Talking Simpsons - Talk To The Audience?!? - September 2026

Episode Date: October 7, 2026

We've reached the end of the month, which means it's time for another episode of our community podcast! This time around, listen in as we dish about a bounty of Simpsons-related news, including new episodes, Matt Groening's appearance on Conan's podcast, the end of the hallowed Simpsons writing room, Treehouse of Horror tie-ins, and more.  And, as always, we read and respond to your questions and comments from the last round of podcasts. It's all happening on Talk to the Audience, the podcast that leaves the clowning business to all the other clowns in the clowning business. Support this podcast and get over 200 ad-free bonus episodes by visiting Patreon.com/TalkingSimpsons and becoming a patron! And please follow the official Twitter, @TalkSimpsonsPod, not to mention Bluesky and Instagram!

I heartily endorse this event or product. Ahoy, hoy, everybody, and welcome to talk to the audience where this is always death. I am one of your host, Bob Mackie, currently occupying the empty Simpsons writing room, and who is here with me today, as always. Watching Stephen Roots' acceptance speech on a loop, Henry Gilbert. And yes, this is talk to the audience, and on this podcast, we go over what's happening in the Simpsons world, what's happening in our world, and then we spend the rest of the podcast responding to your questions and comments

from the last round of episodes posted to the Patreon. And I realize that some people might be new listeners and they might be wondering like, what is up with Talk to the audience? Why do you guys do it? Well, I feel like the sentence I always say up front does give enough context. But if you want full disclosure,

and I think we should do this every time to time, Talk to the audience is an easier podcast for us to do at the end of a month, after at the end of a very long month full of lots of podcasts. And this typically goes live the same week we release a five to six hour episode of What a Cartoon movie on the Patreon. So it is nice to have a slightly easier podcast to do every month. But I also want to point out that this also takes a lot of notes, a lot of research, a lot of homework, cover arts,

a description, an editor, and so on and so on. So it's not just me and Henry shooting the shit. As much as I'd love to do something like that, I feel like there is no space for that on our podcast network because everybody expects so much of us, and I'm glad because I think we've raised the bar for ourselves successively over the years as to how much work we put into this thing. The listeners who've been with us since the start of the Patreon, at least, may remember the talk to the audience got started as just a simpler bonus podcast that we would do just for patrons at the end of the month. And it really was pretty much only a little bit of catch up about our lives and then reading comments from it. And it just grew over time to be so much fully featured, especially talking about new episodes and other news in the month that it became big enough that it's like, well, this should just be a full episode. in our feed instead and also lighten up our at least not needing to find a guest for a regular

episode too that also made it easier and as much as we love living in the past we also feel obligated to cover what's happening in the simpsons now because the simpsons is still very relevant there's going to be another movie out and it helps us stay current with the simpsons we don't want to be the fans who only watched up until 1998 and then called it a day we want to have a thorough knowledge of the simpsons past present and future so that's why we're doing this as well just to let you you know, even if you're tapped out yourself, and that's fine, here's what's going on you might be missing. You might feel motivated to check in if we tell you a new episode is actually good. Yeah, or if there was a brand new interview where somebody tells a story you haven't

heard a million times before, or a new season of a Simpsons-related series is coming out soon. There's always tons of fun stuff to discover. I think both of us really enjoy even doing the news research in the days ahead of the recording because just in this list here, I found like four things that I hadn't heard about before, naturally, just by searching for Simpson's news online. It's a surprisingly busy news month. And a few of these stories, I think we're the ones who will be breaking them, honestly. Oh, yes. Yeah, I think so. At least in American news media. Yes. So, yeah, that's just an upfront to everybody as to why we do this podcast. And we love doing it. I think a big part of it is also reading your questions and comments because we don't exist in a vacuum. The things you

say about our podcast help inform the podcast. And we really appreciate all of the comments you leave behind. And we like to answer lingering questions. We don't mind being corrected as long as people are polite. And I find a lot of value comes out of that, reading those comments and answering them. Oh, yes. We've learned a lot over time and I've gotten to know several listeners just by name of like, oh, they're usually good for a good comment. Like I won't spotlight a specific person because we have so many good ones. But usually it's just like, oh, another good one from that person. I got to get at least one from them in this episode. Same here. Like we take turns producing this podcast every month. And then when it's my turn, I'm always like, well, I'd love to have one.

comment from this person on every segment, but I have to be very selective to give other people a chance. There are some top tier commenters in our own estimation. We're not going to post the ranking yet. Not yet. No, we could make that an extra bonus of like, you know what, if whoever goes higher above $10 a month, maybe you rank a little higher in it, who knows. But the good commenters, you know who you are. Oh, yes. Yes. And we respect it. So yes, again, up front, just we love being transparent here. We love letting you know why we do these things. And that is why we do this thing. Again, like Henry said, It used to be a podcast on top of the other work we did during the week. But then about four or five years ago, we decided, why don't we stop being insane?

Yes. I still think back to what we did. When we had about, I'd say, 40% more podcasting recording a month than we have now. And that includes like prep time. And we did not have the ability to hire regular editors at that time. How did we possibly live that way? It feels insane to me now. We sounded like crusty in that it's a good life parody on The Simpsons. Yes, yeah, like, uh, one little boy.

Yes, we had plenty of over-the-counter wake-up drugs during that era of our lives. But again, that's why we're doing this. And let's move on to the news because this is our podcast. We can report on the story that involves us first. And to set up this story, I have a couple of nonverbal noises for you. Bap, ba-da-da. Now, what does that remind you of, Henry? What city in particular?

That would be the city so nice They named it twice. New York, New York. Yes, start spreading the news. Unfortunately, we've already left, so don't go there right now. But for a time, our podcast was featured on the Patreon billboard in Times Square. We want to really thank our Patreon liaisons for setting that up, making it happen, and we feel honored to be recognized and honored to have our ad in the same space as the M&M store. Yes, it was great to see the footage of it.

cycling through during week ago. It was also, though, funny that I think it did launch on September 11th, which is not intentional. Look, it's a day of the week. It is. Like, you can't help it. Yeah, we have to move on. Come on.

Even though we reference it in every podcast, September 11th is now about us. And it was the day it launched on it. Yeah, the Times Square billboard that Patreon has, we were part of a cycling group of Patreon accounts in podcasts that I advertised on it as kind of Patreon saying, hey, this is what you can listen to when you're on the Patreon app. And having us, our big mouth Simpsons, Talking Simpsons logo up on there, it felt really good. I got to admit, it felt pretty good. And now we can say as seen in Times Square.

Yep, I'll say that the rest of my life. I will. Move over, Naked Cowboy, if you're still doing that. I saw him the last time I was in Times Square. And I briefly went, oh, that's nice. And then my husband remind me, like, he's super MAGA. And I was like, oh, not so fun anymore now, this guy. And hey, and a big thank you to my husband's family.

Patreon also filmed it and photographed it for us, and so did a few users share it with us too. But a special thank you to my sister-in-law, as well as another childhood friend of my husbands who live in New York, live and work in New York, and got footage and sent it to us as well. Yeah, we put that footage on a public post on our Patreon. So if you go to patreon.com slash talking something, even if you're not a patron, you can see it and see us highlighted on that billboard. So yes, thanks to everybody involved in that, thanks to Patreon. And if you're in New York, maybe you saw our ad.

I still check in on Twitter every once in a while. And in my replies, somebody was like, oh, hey, at Bob Servo, Talking Simpsons. I saw your ad on Times Square. I think this is before we even put that post on Patreon. So some people have been seeing it. Yeah, it has been very nice. There's been a lot of congratulations. I don't know how much you got it, but when I posted it like on face, well, to Facebook via Instagram,

I've got even comments from folks I haven't seen in a good while. I think it might be one of my most popular Instagram posts of all time. I'm pulling it up right now. It has like 275 likes. And again, I'm not an e-girl. I usually top out at that high, but that's a lot of likes for me. I'm not going to be showing my feed in this one. And it's got to be up there with like, I got married kind of announcement level of likes. Yeah. So people seem to be vibed about that. Vibing about it. However you say this, I'm old. But we appreciate all of the positivity about this little achievement in our lives. Let's move on to. Simpsons News. So there was the last of this recent round of exclusive episodes on Disney Plus. It was called The Yellow Mirror. And of course it is a parody of the Black Mirror with two Tree House of Horror style anthology

segments baked within it. And I was a little skeptical about how this would turn out, but I really, really like the first segment. Second segment I was okay with. First segment was interesting conceptually and I think it executed very well. In that broadly, it posits that all of the

Simpsons we've seen so far was the result of Homer blacking out in his high school bathroom for about five minutes. So we see clips of the way we was. And when Principal Donda linger startles Barney and Homer in the bathroom, that's when Homer knocks himself out. All of the events of the Simpsons happen. And then he wakes up and he's haunted by this vision of a family he never had and a wife he never met. And he's still like new Barney.

Like Barney is still part of his life. But otherwise, there is no margin. It destroys him. Like I'm sure there is a specific episode of Black Mirror. that is this, but this is like one of the, oh, it was all a death dream thing, is like a very standard sci-fi, twilight zoney kind of idea, yeah. And it's funny, I mean, it incorporates the way we was footage, also invent some new way we was footage. I like when they're playing around the timeline. It reminds me back to the future too, although it is crazy because

they spend so much time on the sliding timeline that in this episode, they're now back to saying Homer graduates in 1974 again. Right. I also love seeing that in the real world, scenes that are like present day he's kind of Matt Graining but Homer is kind of Mac Graining of the universe but a much more like bitter and depressed to Matt Grading. He's like evil macaraining

in this world and David Silverman makes an appearance as himself doing some voice acting very funny so I did like this. The second segment is a little obvious and it does bear some things in common with popular movie that was released this summer in that it is playing around the idea of what are the iPads doing to our kids?

I remember It was at the San Diego Comic-com panel this year that Matt Selman, when talking up this episode, was very clear of like, we wrote this way before we saw Toy Story 5. I know it's similar to Toy Story 5. We didn't mean to.

He shouldn't have put that idea in my head because when I was watching it, I was thinking, okay, it's going to be similar. And it really isn't because in Toy Story 5, I guess, I don't think these are spoilers, but the tech, the AI in the kids' iPad or whatever you want to call it, it means well.

It does not want to take over the world. In this story, it's about, how all of these iPads are brainwashing the babies into helping them take over society. And it's more about the like the YouTube algorithm than just the tablets in general that you hand to a baby. And a genie type character, an evil genie type character represents the YouTube baby content that is controlling the minds of the babies of Springfield. And I'm sure a lot of parents understand the value of the iPad. So this is a real winking satire of what it's like to have this presence in your home and feeling conflicted about it.

Should I give it to the baby? Should I not? Well, it shuts the baby up. And this is a short-term goal, ultimately. We'll figure out what we'll do their brain in the future, I guess. I preferred the first segment to the second one, though the first segment did have the improv comedy lady Patty Harrison in it, who has the villain of it. And she is really funny.

I don't know how familiar you are with her work, Bob, but I really love her in. She is a recurring performer in the I think you should leave. series. That's where I've seen her in clips of that. And she's the villain in the second segment, right? Yeah, that's why I mean the second segment. Yeah, yeah. The one controlling Maggie's mind. Yeah, second segment, I like the first segment because of the concept in play.

Second segment, what annoyed me about it is two dated references in that we have a parody of Go Ask Alice dealing with addiction. That's true. What is that? Strawberry alarm clock? Is that who does that song? Or Jefferson Airplane? It's Jefferson Airplane. Okay, thank you.

Go Ask Alice. What? Yeah, right. Yeah, we don't need that anymore. I've seen that a billion times probably in three other Simpsons episodes. Also, we have a parody of never had a friend like me too. And I'm thinking like, guys, please, I know this is now a classic movie, but I want a little fresher take. Yeah, pick one or the other. Having the Go Ask Alice song, they've done that like five times on the show, I feel like it's been done so much. It's a real go-to. I mean, they didn't actually license a song. They made their own parody, which is inspired. But it is such a shorthand kind of move you do when you're making a story about addiction, but you're like, instead of

drugs, it's this. Though with Patty Harrison, too, who's in, I think usually my favorite line of hers is like, and popcorn, like of her just saying, I'm addicted to wine. And popcorn, such funny. She's just so funny. She also, I checked. I also asked Drew Mackie, who is the creator of the every LGBTQ moment in Simpson's ever video. And he and I both think that Patty Harrison is the first openly trans actor to appear on the show as a voice.

So that's kind of a big moment, too, I think. Yeah, yeah, that is a nice move for the show. I mean, I feel like she's breaking new ground. Yeah, I think now in the past, Elliot Page did appear on The Simpsons, but it was pre-transition and all of that. So that's why I make the first openly trans actor, you know, asterisk there, like not to erase Elliot Page from Simpson's history there,

but I believe Patty Harrison is a first there. So congrats to her. Yeah, very cool move. And season 38 had its premiere last night as of this recording. So this is hot off the presses. The episode is called the Children's Book Job, and it is an elementary school homage to a very, very cursed movie. Get Him to the Greek, which stars Jonah Hill, Russell Brand and Sean Combs.

I mean, two of those guys. Yes. Are they both currently in prison? Russell Brand is still walking the streets, unfortunately. His stuff might just be in civil court, I think. Okay. Yeah. Well, and of course, God is forgiven him in the Bible that he reads very closely,

and he really cares about. Well, God is good. and thank you for forgiving him. But so, Henry, I did not have a chance to see this because it literally released like 12 hours ago. I gave it a watch this morning. It's a fun episode concept where it also does bring in like a lot of the PTA history of the series because Marge gets put in charge of the PTA and then learns that the entire thing's about to be shut down. If they can't do something big at the elementary school, it's about to be shut down entirely.

They even have state comptroller Atkins. as a plot point in it. I say get him to the Greek because that's what Selman also said in his thing. You could also say this is a midnight run or a million of those types of movies of two people. Homer is trying to get a crazy person to go somewhere and travel. So it could count for many,

but get them to the Greek is the one they specifically mentioned. So, yeah. Okay, so Henry, evaluation on this episode, good, good start to the season? I think it's a fun start, you know, mainly I just do love Emma Thompson. She's a great actress who I think should get to appear in more stuff, but she's very fun as a British children's book author who is not based on J.K. Rowling, fortunately. It's more of a little kid, a very little kid, a writer.

Yeah, I see. And in other news related to The Simpsons, Greg Daniels, the co-creator of King of the Hill, recently received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Conan had his dedication speech. He was the on who delivered that. And in the audience were many King of the Hill talents like Rich Appel, Saladin Patterson,

Stephen Root, Lauren Toll, Toby Huss and many office people. So finally, after I would say, probably more than 35 years in the business, Greg Daniels gets his star on the Waka fan. I'm assuming it's because or tied into the launch of the second season of the paper. A show I do want to watch. I heard good things about it. And Greg Daniels is also known for having very good casting.

Conan dedication is great because it is him in a public space telling stories. We've heard him and Greg Daniels tell about their arrival. from New York to Los Angeles as writers and just funny stories of a longtime friend Conan making fun of Greg Daniels for being a real weirdo, like a very weird man who, including a story of that instead of wanting to have furniture for their cheap Los Angeles apartment, that Greg Daniels was like, can't we just have bundles of newspaper? We can just sit on those. Sounds like an odd duck, but hey, he makes some great television.

And if you want to read more about Daniels in his career, a variety has a little retrospective about him and really highlights his ability to elevate talented writers. And I think he's a great writer in and of himself, but also he's able to find talent and put them in the right positions, which is why I think King of the Hill was so great. The proof is in the article there of the number of talents listed in it of just like, oh yeah, he, for example, there were the people like Paul Lieberstein who got hired on to King of the Hill and then went on to be, you know, a key guy on King of the Hill in the writer's room and then moved up to being a key writer on the office. And then the office staff is full of writers who then would go on to their own success,

including like Mike Schur. And also Rich Appel, who was at the Walk of Fame event, like he's been running family guy for like 80 years now. Yes. And before that, he started American Dad. He developed it and everything. He was like one of the early key talents on that show. That's all like Greg Daniels.

They do make it sound like Greg Daniels is not just a good eye for talent, but also good at lifting up people too. And, you know, there were women on that list, too, but obviously I forget the names of women. They'll be acknowledged later. Yes. So, I guess this is related to King of the Hill. Stephen Rood, one of our favorite character actors,

just won his first ever Emmy, and it was in the outstanding supporting actor in a comedy series category for his role in Widows Bay. And if you follow Saladin Patterson's Instagram account, you can see the table read for King of the Hill, whatever was going on immediately afterwards. They put together a nice tribute to Steve. Stephen Root that day. So check out Salon

Patterson's Instagram. He is one of the showrunners of the new King of the Hill on Disney Plus slash Hulu. It's a great little scene of he seemingly had just congratulated Greg Daniels on his Walk of Fame star and then Patterson moves on to Stephen Root

who is, this is not him showing off apparently it is like tradition to if you win an Emmy or an award the night before you can bring it to the next meeting of the TV show as a way of just like congratulations from the So Root's got his Emmy right there, and Patterson is saying like, no, he's like a talent of his generation. He really is.

Stephen Root is so good. And when I watched the video of him winning, they said this is only his second nomination ever. And his previous one was for Barry. And it's just like, man, Root is so good in everything. It is sad that it took this long into his career to get the Emmy. Yes. I mean, hearing of this news and hearing that it was his first win in second nomination, this late in his life, It got me retroactively mad about the fact that King of the Hill was so screwed over when it came to the Emmys throughout its original run.

It only won two Emmys. It only won the outstanding animated program Emmy once. And that was for its second season episode. And compared to that, I mean, we love The Simpsons, but so many much worse Simpsons episodes won the same year as King of the Hill was nominated. I thought, like, you Emmy voters. Yes. Even the best Simpsons Teens episodes were overshadowed in quality by the concurrent seasons of King's. of the hill in our opinion and it's just too bad. No, I think it's objectively true, Henry.

Objectively true, yeah. If you ran the science on this, it would check out. I had just been reminded how long Stephen Rood has been like acting in things because I watched this episode when it was new, the unification two-parter of season five of Star Trek as a little kid, but what I didn't know was the lead Klingon who is in that episode who's the captain of the Klingon ship, Under all that stuff, it's Stephen Rood. And I had no clue. It's him in that like 34 years ago. It's fun to watch him pop up in things. And you're like, oh, it's Stephen Roo

because he was doing this character actor thing for a very long time before anyone really knew who he was. In fact, I believe it was last year I watched Robocop 3 for the first time. And he's in Robocop 3. A very enjoyable movie. That's nowhere near the quality of the first Robocop. But still fun to watch. And it also tells me I need to watch Widows Bay.

I think it won every category. I think it's at a record for a comedy series. It was on my radar because, it's highly acclaimed and also it's a mystery series and also there's a lot of comedy people I like involved. So it's all the things I like put together. Our pal Glenn Lakin from Gayest Episode Evers has known the creator of the show Katie Dippold for over a decade like in the comedy scene. This is somebody from our generation in the improv UCB comedy scene like Local Kid Makes Good kind of thing in her 40s. It's nice to see.

And in the outstanding animated program category, a South Park sermon on. the mount one out over the Simpsons Homer, a cracker bro. And I did not see this episode, but I looked into it. And this is the episode of South Park, I believe, that essentially turns Donald Trump into the Saddam Hussein character from 27 years ago, the South Park movie. So, I mean, he is the exact same character like, hey, buddy, relax, guy. And he's having sex with Satan and so on and so on. And I guess it feels like a political move to make that the victor over everything else.

and I think they're making a statement, which is fine. Yeah, yeah. It's very funny to me that we live through South Park lampooning Saddam Hussein, and then we're lapping that. We're going around the bend. Now it's Trump doing the exact same character. I still feel a little annoyed at the somewhat hypocrisy of the South Park guys that they put their targets back on Donald Trump

after he specifically made their lives harder via the takeover of Paramount by Magapal's Larry Ellison and David Elson. But it clearly did piss off. off Trump, so I can't say it failed in its task. Yes, I mean, I'm glad they're on the right side. And even though I don't think a lot of what they're doing is that funny, to me at least, I like how they can kind of get away with anything because they make everyone so much money. So it's fun to watch them poke the bear rapidly. And no one can really say anything.

Like, we can't get rid of South Park. It is holding up like so much of our infrastructure right now. Yeah, and I also do like that it winning liberal awards and recognition like this. and I say that to me like liberal Hollywood that for decades the South Park was like a keystone to red online comedy folks

who are like no South Park's a Republican show so anytime South Park stops complaining about liberal hypocrisy which there's tons to complain about there is but when they move back to Republicans that really pisses off people like but I thought South Park was on my side why are they making

fun of Charlie Kirk I think this episode had a massive impact though because my mom texted me about it. She's like, did you see the new South Park? It's so hilarious what they did the Trump. So I think, okay, it's reaching like the boomer audience and I think they're having a very visceral reaction to it of joy. Yeah. I think they're doubling down on it in their new season where I think the name of the episode is South America that it's been renamed like, you know, the Gulf of America, that kind of thing is the joke. I haven't seen this episode either. But also it's funny that it beat the Smiling Friends episode. among the ones being beaten Le Voyage, incroable, de Monsieur deignoll. That's also a Trump sort of mockery episode, too,

because Mr. Frog is a Trump surrogate in that universe, too. And the other nominations were the Bob's Berger's episode, Grand Prix, pre-opening, the Rick and Morty episode, there's something about Morty, and the Star Wars Visions episode,

Black, in all caps. Those three, I don't believe I've seen. I need to catch up on the new season, about two seasons behind on Rick and Morty, but I want to catch up. I want to catch up. Do you need to catch up as my question? Whenever I watch episodes,

I like, you know what? This is still pretty funny. I still think they're doing a good job. You know what? I will say that recently, I stopped watching Rick and Morty like at the end of the season three. The finale of that really bummed me out

and I thought like, well, I don't want to pursue this anymore. But I watched an episode, a new one in my hotel room like last month. And I thought like, okay, this is still funny. And it's great that they can just replace Justin Rowland and nobody cares

because the guys who do those voices are identical. It's perfect. Yeah, now they've split the roles and the two guys doing Rick and Morty do such a great job. Most would not notice that Justin Royal was missing. So yes, that is Emmy News. And let's move on to MacGaraining News because MacGaraining was on Conan's podcast. And unfortunately for us and unfortunately for our listeners, you've heard these stories before.

You've heard us tell these stories before. You've heard MacGraining tell these stories before. There are only so many Simpsons stories. But if you want to hear them again and have funny reactions, from Conan O'Brien. This is where you got to go. Yeah, there's stories about John Swartzweiler. There's stories about hiring Conan. Conan does tell the story of like, oh, the Simpsons saved my life is his way of putting it because he did kind of need a reset after leaving New York City and going to Saturday Night Live before going

back to New York City. And I always put myself in the place of like Matt Gourley, who is their podcast nerd, co-host on it. And I say that lovingly as a podcast nerd. He is hearing them remember jokes they wrote in that time, but they're getting lines slightly wrong. And he is able to, I'm sure he's choking on his own blood as we would, have just like, I don't want to stop to correct them,

but they're getting these lines wrong. Yes. I'll say, unfortunately, we're kind of cursed in that we've spent the last 12 years of our life devoted to this topic. And then before that, we were big fans and also devoted in a different way. So we've heard it all,

and it's always nice when you can find a new story. Like, I'm elated when I can find a new story. Like that book, Stupid TV, Be More, funny. It has new stories in it. And I always love when I can find those because I feel like I've seen it all. There's only so many accounts that can come out of the creation of the Simpsons. And a lot of people have not yet been interviewed. So I'm always elated when we can find new information. The Swartzweiler stories, though, were funny in just that the, they had to address, they were like,

oh, what a funny guy he was, what a funny guy. And then Graning does mention his political conservatism, or at least his hate for Bill Clinton. And then Conan said, like, well, I guess he wasn't funny about every like he has to distance himself a little politically from the 90s politics of swarthwellder right but hey liking bill clinton not popular anymore he was on the right side there perhaps not for the same reasons but for the wrong reasons oh i should say there was another i'm speaking swarsteweler i just remembered brent forster his youtube channel is great he's had tons of great like i'd say more like viti prepared essays he then says to camera about his memories but he has some very fun swartzweiler things a couple I hadn't turned before, just about one of them about the specificity of his rules

of why he wasn't allowed in the writer's room anymore because he smelled too much like smoke. It was just too much smoke smell off the end. Even when he wasn't smoking, yeah, check out Brent Forrester's YouTube channel. I believe it's called Professor BFO. And yes, new stories come out of Brent Forrester. So that's another great source. Still on my list of like, oh, we got to get him one day. We got to get him something.

Let's get him. Moving on to another Simpsons talent, Gabor Chupo currently has a special exhibition in Budapest Hungary spanning his career. So if you go to Origo Studios for all of our Hungary listeners, you can see a vast display of Simpsons in Claskey Chupo paraphernalia like a Simpsons crew jacket, a Claskey Chupo crew jacket, Duckman sells, Rugrats sells, his Emmy, and more.

And you can read more about this online. But it's nice to see Gabor gets recognized. And I feel like thanks to Simpsons' producers, starts controlling the narrative, he often gets the short end of the stick. And I feel like people still to this day say, oh, it looks like Claskey Chupo, like as a negative, as an insult. And also in those Claskey Chupo days of the first three, it still is just being sent to ACOM in most cases. So it wasn't even, it was just the studio they were working out of. I still think that the great Susie Dieter interview we had, because she mentioned that she seemed to like working out

of Claskey Chupo more than Film Roman, especially that they had fun Christmas parties at the Cliskey Chupon. It seemed to be more of a fun, wild atmosphere. And according to Silverman, I believe, they just took all the people and moved them to a different building, but the building was less fun. The culture of the company was not as fun as the freewheeling Claskey Chupo. In case you hadn't heard it before, listeners, Gabbar Chupo along with his then-wife,

they had one of the few Hollywood independent animation studios that could be hired to animate the Simpsons shorts for Tracy Ullman. And so when it got to be a series, they kept working with Claskey Chupo. And you got to give it to Gaborne and his then-wife, Arlene Claskey, I believe her first name was. They used that to sell Rugrats and get, they're like, hey, we're the animators of the Simpsons. And now we've got a new family show. It's called Rugrats. And they put that into like a huge boom period of the 90s.

They had a decade of gigantic success. Yeah, it was Nickelodeon's biggest show, post-run, and snippy pre-Spongob. See his Simpsons crew jacket is on display there. So there's some really great pictures out there you can find of him representing he, you know, a famous Hungarian American. I wonder if he had moved back there after this. So I do wonder if it has to be a little weird for him that this big display of his career also has like, everything from his company has his ex-wife's name on it to.

I think he's gotten used to it. When you put your wife's name in your company and then you split up, you're like, well, I guess I have to live with this now. Yeah. And maybe they split amicably. We don't know. I doubt you will see more Duckman sells in one place than in this Hungarian studio. There's one in my condo, and I think that's the only one you can find currently in existence.

Congratulations, Exabor Chupo. And moving on, so the Jack in the Box, the famous fast food chain, their Trias of Horror promotion is underway. Unfortunately, it is so popular that they're running out of cups. Repeat, they are running out of cups, and currently, people can pick up vouchers to redeem cups later with purchase, I assume. And it's great. I love, I mean, I'm never going to eat there. It's not for me, but even if I did eat meat, I would not eat a jack in the box. We're not recommending you do this.

It's not good for you. But I do like the return of so many classic treehouse of horror variants of characters we know. And I also like they get to break the rules because when you see Jack in the Box Homer, it doesn't follow the Gracie film's rules of how you draw Homer today. It looks like 1991 Homer is a Jack in the Box. So it is amazing to see all of these things like frozen in the time period that we saw them across all of this promotional art. Good stuff. Yeah, it's seeing the Krusty the Clown doll. choking Jack of Jack in the Box as well.

My husband did pick up three of the cups very early before they sold out. He went with coworkers to lunch one day and came back with them. Sorry, your husband currently hospitalized. Well, he only ate one of the double chicken sandwiches from the Munchy's Meal. Also, I did like a new commercial that I at least saw in the vertical format. I don't know if it's on TV, but that Krusty Burger bought Jack in the Box. and he's killing Jack from Jack in the Box to take over it as part of this, which that was fun with Dan Kesslinna doing the voice.

And it's extra scary because Jack in the Box, their hamburgers once killed children. Well, hey, that's the reason my husband, Daring, got the chicken double instead of the beef dough. I think in the past 35 years, they've really figured that out, though. Yes, yeah. Hey, they're probably, you know, annoyed that here Taco Bell is giving people like medically injurious diarrhea lately, thanks to the lettuce that they bought from play. and they're not getting half the hate that E. coli jack in the box got 30 years ago. Just consider it a form of weight loss.

It's a fun little, at least, you know, the cups are nice. Yeah, the cups are neat. Moving on, we have breaking news about the New Simpsons movie. So previously, it seemed that the movie was going to be called the New Simpsons movie, but Matt Salman revealed recently, like, within the past couple of days, that this is only a working title. So to quote Matt Selman, he says, quote, the actual title hasn't been approved yet, but the movie is going to be great. It's already S-tier.

So when the Simpsons movie gets its title, we will report on it. Until then, we don't know what it is, and it is less than a year away. Here we've been calling it the new Simpsons movie. It's, to me, I feel like I'm reading T-Leaves here, but it's like they have a fun, cool idea in the Simpsons' Writers' Room, and it's the Disney suits who are being slow to approve it or maybe don't like the joke or whatever it is. I don't want to be cynical, but I feel like they have a very funny idea, and it seems like, we still have to sell this movie. Matt Selman was on Do Boys this month too I just mentioned that because there is a funny bit

where our pals Nick and Mitch are having fun saying that Bob Iger is a crappy guy and talking about Disney and then Matt Selman has to like He kind of puts up his hands and be like They don't represent me here Disney's been great to us We love Disney and I was like oh okay Sure sure we see who's cracking the whip

Moving on I believe we are breaking this news Unless you are out there reading algae Twitter account or X account rather. So this happened last month and I forgot to put it in our notes. So I apologize for that. But apparently, and this is big, shocking news for the production of the Simpsons. As of August 4th, the Simpsons writing staff has moved offices from the very familiar Fox Bungalow where they started writing the show in like late 88, early 89.

So we don't know where they are now, but this is huge. They were there for so long. That room has appeared and that building has appeared in so many episodes. It feels like this is the. end of a legacy. Yeah, this was something we've been talking about on and off for years now, ever since the Disney merger with Fox series and films, because they're on the Fox lot and had been on the Fox lot since basically the Tracy Oman Writers' Room that moved over to another room, and that's the First Simpson's Writers' Room, and that's where they've been ever since.

And when Disney merged with Fox, they didn't buy the property of the Fox lot, like Disney just rented it out or that was part of the deal too to lease the Fox lot so everybody doesn't have to move off it immediately but that lease doesn't last forever and there was a question of when's it going to happen and yep Al Jean packing up his stuff saying I'm like I've been here for forever and he hasn't had other offices other than the time he was at Disney that was for like a five year period yeah at first when I saw the news I thought oh is Al Jean just leaving because he's no longer a daily guy on the show anymore he's a consultant but no No, he showed the entire office being packed up.

It's the same office we have all seen in that disgusting picture of all of the fast food and the writers surrounding it, getting very greasy. I never wanted them to leave that. It feels like the end of an area. It feels like your parents selling your childhood home and being like, but how can I come back to that? Like, we have stood outside of it one day at our table read. That's the closest we got to it.

And it makes me sad we can't come back now, it sounds like. Yeah, we absorb some of its comedic energy. So RAP to the Simpsons writing room. It's crazy that's not going to be around. anymore. And I feel like we can reach out the people we know who know people who work on the show and find out, like, not trying to docks them, but where did you guys move? Yes. If you're not on the Fox lot, are you in Burbank now? That is where Disney has been moving some people. That's the main Disney office is in the Burbank area, which would put them closer to the animation studio for Simpsons at least. But yeah, I am curious too. Let's do some of our own reporting and journalism here on this, I think. We'll let you know if we find out anything, listeners. And finally in our last news item, another cast member of the critic has passed away, and that is Garrett Graham, who just passed away last week at 77.

Of course, we know him best as Franklin Sherman on the critic. Middle-aged man playing a very old man. But he was in many Brian De Palma films. He wrote songs for The Grateful Dead. He wrote some dialogue for The Little Mermaid. Of course, he was Bud the Chud. In Chud, too, Bud the Chud. We all remember this.

Seeing so many scenes of him shared online was so great, because I had not, we love him on The Critic. Franklin is one of the funniest crazy old men that ever has been in animation history. And I was not aware of a lot of his character actor work in live action. I saw this amazing scene of him from Robert Zemeckis's used cars where he's almost hit by a car while walking backwards in a stunt scene. And I was like, that was incredible. Yeah, that's the first time I've seen that clip.

But now I want to watch use cars. It's a big gap in my Zemeckis filmography or whatever you want to call it. And same with, you know, fantasy. of the Paradise, the Brian De Palma film that has Paul Williams in it and a bunch of original songs, like just seeing the voice of Franklin Sherman in clips

playing like a glam sexualized kind of David Bowie type character in it. He's seeing at the camera and his entrance scene is just amazing to see. When you see pictures of it's like, I remember I think it was Maurice Lamarche on critic commentaries. He said, Gary Graham

could just play Franklin in live action very easily. Yeah. Unfortunately, We don't know what's going on with the critic reboot. I guess Franklin won't be part of it. But if they age people up, I don't think Franklin and Eleanor would have survived to 2026. Oh, man. It's just going to be John Lovett to Nancy Cartwright then in the new series, I guess, right? Maurice Lamar, she's still around.

Yes, Marie. And Nick Jameson, you could be there. Okay, so they still have four. They got four left of the main. And if they bring back Alice in the show, she's still alive, right? Yeah, Park Overall. Yes, Park Overall. She's still around.

So, okay, it's not as bad as it seems. But they've lost Duke Phillips, they've lost Franklin Sherman, they've lost Marty Sherman. Though Nancy could take that over, I'm sure, too. Sure, sure. And actually, we have one other news item here. Well, not really news. It's more of a segment, Henry. Henry talked to someone that's been mentioned on the show many times via very one-sided stories

and accounts of things that happened. But finally, you're going to hear his side of things. Henry, what's going on? I'll mention it too in what I went and did this month, but I visited Las Vegas for a little first. family get together for about half a week. And my brother came to, who I've not seen in person in quite a while. And I caught up with him. And he agreed under no pressure for me to do a quick interview about our Simpsons memories together. And he confirmed some fun stories.

There's one embarrassing memory. I was like, oh, yeah, I think I've told that story on here. But yes, you can hear my brother's side of things from all of the Simpsons taping. And you'll hear a lot of tales of the tape, which you haven't heard in a while on here. including, I believe he knows where the tapes are now, the Gilbert Family Tapes. The Gilbert Archives. We'll drop it in right here. It's about 10 minutes of the chat with my brother, Sam. Hey, everybody.

This is Henry live from Las Vegas, and I'm here with my brother. Hello, Sam. Hello. Thank you for doing this, Sam. How are you? I'm good. I'm good. Well, okay, well, so, yes, I mentioned you in some stories.

over time about just how we were both big Simpsons fans. Do you remember how much, how often we both watch the Simpsons all the time? Oh yeah, I remember putting on the various VHS tapes, recorded Fox 30, Orange Park, Jacksonville, Florida.

Just every episode year to year, kind of having all the commercials and stuff cut out. Do you recall who was better at recorded pausing and cutting the commercials? Well, I would think it would be me, but I do remember one crucial episode. I missed about the first 10 seconds

coming back in from commercial. I can't remember what episode it was, but that one stuck with me. No, I remember here, I can think one specifically that it was the episode Old Money with Abe's girlfriend B, where we were like at a family function thing, and we came in too late and we couldn't get the first act of it. So we didn't tape it until like it showed up on reruns on, do you remember that? I didn't remember that exact episode, but that sounds right. I mean, I did become a weekly ritual of make sure to get in front of the TV in time and then fighting over who got to pause and hit record again.

I can admit it now. You were better at it than me. I could be territorial about it. You usually were better at sensing when it was the last commercial before. Yeah, but now some part of me kind of wishes have some of those old commercials just from that nostalgia of seeing what. it was like back then, especially kind of the old syndicated shows and old news hosts and that kind of stuff. Good nostalgia. Definitely remember Safari Sam, local newscaster, I guess, personality. Okay, do you remember like, I remember the summers we would have to like share like, okay, my tape is the 92

tape today and you get to watch in your room the 93 tape or whatever from when we were taping them. Yeah, definitely. I remember that and skipping kind of past the 91. and try to hit that meat of 93-94 kind of era. Our season one and two tapes didn't get watched too much, comparatively, no. Pretty much start right about after the softball episode. From that point on, I feel like it's pretty gold. Oh, okay, here's another one, too. Do you remember, because we're about to get to it in the episodes we're doing,

who shot Mr. Burns? Me and you watched that episode a million times all summer, right? Yeah, and definitely remember we had theories, and did not end up being true. But I guess that's true of everybody. I remember pausing it, or me and you were watching it on like the 14th time or something, and pausing it watching Smithers leave.

And I remember going like, oh, there's Smithers. He's leaving. You see, that's how he must have shot Mr. Byrne. Yeah, but I remember that. I remember trying to decode the pointing to South and West. Whalen Smithers, of course, made a joke about that.

But yeah, I remember solving that. I remember the America's Most Wanted episode that preceded it, the special, remember all the things about the vagus odds for it, and never could have guessed. I mean, we were lucky kids, too, and that our parents just let us watch the Simpsons whenever we wanted, right? Mom, especially, I enjoyed it just as much as we did, I think. Yeah, I mean, it's weird looking back on all the kids that weren't allowed to watch it because of various attitude problems that Bart has disrespecting elders, and then all the blasphemy type of stuff.

And, yeah, never had any of that concern. Oh, do you remember when we played the Simpsons arcade game and it was like either your birthday or my birthday and mom just got us tokens till we finished it. Do you remember that too? Yeah, I do remember that. I mean, I remember doing that with X-Men also, but definitely the Simpsons one think I would main Lisa, but that was a fun one. It was Adventure Islands or something like. Yeah, Adventure Island and Aladdin's Castle in the Orange Park Mall. Yeah. That was good times. No, okay, well, actually, I didn't ask you this beforehand.

I moved out before you did. So do you remember where our tapes are or do you, have they been lost? And we've both moved a bunch since then. I'm pretty sure they're in a box in my basement and along with several other strange oddities from over the years. Lots of McDonald's Happy Meal Toys, old comics, old electronic gaming monthly magazines, lots of strange stuff that got unearthed. moving out of the old house. Yeah, I would think I had a bunch of tapes. Like, I had mystery science theater tapes, and I had Space Ghost tapes.

I left them all there. I feel like the Simpsons one was the one to save more than any other, right? Yeah, I would say so. One of the ones I do remember putting Miles on was actually the Earthworm Jim cartoon. Yeah. That one, even though the creator seems to have panned out to be not the best guy. But that one definitely put some mileage on. And then when after it got released on DVD, found two episodes that didn't ever get aired for our local affiliates.

When we had like the home tapes, too, or like the home video release of like three or four tapes, we had those two. Yeah, had those much higher quality and then the WB Kids version that kind of just got worn out to oblivion. Well, okay, I guess do you remember anything else specifically about like Simpsons and us watching it growing up? I mean, one of the ones that weirdly sticks with me was the episode where they get Ralph Wiggum, they get the skeleton key or whatever the key that Chief Wigham has. And we had the closed captioning on. Yeah. And it had the kind of original scripted version of what Homer got arrested for. Yes.

Yeah. Killing a swan, I guess. You killed the swan at the zoo. Yes. And that one sticks out with me. Okay. See, listeners, you heard me tell that story on there. and Sam's here to back it up.

That was real. I didn't just make it up. That's, oh, see, good. I remember that. See, we both watched it the moat. Do you even remember when, like, the Christmas special debut? Because you would have been, like, not, you'd have been four then, I think. I don't have vivid memories of it.

I mean, I remember watching it plenty on the VHS tape, but I think more probably around Bart failing or almost failing second grade. That's kind of when I had tuned in a little bit more mentally. Okay, I guess, last thing, I don't want to, we're on vacation. I want to keep, do you have any other things you would want, I'm worried here, but there are any other things you want the Talking Simpsons listeners to know about me, or us growing up watching stuff together? I don't think so, really.

I mean, the fights over getting to record, I think that was the primary one. And, yeah, just watching it sitting on the floor in your room. Yeah, I don't know. The beanbag was like in front of my bed, like one of us would sit in the bed, would sit on the beanbag watching like the 19 inch TV or whatever in there, right? Yeah, and I remember having to make bets or something to get the privilege to being on the bed or something. Yeah, I again, I see I was very tutorial then.

I apologize, Sam. I'm sorry. Yeah, I mean, I guess the other would be the controversy over what went on the top of the Christmas tree, I guess. Yes, yes. Whether it was my homemade, classmate Santa figure. Like cotton ball Santa thing. Yeah, cottonball and toilet paper roll Santa felt or the storebot star that you preferred.

Yes, yeah, again, I think. And then like 10 something years later when I visited Mom at her new place and she's like, okay, here, I'll put, I'll have the star over here and the Santa over there. I had barely even remembered the star. And I, yes, it may be, but it did make me very bad. Again, I'm sorry, Sam. But a long time listeners have heard about my jealousy over the star versus the Santa, yes. So I'm sorry, Sam.

That's fine. I understand. And hey, we're both very happy functional adults now. Everything's fine. Right. More or less, yeah. Well, I guess, okay, do you still keep up with this show, or at the very least, watch old episodes, like on Disney Plus or anything?

Yeah, I'll watch. I'll kind of do a season three through nine and then start back up again. I'll hunt around, do some Sideshow Bob episodes. I think last exit Springfield here and there, the Beer Baron episode. But I have some favorites I'll go to you from time to time. But anything kind of around Homer going to New York or the family going to Japan is when I was fully out, I would say. It did feel like we'd watch the Japan one. I'd rather start back over again than watch one after.

Or I remember too, I feel like we were both watching the Maud Death episode that night. And it was so disappointing. Like we're like, oh, they really did kill her. Like, this sucks. Like, I remember we were both not happy with that. Yeah, looking back on it now, I think that was the first kind of point that I was able to critically analyze TV instead of just enjoying the ride and realizing that it did have a steep drop-off very rapidly around that post-99 era. Well, thank you, Sam, for offering up for listeners here, can see her the other side of any childhood memories I've shared on the podcast. So, thanks, Sam.

You're welcome. And hey, I love you, brother. I love you. So yes, that was this segment with Henry and his brother. Now, you can vote in the comments. Who do you like more? Oh, it's my dream come true, yes. It won't give Henry a complex at all.

I think listeners will see you there. I deal better with any jealousy I had as a kid. Little brothers getting more attention than me. These are things that therapists help you with. Now you get too much attention. There are like at least 10,000 people listening to this right now, Henry. That's true, yes. Meanwhile, my brother, he doesn't want this. I barely know what's happening in his life because for some reason he doesn't want to post everything he does on the internet. I don't care. It's strange. Yeah. Odd behavior. Yeah. He wants to have like a private home life. He chose a different life than us. Anyhow, let's move on to our news and that involves our schedule. So here's what's coming up on the Talking Simpsons Network. So of course, we have our What a Cartoon episode of the month of October and we always like to choose a spooky subject. We try to. And this time around, we are covering

Johnny Bravo. And you might say Johnny Bravo's not spooky. Well, guess what? Johnny Bravo is spooky when he involves the mystery machine and the humans inside of it. Yes, because the episode we're covering is called Bravo Doobie Do. It is the Johnny Bravo Scooby-Doo crossover that also happens to be the second episode of Johnny Bravo already out of ideas. There is so much interesting history to Johnny Bravo. It's one of the 90s blind spots that we had yet to cover, which there is few of those of things that we both watched in the

90s and the creation of Johnny Bravo is very interesting. Its first season is full of talented people who went on to big stuff who worked on the Bravo Doobie Doobie Doe episode. And just anecdotally, when I mentioned Johnny Bravo to like, say like my hairdresser or my brother that we were doing this, Bravo Doobie Doe was everybody like, oh, the Scooby-Doo crossover. Like that seems to be the Johnny Bravo episode. Everybody remembers. Yes. Yeah. It's the one I remember. And you know, Johnny Bravo is a great show, went on for a very long time. But this is a very iconic episode. And actually, it is instrumental to the resurrection of Scooby-Doo as a property.

It's at a very interesting midpoint in Scooby's history at a real low moment for Scooby-History. And it is, I think, partially to credit for the rebirth of Scooby-Doo to degree. And so it's sort of a Scooby-Doo podcast we're also doing along with Johnny Bravo. And that's why we only covered one 11-minute cartoon because it was already pretty long. Yeah, it's already a three-hour podcast. Pretty great. Another blind spot we're filling in at the start of October. And moving on for patrons at patreon.com slash talking Simpsons, we have our normal miniseries episodes. So for Talking Futurama, we're covering the episode Decision 3012. It is a Futurama-y look at the 2012 election, but instead of the Berther Movement, they are covering the Earther Movement.

And it's a very clever episode that I thought going into it, this is going to be bad. It's going to be very day-to-take on politics of the era. But no, I think it is very inventive and worth a look. So look forward to our take on that one. Yeah, it's full. Bob has a very funny technique for dealing with us. My needing to think about like, oh boy, things were different 15 years ago kind of feelings. We find a way to get through it. And also, of course, we cover King of the Hill on our Talking of the Hill podcast at patreon.com

slash talking Simpsons. And this month we are covering the late season four episode, flush with power in which Hank takes on big government and them forcing low flow toilets It's on us. Yeah. We haven't recorded that one yet. I am looking forward to watching that one for the first time in a good while. It wasn't one of my top most remembered season four episodes.

So I'm interested in checking it out. In this episode, it's revealed that Peggy Hill takes gigantic dumps. Right. So she already has, and we're getting a lot of big feet content of her too in this season. So we go from, we're getting big dump content and then big feet new content after that. And of course, if you want to jump up to the $10 level at Patreon, dot com slash Hocking Simpsons. We have the What a Cartoon movie episode. This month

we are covering and tribute to Tim Curry who recently passed away. We are finally covering Fern Gully the last rainforests, which was the big Robin Williams animation vehicle before Aladdin, in fact one year before. Yes, the Batty character himself

that we all of it. It's got Tone Loak. It's got so many 90s, early 90s stars in it, but you probably, I saw the performance of Tim Curry in my feed a lot the days after he passed. It was previous guest, Merritt Kay. She mentioned online, like, this is far too hot for children to have seen that and

it fucked with our brain. Yes. At one point, he does suck off a bulldozer. So look forward to our commentary on that. Yes. Oh, my God, man. I think I was changed somewhere in my brain of seeing the orgasmic shaking of the skeleton of him come to life.

His song, and it is basically his Rocky Heart Picture song. It's that level of sexuality in it. They knew what they're doing. So that is what's coming up in October on What a Cartoon movie. I want to promote the last episode we covered because it is related to the month of October. Of course, we recently covered the Adams family, the 1991 live action movies. So check that out on the What a Cartoon movie tier if you're interested in a spooky movie commentary to get you through the month of October. It was such a great movie.

And Bob did a great history, not just on the Adams family 1991 film, but also Charles Adams in his career before that too. Yes. Other news related to us, apparently our YouTube channel is only 14 subscribers away from 1,000. So you might be the lucky 1,000th subscriber if you go there today. And I guess we should point out that our feed automatically uploads our podcast to YouTube so you can listen to them there. But also YouTube is like, I don't like this copyrighted content. I'm taking it down. So many podcasts are arbitrarily missing from YouTube and it's not our fault. It's just a place you can go sometimes to hear some of our stuff. The talk to the audience is one of the few Simpsons ones that we do that don't get content restricted on YouTube. But yes, I wanted to mention this because we're so close to 1,000 and whatever amount of monetization will be allowed by, because YouTube puts ads on our channel whether we want it or not, but they don't offer us money until we hit like four different things. And one of them is having a thousand subscribers. And we're like 986 when I last looked at it. I was like, you know what, let's finally just ask people. to subscribe now just to get to the 1000. And hey, you can put an extra 48 cents a month in our pockets.

Yes. Hey, that 48 cents is ours, not YouTube's. That's what I say. It's true. And I guess that is it for the Talking Simpsons Network News. So please check out Patreon.com slash Talking Simpsons for all of the extra stuff, including the miniseries podcast and what a cartoon movie. A big nice episode about Fern Gully coming very soon. And now we talk about what we've been playing and watching that's not related to podcast necessarily. And as for me, I've been playing a lot of big walk. Henry, have you heard of big walk? Yeah, it looks like a pretty cool game, of course,

so I'm not into walking simulators. Here's the thing, you need friends. So many gamers cannot play this. It is some kind of asynchronous multiplayer is in like real time? It's like asymmetrical because what happens is, I mean, the picture of the game

is not an entirely new prospect. You are working with a group of players from two to 12 players, however big you want your group to be, and you are going around and island solving puzzles. They're basically escape room puzzles. So, I mean, this is not that out there of an idea, but the execution

is amazing. It's incredible the way the puzzles build on each other. And the main gist of the game is your communication is limited. Unless you're cheating, and I don't recommend you cheat. You can only hear people if they're within the same distance as you, if they're like in the same vicinity as you. So if they go somewhere, you can't

hear them unless they're on a walkie talkie or using some other tool. And as you work through these puzzles more and more, the things you have to communicate with each other become more complicated and the ways you can communicate become smaller and smaller. So as you're playing with a group of people, you're developing ways to communicate that go beyond human language and go to body language and symbolism, things like that. So it becomes like a fun experience built around bonding with the people you're playing with and gradually like building a shared language with

each other using the tools you have in the game. It's very, very good. And hard to describe, and I will say, I have not played a co-op multiplayer game this good since Portal 2's multiplayer. which is really saying something. This feels like Valve made another game. It's so good. And it is not a walking simulator. Despite the word walk in it, it is a puzzle game.

No, yeah. I was joking when I called it a walking simulator. Yes. Your description reminds me a little of the game journey, at least, of how that was, though this seems a little more focused on the multiplayer. Yes, Journey is for kindergarten babies to stick their head in gravy.

This is for eighth graders. Okay. All right. I mean, that does sound good, but boy, where will I find any friends? You got to find friends. I mean, your husband's a friend. That's true.

But it sounds like we shouldn't do couch multiplayer for it. No. I mean, when I did it with my friends, my friends are all remote. So I, of course, was playing on the couch. But now I'm playing game with my wife and her friend. And I go to the bedroom and play on my Steam Deck while she plays in our main room on her computer. So we're keeping the honor system intact for playing Big Walk. It's really great.

And I know game awards mean nothing, but I really hope it takes home the key lead for best multiplayer because it is an excellent game. It's so good. My friends and I, you don't have to do this, but we finished every puzzle in the game. And it's such an achievement to get that done because they become so difficult. But then you feel like, well, it's through teamwork in this shared language we developed that we were able to overcome this. So it does feel like you have accomplished something when you actually finish the game. That sounds awesome. Okay. Yes. Also, old game I've been playing.

I did not want to disrupt my backlog to play this, but I kind of had to. But Metal Gear Solid Peace Walker was finally re-released for all consoles. It last got a re-release in 2011 for like PS3, Xbox 360. This is the first time it's been on PC. But also, it's the first time this multiplayer game has had a lobby system. And you can play this as a single player game, and I did. I played this for about 80 hours as a single player game in my past, and I love Peace Walker so much. But because this new version has a lobby system, you can just go online, find people, pull them into your game.

You can jump into their game immediately just blast through all of these missions. And I realized, like, oh, I'm finally playing this the way it was meant to be played. and it is a completely transformative and different experience than the single player version I played through 15 years ago. So don't sleep on this. If you've been interested in playing Peace Walker, play it now while there is still a big and thriving online community who want to play online with you.

Great time, great game. Eventually I will get around to replaying Metal Gear Solid 4. Now it's available again, and now I have no excuse, and I'm really dreading it because that game stinks. It stinks. It's a movie, really. Well, it's like a series of nine-hour movies that aren't very good. You know, I did not play Peacewalker because I had pretty much given up on the Sony's portables.

But the Peacewalker, if I recall correctly, it was born out of Hideo Kojima's love of playing Monster Hunter. Yes. And he wanted his own equivalent of that with Metal Gear. I think the story is he wanted something you could play with his son. So essentially, Peace Walker is kind of like a Monster Hunter game and meant to be played in its original release with people around you. That only worked in Japan because in 2010, nobody was playing. PSP in the West. If you were playing PSP in the West, you were alone and there was no one within like a 50 mile radius of you playing a PSP, let alone playing Peacewalker on it.

I remember though when I played Ground Zero's for a review event like pre-release, that Ground Zero's smacked me hard in the face of like you were supposed to play Peace Walker, jerk, like you don't understand any of this, do you? Yeah. And in a spot, have you played Metagosol-5? Because Metagher Salafive is like souped up Peacewalker in terms of you're building a base, you're recruiting soldiers, you're developing things. I went to the preview event for that, and I was elated like, oh, they made a sequel to Peacewalker. That as well was, this is what Peace Walker is in like gorgeous form, yes.

I think I got, I think we bought the release of the package of Metal Gear games that has been re-released this week or this month. I feel like I'll probably go through Four again first. I want to replay Four and give it another shot. I just watched Four to see how it was beaten back in the day. I had a miserable time with that game, but I will play it for money when I do an episode of Retronauts about it. And a few things I wanted to call out here game-wise.

I checked out the Final Fantasy Residence demo because Chris Kohler shouted it out on Blue Sky. And I thought, like, if Chris Kohler likes this, I'm going to give it a shot. Because when I saw the trailer for this game on one of the Nintendo Directs or something like that, I thought, oh, this is just reheated mobile slop. They took mobile game assets and made a Final Fantasy game with it. And the HD-2-D stuff doesn't always work on me anymore because I was not a huge fan of Octopath Traveler. I like how it looks. it sometimes works on me, but I thought you just re-engineered a mobile game

for a single-player release, and they kind of did that, but it's also very, very good. Well, okay. I didn't give it much thought after I saw those trailers for it because I thought I got, yes, either mobile game or just,

I also, the 2D, 3D style, I have fallen off of it. After beating Dragon Quest 3, 2D HD, I didn't go back for one and two of it because I think I was also getting a little worn out in that style. Yeah. And this just feels like a very

well-made older Final Fantasy game with like very good pacing. And like a lot of these modern RPG demos, it is about seven or eight hours. So you can play a lot of it before you can decide like, do I want to continue? Do I want to play the final version that comes out in late October? But yeah, I recommend you give it a shot. I was really impressed by

it and I had like, the bar was so low going in like, well, I know what this is. You're just trying to sell me mobile slop that you can't sell anymore on a mobile platform. But no, it's elevated. It's great. It feels like what a Final Fantasy game should be, except it does not look like Final Fantasy 16. It looks like something entirely different.

And it's already so much better than Final Fantasy 16, you guys. That game, another stinkeruny game. Yeah, that's also been on my pile of shame just because every time I think about playing it, then say myself, why don't I play a better Devil May Cry game instead of a not good one? Here's the thing, Henry, don't play Final Fantasy 16, it's fine. Okay. But then I'll understand the magic card's better from Final Fantasy 60s. Oh, you can just tear those up when you get them.

Oh, but Clive's not a bad card. He's an all right card. Because I like some of the characters, but the game is so tedious. But I put together a podcast about that, so check out my retronauts about Final Fantasy. And sorry, I'm going on long with the games. I want to call out another demo. The demo is for a game called Stupid Never Dies. And based on the trailer and the name, I thought, I'll give this a shot.

And it is very cool. It is essentially Grasshopper. They're not making this game. I'm just using that as a point of comparison. But what if Grasshopper made Hades? And what if instead of Greek gods They use classic movie monsters As the content as the source material

For the world they're building It's very wacky It's very colorful, it's very funny Many laugh out loud moments in this game I can't really sell it through this audio pitch alone But it's a demo, it's two hours It's a little talky Because they have to set up a lot of stuff

In the world and mechanics-wise But I was very impressed by that And that also launches at the end of the month So check out Stupid Never Dies I really enjoyed what I played of that game Man, Grasshopper meets Hades sounds like that's exactly what I want to play. I should get it on my Steam deck, I guess.

Is that where I would find it? I'm not sure how it'll run on Steam deck. I just played it on my PC, but you can give it a shot. That sounds really cool. That I am going to download for sure. And it's also, I think it's available for like all platforms when it comes out at the end of the month. Maybe switch to then, but I'm going to check this out. So yeah, sorry I took up a lot of time with games.

I can move on the stuff I watch. So my friends, my old college buddies were here in town, and I wanted to take them to the movies. so I decided I saw Akira in 4K IMAX. My first time seeing Akira in a theater, my first time seeing it since we put together What a Cartoon movie about it back in 2019, a very long time ago at this point.

Yes, you produced that one. We had such a super deep dive into Katsahiro Tomo's classic film. Yes. It still rips. It was amazing to sit basically front row center, well not front row, like three rows back center, IMAX screen completely around me. The only negative, I will say, is we saw it subtitled, and that's fine.

But I really wanted to see the 2001 dub because I just wanted to look at everything and not look it down at text. But there's actually not a lot of dialogue in the movie. So when people are talking, I look down, read it really fast, then looked up at their mouths. Because this is one of the few anime movies with Lip Sync, and I was really appreciating that this time. But I hope you got to see it because I'm sure they'll bring it out again, but it is worth. This is a great remaster. It looks amazing in 4K. And it is just like totally sensory overload.

and you really appreciate how they used to make it happen back in the late 80s. It was on the Fathomovance thing in the U.S. too, but I missed out on it. I think I did have a ticket and then something came up and I couldn't make it for that night and missed out on it. I am jealous of that, too, to get to see it. You're jealous? Yes, I am jealous. You should be, say, Bob, I'm glad you had a good time. No, I am glad you.

Well, yes. But it should have been mine. Well, I wish I was there even to be there in the, like, but it had to be nice, too, to see this anime club kind of classic. with anime club pals. Yeah, these are two guys I met in my college as anime club. I actually met them before I attended the college. I went to an anime club meeting like in December of 2000, so I've known them for a very, very long time.

So anime brought us together. Anime is keeping us together. And it was great to revisit that movie with them. Also, I wanted to shout out a film noir movie called Lady in the Lake. It is based on the classic Raymond Chandler novel. But the reason I wanted to call this out is because I've been watching a lot of noir movies. I went to our noir festival in Vancouver in the summer. and this one was not being played at the festival,

but I always wanted to see it because, get this, Henry, it is one of the first movies, and one of the only movies, filmed entirely from the perspective of the main character. Oh, okay. So a POV movie. Yes.

Wow. And this is happening in, like, 1946, so they can't really do a whole lot with the camera. It can't really go that many places. We are not in steady cam zone yet. But it is really fascinating. It's not an amazing movie, but it's a fun experience

because you realize, like, they are kind of learning the visual grammar of first-person video games about 50 years before that is even possible. So when you're watching Lady in the Lake, it's like you're watching a playthrough of like an FMV adventure game from the 90s where they're like pulling away the little screen

where you're picking from dialogue options. That's the one thing you're not seeing in this movie, in this playthrough of this game. But yeah, it's a fascinating experience. I think they tried this once and everybody hated it and they were like, we never want to see a movie like this again. So I'm sure here and there people might have tried this elsewhere,

but this is the one time. know where it actually happened in a major release. That's amazing the film history there. I would love to check this out sometime. I thought it seemed inventive. When I was a kid, there was a Tales from the Crypt episode that was a film noir style

from the perspective of the private detective in first person view. I want to say it was Zemeckis who directed it or it might even been the Schwarzenegger directed one. I forget which, but it was in the point of view and I thought, oh, this is such a amazing idea back then, it seemed so novel, to know that like 40, 50 years before that

they're doing it with none of the technology that they had in the 90s. And I think that tells from the Crip, the main character is Humphrey Bogart, right? Yes, yeah. You know what? Then it must have been a Zemeckis one because it was like doing the Forrest Gump face tech kind of thing on it, I think, too. Yeah. And in fact, I think it's partially based on Lady in the Lake, but it's also based on Dark Passage of another movie I just watched because for the first act of that, most of it is in the POV of Humphrey Bogart

having just escape from prison where you don't see his face for the first like 30 minutes of the movie Okay then yeah this makes a lot of sense then That it's a very intentional That Tales of the Crip must have been a very intentional Reference to those classics yeah And I also wanted to mention a Weird Al movie I saw a secret Weird Al movie

And I don't know if I talked about seeing Weird Al in concert I probably did I don't remember when that was But I'm pretty sure I did mention it I think we talked about it last I think we talked about it last month. And if not on that, then on a podcast, we've recorded in between them. If not, still amazing. Still kicking ass at 67.

None of us have any excuse for not, like, jumping around in a giant fat suit anymore. I mean, if you missed your chance, go see him because he still rocks. And I wanted to see the secret weird owl movie that no one talks about because it's not very good. It is called the Complete Al, C-O-M-P-L-E-A-T. It's a reference to the Complete Beatles, something that was popular in the 80s. So fascinating to watch, not good. but fascinating because this is a mockumentary released in 1985. So 41 years ago, it is essentially a mockumentary that takes place at the end of the first phase of Weird Al's career.

So like from 1978 to 1985, he is pre-fat. He is pre-the things that we know him best for. Yeah, the things that we grew up with. And essentially this video release, this mockumentary is just a showcase for the seven or eight music videos. But I will say there are some interesting looks. at Al at the time that are just like, okay, here's a snapshot of Weird Al in 1985. This is just like what his life was like. And then there are some fun sketch content.

But you can tell whoever put this together does not really trust Weird Al, because in these comedy sketches, he is just sort of like reacting to hired actors who are presenting things to him. Weird Al, maybe he is a better actor now that he was then and they trust him more. But if you watch him on the Comedy Bang Bang TV series where he is basically a co-star of it for the final 20 episodes, 30 episodes. He has to act in sketches and I think he does a good job. No, actually, I was thinking that.

I was thinking, is Weird Al not great at acting yet? But then there are a few times where they let him do something and you're like, oh, no, he's fine. He's in Weird Al mode. They should have given him more leeway. But again, I don't recommend it as a fun watch, but it is a fascinating little timepiece of where Weird Al was in 1985. And now it was really fun to see him in 2026 and then jump back 40 plus years and see like, oh,

hear all the band members I saw on stage as old grampies and they're all very young men here next to Weird Al. So you're saying the complete Al is for Al completists. It is, yes. So those are my movies for the month basically. And then other stuff, I want to mention

as usual, I'm going to be at Portland Retro Gaming Expo representing Retronauts. So please check out our panel. It's going to be Saturday, October 10th at 11 a.m. In the convention center and it's going to be celebrating the 20 years so far of the Retronauts podcast, 15 in which I been a part of. So if you like Retronauts, check it out. It's going to be a lot of fun. It's going to be a

funny panel. It's not going to be like I'm presenting information to stockholders, by the way. We're going to have fun with the idea. So please check it out. This might be our like 11th or 12th panel we've ever done at Portland. So always happy to go back there. It's always a really great time. I love Portland at that time of the year. And I love this convention so much. Yeah, you guys, retronauts have been quite mainstays at the PRGE for such a long time. I've been part of a few of those panels in the past. There are tons of fun. Bob prepares some funny clip to enjoy with the audience on those, including like you dig up some stuff,

the audience has not seen about the famous game characters usually. Yes, I try to find clips that are rare, and if not rare, that will make an entire room laugh. So really enjoy putting together panels for Portland. I'm glad to be welcome back there again. So check it out. Again, that's Saturday, October 10th at 11 a.m. at the Portland Retro Gaming Expo.

I'll be doing a lot more promotion right before then, so you won't be able to miss it. I'll be cramming this news down your throat. This is Portland, Oregon, not Portland, Maine. Don't end up on the wrong coast, folks. If you fly to Portland, Maine, I can't help you. I'm sorry. That's your mistake.

Yeah, and that's been my month. It's been a very busy month. And yeah, that's it. Well, Bob, you were playing a lot of games with other people. I was having a very single-player month of video games and playing a lot of them. The main one was Marvel's Wolverine. That's the official title, Marvel's Wolverine for the PlayStation 5. Oh, not the other.

one. Yes. I thought I'd be controlling an actual Wolverine within Canada, building a nest, climbing trees.

I was a big fan of Insomniac Spider-Man games. I really enjoyed them. I was looking forward to this.

Even the middling reviews and when I say middling, when I see IGN give something like a seven of this

level, that may as well be a three on the IGN scale, at least in my old game press brain. Yeah, they're saying

we don't want your ad money. And by the way, fuck them. They just laid a ton more people. I hate that company so much. Never go to their website ever again. I'm just saying that. How do they still have

people to lay off? It happens every time they lay people off. I'm like, they still have people to lay off? It's not just because they laid off me. They've also laid off everyone I've ever met. Yes, yeah. Nobody, I think I know two people still employed in the Games Press that I knew 15 years ago in the Games Press. Yeah, yeah.

So, yes, Marvel's Wolverine, though. It is lesser than Spider-Man, but I still had a fine little time with it. It's fun. I like chopping up people as Wolverine and boy do you chop up a lot of people though this has the it's a Sony story tube bob there's no two ways about it it's a Sony story tube and i think that's why i think it's negative reaction is deserved to a degree i just feel like these are things you could have complained about story tubes of sonies that i have played or seen played before but this

is like the tipping point that it's just not good enough that people notice more of the seems like, oh, you've really put me down just like there's no, I just have to walk this way, don't I, you know? Or maybe it's just people have done that so many times that a very, a game like this with a very nice presentation doesn't really fool them anymore and then they want more. Yeah, it grows to more interesting places. Its opening is lesser. It's not one.

If you were playing it as a demo, you might not want to keep going with it. The midpoint of the game where that takes place in Japan, I think is the peak of the game, because they did build a pretty cool visual. of Tokyo, I'd say. There's some fun gameplay elements, though. Also, if you're coming to it as a long-time X-Men fan, what Insomniac, they did this in Spider-Man, they do it even more in this.

What you think you know about the X-Men, they just zig every time you're going to zag, and some of the changes just feel done to surprise you, not because it makes for a better story by changing something in the history. I don't want to spoil the game for folks. You can read spoilers out there, but there were even parts where me

as a longtime reader of Wolverine comics went like grumble, grumble, why they changed this about his history for this universe. But you don't do what Don't does here. Wait for a sale. I wanted to play it when it was brand new. I was still excited to play it. You can wait for a sale. This could be $60 by Christmas.

Yes, the price it should have been at lunch. But that was the big thing I played this month, though I did play the first few hours of a couple other new games. In my traveling this month or last week, I did the first four hours of Fire Emblem Fortunes weave, the new Fire Emum for the Switch. So far, I'm enjoying it more than I did Fire Emblem Engage, because I think it has a better, darker story. Though, my first impression of it, though, is also the developers. I think it's still intelligent systems.

They watch too much attack on Titan. I think that's a problem. Okay. So do you think you might stick with this more than Engage? I think I will. I think I will because it reminds me of the advanced. Wars, the DS1, or the 3DS one with the end of the world stuff. And now I can't remember the name of that one.

But the last regular advance wars that came out where everybody's dying and is post-apolid. I think it was so old it was for regular DS. You're right. You're right. Yes, it was. It reminds me of that I kind of like the characters so far more interesting to me than engage. And it feels a little more focused.

I also do count against it that they should have brought romance back and there's no romance. I want to make my action figures date each other. If I had it, would I complain that there's no gay options or only one? Yes, I'm sure I would. But I really like the component of I want these characters to start dating in game to increase their. I like partnering who I want to partner to then make them more powerful fighters. That's the fun of the dating game aspect to me and the other recent. In my recent, I mean the last 20 years, by other games.

Have you thought about just playing games where that's all you do is build relationships and date? But I need a turn-based combat, though. That's the thing. That's why the persona games are great at that too, that I get to, if I'm just in the mood to podcast while doing turn-based dungeon running, I do that in persona.

And then it's like, nope, now I need to focus on dating the hot teacher because she's the only not underage character and I don't feel as creepy. Like that kind of stuff. I see,

but your character's underage. So someone's breaking along. Yeah, so actually it's the more criminal action in the game, really, is dating. You're under arrest, Henry. It's all sting. I've been enjoying it so far.

just, I wish it had the dating element. It's not, I don't think it's going to replace three houses as the best Fire Emblem game of the last decade, though. Yeah, I will say that I didn't buy this, but very stupidly, I have bought all of the recent Fire Album games within the past five years, like Three Houses, engaged, the 3DS ones, have not started any of them because I buy too many games and I have a disgusting backlog. So people in the audience, where do you think I should start? Because I'd like to play one of these at some point. I know they're all big undertakings and I won't have time to play them all in one lifetime. I'm sorry. So that's just my, I'm throwing that out to everybody out there. My vote would be for three houses. That would be my vote. That's been the most fulfilling one. Even though I should say, full disclosure, I have a cousin who did voice work on DLC for Firearmament Engaged. And I have not played their level yet, unfortunately.

So I'm ashamed of that. I have a cousin in the voice acting field I learned. But lastly, I have started up and have been enjoying more than a Marvel's Wolverine Control Resonant. I'm like three hours into Control Resonant. and it is more fun. It is not as smooth as Marvel's Wolverine because Remedy is not always known for like

the smoothest gameplay, but it's much more interesting than the velvety smoothness of the most expensive games Sony can put out in Wolverine. Like I prefer the weirdness of control resonant. Yeah, this looks neat. It's making me want to play the first control, which has been sitting around on my Steam account for a billion years. And also, oh, I should play Island Wake 2 and other remedy things.

Yeah, control, the first one, was a great surprise for me. I didn't even play it until after I beat Alan Wake 2, which I loved Allen Wake 2. And then I played Control. And yeah, Control is such a clever idea, and it is kind of their approach to X-Files. If Alan Wake is Twin Peaks, Control is X-Files. And then Control Resonant takes an even more interesting turn of, like, it's a different genre pretty much because you have a new main character in it who was a supporting character in the pre-year. previous game and I won't spoil more than that, but the new main character is an interesting

guy. I've seen people post things online that he's like, he's just a guy who guys like, fuck, man, oh, fuck. Like, he's not like depressed or sarcastic. He's just like, he's trying to pull himself back together after a very dark mental health episode. So far he's an interesting character to me. I'm hearing nothing but good things about that game. Yeah, it's better than Wolverine, but also, yeah, if you've not played the first control, get that for like $10. and then you could go on to Control Resonant. And then movies, I had too many movies this month. I won't talk about too many,

but I definitely wanted to spotlight two animated films I've seen in the last month. One was Coyote v. Acme, which I think you saw too, Bob. Yeah. It was good. So much has happened this month. I forgot that must have come out since we recorded last time, right? Yeah, I was seeing it like the day after we recorded the one at the end of August. Yeah, Coyote v. Acme was pretty good.

The ending felt a little like, there were parts of it that I could feel like were kind of rushed ending. That's the biggest negative I had on it. The stuff in Capitol Hill that felt really rushed. Yeah, I mean, I like this movie. I think three and a half out of five on Letterbox.

I think some people may need to calm down a little bit about it. I'm glad it came out, but this is not Roger Rabbit. I'm sorry. I know I'm an old man speaking here. I mean, my major problem with the movie is that the 3D characters looked like shit. That's what I'm going to say.

And I know the visual effects studios probably got no money to make these characters move around. but Coyote and Falkhorn, Lakehorn, especially look bad. And it's a bummer to see them constantly because you get some Bugs Bunny animation in the movie. And apparently those were retakes, which is why they were done with traditional 2D animation because that was a new element of the movie apparently.

Bugs Bunny was not in the original pitch. Or they added him at some stage. And then when you see the 2D animation, you're like, that's what I want to see. Yeah. And then you're thinking about that for the rest of the movie, like, oh, and this could look so good. And then I've seen artists online, like, basically do retouches of different stills of images of the movie.

Like, here's what it would look like if it was hand-drawn. You're like, this is why I'm attracted to animation. I'm sorry, guys, these Fortnite skins aren't doing it for me. Everybody is using that as the point of comparison. And I think we're all arriving at that independently because that's just what it looks like. Yes, I don't want to make too many excuses for them of like, well, that's just where the budget's at or that's how one gets approved. But yeah, that is the biggest disappointment on it. When Foghorn, Lakehorn moves around, he was the one that I was sticking the most on.

At least Coyote doesn't speak, so you're not getting like lip sync issues or something. But the jokes that were funny, I kept thinking like, boy, these would be funnier with hand-drawn animation. But there are funny jokes in it. I agree with that. And it's another one of those things. I don't want to complain too much. I'm so glad this movie came out. And I don't want to say the people that worked on these 3D characters of the bad job.

I know they had no money to do this. I know they had no time to do this. But it reminds me of that Chippendale movie they made for Disney Plus, which I don't like as much as I like Kydo v. Acme. But with that movie and this movie, I noticed that the characters don't really interact with the world or the humans that much. And once you start looking for that, you're seeing it everywhere. Like there are like boundaries around the animated characters. When in Roger, again, Roger Rabbit, it's out there. That's going to be the point of comparison.

It exists. Characters are knocking things off a table, spinning around in chairs, jumping into people's clothing, yanking on people's clothing, climbing on them, things like that. And I know what the possibilities are. And I know the technology is now better. I just keep asking, why aren't you doing this? The camera is also moving a lot more to, yeah. Coyote versus Acme at its peak feels like the best expression of like a really clever idea for a sketch.

Yes, yeah. And I mean that in a complimentary way, this feels like a good sketch movie. Will Forte is the star of it, probably, you know, an S&L great. I think drives at home even more. Though Will Forte, I love Will Forte in pretty much anything. He's so good in like Last Man on Earth, for example. and I think he does my favorite moments

in the movie is I think he actually does mostly be a him get actual emotion out of Coyote's Sisyphian quest after Roadrunner like and it's all sold by Forte in his acting. Yeah it's a tough role because you're playing against the character you can't see who also can't talk

Yeah it's and John Cena is perfectly fine Sure sure yes I'm happy it came out again I don't want to be too negative but it's a real tragedy that it has to come out looking like this But hey, it's also a profitable film, I think. It's at almost 100 million worldwide, which is more than I thought it would get. So, yeah. The other animated film I saw that I wanted to shout out is the new DreamWorks movie, Forgotten Island,

which is an original IP from DreamWorks. So that's already worth shouting out. It's co-directed by one of the directors of Puss and Boots Last Wish. But I gave it a high review of four and a half stars out of five on Letterbox. And partially I think I was a more honest might be a four, but I was just feeling so jazzed about it as like, I want this to succeed. I would like this to have like the success level of K-pop demon hunters

because I do think it expresses, and I say this is just someone married to a Filipino American, but it is set in the 90s, late 90s in the Philippines. And I think it does express Pinoy culture well for a mainstream animated film. It is a celebration of the Philippines culture, the Oswong collection of mythical creatures, I guess you'd say. It's full of, like, great, you know, actors and also Dave Franco. But, you know, I really enjoyed seeing it a couple weekends ago. Okay, yeah, I'm glad you confirmed that it's a good movie because I will say the marketing made it seem very annoying.

Bad marketing is what else. It's not great marketing. And there are some bits that are just like some of the comedy is a little like, oh, so rando type. stuff. You see the worst of it in the trailers, but the characters grow on you and this core story of the two girls' friendship, which doesn't get shown as much in the trailers as opposed to like Dave Franco's dog boy character. I think it really works. And it speaks to you too in that, even though it's about people who grew up in the Philippines in the 90s, who are basically like our age. I think it's very approachable if you're in our age group too. And I like, I am so

tired of 80s songs in movies, I know, or 90s songs like that type of, but the setting and the story and the characters, I think, earn those overused needle drops, too, I'll say. So, yeah, if you want to support a little film from a little company called DreamWorks animation, but it could use some support. Check out Forgotten Island. It gets a thumbs up for me. All right. I saw Resident Evil. I liked it. To know that there's some fans out there who complain that this is not, like, close to the story of the games. Like, who cares? Like, who cares? There's a ton of bad movies that do that. I just put an episode of Retronauts about this,

so I don't need to say anything, but I will say, I like the movie, did not like the ending, but that did not ruin the movie for me. Go Zach Krieger, you rock, and I noticed that, like,

after I posted that episode of Retronauts about the movie, our Retron's Escort filled up with whitest kids you know sketches, which I love seeing again. So thank you. Craigor is killing it these days. I'm glad that he's getting to make interesting films,

whether it is for a known IP or not. And also the lead guy in it, I need to learn his name, because I have come to really like him. I just saw a trailer for another movie that he's going to be in called the whale fall. I believe it's called where he's eaten by a whale

and he has to fight his way. And it's like 127 hours, but in a whale, I'm like, you know what? I want to see that because he's in it. I feel. Yep, Austin Abrams. Austin Abrams, yeah. He's really great.

He's a fun guy to see freak out and be like, fuck, shit, oh, shit. Like, he's very good at that. I also saw the first episode of Mystery Science Theater, Rift Tracks and Theater. great, great stuff. They still got it, folks.

They still got it. And Nina Matsumoto did the art for it, even. The Sting of Death one I saw. It's a great art, too. She is actively working on that project. So in a way, I am too. We both saw the Robot Chicken Adult Swim 25th anniversary special. I liked it a little more than you,

but I think it's because I just like seeing Venture Brothers characters again to do stuff. Sure, even though they're not voiced by the people you like. No, no, only Mike Sinternichas isn't in it. They got Jackson Public. and Doc Hammer. They are in it. Yeah, I didn't watch this, but I was in a hotel room. So I didn't plan on watching this, rather, but I was in a hotel room. It came on. And I was like, okay, I'll watch it. And I like the history of Adult Swim. I don't like Robot Chicken. I'm sorry. I've tried giving it a chance. I never liked it. So I love the reverence

for the 25 years of Adult Swim, but I did not want to communicate it through that medium, but I was able to enjoy parts of it. If you are sad that smiling friends are gone, you do get to hear the real smiling friends in the episode, or at least, you know, the two main characters from it, him and Charlie. And I like that they at least did like a celebration of it, but then when Andy Merrill is not like, they have 80% of everybody. So then when

Brack appears and doesn't talk, I'm just like, what would it have cost extra to get Andy Merrill to be Brack? He would take $600 to be Brack. He would not be... I like Andy Merrill, but I wish you'd stop getting mad about our podcasts. Yeah, he relaxed a little bit, Andy. I know. It's hard.

He's had a hard time. We're your friends. We like you. We like you. Yeah. And yes, I also saw Avengers Endgame encore in theaters this weekend. And whatever you say, Mr. Billboard, I'm looking forward to all the teases for Doomsday. And boy, is your ass tired. Now, Henry, I noticed based on Letterbox, you watched a lot of Marvel movies to prepare for this. So you went through a gauntlet of these films.

Basically, on the weekend before, to prepare for Endgame Encore, my husband suggested, let's rewatch all the Russo ones, the Russo brothers ones. So we watched Civil War and Winter Soldier, but I did log them until we watched Endgame. So then the night before, I basically come back for my trip to Las Vegas, we watch Infinity War that night. And then the next morning we go to see Endgame at a 1 p.m. showing that lets out at 5 p.m. Jesus. Yes. I do what I was in for, and I do still appreciate these as TV shows.

Like the Russo Brothers are bad. I think I diagnosed it correctly now that the Russo Brothers, they were executive producers on Rested Development and Community, the best seasons of those. They are great at TV shows that have dense continuity and fun callbacks all of the time.

And that's what their movies are for Marvel and it's the best that Marvel is at being Marvel. The mistake that the Russo brothers have is that they think they make real movies. They don't. They make great television and that's what the Marvel movies are. And I've come to appreciate them again, or at least their ones, with that in mind.

Now, Henry, did you see this in IMAX, this Endgame Encore? Yes, an IMAX Infinity Vision. Okay. I'm learning that there are exclusive scenes you can only watch in that format. Yes, yes. The film has a new ending and then three post-credits teasers for Doomsday in it as well. So get ready, Bob.

You're going to have to catch up. No, I won't. It's okay. I also mentioned it because Darren confirmed it for me too. Behind us was a mother of two with her two kids who seemed like they weren't even alive when Endgame came out in 2019. They were that young. And she was there with her husband.

I'm assuming her husband. In the last 40 minutes of that movie, after an important character dies in Endgame, she is like, huh, ho, like sobbing. She is sobbing for like 10 minutes straight.

I had an incredulous commenter on my letterbox. They like, no, nobody would be crying. I'm like, no, this person was sobbing for loudly behind us. Hey, good for her. I'm glad she was so into it. And then just quickly, other stuff I did, went to San Francisco, met up with some old friends for my birthday trip,

and also got to check out the Pokemon XP and the Pokemon tournament stuff. That was fun. All the seeing Pokemon takeover San Francisco was interesting. But also got to grab lunch with Shivam. I hadn't seen him in forever, who Shivim Bhat, who we had on several podcasts. And you were just on his show. Yes, that's right. I was on his YouTube and Magic show. So if you want to hear me talk about being a total magic noob who some hardcore magic fans might hate because I like how there's Marvel and Final Fantasy cards now, check that out on Shivam's YouTube page. And also, yes, just came back from Las Vegas for a family get together. You know, my mom and brother were there and my mom paid for the tickets. That's my excuse.

Henry, the word no also exists. I just want to point this out. I know, but it was like... A respectful no. I'm not saying what I would have done. I'm just saying there are other. options. The tickets were already bought. Look, I'll take the blame. Nobody held

a gun to my head. Yes. Say, Mom, let's flip these on Stubhub. I'll take you out to dinner. We did go to see the Spheres, Wizard of Oz, and it's interesting, except in all the ways that it's an insult to life itself. But it's amazing to see the hugeness of it, I have to say.

To get inside of it, it has a real wow factor. But seeing AI recreations of dead people heavily manipulated to make a classic film look like a new thing. He's horrifying at times. It really is. Henry, you went on two trips this month, and that's fine. You got to relax. You got to enjoy yourself. My issue is whenever you go on these trips, it's like you're abducted by aliens, and they only leave behind three pictures,

and that's all we get. I am commanding you. The next time you go on a trip, somewhere fun, like San Francisco, Las Vegas, you've got to take pictures, A, to show everyone what you're doing, and B, the main reason is your haters can writhe in agony when they see you having fun. I know. I forget. I just forget sometimes to take the picks or I just in the past, yes, I will share more picks. You took a picture of three slot machines and that was it. You know, I have a couple of picks of dinner I should share. Well, it's like, as previously mentioned with my brother, I think he didn't want me. I was respecting his privacy of not wanting to post his pictures. They don't have to be in the picture. I want to see what's a fun party animal Henry Gilbert is up to.

I did go to a nice restaurant that actually was not like a chain or something. It was called Batista's Hall. in the wall and it's like it's the type of real restaurant that like buca de beppo tries to dress itself up as like it's like oh do you want to have the steak that sinatra loved eating here i said no i don't because i'd gick out but but i had the chicken parmesan there and it was really good is the type of place that gives you house wine just as part of the meal oh nice you see henry if you would have posted a picture of that at least eight haters would have said god damn it i'm making mac and cheese here I should think of that more. I want to hurt the haters.

Also, people that police what you spend because they give to your Patreon, they need to know. Well, they wouldn't like seeing all the gambling I did then this week. Henry, do you really need to upsize that? I'm withdrawing my pledge. I stayed in the greed, but I turned a big win into a small win by the end of the week. I was my most lucky on Tuesday,

and by the time I flew home Friday, almost all of my wins were gone. Slot machines are fun. I like them. So did you make a profit, or did you have some of your gambling money? left. I set aside $300 and then I

was up, I think even $600. So $600 in addition to $300. And by the end of the trip, I only had $100 in profit above. I had $400 in my wallet after that. And also I went to a burlesque show. We did a fun

burlesque show as a family. Though it was the first time I had heard the warning. Obviously, they have the warning, don't bring out your cameras or your phones, but they now had, in part things are worse now type moment. The MC also had to say, and your smart glasses, we're watching out for those two. I was like, oh, that's

depressing. How am I going to count cards without these? I know. It's these adult performers are putting so much of themselves out there, and that they're being like creep watched now by meta-goggles, even. It's just like, they already have so many creeps to deal with. Well, the important thing is that you're watching them

next to your... Bomb and brother. There you go. Yes. Yeah, it was. Well, we'd already done zombie burlesque together before 10 years earlier. But it was a fun, if brief trip. I wish my brother wanted to see more things, but his feeling too was, I was throwing out there, why don't we see a Cirque de Soleil thing?

And he's said, I've seen the Beatles one. I don't need to see more. I'm good. But Vegas, not a bad time. Not a bad time. But okay, sorry. That's the end of my month as well. I did a lot.

I'm doing considerably less in October. Stay at home, pretty much. Don't worry. Henry's being punished if you think he had too much fun. I'd do much fun. I don't share the pictures because that's part of my feeling guilty. Is that part of my feeling guilty? Is that part of it?

guilt. I'm talking through a lot of stuff with my... Henry, you deserve to have a good time. I'm building up a mantra here. I am building a mantra for that. If you've gone too far, I'll tell you. Now, three vacations in one month. That's when we start drawing the line.

I think that was a couple months last year. Yeah, that's when I invented the theme song. Yes, yeah. In fun. I do want to see, by the end of the year, or early next year, I do want to go to L.A. again. You might have to play the theme again because I want to see that George Lucas Museum.

It looks really cool from all the video. And of course it won't be there after this year. I know, but it'll evaporate. Seeing all the videos of it now, it's like, how can I wait a whole year to see it? You see, I'm shaking with feeling left out. Everybody's eyes have already, like, removed electrons from those exhibits just by looking at them. They're breathing on Queen Amadala's funeral dress is already depreciating what's interesting about it. It's very funny how we like George Lucas again.

It's because he stopped making things. Yeah, yeah. Thank you, by the way, for not doing that anymore. And then he let other people make things that suck that make you think that he made good Star Wars movies in the last 30 years. Anyway, that's what I did this month. And now we're going to move on the questions and comments from the last round of episodes on the Patreon. And by the way, we're moving on to Homey the Clown. And Dennis Kay says, I'm sure you forgot Henry, but in the mask, there is a scene showing Jim Carrey watching TechSavory cartoons on VHS to establish where he gets a sense of humor from.

and that is what Dennis Kay says. I guess Henry said, posited that he just gets this idea from nowhere, but I guess there was a source in the film. Yeah, I think I had forgotten that, so I thank you, Dennis, for bringing that up because I've said it before. I have alleged that the mask essentially steals jokes

from tech-savory cartoons by having the mask do them on screen and kids will grow up thinking the mask invented it. But it's true, they do play a little fair by having him watch the things that inspire him, and visually recognizing that tech savery is the inspiration. Well, whenever Henry gets something wrong about the mask, I always say somebody stop him, and Dennis K. So thank you, Dennis.

I can tell you, too, that mask machine, there is a mask slot machine. My brother and I played it next to each other because we're both like, oh, man, this looks so cool, the mask. We should have realized the spirit of Loki in the mask would make it so we would lose every round and not make any money off of it. That thing took, it screwed us. Yeah, he's a playful. trickster. He doesn't want you to win. And Cat Rebar also says on it, regarding the difficulty of getting

on the Bozo the Clown show, in the very early 90s, my next door neighbor who was one year older than me, did get to be a contestant on our local Bozo show for his fifth birthday. I remember being really jealous and my grandma explaining that his mother had put his name in for tickets right after he was born. Like how some parents apply for prestigious preschools the moment the care that is born, I guess people in my neighborhood, aside from my parents apparently, put in bozo applications. At the time, I was really sad because I was already four and knew it was too late for me. I did later learn that that very bozo was the same man who emceed my dance recitals every year, which was kind of a flex, but not as much of a flex as getting to toss a ping pong ball into a bucket in front of a

live studio audience would have been. That's crazy. Thank you for the first-hand account of Bozomania. I did not grow up with this. There was no regional bozo. there was no access to Bozo, so my parents never applied for the Bozo seating. For Cat, to be like at four years old, you're thinking, my life's over then. I'll never be on Bozo. I'm already too late. How depressing. I think you turned your life right after that, Cat, so don't worry about it. Moving on to future drama, Tyler M. says, very odd that this is the second episode in a row of the season, I believe, that fails to pay for a hippie classic, yet splorges on another needle drop.

Though, given how Lettich's Steely Dan are, maybe the Donald Fagan track, was absurdly expensive. And yes, now, it's been a while, Henry. Which track did they not use for future drama? Man, now I can't remember the song, but it's when Ralph gets dosed. Like, it's not Inegada de Vita, because that's the one they did with Otto in the Snitch episode.

But yeah, it's like the first three notes of a classic hippie track of going, near, yeah. I guess the bean counters are keeping track of this and telling the writers, okay, we can give you six songs, or sorry, five songs, but not six. time. It'd be pretty great if we ever get to interview Al Jean and most of our questions are

just about the song budgets from seasons 13 to 23 and only that. I bet he'd love to share that. He's tired of talking about the first year writer's room on The Simpsons. That's probably the budget for the entire show now is what the song budget was in the aughts. It was, yeah, 15 episodes and no license song now in seasons. Also on future drama, Ian Stratton pointed out, American Dad had a similar ending to this episode with its 2009 episode Stand Time, where Stan and Francine reconcile deep underwater while the song

Sea of Love plays, though it's the Robert Plant version. Not accusing anyone in plagiarism, I just thought it was a funny coincidence. Okay, yeah, I guess it's an obvious go-to if you are underwater, right? If I remember stand time correctly, him and Francine grow apart because he wants more stand times himself, and so since they're not

being intimate anymore. She becomes an underwater researcher and she has an emotional connection to a gay researcher so it's not sexual. But then Stan reconnects with her underwater and they're making out underwater with Sea of Love playing. So it is kind of a similar ending. Yeah. Hey, by the way, congrats. American Dad, 400 episodes were hit this month too. That's crazy. I just have to watch 370 more of them to catch up. Let's say 340. I watched it. It was a good episode. episode that was after Stan does a lot less in the show to save time of a very busy man, Seth McFarlane. It was a very Stan heavy episode, as well as a bullet-heavy episode. And yes, Patrick Stewart sounds very old. Spoilers, he is. How dare he age? How dare he? I think he's 85,

Port Patrick Stewart? I think so. I think, yeah, another reason to see Doomsday, Bob. Last Patrick Stewart, live action performance, perhaps. People film these movies with their phones, and I can easily just grab that and watch his scenes. Of course, I don't want him to ever die, but especially what just happened with Peter Cullen passing away right before the 40th anniversary re-release of the Transformers movie, if he passes

away before his movie comes out when he probably dies in that in Doomsday, that'd be depressing. Well, I don't think he's going to die, so it's okay. Yeah, no, he's going to live forever. It's true. Moving on to Barber versus Australia, T.J. Gaines says, everyone forgot to mention Australia's latest and greatest import. Bluey!

And this is a good one. long conspiracy to smother Bluey and never cover it. I'm sorry, T.J. Gaines. You do usually try to avoid. You forgot to mention things in this, but I did think, you know what? That's fair. None of us thought of Bluey, which is the internationally successful

Australian export these days. We are all adults without children. I think sorry, did the guests have a child? I forgot. I don't believe so. He has a dog he really loves. Okay, that counts. That was a fun one with Tom Walker. I'd love to have him on again for one where we don't just ask him, hey, in Australia, when I

say we, I should say me. I said, in Australia, is this that thing? Is that that thing? Just a regular Simpsons next time for him. But also, somebody I will take responsibility to in Homey the clown, I think that's when we talked about the biggest people from S&L in movies. And multiple people said, hey, you guys forgot Eddie Murphy. Eddie Murphy is so much bigger than S&L. I don't think of his years as S&L. I think of them as the Eddie Murphy show. And I often forget about him being an S&L guy. And I think we were, I don't know, one when he was a big S&L star, and then we grew up with him in movies, so it's easy to forget. Yeah, yeah.

And also, like, his episodes of Saturday Night Live that would replay on Comedy Central, I disliked most of the cast who wasn't him, so I didn't rewatch them the same I would with the bigger comedy nerd seasons that were the Lorne seasons, too. But, you know what you're right? He is an SNL cast member, and he is more successful than Adam Sandler. though honestly Adam Sandler is a better businessman, I'd say, or at least a building a studio thing.

I think so. Oh, but also on Bart versus Australia, Ryan's Giff and Art Extravaganza says, growing up in Australia at the time, The Simpsons was huge. We really didn't have cable in the early 90s, not until Murdoch's Fox Tell came along, but we had channels 1, 2, 7, 9, and 10.

7 and 9 had the 6 o'clock news, but 10 had 5 o'clock news, so they had the Simpsons on at 6. So the only real option that wasn't the news was the Simpsons and every kid watched it. We also got Simpsons Tasos, Pogs that came in chip packets, and apparently a whole trading card set dedicated to this episode, which he then in the comments he links to it from tradercracks.com of the 1996 tempo Simpsons Down Underset. Yeah, I'm looking at Tasos.

And I guess that was just another thing to call Pogs if you didn't want to use the copyright. term. There were a lot of those back then, right? Yeah, that as people who lived through the back in pog form era, so I guess milk caps was the standard, like if you didn't want to call it anything, right? That's right, yeah, milk caps. Yeah, I think I had Spider-Man ones that were also not branded pogs. I think caps were the name of it perhaps, but, uh, hey, it's nice that they even got just all of these stills. The stills don't even look so bad on the trading card set here. Well, not all of them do anyway. Oh, yeah, well, I was just going to say, thanks again to another Aussie listener who gave us some of their side of experiencing this

Simpsons tribute to Australia. Yes, and now we're going to move on to Don't Fear the Roofer, and I think we have to address the elephant in the room. On that episode, there was an incident. I don't want to dredge that up and say what it was, but over the passing weeks, Henry and I, we've been talking through teams of lawyers, and we're agreeing to record the show again. In the following weeks, one of us was AI. We're not going to say who, but we didn't really want to talk to each other. But now we're cool with each other. We have redeemed all of our AI token, so we can't do that anymore. And now we're back in the same Zencast room at least. So the healing is continuing. It took some arbitration

and some billable hours from some arbitrators, but I think we got past it. Because of that, we are raising Patreon tears very quickly here because of all the legal actions we've had to do over the past couple of weeks. Don't fear the roof for yes. I think even Drew Mackie has mentioned he's like he thought it was like watching parents go. No, I re-listened to that and I was turning it into a bit and I thought like, oh no, what do people take this seriously? And then I listened to it. I was like, oh, no, this is funny. And then people in the comments were concerned, though. Now, please, folks, relax.

We had a good time. It was all in fun. We're all having fun here. So we're going to move on to Don't Fear the Roofer. And Homer Thompson, the first says, My sister-in-law worked at Earls as a bartender when she was doing her degree. She actually tried to get into the serving side of the staff, and they told her that, quote, her physique didn't suit Earl's image to make a long story short.

She quit shortly after. And yes, thank you, Homer Thompson. Others confirmed that it wasn't just me. Earl's girls are essentially like a different version of the Hooters girl, let's say. I guess they are called Earl's Girls. There's a reason why it rhymes with Earls. So, Henry, you're going to a horny establishment with your gay husband.

I'm still shocked to learn that, yes, as I hear that again, of a physique didn't suit the image. Like, as I said too, are also gay guests on the episode. Like, I never noticed the size of the chests of our waitresses. That was actually, I think the funniest joke on the episode came from Drew. You said that, and Drew said, well, that's because you're gay. Yes. Yeah, that was a very good, yes.

And I haven't been back yet. I'll make sure to stare at their chest a lot more the next time. I mean, that's why they're dressed like that, right? Yes, yeah. And again, and similarly at the burlese show, I was like, I mainly when the girls were doing the pole dancing on it, I was like, man, they're really fit. Look at that.

They got her, like, spread that wide. Man, she's in good shape. Are you elbowing your mom while you're saying these things? No, no. We're just laughing together. You're appreciating fitness with your mother. Yes, yeah. A nice time was had,

And what else are you going to see at 10 p.m.? Also, I appreciate going to Experlest because it got me to stop gambling for the night. And I'd been on a losing streak. I probably would have been in the red had I not spent two hours watching Topless Ladies' Dance. Also on Don't For the Roofer, Tyler M says, regarding the Boost Mobile ad and two-way, I am nearly certain this refers to the short-lived text-only two-way pagers, which I knew as simply a two-way.

These things were around for a hot second, when I was in high school, which was when this episode aired, and blew up right before texting was on cell phones. The partial reason why they blew up in my school was due to a kid working at a cell phone kiosk and committing fraud. But that's a story for another time. You can see one of these in the Nelly video for Dilemma.

Kelly Rowland uses one at 316 in the music video. Yes, this is referencing an ad that is referenced in the show. that Marge finds very annoying. And in the ad, an old lady is talking like, I guess what would them be millennial or younger? And she's talking like a young person. She's mentioning how the service lets her do two-way. And we're like, is that just a normal phone call?

But no, it was pre-phone texting, I guess. And just one-to-one texting in a new way to do it. Things are different now that every phone does everything. You don't need to buy multiple extra devices to do like the halfway version of it. For this to be happening like 0-4, They've only got a few years left before the iPhone just changes it all. So up next we have our What a Cartoon for September, and that was Family Dog, the Brad Bird Classic. And Nick Mold says, according to David Konigsberg, the requested retakes for the Family Dog series came so late that Wang Studios had already scrapped all the production materials,

and they were having to recreate animation and backgrounds by rotoscoping the workprints of episodes they had considered finished. Konigsberg was a producer on the original Amazing Story episode, but had refused to work on the series for the same reason. Brad Bird did. Yes, it sounds like a nightmare, and I don't think we'll ever cover that series, but that was a great history you did on that, Henry. Oh, thanks. The show that nobody remembers,

but Family Dog is unfairly remembered as being a bad show and not a great series of shorts. I appreciated Nick bringing that up because I worked so hard on the research, but you can't find everything, and that hearing what David Cunningberg said, did add extra to it of just that to know that they couldn't go back to Wang for retakes

because they waited so long that Wang's like, well, our production, like, we just dump these in a shredder. Like, we were done with this thing. We can't reanimate stuff. You asked for it too late or whatever. So to know they had to rotoscope things from original prints. Like, that couldn't have made Steven Spielberg happy, I would think. And actually, more on that, Thad Kamarowski, our good friend in the animation history industry, said, anyone who's fed off the teat of the nine old men slash Cal Arts seem to need to do some pantomerokee.

to mime frustration comedy. And as you rightly point out, none of it's funny. It's purely masturbatory to impress other animators. The family dog pilot is technically an example, but of course it has so much more to offer since it eventually became The Simpsons. I'm sympathetic to the series more, not because it's good, it's not,

but because by that point, Spielberg knew what the overseas TV pipeline was and should have known better. With Tiny Tunes, he completely threw out the first bunch of episodes that came in, for being substandard. So by the time Family Dog went to series, he should have known what to expect.

Hell, he did this all over again with the abysmal Animaniacs reboot. A bunch of those had to be completely redone because they weren't cinematic enough. Although in that case, I think Spielberg was ignorant of the fact that the industry had seen a hard reset from the original WBA days

and is once again making ugly, stiff cartoons on mass. Thank you, Thad. And yes, I guess in the case of Animaniacs, it was for the better because that is a good-looking show, despite being used with the modern animation tools. They made it look enough like the classic episodes that it did fool me at times. And I honestly missed the other two seasons of that they made.

And some part of me always wants to go back. What were Animaniac seasons two and three like? I was just thinking of those early seasons of Tiny Tunes today because the Popperina, they put out a new video focusing on just one in the sampler platter of the Knick-Nack series they do. Popperina did one about. a Glenn Kennedy Tiny Tunes episode, one, the very first ones.

And again, was talking about how Steven Spielberg, when he got back to Kennedy Tunes, was like, this shit is garbage. Get this out of here. I guess they had to use some of it. But unfortunately, Kennedy animation animated what was supposed to be the pilots, where it's like, welcome to the world. Here's how the Tiny Tunes came into being. And they didn't even air that first.

They were so ashamed of it. I agree with Thad's sentimenties here that Spielberg had already been through at the very release Tiny Tunes by the time in 91 when production really started for Family Dog that he should have known what they were getting into and had a better idea of the pipeline that they were approaching. And then to tear, I did also like hearing from Thad's perspective that the nine old men really were into animating frustration. Like it's not surprising that Brad Bird, that was one of his first ideas post in Disney. Yeah, there's like a lot of dark energy in a family dog and that's why.

And hey, soon we're going to see, was the 30-year wait for Ray Gunn worth it? The first trailers were out there. I wish it was 2D. I'm going to watch it, but I don't kind of like what it looks like or what it is. We'll see. Optimistic here.

And you're Mr. Film Noir, so you might have high standards for it too. So we'll see. So moving on, we covered Big Hero 6, wrote a cartoon movie. We have a few comments about that. And we, Dylan Sludge said, Bob's Overwatch comment is so true

and I do too greatly miss the 2016 era Overwatch, addicting and fun. Yes, thank you Dylan Sludge. On the podcast, I was talking about how all of the Bigs Hero Six guys look like. Overwatch characters, I think that that's just early 2010's graphic design, early 2010's character design.

That's why they look like that. But I also, I loved Overwatch. I played so much of it. And that period is over now and Blizzard's only gotten worse as a company and I never played Overwatch too. So I wish I could go back to that era of my life just to play Overwatch again

because I could never jump back in now. There's like 40 characters I don't know anything about them, how to play as them, how to play against them. The era of the last like 10 years of Blizzard has been very weird, especially in their Microsoft ownership, that like they shoved out a Diablo 4, that they're actually making a Diablo 5 so fast after 4, which that's not a good sign for 4's success.

And then Overwatch 2 just got renamed to Overwatch. Yes. They didn't do it, Overwatch 2. Now, we're running late on this podcast, but I have one little story about our old job, Henry, in that the guy I took over our old job was very stupid. We know that. We've talked about him before. And I was like proposing content. I was like, there's a new Overwatch character.

Why don't I make a video about it? And he's like, oh, sure, you should do that. Because he doesn't know what we do. He doesn't know what our company is about. And so I spend a day at home and I do that and I bring it and I present it to him. And his mind is blown. Like, you did this? You put this together?

I'm thinking like, this is the most bare bones video game coverage. You're like losing your mind over it. You're our boss? Man. Yeah, we had a really dumb boss who also, though, was being, like, told by his video team that videos took too long. And who would say, like, well, we can't do that. And then you would just do it. Yes, I definitely remember that one.

And that was not the only time where you or I would come back with doing a thing the video team said they couldn't do. And the boss was like, but I was told this couldn't be done. Yes. To be fair, that was like praise, which was nice. But I also thought, boy, you do not know how any of this works, do you? And you're being paid so much more than me. No, it was. We had to explain our jobs many times, and we of course were not listened to about what our jobs were.

No. Blake R also says about Big Hero 6. I was at Disney Parks in Orlando last year and was honestly surprised that the very small presence of Baymax seemed to have in the merch department. You'd think he would be the one that would really break out of this film that's otherwise fallen to the wayside from a cultural standpoint. But my biggest surprise was that people love Stitch's stupid pink girlfriend. I mentioned this on an earlier, talked to the audience or something. I feel like Disney was aware of what people were getting out of Lilo and Stitch, and that is the queer content,

and the significance of his number that lines up with a date that happened in the future. And recently they released a short on that date where they're underlined and like, no, he has a girlfriend. Yes. We're taking this back. And I mean, they're big tease for the next Stitch movie is Angel is in it. And so it's like just further, you know, if you hit, out there, love your angel and stitch content,

then more power to you, but I just, she seems very assigned to him. It's to give Stitch the not gays, as the term goes. Maybe girls want a stitch doll and they feel ashamed of having the blue one. I can see that for the girls out there, but Stitch is for everybody. It's great. Although this mention of Baymax stuff, I did forget to mention one of my favorite Baymax things that they have at the Tokyo Disneyland, which is curry rice plate, but it looks.

Looks like Baymax is like in a hot spring bath. He's like laying in a hot spring bath of the curry. Like Baymax is the pile of rice with, I think, Nori as his eyes. And then the curry pool around him is like the hot bath. That's very clever. Yeah, very cool. Moving on, we're going to talk about Talking Futurama. The episode we covered last month was a farewell to arms.

And Purple Comment says, oddly enough, the latest episode, Oceans 3, also features Revelo in a plot where Fry screws up everything by trying to do something romantic for Lilo. I thought Revelo might be a reference to Valentino, a magician who faced enormous backlash when he did multiple specials on Fox where he revealed the secret behind many magic tricks. Yes, thank you purple comment for that. I didn't know Revelo came back, but I also think that if they were going to reference that guy, they would have put him in the mask. Yeah, I think Revelo just is a great simple joke of just that, of a very obvious name for a guy who's bad at doing magic, that over explains things.

I am behind on the new season. I believe the finale of the season and sort of fifth finale to Futurama just came out actually, and I have not checked it out yet. Yeah, is that the disenchantment crossover? I think the episode after the... Maybe it is,

it's disenchantment crossover is either the last or second to last, and then they have a last episode. But I believe they've both come out at this point. Yeah. And, hey, speaking of people working on current Futurama, We got a good reply from Peter Avanzino, the series director on Futurama. We've talked to several times before.

And about this big episode that we've mentioned many times, like, wow, this seems like real challenge for the animators. Avanzino said, The thing that I marvel at with this writing staff is not that they can come up with a story like this about a Mars Earth apocalypse and all of the incredible elements that come together in it, but that they would kick the whole epic off by having, lose his lucky pants down a badger hole. Director Amy Muske's and his assistant director, Alden Barossa, got a string of incredibly complex shows in the group. They did a lot of great work figuring out how to visualize this stuff

and on a TV budget and schedule. I look back at an episode like this, and I am baffled as to how we got through it. This was one of the first episodes that used the new 3D crowds our teams developed. We used to have to cut around to avoid showing too many crowds, shots, but not anymore. As far as the process, we still hand-draw all storyboards and designs, but everyone is working on a Sintique now. Designers work in Photoshop and the storyboards are drawn in a program that keeps all the drawings in order and compiles the drawings in info like

dialogue and screen directions into a storyboard. Most overseas studios have switched it on paper as well. I can't believe we did this episode on paper. Thank you, Peter, for so much that insight, because we were also wondering how they did it on paper, back then and when did the paper go away entirely? Yes, thank you, Peter, for all of this inside info and looking forward to seeing the new season, which I've been too busy to watch, but I'm anticipating watching it all very soon. And I often go back through our Patreon episodes or look at new comments on old episodes, and I see Peter does get around to leaving comments on things.

So always look for the Peter Avanzino comments. Go back in our archive. He's sneaking around in there, leaving comments. I've probably even missed a few. I need to check those out. Yeah, Peter has been very, he's also not just the one interview we did with him that to check that in the past too, but also we've just sent him emails asking

for like, you know, questions in production and he's been very helpful too, a very nice guy. Hey, Peter, if you're listening, I want to buy some more Duckman's stuff, so reach out to me if you have anything. The only other cell I know is in Hungary. And you don't want to move to Budapest just for that. I can't go there.

I'm already flying internationally next year and it's not to Hungary. Moving on, talking to the hill, Nancy boys. And Jack Curran says, I hate that the reboot put Nancy and John Redcorn back together without even a joke about why. they would get back together. Not only does it go back on this episode, but there's an episode in season 11 when Nancy has to choose between getting back with Redcorn or losing her hair, and she chooses to stay committed to Dale and accept losing her hair. Thank you, Jack. I have seen

that episode. I don't remember it, but that is a very good point. They never stray from the canon this episode develops at the end of season four. They are true to Nancy being with Dale, despite how unhappy that might make her. It is a choice that is best for their future, I guess. But yeah, like we talked about in that episode, it does strike me as a bit tacky, just especially when you look at all of the other good choices they made about how to change the characters. They fell back on those jokes again. Also, Salton Patterson and his team of younger, newer writers, mostly, and like, I'm not expecting them to be like our level of nerds or above of like you can't do anything that is against. They respect the continuity a lot in the series for most characters. So it stands out when they just are like, oh, you name.

Nancy and John Redcorn are together again. Are they just doing another Nancy has to choose Dale over John Redcorn story in the most recent season in season 15? And our final comments, poor Nancy boys, is from John Hulski, who says, In defensive glue traps, a great way to start to say. I'm listening. In defensive glue traps, I used a type forever ago that broke down with cooking oil to release the trapped animal.

And that's what I did, catching what I believed was an entire. family and releasing them into Central Park. I have no idea if those oil-covered mice were immediately eaten. The coating probably made them go down smooth, but I gave them a shot after they invaded my Manhattan apartment. Well, John, I think what you did was create a family of Speedy Gonzalez's. Very slick mice just slipping around Central Park. A cat swats at them, it just like slips off the paw.

That's also, you know what, that then ties into the Futurama we also covered, which was about an oil-covered fries. in Central Park in that one. Oh, right, he was greased up in that one. That's nice to know that an option with glue traps, or at least apparently with some of them, is ones that you can release the animal from via oil or something else that can get them untrapped.

You don't have to just let them starve to death or beat them, crush them or whatever. Yes, yeah. We're smashing them with a book. But thank you, yeah. I would be skeptical about this, but apparently there's proofs. Find humane options I'm not only people know out there

if you're trying to dispose of pests. But that is talk to the audience. Up front, I said we do this to save us time, and now we are over two hours into a community podcast. So we're bad at our jobs, everybody. We live too much. We had too much fun this month. It's true.

It's true. There's so much to talk about. And we had a lot of Simpsons news. And we had a lot of stuff going on in our lives and a lot of comments. But another fun episode. And be sure to look forward to this coming month. You can start off the month, by the way, by listening to the most recent what a cartoon movie about the Adams family,

but look forward to the next one about Fern Gawley at the end of the month. And then a bunch of the bunch of fun stuff in between there. A lot of great returning guests, a lot of episodes. We've recorded, I think, most of them at this point, and it's been a very long time. So we're working way ahead. Yeah, I think there's only one October Simpsons we haven't done yet for the end of the month. But we're finally covering Johnny Bravo and continuing from the Adams family into a scary episode of his crossover with Scooby-Doo. And can't wait to chat about all of that this month and have you listeners check it out with us. So that is it for this episode to talk to the audience. We will see you

again next week for a regular episode and again next month for another talk to the audience. And we'll see you then.