a screenshot folks we got to teach aljean how to use twitter because whenever he posts a picture it's always clearly something he googled and then the entire picture he posts is just his phone background isn't the entire phone capture so we see what time it is how many bars he has what what his phone is charged to in the current time. It shows you that it's really Al Jean's Twitter account. Yeah. In this picture he retweeted in memoriam, it has Shutterstock watermarks all over it.

Yeah, it's also like, I don't know, call your assistant to get your own photos of this. It was an event you were at. And Al Jean, I am sure, has a personal assistant. He should, as rich as he is, he should have a personal assistant. How we use electricity can be smarter, cleaner, and greener.

At Electric Ireland, we can help guide you there. You see, our new Net Zero Hub has all you need to know about smart meter plans, EV tariffs, solar panels, and much more. Making your usage clearer, your trips greener, your home cozier, and your world brighter. Find our Net Zero Hub at electricireland.ie. Disney, get a PA on this. We need better tweets.

So we're an hour in. that was a lot of news let's cover what's going on on the Talking Simpsons Network in the month of June so we have a new what a cartoon episode coming at you it's a Patreon request and we are covering the very toyetic cartoon Inhumanoids and the episode is the evil that lies within part three Inhumanoids it is kind of obscure toy based cartoon only 13 episodes it's pretty gross pretty morbid and i had never watched it as a kid it was never available to me but i had a lot of fun and we had a lot of fun on the podcast going through this insane cartoon it is such a weird ass cartoon it is so it's made by the people who were making gi joe and transformers they made 13 episodes of this

it is also pure reagan era politics like it is so incredibly like 80s politics there's oh man there's so much funny stuff in it and yeah it's so weird it has such a weird history to it uh there was more to be found in research than i thought there would be so yeah it was and it was a great great pick pick by our patron. And for our $5 patrons at patreon.com slash TalkingSimpsons, we have our traditional Talking Futurama and Talking of the Hill episodes. It's going to be a really good month for both of these because we are kicking off Talking Futurama in June,

a new era of the podcast, by covering Rebirth, the first Comedy Central episode. And I will say, if you're anxious about, oh, is this era good? Is it not good? I got to tell you, after doing Bender's big score and then watching all the movies, it was such a breath of fresh air. And I'm very happy with this first episode of the new run.

Looking forward to the next 51. Yeah, absolutely. Rebirth felt so good. It was such a great episode. After all of the movies with the fate of the world at stake or fate of the universe at stake every time it felt really great to have just an episode about build a bear workshop basically yes yes and our talking of the hill episode will all be about the episode dog dale afternoon one of the funniest king of the hills from this era it is a dale focused episode that's a parody of a real mass shooting and by the way this episode went live a week before the columbine massacre we cover all of that in a very complicated

but funny episode this month what one of the best uh king of hills one i've been waiting for us to cover since we got since season three began i've been waiting for dog dale afternoon and we we had a lot of fun already we've we've recorded that one it's a great one so yes that is for five dollar patrons at patreon.com slash talking simpsons if you're a ten dollar patron well the disney renaissance summer of 2024 is about to kick off because we're doing a little cleanup we're covering the final movies of the 90s we have yet to cover and we're starting things off with mulan followed by pocahontas, and then Tarzan. And we're going out of chronological order because I wanted to do Pocahontas in July as my month. So apologies if that gives you existential dread.

But Mulan, this is the first time I saw it. And I'm conflicted about this movie, but we had a lot of fun digging into it in the history and how no one really wanted to make it. Yeah, it's a really fun two-hour history. We've already recorded it. That's how long you know this one's going to be. but we yeah mulan was a really interesting one to cover but i was more intrigued by how it was made process-wise at disney and how it's sort of the proto lilo and

stitch the people who would make lilo and stitch a much better and feminist movie than Mulan is in the seeds of the production of Mulan. So yes, look forward to that and another Disney Renaissance summer. We're going to be out of Disney Renaissance stuff. So this is going to be closing the book on that, but paving the way towards more Disney stuff, more Pixar stuff in the future. I'll be happy once we have an episode about every movie from the 90s just like how satisfying it felt to have done who framed roger rabbit so now we can say we did it you can listen to it and we did it so great you can check it out and by the way if you missed it we just released the bender's big score podcast at the end of may it is probably like our second or third longest

podcast of all time and i'm very proud of how it came out. It went really great. And I'm really proud of it, too. And we needed it just to deconstruct how the time travel plot in that works. A lot of fun history about behind the scenes of the direct-to-video boom or direct-to-DVD boom and how it funded new movies and new TV shows. You can hear it on the feed. So let's talk about what we've been playing and watching, not related to the podcast. And I must tell everyone, I started it on March 10th.

So when it comes to finishing Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, I'm proud to say I am closer than ever before. But we just, as the day we're recording this, I just released Retronauts with Henry on the game. And that'll be out on the free feed at the beginning of June. So you can check it out. But we have a whole conversation there. But satisfied with the game. that'll be out on the free feed at the beginning of june so you can check it out but we have a whole conversation there but satisfied with the game i'm not bored with it yet but i'm gonna feel like genie you're free once i'm finished with all 120

hours of that game it's as long as a persona game it it is ridiculous in length uh in a good way but you do feel like trapped maybe it is the you, you like donuts, huh, of games. You like mini games in Final Fantasy, huh? So yeah, between this and the first remake of FF7, I've probably played 200 hours, and that's disc one of three of the original game's content. I feel like there's only one more game making it out of this, but I'd be wrong in guessing that.

I bet there's two more. I think they announced three, but if they found a fourth one to tack on to the end, I don't know. But I'm having fun with it, and yeah, check out the Retronauts. Also, I needed a break from the hugeness and the graphical splendor of FF7 Rebirth, so I played through this little indie Metroidvania called Animal Well. A lot of people were talking about it. I played through it to see what the big deal was i thought it was pretty good uh it seemed to blow a lot more minds than uh my mind wasn't blown i had a fairly good time with it it is purely exploration based and

puzzle based metroidvania game it's very tidy it's between five to ten hours i got stuck a lot in the game so it took me 10 but i guess my main issue was yes i did get stuck a lot and when you're stuck in the game you can't like fight enemies to get you know experience or gold or find items it's like okay time to visit every room again see what i missed and that part of the game was tedious but it's a cute little game made by one person and it's got a ton of like arg based secrets i have absolutely no time for but people like that aspect of it a lot but i thought if you take it on its surface level it is a very fun tidy little game and it was so different from ff7 rebirth that i did enjoy it as a nice

break from um that huge open world that's cool that's cool in terms of watching movies now uh i have a lot of movies on my list because i think i watched like 20 movies since our last talk to the audience and i don't think i mentioned watching ed wood last month did i henry it wasn't on my notes i don't think you did okay i watched it for the second time in my life first time in hd also i watched it for the first time after basically knowing everything about ed wood and i had such a good time with it it is tim burton's blank check movie he made a big budget black and white movie about somebody no one had ever heard of in 1994 and it is one of his best that's good yeah i haven't i haven't watched that since vhs i i should give that another watch i was

too i was a fool watching it that well not a fool but like i just knew ed wood from mystery science theater like i didn't really and only vaguely then i i think i am now a we an old enough weirdo to appreciate ed wood as a movie i'm the kind of hipster who i'm more into the movies that ed would the film ed wood does not cover the making of like the sinister urge some of the ones that covered on mystery science theater i i knew a little bit about him when this came out when i watched it 95 now thanks to people like will sloan who was an edwoodologist i know so much more including about like the pornography he wrote and filmed and things like that it was fun to revisit this.

And Johnny Depp, hey guys, he's great. Look into this guy. I agree with what he says. I love his lifestyle. He's a great actor. You know, if that lifestyle leads to such great acting, you can't disagree with it. Yes. And I kicked off May by watching Hundreds of Beavers.

As we release this episode, or as we record it, Chapo Trap House just released an interview with the director. Have you heard of this film, Henry? I've seen the poster of it around, but no, I haven't really heard of it. I did hear of it just because we in one of the episodes we did this month, a dude wears my ranch. There's a beaver subplot of Homer fighting beavers. And I think somebody mentioned it in the comments. Yes, yes. It's weird because we never even thought of that after watching the movie but it's basically a modern silent film super innovative filmmaking a lot of practical effects a lot of digital effects it's it's a flat out comedy

looney tune style gag a minute comedy i'll say maybe it pushes things a little because it is an hour and 40 minutes and i feel like it should be there's more to do than just making a short but i feel like it should have been 80 minutes but it's's just so inventive, so funny, so silly that it's worth exploring. I gave it like three stars on Letterboxd, but it's just a fun experience you've never had before. I'm looking forward to what the filmmaker does next. I heartily recommend Hundreds of Beavers. I like that the poster looks like an 80s movie poster, too. That's something I really like about it in the well

from what i've seen yeah really good uh check it out and i also uh because haven't seen furiosa yet that's that's thursday i bought tickets for the next week because i thought i want to avoid the crowds turns out there aren't crowds the crowds are at garfield and i'm upset uh i went i did see furiosa it was i i went and saw furiosa on a Sunday morning or Sunday noon and it was a I'd say 70 percent full theater okay 60 percent well everyone's seeing everyone is seeing Garfield because Henry did free viral marketing for them and I won't forget them for this oh come on I did not that's that was marketing that was marketing we could talk more about that later yeah but I'm preparing to see Furiosa so I wanted to to rewatch all the Mad Max movies.

Well, I'd only seen Fury Road and the first one. So Mad Max 2 and 3 were completely new to me. And yeah, it was my first time watching them back to back. And I had a really good time. Mad Max 1 is so weird. It's so low budget that they can't really depict a post-apocalypse. So it just feels like, well, what's going on in regular Australia? Why is everyone driving so weird?

Well, I'm surprised you hadn't seen Road hadn't seen road warrior before that's usually most people's first that was my first it's one of those ones where i thought it's been referenced so much i don't need to see it i've gotten over that at this point in my life and it's like no i want to see where why everyone references this yeah road warrior amazing uh again mel gibson great guy love him too along with johnny tap beyond thunderdome it's like one act of a good movie and then uh there's some good comparisons of this in some reviews I read it it's very like Amblin-y Steven Spielberg-y where he falls in with this kooky troop of kind of lost boys and that's where the movie loses me completely but the first act when they go to the the desert uh encampment and there's the Thunderdome and Tinaina turner's there and in master blasters

there i was so psyched for what i thought would be a great movie but the last two acts really let me down it felt like they were trying to turn it into a family movie and it is a pg-13 mad max it's not rated r that wow that amblin thing is a very good point i i always forget about those children because the master blaster and the thunderdome is just so cool and tina turner as a warlord is so cool you forget everything after he's put on that horse or i did yeah yeah when i was watching the first act i thought oh you know people said this was disappointing i am on board is this going to be like a fighting tournament with mad max that's so cool but then something happens in the thunderdome and he's dragged away and he falls in with this group of basically survivors from an airplane crash that have.

But the apocalypse wasn't even that long ago because Mad Max lived through it. So I don't know how this new society could be built up around a plane crashing and people surviving afterwards. It's very weird. But yeah, happy to have finally watched all of them in preparation for Furiosa. And yeah, I don't know what else I can say, but looking forward to Furiosa. I give Furiosa a thumbs up. I gave it a four. I'd give Fury Road a five.

That's my feeling. But Furiosa is pretty great. And I also saw Booksmart, which is a movie a lot of people like that came out about five years ago. It is sort of zanier Lady Bird. And I'm not just saying that because ladybird's friend from ladybird is the main character in book smarts oh i didn't know this i not yeah it's a great story so what i like about ladybird is that it was a great story about

like an intense outcast nerd friendship and this is the same way but it also explores what happens when nerds realize people can be good at school and also attractive and popular and they can be having sex and be athletic. Being good at school is not, you know, mutually exclusive from those other things. So these two girls realize, oh, we've wasted our lives just being good at school. It turns out these people we hate are also good at school and they're going to the better colleges than us. We need to have like one fun night and that's what the movie is and it's not just like goofy gross out here where there's a lot of fun touching stuff and i i wrote this in i'm going to mention letterbox again i wrote this in my letterbox review but i'm just remembering all the teen

movies i saw growing up and it is so cool to see a teen movie for modern teens where teens are drinking they're doing drugs and they're being gay and that's not the point of it this is just observing here's what teens do it's not like we're gonna get you laid one of those kind of movies it's just like there's no shame in it any of those elements would have been a psa style adventure in teen entertainment of my day yeah that's right wow that is not yeah i i feel like the teen movies of our youth were either you have to have heterosexual sex before to be considered a man and also iffy a little iffy things on consent in a lot of those movies too when you look back at them it's just funny because nina and i are watching 90210 uh because we're following along with the we hate movies sideshow

about that program and it's these 27 year olds teenagers, and they're out at a club, and one of them's like, let's get some more sodas, guys. Who wants sodas? It's like, nobody is drinking sodas here. It's the soda-only club. I just rewatched Spider-Man Homecoming, and they at least have, when they go to a house party, they're not saying, I'm so drunk, no kid is acting drunk. But they at least have the red solo cup in a hand to let you know, there's underage drinking happening here.

We can't endorse it in this Disney movie, but let's at least not have characters say, we don't have alcohol at this party. So yeah, Booksmart recommended. I also watched on Victoria Day, appropriately enough, Topsy Turvy, the movie about, I just forgot their names, the guys who did the HMS Pinniford. Thank you. Well, Henry Gilbert, you're one of them. Yes, yeah, of course. It's about the Mikado, right? I actually haven't seen this movie. Yes, yes.

It's about the production of the Mikado. And yeah, it's about their partnership. It's not like the history of where they came from or how they met in their partnership over the years it's like a bunch of snapshots around the production of the mikado and how uh their working relationship was and i'll tell you it's very weird in that they're rarely in any scene together they didn't really work together that much their work was done super remotely but i didn't know a lot about them and And the movie is as long as Dune Part 2. And I was just completely trapped in the movie's net the entire time.

Well, now that you've seen it, it'll only make better when we cover Cape Fear. You'll be even more informed on Gideon Sullivan. And hey, now since we did that first recording of Cape Fear way back in the day, I have seen a production of HMS Pinafore. I've got to see if one's happening near me anywhere to see if i can get it in before if not i'll have to find a filmed production of it then they're almost always happening i can tell you that it's a very popular production oh good um final i i watched 20 movies i'm just singling out the ones that are fun to talk about last night i watched dick tracy it's one i saw in the theater i think thanks to a roger rabbit short and maybe i saw it on VHS after that, but as a kid I thought, I guess you want me to like this and it's not boring,

but I don't really care about this. And watching it as an adult, love the production design, it's crazy. It looks like it's being filmed in Toontown because everything is a matte painting, everything is a miniature, and the actors are just dropped into these completely unrealistic backdrops that look so cool and iconic. The villains, all the great practical, like basically monster makeup on them is so great. They're so grotesque. The you know, the outfits are great. The worst part about it is Warren Beatty playing Dick Tracy. I'm not making an original statement by any means, but it is a vanity project in every sense of the word.

Whereas like why I love Dick Tracy. I'm going to be him. Also, I'm going to be very attractive through the entire movie and basically just be kind of stiff and creaky and majestic. And, you know, he is the most boring part of the movie. And if you look at how Dick Tracy looks in the comics, he is as grotesque as the villains. Like the guy love drawing gross human beings. So it's weird to see regular craggy Warren Beatty at age 53 just being a normal guy in the land of monsters. I wish he was not so vain as to reject any sort of weird prosthetics, any sort of weird makeup, because it would have made for a much better movie. He makes all of his famous actor friends like Dustin Hoffman and Al Pacino wear ridiculous makeup. He should have closed eyes a prominent brow and a big chin this is a very good i never thought of this before but you're

right he should have like a steam shovel chin so whenever he's on in the scene it's just so boring and he's like he's just so stoic and not fun and everyone is so over the top and by the way al pacino is big boy he looks like a more healthy version of what rudy giuliani looks like now compare the two i implore you i i watched dick tracy sometime like five years ago and he's all i remember from it because i am used to al pacino in the 90s being big but this is so big it like explodes the screen like it's too much yeah it's uh it's worth going back to because i think like back to back roger rabbit batman dick tracy prepared me for a world in which all movies will be calling back to the same you know aesthetic but that was just a tiny period in in filmmaking but they were so

imprinted on my brain that's why i think it's why i love art deco it's why i love batman the animated series it's why i love film noir it just because everything was parodying noir or calling back to certain you know architectural elements from the era that it just had such a strong effect on my developing brain and rocketeer right afterwards too rocketeer that too yeah yeah no i i still love the art deco look on things it's uh it's what i like it's one of my favorite things of going to disney california adventure is still seeing that they have some of those fins and smooth and curved edges on stuff there. And the last thing I'll say about Dick Tracy is 53 years old in 1990 is different than 53 years old today. Like if you're born in the mid 30s, you're going to age a lot differently than let's say Tom Cruise has aged.

We can see him as Mr. Mission Impossible at age 60. Warren Beatty is kind of a creaky old man in Dick Tracy. And during some of the action scenes, they literally speed up the film so it looks like he's moving faster. And I'm like, you're not fooling anybody, Warren. That's so funny. Yeah, yeah. It's 53 then is different than 53 now. Most people just maintain they're just the same movie star at 53 as they were at 43. Yeah, yeah. I'll skip over the next few things really quickly here because this is a long episode.

I did watch Fargo season two. I really liked it. People told me I would like it more than season one, but I like season one a bit more. I think it's because Billy Bob was such a presence in that first season, such like a horrifying villain that it didn't, two didn't measure up as much, but I still really enjoyed it in the period uh the setting of it as well the 70s setting the 70s settings right i mean it has the a great cast including like the i feel like they fell in love on this show was was uh kirsten dunst and jesse plemmons yeah i was wondering when their connection came about but i yeah she was a one of the big stars in this one playing playing a great character but that's like 10 years old you guys know about that there's a love connection i believe in the season three cast of fargo as well but you'll you'll see i'll get to it soon because i'm watching another show i'm taking a fargo break uh i started watching a

secret show on amazon called upload it's by a little guy named greg daniels heard of him well he has three seasons of a show called upload that we have talked about a few times. It's by a little guy named Greg Daniels. Heard of him? Well, he has three seasons of a show called Upload that we have talked about a few times, but it's such a secret show that the memory just evaporates from your brain as soon as we talk about it. Upload is, I'll say it's pretty good. It debuted during the pandemic, like during lockdown. So I feel like we were all going crazy and it got forgotten, but it got renewed a few times. Essentially, it has the same sense of humor as the episode Lisa's Wedding. Like, let's's jump to 10 15 years in the future and let's see how technology has shaped our lives and like in lisa's wedding a lot of the jokes are either the technology is crappy

but we've decided to adopt it or the technology is way too advanced and we are too irresponsible to use it in this case the main concept is that when you die you can have your consciousness uploaded to basically a virtual heaven run by a corporation and there are so many ideas spawned out of that like how is the afterlife monetized there are their advertisements in the afterlife what do people on a living on the planet how can they interact with you there are all these different ideas and so far it's been very fascinating it's sort of like comedy black mirror oh that that actually sounds pretty clever i if if we've talked about it before i had completely forgotten about it it usually would come up with uh do you know greg daniels has a show called upload that that's

usually the how it would come up in our conversations i'll usually on talking to the hill man see it's it's different from space force i do still remember because it just was apparently not very good or it did it was not well received and i didn't watch it but i'll remember it yeah i will say upload pretty good i mean if you if you have some it's it's a nice like folding laundry watch it was a it's an elliptical machine watch for me i'm a captive audience and i i have been liking it i think i might watch all that's available because it's they're 30 minute episodes they're funny enough for me to want to watch the next one and i like the different sci-fi ideas explored uh and but while while still keeping things funny when i'm working with my dumbbells today i'm actually i'll that'll be my my captive

watch i'll watch the first episode of that once we're done with this and one thing i've been watching the most of is the 24-hour mystery science theater channel on youtube now uh shout factory has owned mystery science theater for a while they've had a they had their own channel on youtube for a while just for mystery science theater 3000 where they've posted in complete episodes like 20 or 25 or 30 but now they have basically an all-day stream of mystery science theater and i can't stop watching it it's it's becoming a real problem in my life because we normally leave on music, like a YouTube endless music playlist for my bird when we leave.

Now I leave on Mystery Science Theater. So whenever I leave the house, I'm like, oh, it's the Wild World of Batman woman or oh, it's Outlaw of Gore. I feel like I'm never responding with excitement when an episode title pops up. I'm always excited, which tells me what a freak I am because there's never been one that's like,

ah, this one's fine. I'm always like, oh always like oh it's this one i gotta see at least five minutes of this yeah you tweeting about it got me on that too uh not as much as you but like i spent a few nights putting it on uh you tweeted about i had not thought about it in so long the train safety short yeah it made me pull up a first that and then there's also a forever maybe it's a copycat i i don't know if it's the official or not but there is a forever-a-thon stream of only shorts too so i i put that on yeah that that's part of the official account too and then other accounts that are unofficial have well here's all of season three running forever here's all of season four it's it's never been easier to find mystery science theater and i i go through like a mystery science theater fixation phase every six

or seven years i think i'm back on it but it does make me remember how when i was um you know a teenager in high school and i missed all of comedy central and i would have to send away for tapes and every tape was so valuable and now it's just the endless endless torrents of mystery science theater in my home the future is magical it is it's a beautiful time yes uh other stuff so i've been reading a lot of comics and i finally finished the shigeru mizuki four-part opus showa which is a history of the show era of japan and his own personal history of growing up through that era uh fighting in World War II for the Japanese and then becoming a manga artist like in his 40s it's so good I will

say the historical stuff can be pretty dry there's a ton of footnotes and I wish this book was just his autobiographical stuff because all of that is so fascinating and when I got to the last page the world there's a lot of bad things happening in the world right now i don't know if you've you follow the news at all henry or look on twitter but the final page is like uh a drawing of like a gun with a barrel like tied in a knot and it's like do not make the same mistakes we did this is a message to the future and i was just like oh it gave me like sad goosebumps oh boy this is a guy who was drafted to fight in world war ii spent most of his time like delirious with malaria got an arm blown off and then went on to become one of

the most beloved manga artists of japan with some really cool stuff and he's like i have lived i have seen it all i have seen everything that humanity is capable of do not let this happen again boy i really want i you've talked about it before. This reminds me, I really got to read this because yeah, I also, one of the things I didn't love about Godzilla Minus One is that I thought it was too, I prefer stuff like that or the films of Klonichi Kawa about from guys who lived through, who were adults in World War II

and have nothing but regret. And just like, no, we shouldn't have done, like regret and just like no we shouldn't have done like we were wrong like we shouldn't have done these horrible things instead of i felt like godzilla minus one stance was more like isn't it sad that this guy came home and his people were mean to him but yeah the stance was like these guys need a comeback what do you say folks yes yeah it was just kind of a not to get on a whole other side yeah no i was on the same page as you when it comes to that yeah so but i gotta read this show on book i i'm gonna add that again to my list i i'm gonna read it uh i've been reading another

manga series from the beginning uh very long longer than one piece it's called uh peanutsu or peanuts it's a very long 50 years manga starring a dog and a boy of course i'm talking about the charlie brown comics now the fan of graphics collection started coming out at my when i was at my poorest when i was making like five dollars an hour and i would go to the bookstore and i would flip through them and i would go god damn it i want to read this so bad but now finally i have access to all of them because the vancouver library system is great and they have all of them. So I've been slowly reading them.

And I've read the first four years of Peanuts strips so far. And it's cool to see the origins of things and the false starts of things. I'm looking forward to getting to the 60s, like when the Peanuts were at their biggest and seeing the stories from that era. But it is fun to see how quickly Charles Schultz abandoned his ideas that aren't working. Because so many characters you know enter the strip as babies and he's like i'm gonna do some baby jokes and then within a few months they're walking around and talking and they're the same age as everyone else so it's like schroeder's a baby that doesn't work linus is a baby yeah he could be a regular kid too lucy baby no not anymore so everybody starts as a baby except for like violet and charlie brown and uh shirmy

shirmy yeah the forgotten peanuts characters when when i think i've forgotten peanuts characters shirmy is the first thought i always have yeah and there's a different patty that's not peppermint patty oh i forgot man i yeah i read some of these those those fantagraphic collections are like the gold standard of collecting classic comic strips like it doesn't get better than those fantagraphic ones i even bought i'm looking at it on my shelf over there they did one for garfield i don't know how far they went in garfield but i bought the first year of the garfield one just to have it because i was like wow they're giving they're treating garfield with the importance of charles schultz's stuff uh anyways they're recommended i don't know if they're still in print but uh they're they're great resources and

the first one has a really nice interview in the back and the art is uh very well preserved also in more classic comic strip uh news i've been reading pogo pogo's this thing that like every aging comic artist references like oh i love pogo pogo's so great it turns out like everybody basically forgot about pogo as soon as the strip went away and it was super out of print for a very long time but uh bill watterson the calvin and hobbes artist says oh yeah pogo that's where all the best art is that's where i'm inspired by and uh jeff smith who did the comic bone the bone like has so many characters who are just pogo characters in design basically pogo unfortunately is like completely impenetrable i found i read an entire collection of it and the issue is um every panel is so dense i swear to god

it has like after reading peanuts was such a breeze i loved reading peanuts but every pogo strip had maybe 20 times the amount of text and the other thing about pogo is every character talks in a very heavy dialect so i could handle one character talking like that but it takes extra long to read when it when it's every character talking like that so i just found it like oh man these were not meant to be read in a giant book collection maybe if i was reading them one at a time from 1948 to 1972 i could handle these but i don't have time for pogo but it was fun to read one of the pogo books and see yes the art is very very good you could tell he came from disney and was elevating the forum i didn't give pogo enough

chances in my youth either i recall reading interviews like that one you mentioned or of jeff smith saying that because he would say the carl barks duck comics and pogo and i'd read the carl barks duck comics like oh i instantly get why these are great adventures each is just so easy to read these are classic comics you can see change the media but pogo i did bounce off of most times too i couldn't even find pogo as a kid i there were no pogo resources it wasn't in newspapers did you find a collection somewhere i think an uncle gifted me a pogo book once as a kid i had i have one great comic book loving uncle who would gift me tin tin books uh a pogo book and uh and and uh

the stuff like that uh and finally i saw a production of guys and dolls in vancouver because nina is a big fan and we don't like the movie uh the movie's not great but yeah thanks to friend of us victor hunter who was in the show we got to see it and it was great and uh i recommend seeing a production of guys and dolls if you can it's a lot of fun that's great and now you know that the song in the simpsons is not in the show yes well i knew that when i saw the movie but it's great to see somebody who's not marlon brando singing luck be a lady tonight because he ruins that song oh man yeah that's terrible that's that's why i was so

happy to learn that the music man movie is a good enough replacement for seeing it live though it's not the same as seeing it live but at least it's full of the people who were good at singing the songs yes uh that was my busy media field may so apologies for taking up so much time henry how about you well other than finishing final fantasy 7 rebirth which yes please listen to that new retronauts that i was a guest on where we talked a ton about it i then mainly played hades 2 which is on early access i did not play the first hades on early access so i didn't realize how this was going to go like basically i did 30 hours of hades 2 and did everything you can up to the point where a screen will pop up that says

and you're gonna have to wait for more of this because so i did as much as i could though and it's great if you love the first hades this is more of it and it's awesome yeah uh i i feel like i knew what i was in for with hades 1 and i felt like i would have gotten too addicted to it so i i stayed away maybe i'll pick up two when it's finally out. Hopefully they have it done by the end of this year. But yeah, I love it. It's great. And then I also decided because it's on Game Pass, I'm going to start.

I wanted to play the control game from Remedy because I enjoyed Alan Wake 2 so much. I was like, OK, let's play this control game since it's in part of my subscription anyway. It is fun. It's slight. It's more of a jumpy shooter than alan wake is like it is it is more of the shooting mechanic yeah i've had it for a while i got it on sale for like five bucks a couple years ago and i know i know it comes highly recommended and it's it's pretty brief so i've been looking forward to playing that but i'm glad to hear it's good and i need to get around to playing alan wake too it's it's too good for 505 games as a publisher it's like how do they accidentally publish this as for movies i saw furiosa it was really good it's not as good as fury road but that's because

fury road is the best but it has some moments in it like oh this chase scene is almost as good as fury road and to know that a man in his 80s is still directing movies this good is incredible so a thumbs up to George Miller I'm kind of bad I mean I haven't seen it yet so no spoilers obviously but I'm kind of baffled that it's two and a half hours long is that just a studio mandate at this point because it feels like George Miller that Fury Road was two hours and that was kind of pushing it the other ones are all a tidy 90 minutes I just don't know I can't see that sustaining two and a half hours it it can because it is like it's covering a lot of time and honestly they collapse some time later in it too but uh yeah i but also i i think it's that it's like scorsese at his age if he's

gonna make a movie he wants to include as much as he can so instead of cutting things to get it under two hours he's like i may i may be dead soon enough so i want to do this scene too hey fair enough i love george miller for a lot of reasons but recently he did an interview where he was like oh yeah lore stupid there is no lore that's pretty great yes yeah that was that he lists the coal that is very clear in all of his mad max films yes i also saw garfield now listen i was about Max films. Yes, I also saw Garfield. Now listen. I was about to, like, when I saw that you saw Garfield and not Furiosa, I was planning a movie court segment for this podcast in my head. Well, what happened was we had tickets for seeing Saturday Furiosa, and then I was just going to watch Garfield the next day.

But something came up and we couldn't go to the movies on Saturday. We were going to do it Sunday. So I was like, well, all right, we watch i felt weird watching having logging it in letterbox before furiosa i i did but so yeah it's not very good you shouldn't pay to see it there are flashes of it where you remember this is the director of emperor's new groove there are occasional times like oh that's good drawing but chris pratt sucks so hard he is not trying at all it made me think oh mario is him trying like this is him actually doing anything i just know that uh we hate movies released an episode about the second garfield live action film the tale of two

kitties and chris cabin had seen the cgi garfield and he said it's worse than a tale of two kitties and chris cabin had seen the cgi garfield and he said it's worse than a tale of two kitties which is garbage wow man that's uh yeah i haven't seen tale two kitties but there are moments where they at least draw garfield to look like garfield doing garfield things but also it's just it's a sad dad movie of like all which does not anything where garfield has to go on an adventure because that's's movies, is wrong to me. Garfield should go nowhere and do nothing. I want to see that movie. But yeah, so don't pay for it, folks, is my point. Then a good, really good animated movie I saw this month was Mars Express.

Basically, a French guy our age loves Cowboy Bebop and Akira. And he made Ghost in the Shell. And he made his own version of that. And it's pretty good. Yeah, when you logged this, I had no idea what it was. It didn't pop up on my movie apps or anything. So I was wondering what the story was behind it. Yeah, it's a really well-animated cyberpunk film that takes place in a future where people can be robots or upload their consciousness.

Robots are a second class i mean when i say it like rips off blade runner it's more like well it's ripping off things that were inspired by blade runner blade runner was 40 years ago 20 years ago things were inspired by blade runner it's now inspired by those things like it's it's that kind of thing but it yeah that the animation is great and it it has a concept that can really last the whole movie, and it's gorgeous to look at, too. Kingdom of the Pliny Apes, saw that. It's all right. Not as good as the Caesar trilogy, and honestly, I don't like the sequels. I'm not so excited for the sequels it teases, because obviously, this isn't going to be

a standalone film. That's not a spoiler. Yeah, yeah. I just saw all the reviews I saw were people who loved the last trilogy being very disappointed yeah no i mean nobody in this is is as good an actor as andy circus or even tony kebbell who's in two of them like or or other it in many ways it just feels like i should have looked up if it was filmed in vancouver but it feels like the cheaper version of these things that are filmed in cheaper places with cheaper actors out uh vancouver suburb perhaps then i saw two coen brothers movies i hadn't seen before a serious man and inside llewellyn davis both really great especially a serious man it's like a top five coen for me now i love love

that movie that's one of the ones i missed and we were covering something in a recent episode of talking simpsons that's not live yet but a subplot has to do with the film sorry the series f troop yes uh a serious man's son loves f troop and wants to make sure he watches it every afternoon in the in the show it's in the movie it's a uh it's a period piece it's set in 1968 uh but yeah and inside llewellyn davis also really good also also set in 1968. Or no, early 60s. Early 60s. And I also, speaking of watching stupid things, I watched Ted 2. My husband was just like, let's just watch Ted 2.

Screw it. Let's do it. It's right there. I'm getting the sense your husband is a secret Seth McFarlane supporter. I don't. We both just wanted to watch a silly thing. It is basically a 70, I looked up the budget, was $70 million. It's like, what if a season 10 Family Guy script

was made for $70 million? It's pretty much the movie. People like the TV show. I think they like it more than the movies, actually. Yes, I've heard good things about that, too. As for other TV shows, finished X-Men 97, just like you. We both loved it.

Hey, maybe we'll talk about it on a future podcast. Maybe. I also watched, in the Ted 2 vein, we also watched all of the Knuckles show. What the hell is going on here? My husband has ironic taste in watching things sometimes. He doesn't want to watch. When it's time to just eat dinner and watch something sometimes we just want to watch a dumb thing so knuckles a what's going on here the fun thing of it is one

if you listen to comedy podcasts 10 years ago it's full of people you will recognize starting with adam pally he's the lead of the show wait i thought knuckles was, am I wrong, Idris Elba? Yes. So Idris Elba still plays Knuckles in this. But after the first episode, their Knuckles quotient is usually about five minutes per episode. And you're going to spend a lot of the 30 minutes with Adam Pally. What are Knuckles' cheaper friends doing right now? Like the first episode has Knuckles, Sonic, and Tails. And it basically is like a mini Sonic movie. But then they say, Knuckles, you should go do this.

And he spends five episodes after that of 30 minutes each hanging out with Adam Pally. And now Adam Pally is also a 1982 boy, so all of his childhood references are ours. So that is another attractive thing about it. But yeah, Knuckles spends a lot of the show locked in a box or in another room. I feel bad for Idris Elba because, is it Elba or Elba? I want to say Elba, but I don't know. Okay, I'm going to say Elba for now because 15 years ago there was a lot of discourse as to like, oh, he should be the next James Bond and I agree that would have been great.

And now he's Knuckles and he's making documentaries about gold for the National Gold Council. I forgot. I hadn't heard about that. I only know about that because it was a promoted ad. Like, let Idris Elba tell you all about why gold is good. Oh, jeez, man. That makes Knuckles seem respectable by comparison. I'm sure he's doing very well.

There's worse things to watch than Knuckles. And half the time I'm watching it like, oh, oh my god this is what a knuckle show is doing like knuckles goes to a shabbat dinner at adam pally's home and his and the his mother tells knuckles like wow the story of you echidnas is just like the story of the jews and it's just so strange from some of the jewish folks on Twitter feed, they were surprised that he was teaching about the culture via the Knuckles show. Also, Akiva Schaefer or Akiva whatever from The Lonely Island, he directs the best episode of the show, which is a musical dream episode. So that one is an actual just like good episode I liked. So, yeah, it's it was strange and the last thing i want to compliment though is everybody's in la the john mulaney hosted netflix show because several cool great

writers wrote on it that's how i heard about it there's a sketch called reverse borad i think everybody should watch it's a perfect sketch a sketch and also previous guest of our podcast uh scott garner wrote a couple sketches for it that were very funny okay though also part of the fun is the chaos like there's parts of it that you're just like this is pure chaos on tv and it you will be uncomfortable but it is fun too i didn't know what this was it's john mulaney doing a live talk show like purely live uh on call-in show and he also part of the fun is he'd have on hey it's jerry seinfeld but the entire time i'm talking to jerry seinfeld sitting next to him is a expert on coyotes in los angeles and i'll

interview them simultaneously okay what was this on what platform is this on netflix okay okay cool part of it was for netflix to uh to test out how good their live service can be for live airings of things oh yeah i forgot it's actually a live show because they tried that with a love is blind a reunion or love is blind special and it just broke everything it it worked really good for us it was uh we watched it live part of the fun was watching it live. And also, not unlike Knuckles, John Mulaney is a 1982 born guy too. So when he booked guests for his show, musical guest Weezer singing the songs from when we were young. Great. Beck singing his song from when we were young. Warren G singing his song from when we were young. All of the old music for guys in their early 40s. That really speaks to me.

So anything else, Henry? No, no. So that was all the stuff I watched this month that was really good. And we're both planning. We got big things going in June. We're both planning and prepping for. A business trip.

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started. Merchants Bank is a proud member of FDIC. So now it's time to talk about questions and comments we've gotten from episodes over the past month and the first one is for talking simpsons dude where's my ranch and ernie cotrell says homer is absolutely groaning in an a-flat when told those keys are owned by disney and then pitches up to an a when corrected i wouldn't be shocked if castlanetta already had a pitch pipe ready for that joke this is bob speaking i'm not sure if that was dan doing it or the computer correcting it but they they were paying attention to detail this is bob speaking i'm not sure if that was dan doing it or the computer correcting it but they they were paying attention to detail i guess that was i'm glad somebody with

an ear for that stuff could point it out i if auto tune was already pretty prevalent by 03 so it could have just been through a computer but i could also see dan being the type who brings his own pitch pipe to the recordings also on that episode drew mackie says for what it's worth identity is not really a remake of and then there was none except in the most abstract sense of a bunch of people gathered in a place and then getting murdered it's whatever but it's kind of worth watching to see the twist which is contrived and bad and results in some of the worst wordplay i've seen in a film i watched it on a plane wow you know i added that to my letterbox during our conversation about the film and now i might take

it off because that was one of the films that came out that's that week yeah it was in the release that week talk yes yeah you should watch the real cancun instead bob the other movie we talked about that week oh am i allowed no it's too it's uh you should get the unrated director's cut blockbuster exclusive wow um you know that what would happen if i did that add that to my letterbox like who would unfriend me that would be straight well you know uh letterbox superstar will sloan i feel like uh every once a month he logs pornography like 70s pornography yeah hey it's vintage so it's vintage, so it's classy. But yeah, when you see him log something like that, the cover is all mosaicked out.

That's true. I learned eventually he had logged enough that like, oh, this is porn. Okay. Moving on to Last Exit to Springfield with Eva Anderson as our guest. And Vance Jericho says, I'll take credit for uploading that revised table draft of the script to archive.org that oj scene is definitely one of the weirder bits of trivia from the series and thank god he turned it down uh and this is bob yes thank you vance for uploading the script and i wonder what it would have done for the simpsons if that stayed in would the show

have gotten more popular it would have been a or would it just been like weird trivia it definitely would be in the weird trivia thing of like, oh, you know, a year before he did this. Or like The Simpsons. I mean, I think it would be in a banned episode list like Michael Jackson, perhaps. I think so. Or they'd be more ashamed of it, too.

Maybe they'd even make more jokes about it to try to, about O.J. Simpson's legal troubles. Maybe they would have made more jokes about it just to show we're not on oj simpson's side we are not his friend we need a listicle on which simpson's guest stars have been canceled there's gotta man yeah it's got to be at least a 10 10 person deep listicle for sure yeah i would say let's say 8% of the guests so far. Who knows? Harvey Weinstein. I just saw that archive.org is under a DDoS attack today or something. It's a reason I downloaded all the revised table drafts,

100 plus of them, last month, because I feared something like that was going to happen. Also, on last exit to Springfield, which, by the way, Uproxx even covered our podcast because of the the revelation eva shared about the real name of one of the inspirations for comic book guys yes thank you to uprox and thank you for calling us very good they're complimentary and they link to the episode in the description that was really nice uh so christmas ape also says on that episode For years I had no idea that the robots in the Burns and Smithers montage saying, Crush, Kill, Destroy was a reference to Lost in Space. So it was just a Simpsons specific thing to me.

Then I played Street Fighter 3 Third Strike where the character Urien says, Crush, Kill, Destroy during certain special moves. I was surprised and perplexed by the idea that street fighter would be referencing a simpsons joke until i learned that they were both referencing another thing who says watching television and playing video games can't be enlightening yeah i looked up apparently it's it's said by a robot but not the robot you know from lost in space it's a new robot okay not and it's not robbie the robot either then it's no it's a jet jaguar looking guy okay wow well so yes honestly i want to include this too from christmas eight because

i also didn't know that and i thought it was crush kill destroy was just a classic simpsonsism i did not know lost in space is a grayer area of my nerdy childhood watching. I'm glad to not know about Lost in Space. I am happy I instead spent that time watching Batman 66. If I was going to watch any 60s thing. I watched Gilligan's Island and Mayberry RFD and a bunch of other things. But Lost in Space was not available to me, I don't think. It was Lost in Space's fault for not filming in color. That was their problem.

I probably would have given it some time as a little kid if the first season was right. I recall it being in color. Those are my memories, at least. Maybe they were late in season. It definitely started in black and white, though. Well, I could be wrong, but it feels black and white to me. Let's move on to Old Yeller Belly with Cole Ross. And all of our comments are soda-based, it looks like.

Jonathan says, just came to say that Pepsi Twist was amazing. All the best Pepsi products were canceled before their time. Pepsi Twist, Pepsi Blue, so thirsty now. Yeah, you know, I find that if you just buy like a little lemon concentrate, one of those little squeezy bottles, you can turn anything into lemon anything. It's great. You can zazz up your water. You could say, man, that's a lemony drink over everything at that point. These were just made to distract us after 9-11, so we wouldn't

try to find who really was behind all this. Meanwhile, Sean Ryan says, I got to give a big thumbs down to Coke Freestyle Machines. Far too often I am stuck, helpless and thirsty, behind an excited child trying to mix wacky cocktails an elderly person baffled by the machine's operation or some indecisive jackass sampling sips of every available flavor before finally settling on just diet coke i applaud every fast food establishment i enter that has a traditional soda tap i i guess i'm not there at peak hours but i usually can find an empty freestyle machine but like i am with coffee i like black coffee no frills i am a regular coke kind of guy no diet

no coke zero give me that regular coke i'm out of there i'm not trying to see like oh they have mango now i i just want the one flavor i like no i i'm the opposite i went when i went that amc to see furiosa this weekend the freestyle machine was back and i was in i i did two refills on my drink because i wanted to try the flavors because they have way more zero calorie things like if i want a zero calorie thing at the cinemark i go to it's either diet coke or water or one type of tea here there was like eight different sugar zero sugar uh powerade and eight different zero sugar teas so i had like a peach tea a cherry uh it there were so many variations i love coke freestyle no no bathroom breaks though right i was able to hold it the whole

furiosa movie afterwards i had uh i took my time in the bathroom but i made it the whole furiosa speaking of eva anderson we had a conversation about the dangers of holding in your pee i don't feel it until i stand up then then it's a quick show late the damage has been done uh you know what no i i'm on your side when it comes to that i like my regular coke uh but that's because i just love the taste of regular coke and popcorn together it's's like, it's my other date to the movies, along with my wife. I do like in restaurants in general now how there are

usually like calorie-free options because it's like, well, I don't want a Coke because that's like 200 more calories, but hey, it's a can of seltzer instead or it's like the tea they have. I like when they have those options now. It's not just by the way, I can't do diet drinks because my brain is allergic to them and I get massive headaches, so I've never been able to do that. So I like when they have those options now. It's not just, by the way, I can't do diet drinks because my brain is allergic to them

and I get massive headaches. So I've never been able to do that. So I like in the seltzer-focused society, we have canned or on-tap seltzer, alcohol-free that you could just have with any meal. I'm so happy seltzer has taken over America. It's a better place with it. Moving on to a Simpsons clip show with Jordan Morris and Giovanni says, the Elf clip show, the one where he gets amnesia, is decent.

It's about half clips, half new content. Plus it's got ALF being his trademark snarky self. Albeit he doesn't remember himself at the time, but still. The compilation video has overtaken the clip shows, I would say, for the best. There's an infamous Sam and Cat clip show where they praise their show in between clips, despite it being an awful spinoff salmon cat is that a spinoff of like i carly or something oh i think you i think you're right that is what it is i think yeah now i was actually i i pulled in that quote but i forgot what the

salmon cat thing was i was so distracted thinking about alf that i didn't read the salmon cat part at the end there yes i'm a 42 year old man and I knew Sam and Cat was a Night Carly spinoff. I apologize to our audience. You probably read about it in some, like, you know, true crime reporting about horrible things that happened on the set. Well, I'm seeing who is the executive producer, and of course, yeah.

Yeah, of course. But I'm glad to hear that Alf's season one clip show was all right. Another comment said that there was a Fresh Prince had a clip show seven episodes in as well. That's crazy. Was Will Smith sick one day or something? I wonder if that's it. I saw it alongside other.

It was in an article about Alfonso Rivera complaining that Carlton ruined his career because it was too iconic. Everybody just looked at him as Carlton. If he appears in anything, people are like, oh, it's Carlton. That's what everybody says. The Carlton curse strikes again. Mara the Demon, named after my favorite Persona monster, Mara the Demon says, this episode went up only three days after Pentecost, May 19th this year, and apparently Pentecost isn't even a wholly original Christian holiday

and is derived from a Jewish holiday, Shavuot. That happens around the same time. So the cut joke from the episode that Pentecost is one Christians didn't steal is a stolen holiday by Christians as well. You know, yeah, I know the term Pentecost and I went to Catholic school and they would talk about it, but I still am only vaguely familiar. I looked it up on Wikipedia when we did the episode and I've already forgotten what it is. Well, when they say Easter, it's like we stole Easter from the pagans, but also it's like, yeah, you know that thing called Passover? Well, three days later, some man with Jesus. This is our time now. Sorry. Passover 2.

Yeah. Moving on to what a cartoon movie. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 1990. Everyone loved this. It was a great time. Our audience is on the same page with us on remembering seeing this in the movie theaters, or at least on VHS 80 times. And Marshall Case says, Unlock the childhood memory of me calling my babysitter Toots because I was five and

thought Casey Jones was the coolest person alive. i was five and thought casey jones was the coolest person alive i was grounded and never called a woman toots again really cool detailed episode about a movie i've pretty much forgotten but loved came here for the simpsons and king of the hill but i love all this stuff too oh thank you marshall and yeah if a five-year-old called a woman toots i would laugh i would think it was very funny if i if i was in his place i would have then blamed bugs bunny that to not have them blame Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles for it. I would, as a father, if I was a father, I should say, I would forgive Toots, but if it was like, hey, sweet cheeks or whatever, I would be like, hey, that's not right. But Toots is hilarious no matter who's saying it.

I said the word slut when I was like seven and got in a lot of trouble because I heard it on Married with Children. Like kids, kids do repeat things they see on TV all the time. They know what words are fun. Galindo says also about TMNT 1990. All fathers care for their sons. Struck me as implied Aristotelian logic. At least in my head, it makes sense. It's not saying that all those who conceive a child or have a fatherly relationship do care for their children. Many don't, sadly.

The implication is that those in the relationship that do care for their children that fill that role are fathers. A father is someone who cares for their son. All fathers care for their sons. Splinter is a father who cares for and misses his son care for their sons splinter is a father who cares for and misses his son and he implies that if danny's father truly is a father he does care about danny so i just love hearing aristotelian logic as the as the explanation for all fathers care for their son i need to work this out as like a logic problem with with with like symbols and a flow chart. But it does make sense to me. It's like, oh, you can a man can make a baby, but it takes a father to be a dad or whatever that one of those sayings is.

Splinter was the dad who stepped up. I mean, he isn't their biological father. You know, he is he is the stepdad who stepped up. We're going to move on now to what a cartoon. The episode was about foster's home for imaginary friends uh bust the two of us and blake r says krasinski's if movie by the way it's called if and not if i thought it was if i guess well it does if means imaginary friend but yeah i think i believe you are supposed to say if yeah uh anyway uh the movie would feel

a lot less egregious when making the comparison to fosters if steve carell's character wasn't named blue that's the breaking point that has me going come on and yeah i i forgot i mean he's not even blue he's he's grimace he's purple right yeah he's a big maybe that's the like shitty joke krasinski's doing like oh he he's called blue but he's actually purple and i would bet ryan reynolds says that obvious joke right there in his deadpool cadence of like um aren't you actually purple shouldn't that be your name or whatever but maybe even calls him grimace but yes to know that they have a one of the lead imaginary friends is named blue like when i read that comment i had to google it i was like no that

can't it can't be that bad, can it? But it is. Keep getting away with it. I saw a great tweet that said that Ryan Reynolds started his own Scientology, but the only people who go to it are John Krasinski. Well, you know, if I see him one day on the streets, I'll be like, hey, if sucked. Excuse me. I mean, IF sucked. He'll probably be around

filming something in vancouver for sure and i'll also say you know what the fall guy sucked too and he'll say well actually that was ryan gosling and then i'll apologize it's it's hard to get all the ryans straight though the ryan gosling is way better than ryan reynolds i just saw look am i gonna see deadpool wolverine day one of course i am i'll probably enjoy it too but i am over deadpool now i got the deadpool commercial before furiosa telling him uh him and wolverine are telling you to hang up your fucking cell phone and bleeping with a bunch of bleep swears and then deadpool goes like oh you're testosterone you're getting my dick tingling i was like yeah i get it deadpool i get. He's the Merc with the Mouth. So Mike Kottchour also says,

One thing about the creation of Foster's that Craig only revealed recently at a panel with Gallery Nucleus, the original idea for the series was called By George. It would have been about a couple of young parents raising a baby who had the unique ability to imagine friends based on how he was feeling. Craig could tell Linda Siminski had a lukewarm reaction to the idea. So the night after he thought long and hard about why he liked the idea and he isolated it down to imaginary creatures in the human world. That's when he looked to his dogs and came up with the animal shelter foster a home idea. The next day he pulled Siminski aside and pitched her the new idea and she reacted positively

but asked if there was a kid in it realizing he hadn't thought of a kid entry point yet he came up with mac and blues agreement with madame foster on the spot so mac was a late edition that's why he stinks that by george idea that is uh thanks for bringing that up mike because that did not show up in any of my research but i was reading mainly five-year-old plus interviews with him or maybe some recent tweets and and gallery nucleus is funny too because that's where i went to see rebecca sugar's really cool spiral bound art uh presentation was at the gallery nucleus so i didn't know craig mccracken also did a cool cool speech there animation folks i don't know if i've ever been there for anything it's you'd know if you'd have been there because it is it's in la but it's in alhambra so it's like

a 40 minute ride from like downtown la so you'd remember 40 minutes from la yeah or one mile uh moving on to talking futurama the episode was related to items you viewed it was the sorry not amazon it's about amazon but it's on hulu and tom patron says or patron rather who knows i rented in a new home community for a few years and i can confirm the proliferation of ring cameras is worse than you might think by default every new home in the neighborhood had one and the police were constantly lurking in the ring social media app sometimes i would even get a notification from the local police station asking for permission to view my footage proactively read anytime they want uh this is bob speaking i don't know if i see them around uh in vancouver as much i don't know how conspicuous the ring camera is or maybe i'm just not looking for them but uh maybe not as prevalent

here maybe the police can't uh subpoena that footage whenever they want that's man to know the police are like hey you know can we just look at these proactively like bling like i'm still shocked anytime i see it rarely inside like my apartment complex like somebody puts it in front of their apartment door which is like this isn't to the public like you really don't need it then but yeah the ring doors in home communities like boy, boy, that sounds... Everybody just turns into Big Brother against each other. I think it's called, like, Nextdoor or something, one of those community apps. And we joined our apartments when I'm pleased to announce that no one is psychotic in our area.

No one is saying somebody with a hoodie walked a mile away from me. And I'm suspicious. No points about sketchy characters who uh listening to loud music perhaps no no complaints maybe the culture is a bit different we have our own problems up here mostly mostly beaver related i see hundreds of beavers little terror also said about that episode amazon has really cracked down on returns lately i returned a pair of airpods because i didn't like how they fit or sounded and amazon told me that i returned a pair of AirPods because I didn't like how they fit or sounded. And Amazon told me that I returned a different pair and that they won't be sending them back either. That's not to say that I haven't sent some old crap that broke before a new version.

So I guess it evens out. But judging by the Amazon subreddit, I'm not alone. So I didn't know they were. It's been a while since I have attempted that or, uh, I've heard somebody try to attempt that. Uh, I mean, sometimes the Amazon lottery works out in your favor. Uh, sometimes it doesn't. I mean, I've told the story where I, I bought the wrong size cover for my Kindle and they're just like, Oh yeah, keep it. We don't want it. And, uh, I've had to return things, but it all worked out. And then the stories I told where I got, uh, an item mail to me, it said it was delivered i assumed it was stolen so i reported it stolen then two of them showed up wow i had the actual opposite of that just recently

where it was one of those like too good to be true deals on amazon where it was like a 10 10 dollars for the 4k version of interstellar i was like okay i'll buy that and then it came in and it was just a dvd with a slip to buy the 4k version and i was like well okay amazon's just gonna like give me credit back right and they then said well you got to return it and we'll see and i was like well fuck it's ten dollars like i just said fuck it and it kept it but uh i was not used to that kind of amazon interaction yeah i don't know if it's getting better or worse or it just seems more random than ever the customer service uh probably because it's it's more and more ai assisted probably that's why it's random uh moving on to our last episode on this uh talk to the audience

talking to the hill hank's cowboy movie and 16 ounce mouse says i was in wichita falls for a day off between running electronics on oil rigs and remembered this episode i found a dairy queen that would have generally been on hank's drive towards arlen and did my best to recreate bobby's blizzard but did not spill it on myself whether that was the right dq or not i like to pretend it's the one and then added later he said it now appears to be the only dairy queen in the city so wichita falls everything i've heard not a great place if you're down to one dairy queen in a texas town like you're in bad financial straits the economy is failing people are making their own ice cream at home because they're so poor

but i'm glad to hear somebody tried that at a dq you know what people mention dairy queen i can like smell the inside of the dairy queen like something about like all of maybe the freon in the air machines yeah i'll tell you like i haven't had dairy queen in a while and uh this weekend i just had a small vanilla cone and it was great i mean any delight yeah also on that episode slime siren says the ponchos mexican buffet they go to in this episode is a real chain of restaurants primarily based out of the dfw metroplex they used to have a ton of locations back when this episode originally aired. Their commercial jingle about raising the flag is forever burned in my brain from childhood. Still hungry? Raise the flag, raise the flag.

You're ready for a little more Poncho's Mexican Buffet. So then Bill raising the flag to get more sopapillas, that is from the commercial for the Poncho's Mexican Buffet. How do you like that yeah greg daniels loves using real things in his shows like the office had chilies upload has a lot of fun product placement that's actually like in very insulting to the brands but it's all the jokes are here's what taco bell is doing in the future here's what oscar meyer is doing in the future here's what like intel is doing in the future they're all jokes at their expense but

to them it's like oh they're mentioning us this is good and i was incorrect because i forgot that we did a batman the animated series podcast so we there are more comments to read that was harley's holiday and by the way yeah there will be another batman blah blah batman episode this year so look forward to that dylan says on this episode arlene sorkin is so damn good in this episode i love how her argument with the security guard starts in Harley's less discernible more even kilt accent and inflection but by the end of it she's full on 40s New Jersey gal chewing on the scenery

and you hardly even think about it because of how naturally she turns it up you totally buy the character more than almost any episode before the Harlequin aide and Harley and Ivy both do a lot with her as well and it's some of Arlene's best work ever much like Conroy and Hamill others have done Harley well especially Kaley Cuoco but Sorkin is the Harley Quinn to me

still and so many other attempts feel like cheap imitation Tara Strong's especially IMO and as good as Margot Robbie is in the role with Birds of Prey and especially the Suicide Squad she hasn't had this caliber of writing yet and I can't really imagine that Joker 2 will either with Lady Gaga. Oh, that's right. Lady Gaga is in Folie Adieu. Yeah, I saw the trailer for that right before. A bit of madness for two. They do the stair kick in slow-mo together.

I feel like it will be the new, it will effectively re-canonize Joker and Harley as a, we're in a fucked up relationship and we're both crazy kind of thing that DC has worked very hard to get rid of. All the memes like, I'm Joker and you're Harley Quinn, my bitch. it now unfortunately though of course arthur fleck in the joker is such a little dork that he he it can't it can't be the abusive horribly abusive classic joker and harley quinn uh relationship i would think i heard that one is a jukebox musical uh the the new joker film that you know yeah they do sing what the world needs now is love so i i would guess i i would guess they're going to be singing a lot of that one so the the trailer is hiding that fact right well it's just like the wicked i it was with the wicked trailer was right before it too and you hear the song sung but you don't see characters singing them and this this is an old complaint people have made for a couple years now but why do musical

trailers not show you the people singing songs that you're going to see in the movie why do they why do they refuse to show you people singing songs i guess people just don't like musicals that much but it seems like they should because some of the most popular things have been musicals like frozen people pay to see the musicals but they think that they have to trick people into going to a musical and then they'll like it yeah especially with wicked wicked is adapting a broadway musical like people should know i feel people do like musicals or they can like musicals but if they go to a thing and it's a surprise musical they're not ready for that and then they leave and then people think oh you don't like musicals then but it's really you lied to me it through through not song you lied to me through not song and then our final comment is joe hodgson on that episode

saying i suppose there's a little bit of the premise of killing joke in it bullock's deteriorating car also gives off smoky and the bandit vibes in regards to the whole one bad day thing but it also is much more enjoyable sorkin was just so perfect in the role and it was great to see season two give her more to work with and the ending always gets me to more so now that both sorkin and conroy are gone and i think it's an important scene because it illustrates that batman isn't some power obsessed dickhead who gets off on beating up bad guys at least not this batman and not this bad girl yeah i love how sweet the ending is in just a few seconds it like sums everything up so nicely. It makes it so, yeah, Batman is a sad, sad man.

You need to remember he's sad, not just a guy who is great at beating the shit out of people. That's secondary in why we love Batman. Yeah, and I forgot that we did this episode. I apologize. It was a busy couple of months, wasn't it? We had a real busy, well, because we were really working ahead right now so it's hard to remember anything that posted in may honestly and speaking of working ahead i think we have most of june's podcast recorded at this point in june once again is going to be so great again we're kicking off the comedy central run of futurama

we are going to be highlighting one of the funniest episodes of king of the hill and we are also kicking off the disney renaissance summer for $10 patrons covering mulan pocahontas and tarzan all things people want us to talk about and we will gladly provide yes we love talking about the disney renaissance some of our favorite ones and also yeah we have several really good guests coming up in june on talking simpsons as well i think you're gonna enjoy a couple returning ones and a couple new guys the stars are coming out to shine on the talking simpsons network even during the day that's how bright they are and keep your eyes on the ad talk simpsons pod twitter and social medias accounts and stuff too because i bet in june you might see some interesting stuff

as well from that uh teased thing we did earlier. Oh, yes. But thank you so much for listening, folks. We'll see you again next time for another episode of Talk to the Audience. Take care. Bye. Bye. Wow. Infotainment.