Talking Simpsons - Talking Duckman - About Face

Episode Date: June 7, 2017

Surprise! In our chronological path through the Simpsons timeline, we’ve hit the premiere of Duckman, USA Network’s answer to The Simpsons. We discuss Duckman’s hilariously rant-filled history and breakdown the first season standout episode, About Face…

this episode of talking simpsons is brought to you by audible and you listeners can go to audibletrial.com slash laser time and get started with a free 30-day trial and get a free audiobook what the hell are you staring at everyone and welcome to talking duck man this is the laser time podcast network's one-off episode about the animated sitcom Duckman. I'm your host, Bob Mackie, and I'm anything but ugly. And who else is here today? Dwa! It's Henry Gilbert. Hi.

And who else is here? It's Chrissy, comfortable laughing at old stereotypes, Antista. And today's episode is about Face, which aired on June 4th, 1994. And Chris will tell us what happened on this mythical day in real life history. You let your dad down and thrust your pelvis. And thrust your pelvis. And thrust your pelvis. And thrust your pelvis.

And thrust your pelvis. That was the funky Duckman, everybody. Oh, man, Bobby. You wouldn't believe what happened today. President Bill Clinton celebrates the 50th anniversary of D-Day. The last episode of Duckman, Nicole Brown Simpson could have watched first run. It's going to air next week. And for you animation fans out there, Stephen Spielrock's The Flintstones debuts in theaters.

Oh, awesome. What a collection of bad events that happened in this day. You told me to make the news bad for the Duckman version. Yeah, for Duckman, it's all bad news that happened on this day. So I want to say this is all my fault, Bob Mackie, me. Please level your insults at me if you don't like this. But I wanted to do one episode about Duckman because it is a very, very 90s show. And I personally love it.

I think it's aged incredibly well, even though it is sort of a time capsule for the 90s. Well, and like we did with The Critic, it is a Simpsons-adjacent show. Yes. And like we did with The Critic, it is a Simpsons adjacent show that premiered at this time in the chronology of The Simpsons, though we're not doing the first episode of Duckman. Exactly. It's done by Klasky Chupo. And you have to imagine that by the time they're kicked off The Simpsons, they align themselves with USA Network and Duckman. This is very much them trying to do their own Simpsons.

To get something out of the way first, we're doing the episode About Face. And if you haven't seen it recently, and I bet you haven't, all of these episodes are on YouTube in their full and complete form. Go off, watch this episode, 20 minutes, come back and listen to it. It's About Face. I love Duckman. I know a lot of Talking Simpsons fans don't listen to Laser Time,

but I bring it up a lot because it is a very special cartoon for me. It's in the era of it's one of the only simpsons ripoffs me too's that i think wow this is different and great it really has its own voice and its own attitude and i feel like like you said chris this is very much claskey chupo so to give you more information on them in case you weren't aware they were the folks who animated the the seasons one through three of the simpsons and they were let go in season four for phil roman who continues to animate the Simpsons and they were let go in season four for Phil

Roman who continues to animate The Simpsons but I feel like this is very much Klasky Chupo's own Simpsons. That's what they wanted. It is and it's, Klasky Chupo is defined by, look wise by Rugrats most famously and Rocket Power and Wild Thornberries. That's what their shit looks like.

But it works better here because it's intentionally jarring and jagged and mean and awful and gross to look at. I love it. Because in the late 80s, there weren't a ton of animation studios you could work out of. When they drew the

Simpsons, when they were producing it, they did it out of the Klasky Chupo offices. That's where David Silverman, Wes Archer, all the original Simpsons animators were animating there. And so when they lost the Simpsons deal, then they were already still going strong. They had Rugrats. But they were looking for a new late night show or a prime time show. A lot of their stuff isn't going to hold up partially due to the

style that they chose which is a bold choice yeah I mean I think it works really well on Duckman and things like all real monsters where it's like this is supposed to be yes

sorry I should have said that that looks great I mean it looks so good usually that show is amazing and I mean Duckman has a lower budget than the Simpsons but I feel

like I would say some of the Nicktoons that what's that I would say a lower budget than some of the Nicktoons a little bit yeah but I think this episode looks good. Actually, I want to say Duckman is just a fun character to look at.

I like his design. I like how his eyes are independent from his face. They just exist on his glasses. They never made a Duckman figure, ever. They never made any Duckman merchandise. The point I like is the resting Duckman face is just his teeth are out. He just looks like such a dweeb. Glasses are his eyeballs. It's based on a comic created by everett peck yes as far as how many comics were

out before this show debuts i think there's like 12 duck man not a whole lot so like the simpsons uh i feel like so a tv critic named jamie weinman he believes that artists created cartoons do better than ones who weren't created by artists because the the characterization is also part of the drawings themselves so king of the hill you know drawn by mike judge piece of butt head drawn by mike judge simpsons drawn by matt graining and someone was i don't know just reminded me of that like draining like yeah he chose to make the color yellow so when you in a world of channel flipping yeah like you'd know exactly what you were that was actually the second you flew by that was actually a woman at klasky chupa who made that arbitrary decision.

But Groening was on board with it. And Duckman's the same way. You wouldn't confuse it for something else. I mean, that's the similarities to The Simpsons 2, that you have a primetime animated sitcom aimed at adults starring a yellow family. Except they're meaner, more 90s, and more set in a specific area and place. They exist in L.A la for the most part their version of la and it's way sexier it is sexual i'd say it's so cool it's a bit ribald so i mean it does but like there's so much of this and i'm sure i'll get into it yeah it's a good sitcom but

more so than any cartoon primetime cartoon show of the 90s, this reminds me the most of classic Looney Tunes. This is a classic Looney Tunes premise. There's a lot of Tex Avery gags baked into a lot of what we're going to talk about today, but you mentioned the comics, so Everett Peck, you might have heard his name. I like that his name is Everett Peck, and his show is Duckman, by the way. Peck, Duckman. And he worked in animation

a bunch. He actually did character designs on the real Ghostbusters, so he's used to drawing ugly things. And he was also a character designer on the critic and i think vlada vlada mirovich that character is a very much an everett peck looking character yes as you said on the fucking critic episode we did yes and i think that you know that's still a thing even now that a lot of independent artists i know who draw their own comics their day job is working in animation right yeah that makes a lot of sense so ever peck wasn't that different and i read in uh well so how how did come to be then so duckman has a very weird origin so peck drew him in some surrealist just strips not full books

for the comic dark horse presents in 89 88 and 90 and then he got his own one-shot dark horse comic in 1990 so that is sort of the comic book origin of duckman i have not read these comics they're not a lot and they're really i've never ever in my life seen one in the wild i never have either all i know the difference is his wife is alive in the comic book where in the series she's dead which i think gives the series a more interesting angle than a suffering wife it totally does because it's not just at the time sitcoms always had the dumbass dad and the bitch ass wife. Yeah. And this at least

You want to put it in those terms. Sure. It's the 90s. Welcome back. It is the harpy wife. Like the fun ruining wife. If you've been in the comments lately calling us a bunch of SJWs then like enjoy some Duckman because that is like the most anti-PC. You know the but by getting by making his wife dead and making the battle acts,

he fights with somebody who doesn't even love him and would never sleep with him. Yeah, that's the premise of the show. He lives with his children and the twin sister of his dead wife who hates him. So their relationship makes much more sense and is funnier and benefits from that so well. And we learn in episode three of the series that he accidentally killed his wife through a crazy chain reaction of events. So Duckman has to live with the guilt of killing his wife and also has to live with his wife's twin sister who hates him. And he's also a total dirtbag. But the fact that he doesn't have a wife means he can date.

We can see Duckman. We can see like it's not a family sitcom, but an animated sitcom where there could be the talk of relationships and things like that. Things the Simpsons never really get into because they can't. To go over the production history of The Duckman, this could have been a Fox show, which would have been awesome. But Fox was like, we'll order two episodes from you and we'll see what happens. USA was like, we'll do a full season. So they went to USA and that's where it stayed for four years. Well, and Peck said that he was just, it sounded like a real star is born type moment where

Gabor Chupo saw his Duckman design. I was like, that should be the next show. That should be it. Like it was just plucked out of the crowd. Like I'll make this the show. And so Everett went from being just a designer to an executive producer of the show, like as a writer and executive producer who oversaw the show with other writers. And the show was, according to Peck, treated pretty fairly by the network for the first two years.

And then after that, it dropped off the map. This series went on for four years and like 70 episodes. But when I bought the DVDs like eight years ago, the fourth season was completely new to me. It aired like on Monday at 3 a.m. on USA. I was just like, where did you even spend this money on? It didn't have that weird science buoy. No, those first two years have that weird science buoy to... No, those first two years were the weird science bump.

It's just like weird science and Duckman together on Saturday nights on USA. And I should tell you, if you were... It's symbolic. Knowing Duckman as well as I do is symbolic of who I was at the time. A loser who had nothing to do on Friday nights. 10 o'clock was my time to shine. Weird science and Duckman. Well, if you're 14, how could you be popular?

I'm a little older than you okay i had no excuse well though also the you need to also understand that the pre-internet time the usa up all night block was like that was your internet porn like that was if you were a young person discovering themselves you were probably masturbating to that not to all night uh censored trauma movies all night long basically best way to put it stewardess school on repeat pg blowjob scenes as far as the eye can see so you'd watch weird science which would have ton of pg-13 sex jokes then duck man which would constantly would have so many jokes of like well are we going to show a nipple this time i don't know and then then they just go into a straight up cinemax porn movie

except with the sex taken out of it yeah the sex replaced with commercials i have no idea how many times i sat there dick in hand like just just the idea that like well what's the movie gonna be it's just random yeah you don't even know you're never gonna know i mean it'll be terrible rest of these scenes oh firehouse boys this is gonna be. USA was not then what they are now. They were barely a network. In fact, they would make fun of USA on Duckman way more than

The Simpsons would make fun of Fox. There were jokes like, USA, are they on at night? And the jokes about how they would just air wings all day because they just had a lot of wings reruns. I was doing my best

to look up what USA's original programming block looked like around this time. Silk stockings? I don't know. It did. Silk stockings and eventually La Femme Nikita, which for a mild bit of sexiness meeting respectability.

But Red Shoe Diaries, a show that was with nudity that was on Showtime. But USA Network made its bones by being basically the first basic cable channel. So if you have cable, you have USA. But they didn't have a lot of original programming. The most notable one that I know of is when Airwolf got canceled by NBC. USA bought it but decided, you know, we can't afford a lot of helicopter shots.

Leave the helicopter behind. Bring Asner over. Thank God we have access to Ernest Borgnine. It's all archival footage from the original NBC seasons. No, they kill off Borgnine in the first USA episode. Okay. You can't afford him. And I just have to plug this.

This is an old episode of Cheap Popcast that Dave did once the WWE Network came out. If you don't know what that is. I've heard this one too. And WWE Network basically puts together warts and all every single uncut episode of WWF at the time, Raw. Yes, Monday Night Raw. Monday Night Raw, which has been on USA forever.

So this whole period, Jerry Lawler is wearing Duckman shirts. I'm like, these dudes are turning to Duckman! They're old news. They're passé. Duckman's a new generation of duck i say he's like the new wwf generation you know well he advertised everything like tech wars coming to usa but dave has a whole episode about just duckman promos on wrestling and they they talk to corn fed who uh calls into wwf i don't why. I'm sitting next to a ham, and I believe we have a ham on the line. Do we? Duckman Detective Agency, Duckman 8 here. This is Cornfed speaking.

Your time, your time. Go ahead. There you have it, ladies and gentlemen. Cornfed is going to be with us. We'll be right back with Cornfed and the matchup. For USA Network, Duckman and Weird science and up all night helped them find an identity but their first true hit was monday night raw in the in the late 90s when the bit when it was really taking off in 1998 nothing outdid raw on usa and so all they do not own all their other

shows would have you wwe guest stars they're like oh on this episode of the the bicycle cop show that had a mario lopez i know what you're talking about pacific blue pacific blue that's right on that they're like well in this episode well the woman on the team's going undercover uh into prison and sable's there wow it's all stuff i wouldn't know what they're airing on usa network i think snl did a sketch on like what is burn notice i know their shows have characters which they mention a lot just like move beyond burn notice or the medical the doctor one the like royal pains no i don't know this is also baffling i don't watch this channel all i know is psych and that's

all i know but it was the first cable, obviously, through Cartoon Express, and to a much lesser extent, Calliope. And they were the first network to hire Nickelodeon's Doug to do animated promos. Doug premiered in an animated promo on USA. I think Kolaski Chupo made the right choice of taking cable money to produce 13 episodes, because Fox would have absolutely canceled this. They would have never aired it. They also couldn't have done a lot of stuff just in this episode that they do they couldn't do on even nine o'clock or 9 30 on fox it was too racy for 94 fox that's another thing we should it's a really really mean show

it's really cynical but it's got a heart to it it's got it's got especially this episode is that why you chose this episode i do i did because people think of duck when they think of just a ranting crazy duck creature, but I feel like there is a world-weary Kurt Vonnegut sense of humanity beating at the heart of this show that desperately wants things to be better for everyone, but there's a sense of like, sometimes you just have

to give up because it's too much. Well, those are the best Duckman episodes, but other Duckman episodes are just like, no, Duckman is a heartless sociopath who would murder everyone in the world if he could have sex with this other woman you're not supposed to like i mean he's a fun character to watch but he's also like this is the bad guy like he has the worst morals henry has said it on numerous occasions like we could laugh at this eric cartman archie bunker s character but your dad like found a lot of my dad like value in duckman non-ironically

well that is you know we're going to talk about our histories with duckman and watching it ourselves i didn't really catch on until probably when the second season started airing or maybe in the reruns of the first season so later in 94 watching it every saturday night with my dad became kind of a thing we would watch it together and it was just something like me and my dad don't see eye to eye on a lot of things but we really enjoyed this show like he had kind of stopped watching the Simpsons at that point. Even I think too liberal. Well,

he definitely turned his back on King of the Hill after the first episode because he felt it was making fun of Republican. So when he watched document, was he like, he'll tell us what to do. I mean, I think he liked how debaucherous duck man was. And he probably saw like,

that's what a guy's guy is. Maybe that's what his feelings. He does fluctuate between an Archie bunker type and someone very relatable and sad. duck man was and he probably saw like that's what a guy's guy is maybe that's what his feeling he does fluctuate between an archie bunker type and someone very relatable and sad and this episode emphasizes that real well well i never peck i found an every ever peck named this as about face as one of his all-time favorites it's one of the saddest episodes of such a balls out weird funny comedy i've ever i've never seen an ending this sad. Yeah, I mean, that's why it's stuck in my memory.

Well, so how did you guys discover Duckman? I want to say, so I have a weird uncle, and he was weird then, too, who got me into a lot of cool stuff, like, I don't know, Mystery Science Theater and things like that, just letting me know about these things that existed that I didn't know about.

And one of them was, like, he was, like, really into the idea of Duckman, and I think space ghost interviewed duck man on some daytime emmy awards and uh lace awards something like that and then like he's like oh come in here you got to see this duck man thing and i was like okay cool this is before the premiere was sort of like space goes talking to duck man about his new show and that's and i was on board from like the first season onwards but like eventually it disappeared into like the the depths of usa like post midnight programming and then i eventually caught up with a lot of it when comedy central would air like at

2 a.m a much better time zone in like the early aughts and with the critic yeah i missed most of the final see i missed a lot of the final season i remember getting to watch the second half of the final episode and also not knowing it's the final episode and that's something too that i feel like can't happen to me anymore of just realizing unless it gets shockingly canceled ahead of time or they just decide to keep it a secret for some reason you know when the last episode of something you like yeah there will people will promote the last episode but it was such a weird thing to be watching this duck man and be like wait this is wrapping up everything like is this the last episode and then it ends on like a mean ass cliffhanger well

not a mean cliffhanger but a big cliffhanger that's meant to never be resolved honestly yeah and we can say what it is yeah it it is that it reveals his wife was somehow alive this entire time and the corn fed knew the entire time and then it ends on it to be continued but they they knew they weren't yeah ever peck said, I will not tell you what happens unless Duckman comes back and then we'll have to answer this question. But that'll never happen. It never will happen

and God, I wish it would. So to get into, I mean, we will start talking about the episode soon, but this is more Duckman info. I'm of the, I love talking about Duckman because it deserves more fans. It deserves to be seen.

It's really good. And it's all on YouTube. It's all on YouTube. And I want to say, these DVDs are in print and you can have all of Duckman for less than $70. Sorry, less than $60. And I say, go for it.

I mean, they're better on DVD, I think, anyways. I mean, you get the high-quality SD adaptation. And Everett Peck actually drew original covers for it. Yeah. It's pretty cool. It's strange. They're all on YouTube, but not all on the same channel, because a lot of people who went to the trouble of uploading everything in like duck man YouTube channel uh the first season is littered with Frank Zappa

music and I wasn't really able to understand what that deal involved because he's credited in the end of this episode of like special music from Frank Zappa and I don't I love unlike Henry I love Frank well I mean he was working on the show with Ever Peck until he died, I think. He was dying. He was dead by the time, as we know from the previous Talking Simpsons. I couldn't get my head around whether he was contributing new music or allowing access to the library. Because Frank Zappa wrote two million songs. I believe it was library access. Yeah.

And they also cast a Zappa on the show. Yeah, Dweezil Zappa. Let's talk about that cast. I want to go into the actual creators of the show first. The showrunners for all four seasons are Jeff Reno and Ron Osborn. You probably haven't heard their names a lot. I mean, so they started in the early 80s

just like working through the doldrums of sitcoms and stuff like Mork and Mindy. They worked on Night Court, which is an okay show. Those are the most sitcoms I like. I mean, Night Court is also horny just like Duckman, so I'm okay with it. they worked on moonlighting and their writing partners together they wrote meet joe black and the radio land murders so i love radio land murders yeah brian ben ben underrated these dudes uh wrote those movies worked on these tv shows i don't know

what they're doing now but they were the showrunners of duck man um but we can talk about the cast so number one jason alexander at the height of his Seinfeld fame Coming in and doing every episode of Duckman Just destroying his voice, no doubt I mean, Duckman is never not screaming It's incredible But long soliloquies Only now that I can hear

I can see where they might have stitched that take together But really, really long, shouty rants When I watched an interview with him He misremembered a couple things but he he said that when he auditioned for the role he thought it was going to be a one-off or just a quick cartoon voice and he says that had he known he'd be playing him for years he would not have used the voice he used yes it tears his voice apart and i feel like i mean i don't think duck man is a obviously i don't think it's a bad show but i feel like jason alexander is charity after the first two years. It's like, no one is watching Duckman. You're one of the most famous TV actors ever.

I would call George Costanza in the top three greatest television characters of all time. When I revisit Seinfeld, it's just like, George is number one. Like, George is all I want to see. Where's George? What's he doing? Like, Jason Alexander is a treasure. He's a meme machine for a reason. He is the hottest. He's one of the hottest stars on TV at the time. Like, Seinfeld is starting to explode. Yeah. It'll be even bigger by into the third season of Duckman. I think we're in about season five of Seinfeld. So, playing his angry sister-in-law, Bernice, as Nancy Travis.

We know her from Becker. And that's about all I know her from. So I married an axe murderer. Okay, yeah. And the amazing Tim Allen show that I loved a lot. She was the wife on the Tim Allen show. And I mean, I don't want to slag on her. Whenever I see her in things,

I'm like, she's a bad actor, but in Duckman, she's great. She's amazing. Like, she is great as Bernice. I think you can give that

to Nancy Travis got handed a lot of very bad roles in that too. Because women, like probably so I married in Axe Murder is one of her best

things she gets to do. It is because she gets to make jokes and be like a charming person rather than just the the object of affection, which is what she got cast as. Yeah. Like when she aged out of that. I haven't seen her.

I mean, like any actress in. Well, so how many like how many funny lines do you get when you're the doting wife? Seriously. And I felt like she was cast just to be like, this is supposed to be an old ass sitcom. This is supposed to feel like a 90s sitcom. So let's get another person that made people go, oh i remember her on a sitcom too but yeah but nancy travis is she has great chemistry with jason alexander too they work so well together i mean i don't know if they recorded together but it doesn't matter because you can just you feel the anger between them the the unquenchable anger uh so we have we mentioned mom on the oblongs too

is that uh no that was one of the ladies from designing women i forget we have was she the mom on the oblongs too is that no that was one of the ladies from designing women I forget who it was but so there's Dweezil Zappa playing Ajax the dullard son

you might know him as Chris from Family Guy because it's the same character man that's true and then we have Charles and Mambo

the conjoined twins and they're played by Dana Hill RIP she played Max on Goof Troop and a lot of other roles and E.G. Daly

who played Tommy Pickles and Pee Wee's girlfriend girlfriend in Pee-wee's Big Adventure. Dotty! Dotty. And Duckman's mother-in-law and grandma only communicates in farts because she's a Nokoma. We'll hear her at the beginning of this episode. In flashbacks, she's voiced by Nancy Travis, which is the thing on the show, too, that Nancy Travis voices every woman in that family. In flashbacks, she will voice Beatrice.

When they introduce a third, a triplet. Beverly. Beverly, she voices her. And in the flashback where of the funky duck band. Yes. Then she also does the voice of Grandma Ma. I think that entire episode is a Bridges of Madison County parody. Oh my God.

How he meets Beatrice. I didn't write that down, but that's number one on the bestseller list right now. Oh yeah, for sure. It has to be. Another, just a straight up voice actor, Greg Berger plays Cornfett, a fantastic parody of Jack Webb

from Dragnet. And he plays off Duckman so great. One of the greatest animated characters of the fucking decade. Yeah, he's just so understated in everything. He's so funny. Rewatching this,

rewatching episodes, he is now my favorite character. And Greg Bergerger i think is most famous to people our age as he was grimlock on transformers me grimlock really okay and he was orson the pig on us acres the less funny part of darfield why he played two famous pigs yeah and. I'll send up for you a Saker's. I remember walking by him at a convention. He was at a table. I was like, man, I want to say hi, but I don't want to give him 20 bucks for a signature. I feel like I'm going to get stuck into that. I love Corn Fed so much.

I give him 50 for a Corn Fed voice. He is the understated heart of this series. Yeah. And Greg Berger is still at it. If Grimlock appears in any Transformers game, he is still Grimlock. I will be the retarded dinosaur. I can do this. Cornfoot is often the moral compass for Duckman when he needs one.

And I think, like I heard on a Simpsons commentary, Greg Berger for Sideshow Bob episodes when they're doing table reads. Because Kelsey Grammer is a busy guy. He can't just show up at a table read. There were a ton of, like, great guest stars and recurring ones. Eddie Deven. Eddie Deven. Eddie Deven, I'm on the show. Ben Stein, before we knew about him and recurring ones. Eddie Deven. Eddie Deven. Eddie Deven, I'm on the show. Ben Stein, before we knew about him and his problems.

An animated version of himself. He played a character named Ben Stein. It's insane. And that was Duckman's neighbor, Ben Stein. People like Gilbert Gottfried. And the greatest is Tim Curry. Yes, yes, as King Chicken. So the King Chicken episode, he was King Chicken.

He was Moriarty, Duckman's Moriarty, who was is much smarter and better than duckman but was somehow beaten by him every time but the best thing was that in every king chicken episode it was a mystery that he was pretending to be somebody in his life who would then be unmasked to be king chicken yeah but tim curry was voicing the character the entire episode and so if you were if you were a super fan you'd be like wait that's tim curry's voice yeah oh it's a king chicken episode i mean he's talented but he can hide that british accent so much tim curry's the greatest i love him so much please never die tim curry get that only get better and his performance is so great but i think it's time to talk about the episode about face we just want to give you some duckman history it's been half an hour oh

let's start off as duckman plays Monopoly with Grandmama. Oh! Unlucky Seven, Dame Fortune. She's a cruel mistress. Let's see. This is your piece, I do believe, and you must move. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven spaces, which lands you smack dab in the middle of my rainforest logging company.

Which brings the grand total you now owe me to $164,552.17. What the heck? Let's round it up to an even $200. What's that you say? I couldn't pay that back if we played 100 games? Oh, my goodness. What to do?

What to do? Wait a minute. A simple X on the dotted line changing a few irrelevant clauses in your will dealing with... Oh, Duckman. You weren't trying to worm your way back into that will, were you understand how great the foley is on Duckman. Watching it again, like every webbed footstep is captured.

Things are making a lot of noise in the background. When Duckman's in his office, you can hear like cars honking and people on the street and things like that. That's really good. You know, I didn't even notice that now it's all hearing footsteps of the simpsons yeah i mean claskey chupo made things a little too noisy for the simpsons but i feel like with the chaos of duck man it works really well what's allowed it is a loud intense show yeah it is a bombastic production and we did you did you were right to call me out on the laser time farts episode oh that is not grandma's f fart that I used from the pilot.

The one you used originally, that's her consistent fart. Yes, like the lower pitch, more emotional farting. And so the opening is so Rugrats as well, or it's just really the Klasky Chupo opening of a close-up. A close-up on something that will disorient you at the start, and then you're like, oh, that's what that was. Yeah, and I say it's it's uh it's not as uh well animated as the simpsons in terms of budget but i think it's it takes more creative risks like this episode opens on a city but then it shows you it's actually monopoly city because the dice hit like buildings and stuff like that

so no it is a darker 90s monopoly just like the rainforest logging company logging company it's a gray shitty world and that's the world the duck man lives in is a sad destroyed dystopia of basically la i don't think they ever really say it's la but it is it's definitely yeah it's like writers living in la and hating it and you know like i i went back to the show uh thinking like this is going to be a little more right-leaning than remember. But it really isn't. And we learn from Charles and Mambo's contest they're entering just where Duckman stands on the corporatization of America. You want to see our project for the corporate theme science fair? Our master cigarettes, vein burster beer and splat go handguns are sponsoring a category called alcohol, tobacco and firearms.

Other things kill people, too. Hence the Titanic. One thousand five hundred three non--smoking non-drinking non-gunshot deaths i thought this kind of blood-sucking corporate greed and hypocrisy makes you boys sick true but there's a cash prize so there you have it and it is a bit funny i watched this in 2017 eyes it's just like i i kind of idealized the 90s i realized they had problems but i'm like duck man the show you're a little naive about how bad things are because at this point corporations aren't people yet yeah there's there's still fallible organizations they aren't legally people in

america they don't own as much stuff as they do and there's way more corporations because they haven't all merged yet yeah but the spirit of it is still there of just like a corporation the schools are failing so a corporation is paying to basically for basically propaganda in school for the children to make things that kill more people than alcohol tobacco and firearms yeah and and i had the same feeling when thinking about duck man and like is this a is this the republican show but now i watch it and it's like no this is me as a teenager it hates everything yes everything is lame and stupid and boring and has a flaw it's secretly shitty yeah it's both sides in that way just like

i like fuck everything yeah everything sucks it's a very punk rock feel yeah there was a certain moment like well ajax reminds me a lot of the young ones which to me is the most punk rock comedy thing i can imagine he he breaks everything just by moving around yeah just with a very deadpan expression on his face yeah i just like how incidental bernice's violence to duckman just is now she's like i'm just gonna kick you in the face yes i i think in season one there's even an episode where they i will admit i am not i don't have the encyclopedic knowledge of duckman i have of the simpsons same here yeah but there's in season one there's finally episode where they're just like or maybe season two where it's like you know what fuck this we are fighting like this is going to be

the big duckman bernice that's true yeah i mean like long before peter hit lois what they don't have on the show is matt geraning who did not want the simpsons to be cartoony duckman kind of indulges in like duck, Duckman can get smashed. He can do wild takes. He can just get injured. Well, Duckman walks around naked all the time, like Donald Duck's bottomlessness. And so only for jokes do they occasionally point out, like, yeah, I'm nude. But otherwise, that's just Duckman.

He's a cartoon character in a world full of humans, but also human-ish animal people. Yeah, like weird dog ladies and things like that. I mean, no human in this world looks good. Even the sexy women are drawn to be like Klasky Chupo sexy, which is not very sexy. And I like the early hint at Duckman's loneliness because he's like, even though he hates Bernice and she hates him, just the idea that he'd be invited to the movies with her, he perks up like, oh, I could go? He is excited. I guess she was going to have him drive the car around because parking is bad.

But her friends, who are very, very butch lesbians, show up to pick her up. They're lifting weights in the back of the bed of the truck. I mean, it's 94. So that was something they didn't hit on as often as I thought with Bernice. But that definitely was. Bernice is a very aggressive woman with a tight haircut who is health obsessed and also it's more of a joke in the pilot of like her her not letting duck man eat real food yeah as in it's all just like wheat germ and whatever the health fads were at the time

so her exercisiness and man hating would definitely is is an easy way to do lesbian butch jokes i feel like that was a much more prevalent stereotype in this time like if you hate men you're obviously a lesbian or you're a lesbian because you hate men though there's only one episode where she thinks she's a lesbian which is when right most most women don't even get that so quick version is the king chicken is undercover to try to as a woman to try to get Duckman to sexually harass him, which he doesn't, which everyone's shocked by. And then meanwhile, Bernice is falling in love with this woman, and she's very troubled by that. I do remember this now.

It's revealed at the end that it's King Chicken. She's like, you mean this whole time I've been in love with this horrible monster of a man? She's very relieved about that. So up next, I have this clip where it sort of, if you've never seen Duckman before, it really kind of underlines just how fast-paced the dialogue is between all the characters. That whole thing was so fast there. Yeah. I mean, these scripts must be like 60 pages long, and they squeeze into 20 minutes.

When we talk about older media, I say the only difference in most modern media and older media is pacing. Every 10 years the pacing gets faster, but Duckman is still faster. It feels like it's made for diseased millennial minds. And here is Bernice giving her babysitting demands to Duckman. Make sure the kids eat a balanced dinner, Duckman.

Don't just order them some fatty cholesterol soaked pizza, then fall asleep on the couch watching the string bikini volleyball channel, allowing the three of them weights in the back of the truck. Good foley right there. Yeah, and that was so fast. I wonder how many takes they were with all of them. Just like, no, faster, faster. You can hear Nancy being out of breath.

I just love how stylized the dialogue is. Just like characters would never speak like this, but it just underlines every element of Duckman. No human would say that. No normal person would say it. And then it cuts to the exact thing she described of Ajax walking around with a mask on. Yeah, and they're playing like quote-unquote spooky Arab music.

He is watching the String Bikini Challenge. Again, that felt like a sideways knock at USA. Just like, yeah, you just show bikini movies at night. So sad men like Duckman can jerk off to it and fall asleep. And I got a good chuckle on second viewing noticing that it is literally, the brand is Fat and Cholesterol Soaked Pizza. See, Bernice didn't know it's actually carbs that are bad for you. She's on that 94 anti-fat and cholesterol kick. Trans fats, duck man.

I mean, the carbs of pizza aren't great either. So at this point, Charles and Mambo, so they're still at home, and Charles and Mambo, the controlling twins, are arguing with each other whether it should be the Titanic or the Lusitania when Mambo gets the model of the ship caught in his throat in a scuffle, and duck man has to call 911. Ships.

Under your dory lollipop minnow Poseidon. Here we are, Titanic. Can you get a hold of some ice? Ice, got it. Now what? Pour the ice into his throat, making sure to hit the starboard bow of the hull below the waterline. Iceberg, Dead ahead! So the ship breaks in half in Mambo's throat

and just sort of falls down into his digestive tract. It's cute that he had to sink the Titanic in his throat. It's a cute little joke. Also impressive that they did it three years before Titanic craze took over

America. I know everybody associates the Titanic with one of the biggest films of all time and a love story and hearts going on, but that wasn't what Titanic meant in 1994. I mean, was that iceberg right ahead? Was that like a line people knew? Because Duckman says it before the movie. I mean, it was definitely famous

that an iceberg would hit it. But that that that actual like choice of expression feels like pretty yeah it seems like a reference to the james cameron yeah and the difference is the lusitania was sunk by germans in world war one maine 1915 killing 1198 civilians it was not a warship though the germans saw it as as as a ship bringing supplies to london their enemy the germans have had i just had to get one negative comment was that more than the titanic then no the titanic had 1575 so mambo is correct that getting the is correct that using the someone re-watching a lot of duck man in my spare time while i play with my marijuana card um you got to use it to buy marijuana, Chris. I know.

They don't normally acknowledge the conjoined twin status of one another, but it is funny that one of the twins is about to die and leaving a dead... Unless you want a dead head sitting next to me for the rest of my life. I did like that. One thing that is the most dated in this episode is pulling a book off a shelf to find an answer to something. They would have a much better database now at 911. They would just Google what you're supposed to do. Yeah.

I'm Duckman, someone you never heard of doing a show you've never seen on a night you're never home. Why the hell am I spending money on a commercial? You're not paying. USA is paying. And a fine network it is. Boneheads. Duckman, Saturday nights at 1030, 930 Central on USA. Thank you guys so much for listening, and if you like listening and stuff, it's a good thing this episode is brought to you by Audible. And before I tell you more about it, know that you can go to audibletrial.com slash lasertime

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slash Lazer Time Here's a taste of what you've been missing The day the show came out Well Dave didn't volunteer his time for his country

No, no Brett and I went to work at the food bank with Chuck They can't have their own damn vegetables The day the show came out, well, Dave didn't volunteer his time for his country. No, no. Brett and I went to work at the food bank with Chuck. They can't have their own damn vegetables. Yeah, last week with Grim and Charlie. Yeah. Went to a food bank and packed frozen corn into bags for three hours. We did. And then they're like, who do you think all this food goes to?

Of course, I don't fucking answer because I know he's setting me up for a wrong answer. You guys should have been able to tell in this week's Laser Time. But actually, 15% of our food goes to the homeless. I'm like, what? All right, please fill us in on where it goes. The rest goes to people who have too many homes. Not enough corn to put in all those homes. It was sort of eye-opening.

It goes to, because I forgot about Meals on Wheels, the kind of thing like, Not enough corn to put in all those homes. It was sort of eye-opening. I forgot about Meals on Wheels. The kind of thing like get food to people who can't leave their homes. Do you know anybody in this city who works, pays their rent, pays their bills, and has zero money left for food? That's also who we deliver food to. Which heartened me.

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again so Duckman falls in love with the 9-11 operator's voice. It's so angelic. And he has to tell Cornfett, his partner at the detective agency he works at, just what's happening with his love. An angel, Cornfett. One phone call and I was swept away. She is everything I ever hoped for in a woman.

Low standards. I'm keeping my fingers crossed. It was incredible, Corny. The way she made me feel things as I listened to her. Excuse me if this is going to get sordid. Emotions, okay? I found emotions. The kind I never feel anymore.

And it's all because of a voice. That sweet, willowy reed of a voice. I want to do things with her, Corny. Fun things. Exciting things. I want to paint her living room. I want to go to the tar pits. I want to surf.

The problem, though, is Duckman can't figure out who the operator is because apparently an escaped serial killer has been following 911 operators home and killing them. And so Duckman can't find out who this person was. I love that line so much because it implies horrible, horrible things are happening in his city, but he doesn't even care. And then the way Cornfed reacts to another concerned citizen stopping you from doing this, overly worried people.

The nanny state again. All part of the needless cruelty that permeates throughout Duckman. Yes. Just in the background. Just like the background radiation is just nastiness and anarchy. Well, Angela is voiced by Lolita Davidovich, and she'd later appear in an episode of Curb Your Enthus your enthusiasm which is a michael uh jason alexander adjacent show so it's in the greater alexander verse

so uh two characters we didn't name are fluffy and uranus who are sort of like the itchy and scratchy of duckman in which so they are like the fluffy like super cutesy super teddy bearish creations that are duckman's receptionist one is blue one is pink and the the main appeal of them is they can be killed in many ways they're kind of like immortal creatures they can just destroy before kenny duckman killed his receptionist every single i constantly yeah i love it i i love it so much oh by the way the line is one more overly cautious reactionary in a position of authority. I was so happy that this was the episode because one of my favorite gags was seeing Fluffy and Uranus

torn apart in different ways or murdered in different ways each episode. And this has an entire montage of it set to Love American style in the real song. So let's hear Duckman start his murder spree with Fluffy and Uranus. So he's trying to kill them in different spree with Fluffy and Uranus. So he's trying to kill them in different ways so he has a reason to call 911. Because it would be illegal to fake a call. So he has to do horrible things to them. As if Duckman is better than that.

But let's hear him get this idea. Well, season one Duckman's better than that. That's true. Too bad it's against the law to make dozens of 911 calls till you find her if you're not actually reporting a real emergency. Hmm. Fluffy! Uranus! What can we do for you, Mr. Duckman?

An impersonation. Of what? Drowning victims. Help! My son's fell in the pool! They're going under! Okay, stay calm. Is there a rope you can throw him?

Do you have a cold? No. Forget it, they gotta learn to swim sometimes. Again, I love just the heavy phone slamming down, and he's drowning them in the water cooler. The water cooler. Yeah, and then he just tears them apart over and over again in a great montage. At first, I wondered, like, hey, Charles Amambo

should be forever thankful to Duckman for saving one of their lives, but then I can understand why they hate him again in the episode when he tries to make them choke again yeah so it's all part of a montage like the simpsons they use the love american style song which i'm not sure if that's on the dvds or not they did take some of the licensed music out of it on youtube it's the original yeah it's definitely there but uh he kills them with electric fence they're run over by a semi they're killed with a circular saw and then chased by hungry dogs.

And as Henry said, Duckman tries to serve them a model ship, Charles and Mambo, to get them to choke again. He sprinkled some spaghetti on top of it. Just the way they glared at him, he's like, I can't blame a guy for trying. So Duckman's at the end of his rope, and I love how Ajax enters this scene. He just throws a garbage can through the windows like, hi, Dodd. Just with a dead look on his face. I love Ajax. And the Duckman's ready to throw his life away by smoking again, which is a good setup.

Him smoking is a payoff in this episode. It really is. Yeah. It's him giving up hope and just going like, I should smoke. And also that he says he admits like, well if i smoke i'm both going to kill myself and i won't be politically correct anymore so duckman's willing to just do this out of spite for the world and it's important to note that he throws the match and then it starts lighting the living room on fire around him so as this conversation happens we're going to hear uh

duckman's house just like be enveloped in flame so this is a long clip but i think it's worth it you know a lot of people don't keep their heads in an emergency oh it was your voice it made me feel like well like everything would be okay well the reason i called is i'm new here and and your sons was the first life i've ever helped save i just wanted to follow up i never want to forget there are real people on the other end of the phone. Wow. What? Nothing, nothing. I was just glancing down at my bicep.

At the risk of sounding like a pimple-faced schoolboy, I was wondering... Sorry, I'm not very good at this. I was wondering if, well, you'd like to have dinner with me tonight. Dinner? You only have to buy your half. Just think of it as a way to say thanks for saving my son's life. Well, you sound nice.

Okay, I'll do it. You will? There's a little Japanese restaurant on 3rd Street. Do you know it? Yeah, I think so. Just down from Vic's Fleshpot and G-String. I'll find it. I'll find it. Shall we say half an hour? Half an hour it is. She said yes!

This little ducky has a date! Oh, happy day! Galoo! Galay! I'm going out with Angela! I have to underline just the visual splendor of Duckman's living room slowly catching on fire. There's one point where the couch starts burning at both ends before it can reach him he stands up and starts walking some other place well i like how ajax duck man doesn't notice but ajax definitely does notice but he's not concerned no he's not it's just a dead look on his face he just will take one step away he's like

well just one step over so not burn he at least has the smarts to know that he doesn't want to be on fire but and i think like the people writing the show the smarts to know that he doesn't want to be on fire but and i think like the people writing the show are smart enough to know like this is a cartoon we can't have this dialogue heavy scene just go on with nothing cartoony happening so meet cute yeah it's a sweet one but they have to have this conversation but something visually interesting if you're juxtaposing it with the simpsons they wouldn't have had a dialogue sequence this long. No, I don't think they would. And it's funny, like if you watch Duckman, it is a very also as cartoony as it gets, it also is very

grounded. Like an entire act will just take place in the home, in their home before moving on to act two. Like they're not afraid to sit inside the house for an entire act with all this stuff happening inside of it. Well, I wonder too if that's also a budget thing that they're like, we can't go to too many new places. That could be it too. I've watched a lot of the show. there's not a lot of reused shit like even the paintings

sometimes are different in the house yeah it's true it's i mean they there's some wild the klutzky chupo really went out of their way to get crazy on this like i think that's another sign of the removal of matt graining from the process. The back raining is very much like, no, the house always looks like these people are too big. Yeah. These tears don't go that way in this show. They're just like, forget it.

I can't prove this happens all the time, but there's an establishing shot of the house, which is like, but up against a freeway ramp. Yeah. It's like, yeah. Disturbing discussing the lawn is dead.

The sprinklers constantly going. And like the, after this, there's always construction workers working, meaning that it's a different shot every time. It doesn't look like this in other episodes. Just like in L.A., construction never stops. Yeah. And as wacky as it gets, I think the layout of the Duckman house stays the same all throughout.

I think so. Yeah. Well, the design of that underpass, I'm glad you brought that up, Chris. It very much is. They designed the L.A. of like the Rodney King trial. Oh, for sure. The L.A. rights like Ajax smashing the window with a trash can. I feel like in a world where the L.A. rights didn't happen, that wouldn't have been the joke.

Let's do the right thing. Slash L.A. slash recent history. Yeah. And so, again, one of those things that feels ripped from the headlines type moment on the show. And we should mention that um angela called duckman back to check up on the people she saved so she's a very nice person so they go to benny ha ha's where it's okay to laugh at old stereotypes i have this image on my ipad from a year ago so i thought it was so funny and i was surprised oh go ahead chris it's just that it's called it's a

parody of benny honda's called benny ha ha's where it's okay to laugh at old stereotypes yeah that it's acknowledging we're aware of what we're doing yeah but they actually don't do any stereotypes of like asian or uh there's one in there i heard maybe one a like japanese accent yeah they could have it could have gotten much worse in terms of what was acceptable i was ready for like holy shit yeah have like a samurai show up here or something that's the beauty of duck man it both acknowledges what it's doing and then does it yeah yeah i well i also did like that there was a quick joke about that mambo is shitting out a the titanic too they did he had to pass like the chimney stack or whatever like i like that joke but so he's going to benihana's i've never been to a benihana i have been to a japanese steak place it's basically one

of those things where they like make the onion volcano it's like a show and dinner at the same time i mean it's cool to watch them like you know just chop up steak and cook it in front of you and just be like oh this is nice i mean it's not cheap steak but uh it is not i won't eat uh steak and it's been it's been prepared by someone i'm positive caught an egg in their head that's that's important. Oh man, you mentioned the egg catching thing. That's always vital to the Benihana experience. There is a Benihana relatively near in Japan Town.

Yeah, which is very strange. Why would you go there? Whenever I've gone to Japan Town, I'm like, why would I go to Benihana's chain place when I want more authentic Japanese? Well, I guess if you're taking your parents to Japan Town and they wanted something safer, they could go to Benihana and they'd all be fine. They need a good P.F. Chang's.

So, Duckman meets Angela at Benihana's, but he finds out that she is monstrously ugly. And in a very smart move, they don't actually show you a lot of her face. You see a little bit of her in her compact mirror, but you really don't know what ugly Angela looks like, which is a smart move. Well, the reactions are so cartoonish in this yes and the descriptions too that there is no way especially in the design of the show to make her look as ugly as being described to you that's true there's no way to do it so nothing they could show you could match what your imagination has again watching i was watching this with my girlfriend and Duckman is an ugly character but he's also in a very ugly world

and that everybody here is so cruel and reacts so mean to his ugly girlfriend and there's nothing they could have shown you that would have merited the reaction

from the entire universe to Angelo. Well, the attractive characters even have hideous faces. It's true. You just know they're supposed to be read as attractive usually because of their bodies are also good looking.

Either it's a dude with big muscles or a woman with giant boobs. Like, that's how you're supposed to read them as attractive. Yeah. So that's why you need the characters to tell you so much like, no, Angela is definitely ugly. And Duckman is a very shallow guy. He really is. But we learn in this episode that maybe he's not. Like, he has to look below the surface of the tank.

It's the least yelly Jason Alexander is as Duckman. Yeah, I mean. Because he's sweet most of the episode. I chose this episode in part because it's like the full range of Alexander in this episode. He can be very sweet as Duckman, too. So, yeah. To read into, like, knowing about. For some reason reason I was watching

a Seinfeld documentary recently. Like Jason, he didn't want to do comedy. He's an actor. But in a really, really, really, really,

really, really good one. Yeah. Who he wouldn't have heard of, we wouldn't have heard of probably because of the way he looks, if not for Seinfeld. Yeah.

And to me, that's what Duckman really showcases. He doesn't get to play a lot of range as George Costanza, but gets a lot of range as Duckman. He really does. Yeah, George never really turns the anxiety down past like 11, but Duckman can occasionally. You're right. Yeah, he is, thanks to a weird Bob Vila scene, he's able to realize like, no, I have to give this a chance.

She may be ugly, but I just have to, I got to tough it out. I can't leave her waiting. And you do feel so sad for her when she's like waiting for him there. It's a cruel thing to do to her. Especially as an act break. Ah, ugly! For as many jokes as there are at Angela's expense as her ugliness, I feel like there's also a lot of compassion for her. And she knows what she looks like and she understands her place in the world and why it's not fair.

But Duckman saves the date with the Date Saver 2000, which shuts off the power in the restaurant. Alright! I'm gonna do this! Look past the obvious. Have the common decency to sit down and appreciate her for who she really is.

Are you Duckman? I'm a sucker for ambiance. So what I love about this scene, it is this. So Duckman is very much of the David Merkin style of humor where it's like, screw the audience. Let's be as edgy and cynical as possible. And the rest of the scene plays out in complete darkness. There's like two minutes of darkness. You can see the exit sign.

105 seconds. 105. Wow. There's like two minutes of darkness. You can see the exit sign. 105 seconds. So close to two minutes. That is a real budget saver for a show on basic cable. It really is. It's not something they did a lot. It was just for the situation. No, but I feel like it was just like a fuck you, you're seeing darkness. But they also keep an exit sign in the background. I think just if you're tuning

into Duckmeat, like my TV's broken or something. I feel like that was a necessary thing by the network. Like you must have some animation on the screen. I mean, it's smart too, just to have like my tv's broken or something i feel like that was a necessary thing by the network like you must have some animation on the screen i mean it's smart to just have like there's got to be a drawing on here and the writing compensates i love that there's a clear spit take yeah and dialogues who reflect there's been a drink bleach oh she's drinking bleach that he had asked for it's actually drano so he gets a white wine in a drano in case the lights come back on and uh the rest of the scene is played straight except people are being mutilated

in the darkness like people are being chopped apart by the Benihana chefs Duckman and Angela are being straight but everybody else is like being murdered by chefs in the back like my head! throw it back! and I love the Duckman line in Capture the Club

he says I always kind of take a small truth and embellish it into well a huge lie yes i love that it is a very human moment of duck man like this is you get a full range of duck man in this episode it's still very funny like it's not just it's not just a bunch of like lovey-dovey emotions or whatever yeah yeah he's still a bit of the true duck man still leaks out. So Angela and Duckman are going to go on a second date, and Duckman arrives at the detective office, but Cornfed knows something is up. Ah!

Hmm. You're dating an ugly woman, aren't you? How'd you know? I've fished out of that pond a few times myself. Dinners in the basement, twofers at the planetarium, weekends in the darkroom developing the pictures you took

in the basement in the planetarium. I know this sounds corny, corny, but Angela brings out the best in me. You know what I mean? Not exactly, no. We've been dating for three weeks now, and I don't belch around her. I don't scratch hard-to-reach body crevices. I don't

tell incredibly tasteless jokes. Except for the ones about hermaphrodites. I love those. I think I'm in love! Duckman is still Duckman. Again, if you listen to the background of that clip, you can hear the traffic outside, like the chair moving around. It's so great. I love corn feds.

I fished out of that pocket. Yeah. It's a plot device you'll literally never see again. No, I don't think we can do this anymore. No, but, well, also, even Fluffy and Uranus, who represent PC culture, like, even they can't be nice about how ugly she is. They run screaming from the room. I'm surprised they didn't, like, kill themselves, like jump into a paper shredder or something. I mean, that does show you how much the show, like, the show was very anti-political correctness for its time.

And that was always represented in Fluffy and Uranus, who would be murdered by him. And they would say things like, Mr. Duck man. Yeah. Almost does this in the workplace. Now it was kind of like a March, little March Simpsons running around in a bit. The way they talk.

Yeah. Better. Like, or like studio notes. We're acknowledging this is wrong. I definitely, I mean, Uranus is existence.

I absolutely think a few times they probably said things. A sensor told them to say, all right, but that's the show getting its way like again i'm not i am not damning this show for being mean to pc culture it was in i'll also say in 1994 it was a lot fresher thing to make fun of than it is in fucking 2017 really is yeah like that's some hack shit if you're still making fun of the pc police man so duckman's in love with angela but he can't really get over her looks.

But Cornfen proposes an idea that will help both of them. I love that he says that he's in love with her so much, but he's like, well, she's kind, compassionate, caring, and I can talk to her for hours. But how long can that stay at the same? So Duckman is really just used to masturbating, I think. It's just like, what's beyond the superficial world? And that's one reason I think Duckman can't exist in the modern world like if duckman existed in the world with internet porn he would never leave the house yeah his well there's so many jokes in multiple episodes of

his porn collection yeah and all the ways he goes to a strip club or he gets or he he buys more porn somewhere dolls and then now it's just like well he'd just be like watching cam girls and then going to porn hub and just jumping between those things and never leave his computer that would be a great like limited animation series just duck man in front of his computer that's how you could bring it back for a new season he just never leaves so corn fed has an idea that will help duck man through his dilemma you see even they think so the woman shatters mirrors but there must be more to her than her looks oh sure she's smart sensitive cheerful-provoking, and loaded with empathy and insight.

But how long can that stay interesting? Duckman, you obviously have strong feelings for her. You should face your fears. Take her out on a real date. Dancing, romantic music, soft lights. How soft? They'd be on. Forget it.

What if I came with you? I'll rustle up a filly of my own and we'll prove to you that you don't have to be ashamed to be seen with her. Okay, Corny. You're're right let's do it so yeah they are going to go on a double date to swanks a very upscale restaurant uh corn fed always dates the hottest girl corn fed gets some tail although later we find out he's a virgin and duckman like that's right duckman makes duckman laughs for like two minutes at it and that's a great scene in the show that is great i forgot he's a virgin that really doesn't work with this episode and no but i mean i think it makes sense by the time they get to it it's like no we never actually saw corn fed fuck i guess not yeah i

guess he just wanted female companionship but i have a friend like that yeah and the only reason he has sex when he finally loses virginity is because he will die if he doesn't. That's right. Yeah, he's very Klingon-like, I guess. Yeah, it was his... Vulcan. Oh, Vulcan, yeah. Pon Far. Pon Far. That's it.

The Pon Far. He has to have sex. But he... See, I got the skills. I got Star Trek skills. Pon Far happens every morning. So he has sex with Bernice. That's right.

That's a great episode. And the sounds of them having sex off screen it was pretty great talk about foley i've said it on a bunch of laser time shows the first clear reference to jerking off i heard in duck man oh yes when he's staying with fluffy and uranus and the bed starts shaking and they hold each other afraid and then he stops and then starts shaking again it is revealed he's using a thigh master though. So they can get away with it. But that's actually the same. But nobody was talking about that at that time.

No, it's actually the same episode where Bernice falls in love with King Chicken. Oh, that's why Duckman has to move out. Yes, yeah. But the- Really good show people. But there's some subtle acting I really like when they arrive there on their double date

that Corn Fed's date, Trudy, and Corn Fed both can't look at Angela in the face, but they're being nice about it but they're just like yeah now that you're right it's very subtle for those characters you don't think of subtle animation when you think of duck man but they really don't they pulled it off there which is crazy because they're being surrounded by tex avery level or peppy lepew cartoon level reactions like i'm glad you said that because i wrote down tex avery like A very Ray Charles-esque Blind man is playing The piano

And his dog sees Angela And jumps into the piano And pulls in the Ray Charles guy Like everyone is doing Wild tics to Angela's Appearance And I love them

Dancing in silence Yeah Where I was like There's no music Like then we'll just Dance in silence Yeah It's like okay

It's very cute And like So I feel like They're playing up This high comp This like Kind of wacky comedy To make it seem Less mean spir feel like they're playing up this high comp, this kind of wacky comedy to make it seem less mean-spirited, that they're making fun of a woman's appearance.

It's kind of cartoon wacky. She is outlandishly ugly in a way that cannot be depicted with drawings. That's what made me think of Looney Tunes, because it's a perfect Chuck Jones premise. Oh, man! But it only becomes more real when someone just directly insults her to her face, which actually didn't happen. Everyone's being nice around her. Well, they're not being nice in their reactions, but nobody's saying, you're ugly. Yeah.

Everybody's trying to save her feelings. And that's the melancholy of realizing she is noticing all of this the whole time. How do you not live with that face and not realize how the world reacts to you? She's aware of who she is. And we hear this happen. This kind of come to a head at this restaurant. A rose for the lovely lady. Whoa.

Or maybe a cube of sugar, huh? Nobody insults my girlfriend. Wait a minute. Where are you going? Duck man, I've had a lot of years to get used to the fact that I was born with colorful features. But you haven't. I hate to see the look on your face when you see the looks on everyone else's. And I think it's time I did something about it.

If it doesn't work, you'll never have to see me again. It's a really sweet moment right before that where duck man can finally look her in the face and he sees her like i just love you i don't yeah i just see a woman i love yeah but that's what every woman's had to deal with dating me but it's also what ruins it for it what's hurt it's it's already the new problem in their relationship of just like he can look her in the face but now he's even more invested and can't take anyone calling her ugly yeah and there's like there's he can look her in the face, but now he's even more invested and can't take anyone calling her ugly. Yeah, and there's like... And he can't...

You just... Even if it's a cartoon world, people treat it as like as you would in real life. If someone punched someone in a bar or at a party, you'd be like, holy shit. In later Duckman episodes, that kind of violence would just be... It'd be kind of laughed off. Yeah, and there's a very sad and cute cute line where um everyone just flees from angela's face and she says i feel like we're all alone out here and duckman's like yeah me too because everyone is just gone well i i like that she's she's not well it's a tough thing she's she is changing her looks for duck

man's benefit but it is it is to save their relationship which she is invested in yeah it's but i mean there is you could take the stance of a woman shouldn't change her looks for a man that she should be happy with the looks but she is happy with her looks but she loves duck man yeah and if everyone is reacting to you like uh with tex avery style freakouts you'll be like maybe my life would be better if i fixed a few things it turns a really cartoonish situation very complicated yeah yeah there's a lot to talk about i think i mean it's not nice to be it's not nice Maybe my life would be better if I fixed a few things. It turns a really cartoonish situation very complicated. Yeah, yeah. There's a lot to talk about, I think.

I mean, it's not nice to be mean to somebody who you think looks ugly. Like, you just shouldn't do that. Yeah, but the idea that she's aware and she's coping with what she looks like and who she is. And she lives a happy life as an unmanaged woman. And has forever. And is free to meet people. But is now affecting someone she might care about. Yeah. And it's not for Duckman, but it is now affecting someone she might care about.

It's not for Duckman, but it's about Duckman. It is about. It was spurred on by Duckman, and it's a choice she could have made at any time because they kind of walk around it like, I'm skipping ahead, but she doesn't exactly get a facelift, but she kind of does. She still has a rocking figure for a duck.

That's a duck ad for her. I'm on the Angel. She's my waifu now. But anyway, she gets it completely different. I hung it on my pillow. But that was a pretty good act break of her just leaving. Yeah. And for as much as Duckman is like a total sleaze, like Duckman is not superficial in this case.

He's like, I love this woman for who she is. I don't care what she looks like, and I will attack anyone who insults her. It's very, very not... I mean, Duckman likes to talk big, but he's really just a sweetheart, you know? Just like all of Harlem. They all are sweethearts. I mean, Duckman's an idealized scumbag,

so he's written unlike real scumbags. This is just one episode, by the way. The rest of the time, Duckman is a total scumbag. I mean, he does show his sweet side and and i think they want to uh kind of keep that part of his character and make him somewhat redeemable there's another episode where the entire town gets stuck underground and and he then destroys the rest of the city while thinking he and a mute girl are the only ones left that's right entire town comes back up like you've destroyed the town and they're all out

to murder Duckman. That's another good one. Maybe we'll get to it in some time. So Act 3 opens with the house being repaired, which is a great, which is like a great visual gag.

Like that, the living room burned down when Angela called Duckman. Act 3 begins with people, with Bernice like wallpapering the living room, people putting in a new window. Like they're,

they're following up on that visual gag of the house burning down around Duckman. So Duckman's going to introduce Angela to the family, and she's been gone for a while. What's the occasion for this olfactory outrage, Dad? It so happens I have a date, and she'll be here any minute. What does she look like? Must you be so shallow as to focus on looks like society, some kind of pageant,

and we're all judged on a meaningless detail like appearance. Gargoyle. Okay, she's the bell ringer at Notre Dame. I don't care. She's mine and I love her no matter what she looks like. Truth is, I don't know what she looks like. I haven't seen her in a week. I called and called until she finally admitted she was getting a complete makeover.

With a little luck, she went from hideous to butt ugly. That's the one time we see Duckman admitting to his family, like, yes, this is what you're in for. She is ugly. You will view her as ugly, is perhaps what he's saying. And in one year, Jason Alexander would be a gargoyle in Notre Dame. That's true, yeah. Holy shit.

He would play Hugo, I think, in Hitchhiker's Note. Oh my god. I couldn't remember the title. But I like that Charles and Mambo are also they are the cruel world too just like yeah that's the sad dated aspect of the show that we're all supposed to immediately understand like yeah total woof dude buzz your girlfriend well like duck man can't even get his sons to be on boy i mean like that i mean the point of the show is like no one respects duck man his sons don't respect them ajak is too stupid to even know what respect is.

No. And Charles and Mombo are kind of like dual Lisa Simpsons in a way. Well, they're like Lisa and Bart. They are as smart as Lisa, but they also are just as mean, nearly Bart levels of mean to their father and disrespectful. They definitely do not respect Duckman, but they're smart enough to know when to be better yeah at least and they can admit when they're wrong so angela appears and she is gorgeous as chris said uh she would he would hang it on on his pillow in the pillow waifu form and there's some great exchanges here just like charles and or mambo saying i thought you said she was ugly dad's like anything but

ugly son can't that's such a key word you said she was but ugly anything but oh yeah son and also that they throw out one of duck man's cut catch phrases he doesn't say it bernice charles and mama oh yeah right and that was just i think everyone said that and there would be some like weird translation it's like that's cherokee for your scrotum as many colored or something like that i forgot that there would be some like weird translation. It's like, that's Cherokee for your scrotum is many colored or something like that. That's right. I forgot that. There would be some follow up to it. So Humana Humana Hawa was a duck man thing.

Ajax is immediately in love with her when Bernice is like, he might not embrace you immediately. He misses his mom. It was a sweet moment of Bernice saying like, he hasn't accepted his mom's death. And then he's being like, mama, and jumps in her arms. Also, another running joke they do there is Duckman getting Mambo's name wrong. He calls him Marengue. This is Charles and Marengue. Mambo.

That is a running joke on the show, you're right. It was, well, there'll be a clip show not too long after this one that you'll see them all together, at least all the ones from the first two seasons. And yeah, so Marengue is the one in this episode. And everyone's in love with him. I also love the line.

Is it from Bernernice uh asking her like what went wrong in your life we'll talk about that childhood incident that left you so traumatized you thought duck man's a catch ha yeah like i mean it's a funny line but when i when i see somebody with a despicable like man i'm like what happened to you that made you like this guy more than this you say that about your girlfriend all the time. No, I kid. Charles and Mambo plant the seeds of doubt in Duckman's head. You're not good enough for her now. She's too beautiful for you. And Duckman immediately

is on... And they knew what they were doing. They were doing that to be mean. Duckman is now on the road to destroy this relationship because he is too insecure to have someone as beautiful as Angela as his girlfriend. And I feel like I've felt like Duck man in relationships. I don't know if it's a self-esteem issue,

just like I'm not good enough for this person. It's happened to me three really weird times. I'm with someone like, you're way more. You're out of my league and it makes me uncomfortable. No, I've had that feeling too. It has less to do with attractiveness in a lot of places, but class, you're just, I've had that feeling too. It has less to do with attractiveness in a lot of places, but class. You're just, I don't know, because I've realized I'm attracted to more than just looks.

Look, that took me a really, really long time to realize. As it did with Duckman. Yeah, I've been with people like, I don't know, I don't like what you do or who you are really. And every time we go anywhere like everybody flirts with you like oh stop it like i wouldn't date a girl like you normally like i shouldn't be here i can't stand this i do yeah that self-esteem thing of feeling like your partner is more attracted than you or you're not good enough for them like that can be a real mind fuck i could definitely identify with duck man's feelings here though i can also identify with him wanting to show off what an attractive girlfriend he's got he brings her to the office

and he's like look her eyes point in the same direction which i guess didn't happen before and i have to say um so duck man has some t-shirts made and these t-shirts resulted in my most popular tweets ever of all time so duck man makes a shirt for angela that says i'm going out with him because i want to and duckman's head is in the center. And his shirt says, she's my girlfriend and I'm not paying her. And so my tweet says, gift ideas for your next anniversary. As of this recording, it has 3,000 retweets and 7,000 likes. And I will tell you, after the 500th retweet, for whatever reason, this thing was picked up by teens.

So, like, modern teens were on board with this Duckman joke. Much younger than Duckman. I was getting all of these responses like, what is this from? This is so funny. I was just like, I got to teach the kids about Duckman. If I don't, no one will. That's what this podcast is about.

And my girlfriend and I watched this with pointed it out. Like, they say the kind of T-shirt it is, and it's a long forgotten. Oh, really? Yeah, like a 50-50 or a half z it's it's oh caulipot and blend it's like it was only cotton blend not caulipot and blend but i forget but like she was like no that's a very specific yeah kind of t-shirt that doesn't exist anymore it's a joke about how duckman did not get all cotton t-shirts he didn't go all out for but it has a

name and like she knew it immediately like you've never heard of half happy happy it's it's caulipot and as i said but yeah it's a great joke he's, and I went all out. I got a not all polyester T-shirt. But also the idea of making a T-shirt at the mall that you can wear as a couple. Like, that's cute. Yeah, and it's also very 1994. Or 2017 in Tallahassee, Florida, where I was at this year. Which is still 94 in some ways. One of the only things open there. And Angela might be the prettiest designed woman in the series.

They worked really hard to make her appealing to the human viewer. Yeah, I think so. I don't know. I don't want to say she's hot because that's weird, but it's a very attractive Duckman character. They scaled them back to be not ridiculously stupidly hot to where like triangle tits are about to poke your eyes out, which is usually what the characters hot girls look like girls in the Duckman universe. But hair color is a real hair color,

which corn's fed girlfriend was like light blue. Yeah. Yeah. You know, I think that's an issue too, that they made Angela a duck person instead of a human. And I think it allowed an abstraction on ugliness too, that you're like,

well, what is an ugly duck person as compared to a regular duck we just saw her like the acne covered beak for the most part that's all we saw and her horrible hair yeah it's like duck man starts dating angela and they go out and she's getting all the attention a construction workers cat call her monks cat call her uh it's a reverse peppy lepew and she falls over for some reason, I forget why, and someone takes a picture of that, and that's now her escalation to fame as a supermodel. It's a billboard just because we wanted to see her.

Yes, and that's actually an Evangeline reference to the famous billboard of Evangeline. That she just pays for to have up in LA. Evangeline was, I think she still exists exists in the 90s she was just an attractive model who drove around LA in a pink Cadillac and had photographs of her on billboards and there were always these things of people thinking like there must be some rich actor or Hollywood executive sugar daddy who's paying for all these things all these ads for her around yeah I don't know her full story but it seems pretty pretty interesting. But I also love the joke that they're in the park

and that all the animals love her like Snow White style. Like very Disney-esque. And when he tries to be nice to that deer, it mauls him immediately. He's mauled by a doe, which is something I've never seen in any other cartoon ever.

Just turns vicious and grows all these teeth. So it shows how fast this show moves and the act three starts with Angela's makeover and within two minutes she's the the most famous supermodel ever like outshadowing duckman in every way making his insecurities even larger he's being shoved to the background of every photograph he's it's impossible for them to live a normal life now and he's he's feeling bad you couldn't have a better way of showing him the world telling him you're not good enough for her. Yeah, and so we have these spinning magazine cover kind of thing happening.

And every time it happens, Duckman is more in the background. And I think the last one's like, dump the duck, Angela. Who is this guy? Yeah, so they decide to have one last meeting at Swank's, one last date at Swank's, sort of talk things over. But not for her. She doesn't want one last meeting. Well, no, it's not a last. No. They just want to go on another date to i mean i think where they met or where they had

their last their big date before angela is still angela duckman is the one who's altered by this i mean i think duckman in terms of being like i think duckman thinks this is the last time i'll see her so i want to let her down easy so for him it is and so their date is interrupted rudely in a way that duckman probably isn't expecting. Let's sit at the same table. I want tonight to feel just like our first night here did. We'll dance and we'll feel alone again. Just you and me.

It's Angela, our woman of the hour. Angela! Angela! Angela! Welcome to your very own night, Angela, where hundreds of people you've never met and couldn't care less about have gathered to tell you they love you so let's set you down and let the fawning begin so yeah i like that voice actor he appears a lot in duck man in between bits he really is i think even appears in live action at some points like when king chicken does his nine millionth explanation of why he's after duck man i think he appears as like a newscaster telling us like we're gonna say this but I'll just wrap it up for

you really briefly buck buck buck yeah they cut back in him I guess it's oh god we gotta do a King Chicken episode at least I really think so tell us if you want us to do more or if you're really angry about this if you've stopped listening at this point I guess you can't tell us yes so all the comments you lead me to believe no one will stop listening no one will stop we're that addictive but i i like the very obvious statement of all these people you don't care about and they just love you because they saw you in a picture so they're nobody to you but they're all going to surround you and fawn over you it's really underlining how empty fame is in this context just like especially fame based on beauty alone and this is your belief why this is la yeah for sure i mean i i also in my research before this episode ever pack in an interview

pretty much said i mean i think it could have been debatable but this is very it's definitely la quite la yeah with the angela billboard i think really just seals the deal for this being la and yeah then they cut to duck man duck manman just gets literally kicked in the face out of his chair. And he's outside and he is smoking because that shows you it's a great visual tell of how much he's given up or his mental state. Duckman is back on his bullshit, as they say. I came out here to think about things, you and me. And I'm thinking maybe tonight was our last dance. What?

You've got plenty of people who can give you more than I can now. The simple truth is I'm not good enough for you anymore. I can't compete with the whole rest of the world. It's only a matter of time before you find something better and leave me. So why don't we save us both the wait and just say goodbye now. Duckman, you're wrong. None of these other people mean a thing to me. I did what I did because of you. Because I was falling in love with you. I'm not gonna leave you. Maybe this isn't the time. Can we meet tomorrow night?

You'll feel better then. Maybe at the Japanese restaurant where we first saw each other? I'll be there at eight. A very sad reprisal of the Duckman theme too oh yeah i miss that but yeah no i have goosebumps listening to that i i would love to compare this to that first episode of the critic in the first episode of the critic he it's also the main character meeting a new girlfriend who is too good for him who is too good for him and everyone's telling him that that ends with absolutely no explanation of why she left him

yeah from her so all you have to go on is that oh everyone was right she was just using him for a good review yeah she's a bad person and is fulfilling all these stereotypes of a bad woman yeah now oppositely angela here gets like so many other shows at this time would have never given lines like that to angela for her to explain i did this because i'm in love with you i care about you and i don't give a shit why you if you think you're not good enough for me i love you and your your bullshit insecurity and fucking narcissism superficiality yeah is going to destroy this relationship for both of us. Yeah.

I mean, Duckman sabotages the relationship. He does. She's upset by that, but they could have so easily. Somebody else could have written an episode where she's like, I'm famous now. I don't need you anymore. Yeah. That's how it would have ended on The Simpsons. Yeah.

I mean, I feel like that's why this stands out for me. Angela does not sell out. She still loves Duckman, but Duckman can't deal with having someone he perceives as better than him as his partner and that's insane yeah that's an insanely complicated thing for a cartoon about a duck what's supposed to be a gross cartoon about a duck yeah about a horny duck when he's it is self-sabotage like he he feels so worthless he can't let the thing go on, this happy, fulfilling relationship for them. Yeah, I mean, Duckman, I think, in a way, wants to be miserable. He punishes himself for the death of his wife.

He feels like he's a piece of shit, and he can't be happy. And that's part of the theme of the show. Like, Duckman will not let himself be happy. Well, when he goes inside his own head, he literally, like, he sees the guilt that is all-encompassing in his brain. It's how to destroy him while his self-esteem it's a little wimp he's a little wimp in a cage like so that's that is the shit that's going on yeah i'm just so shocked that this i don't know i didn't expect i have watched this episode like three times recently yeah that that it's dealing with i don't know perverse subject matter that no shows ever touch.

Perverse in which way? Just in the psychological imbalance or ways that you can keep yourself unhappy forever by adhering to... I don't know what Duckman's hang-up is because it's hard to separate the caricature from the character that he becomes in this episode. But he's self-defeating his own relationship by bullshit hang-ups. Like, dude, you won. Yeah. You he's self-defeating his own relationship by bullshit hang-ups. Like, dude, you won. Yeah, yeah. You won. Like, what's your fucking problem? He can't let himself be happy

and that's really the problem here. It's not letting himself be happy but hanging on to it. Like, and I have that shit too. Like, the idea that, like, it still bothers me sometimes my girl makes more money than I do. It's just not something

I expected to deal with. And every once in a while, I'm like, oh, I got a raise. I'm like, meh, I'm going to work on Patreon forever and never get a raise. I got to do more annoyed research. But I mean, that's how society, that's also society making you feel

that way. You're the man, you should be in charge of making money. And I meet Expectation Chris and Current Chris together and like, shut the fuck up, that's dumb. Like, her success has nothing to do with your success. Whereas Duckman doesn doesn't have that not to spoil the episode but it doesn't have that realization he literally doesn't do anything yeah duckman is not self-aware in the way he needs to be he just gives up it's a very i mean yeah we'll we'll play the last scene uh so duckman just

leaves angela hanging and this is the last scene of the episode that plays it's a great book and that she asked to meet him at benny ha ha's again and that this time he stands her up unlike when unlike their first meeting that's true yeah so this is the last scene in about face duck man it's 10 o'clock weren't you going to meet angela at eight i changed my mind i'm not going what did you do to her nothing i i did something for her she's got a chance at a new life. She shouldn't settle for me. I wouldn't let her live. I'd spend the rest of our lives holding her back because I was afraid of losing her. I'm sorry, duck man.

Let it ring. What a ballsy ending. It cuts to credits with the phone ringing. Immediately to credits at the last thing. And the phone was their connection too, and he's turning his back on it. It's all these great thematic things. I never thought of that. That's a great visual embellishment of the theme.

This is a weird independent movie inserted into a gross fart cartoon one that bernice tries to make a joke he's like no we're not joking we're not like she's like oh what did you do to hurt nothing even bernice at this point feels compassion for duck man it feels like the first time she's ever been nice to him even a little bit like I honestly don't know if this is an abrupt ending like let's just end the show't know if this is an abrupt ending, like let's just end the show here, or if this was well thought out, because to me,

it just surrounds me with a ton of thoughts. That's why I keep talking in the way. I think they were going for this bittersweet ending, like we want to defy conventions. We don't want her to run off and just be some Hollywood floozy or whatever. We want this realistic ending in this duck cartoon,

like this realistic relationship. I'm real real hard on myself professionally and personally but but this is like this is the danger of hating yourself i just i don't know i don't see that a lot in other shows like yeah i mean you would not i mean the simpsons is great but you would not see relationships explored in this much depth on the simpsons you wouldn't you wouldn't end an episode with say skinner having so much self-hate that he would destroy the first relationship. Nope, she's better off without me. Yeah. I wouldn't do that.

But yeah, I mean, I think this is kind of like the heights of Duckman's emotionality in terms of the series. But I feel like they would dip into this pool semi-often, and they would make the character more than just this profane idiot who is a dangerous duck being you know yeah and if you see his his debauchery and rudeness and disgustingness as fueled by self-hate he's like oh i hate myself so i'm gonna be disgusted it really helps explain who he is and why he acts the way he does he's he's ultimately in almost all the outcome of every episode harmless because he's a coward that's true yeah and and maybe there's something to learn from that. And you should watch the show again. Yes.

Please watch more Duckman. So I guess. I'd be up for more of these. I think so. Yeah. I mean, it was really fun revisiting this. I hadn't watched Duckman in like eight years. I think it holds up really well.

And I feel like I have more fun for it now, even than I did as a kid, because I'm an adult now. I've had relationships. I've had adult style Duckman problems. So I can be like wow this show really is much deeper than it ever needed to be all it needed to be was a crude cartoon with swearing and like masturbation

jokes it has that too yeah I mean that it's there too it's even in this episode we're in our I mean we're in our mid 30s which I would peg duck man's age as well like we have reached that age of duck man now you know and I guess now maybe you know it is so 90s it very much dates it in that way yeah but but i kind of like that it crystallizes a a real

zeitgeist of the early 90s of just like let's be gross because the world is seemingly trying to be nicer and let's be let's point out these things that we see as problems in society right now it's very much about the the society of the 90s then there's a bit of that but it's like whenever i watched it like there was nothing else on the air like this at the time not really there's nothing ever since then and this can't exist now it really can't it can't exist now so it crystallizes it as this weird fucking miracle. Like, a miracle not... I don't want to say it's the greatest show ever,

but, like, it's a miracle that this little show existed. There's 70 episodes for you to enjoy. It's an amazing time capsule. They bring back everything now, but I don't think this will ever be brought back. No, I don't know how it could. Even if they can get Jason Alexander to be like, please, Jason Alexander, just two hours of your time,

record new stuff. They do that kind of stuff, like, how could this character survive in this reality? But there's not enough fans of the show. No, I mean, if you look at the YouTube hits on the episodes, you'll see. It's depressing. Yeah, but I mean, everyone... All you have to do is Google Duckman. Can you imagine a Google search?

Whatever happened to this show? It's all here free. Yeah. Ah, don't care. And I wish there was a Duckman doll I could own. I wish there was more Duckman t-shirt i could have but like duck man usa could have done much more work in making this a a more more of a hit i think yeah but they didn't want it to be it was it was a gross weird show with a limited it would never be what we love about

duck man is also why it would never be as big as the simpsons. Yeah, perhaps. Because it's too weird and ugly and purposefully mean and cynical and all these... It's not wrapped up in a happy family. It's wrapped up in a screaming, crazy person. It's deliciously weird. And I can't think of anything else even comparable to Duckman.

And you all owe it to yourselves as animation fans and comedy fans to check it out. Yeah, please revisit Duckman. You make no money off that recommendation, though. Yes. This entire 90 minutes. I hope you at least revisited about face for this episode and i encourage you to watch more maybe we'll revisit duckman again i just want to do this because duckman premiered in that three weeks span of time where there were no simpsons episodes between uh deep space homer and homer loves where was the capital critters episode but that was

canceled like two years prior and fuck that show well Well, that is also why I wanted to do this one. I was into doing a Duckman one and a Critic one as well, because these were the first true Simpsons. Other animated shows got greenlit because of The Simpsons existed, but this was The Simpsons people making new shows. Yeah, and it lasted for more than a season. There are four shows The Simpsons spawned that I think have any worthy legacy in anything. and that's the critic but it's very much like the simpsons it is king of the hill which is let's not get into it now but it's a different thing and like but it wouldn't have happened without the simpsons and family guy which owes the simpsons a lot and duckman which is just insane like it doesn't it doesn't there's nothing else i can compare i'd also add futurama to that no no

yeah i would too it's just like it's a sillier simpsons yeah futurama is so much just a sequel to the simpsons aren't even say inspired by it's just it's much the season eight staff pretty much just walked over to the future my vendor robot that i bought when i was a fucking poor asshole and i spent a hundred dollars on a metal It was worth it....working in a Chinese restaurant delivering food. I love Futurama, goddammit. Don't ever let me... I did not mean to sound like I was slagging on Futurama. We might talk about that, too, at some point.

Someday we might do it. We've got lots of plans for things. We have lots of plans. I'm bringing my hands together. Exactly. So, yeah, that was our one-off Talking Duckman. Let me know if you like Talking Duckman or like Duckman in general. I want to know what you think about this little special.

Let's talk about more cartoons, man. It's a minor speed bump in the roadway of Talking Simpsons, but I think it's one we need to acknowledge because Duckman was a great show that was overlooked because of its spot in the cable universe, I think. The landscape. It predates the respectability of The Sopranos by just a fucking year to the end of the episode. Yeahos by like just a fucking year. Yeah. The episode.

Yeah. The final season. It was poor timing. I mean, USA would never, this show isn't what you, well, the show actually has a bit in common with raw.

It's not shocking that raw, but it's, but all the rest of like USA hates it has wrestling, but it's the highest rated thing on his channel. So they love to cancel it. They always have to have wrestling, but, but duck man is of the same lowbrow cloth as that the rest of their shows at least want to pretend

to have have a higher profile i'm more like duckman than i am almost any other anime i have dark moments where i think that too chris so don't worry i'm more millhouse honestly so this has been talking duckman burns to break your arms this has been Talking Duckman. Mr. Burns to break your arms. This has been Talking Duckman. I've been your host, Bob Mackie. You can find me on Twitter as Bob Servo. My other podcast is Retronauts. Every Monday, a new classic gaming topic.

Just go to retronauts.com or search for Retronauts in your podcast device or machine. You will find at least one topic you'll get on board with. All of us in this room have recorded plenty of Retronauts episodes, including one about Bart vs. the Space Mutants, one about Bart's Nightmare. Any bad Simpsons game, we're going to take on by our full force, I think. So I've seen every episode of Duckman.

Yes. There is a PC game. I played it. Really? And finished it. They got everybody but Jason Alexander. And the guy who does it does a great job, but he's also no Jason Alexander. But it was also never released in America. It's true. It's crazy. And that's the last thing I have left to experience at Duckman, I would guess, forever.

Yeah, that is the final Duckman product. I wish they would do a Kickstarter on that. Just because I want to, like, who are you people who like the show that I like? I think it's on Abandonware websites, Chris, you can find it. But yeah, retronauts.com every Monday. Look up our Simpsons episodes. But I'm sure you'll find something you'll want to listen to if you just go to our directory. So thank you.

H-E-N-E-R-E-Y-G. That's my Twitter handle. I got it wrong after all this. And you can find out when new episodes of this podcast go live as well as other big announcements I may or may not be involved in. But until then then you should support us through patreon.com slash laser time babies yeah we i i've talked about duckman a great deal on laser time it's it's i i don't care if you like it i just like the idea that like i found this little thing that was very important to me and it holds up very well and i like revisiting

it i don't care what you think i don't need need you to see it. We will make you like Duckman. You know, I hope people aren't sad we didn't have Homer loves Flanders this week, but I think this is a really good one. I can't believe what an accelerated course we're on that we'll be doing the fifth season by the end of the summer. If you're unhappy with us doing other shows,

I'm just trying to point it out that we're kind of delaying our end of the really good episodes. So more stuff like this will mean there are more good episodes of Talking Simpsons for you to listen to. Yeah, some of you would argue we're halfway done with the good episodes. I'd be one of them. But I want to do it until I die. We need some really good 11, 12 episodes.

We shall see when that time comes. But LasertimePodcast.com is how this whole dumb shit got started. And for the time being, that's where you can find Talking Simpsons and Laser Time, which I've mentioned constantly. I was working on the DuckTales game. I'm a big fan of animated ducks and I'm not crazy. They stand the test of time.

Animated ducks are charming to everyone and I don't know why. They're just fun to watch, Chris. I love Duckman's beak flapping. I gotta have a smarter person explain to me how an anthropomorphic duck is fucking this exception daffy was always my favorite daffy ducktales donald how are the duck it like plucky duck it like every single one of them like plucky duck is that's the tiny tunes highlight yeah how the fuck are ducks so popular people try it all the time to make new ducks and they usually succeed.

How does it happen? How does it happen? So there's an episode of Laser Time from way back, it might not be on iTunes, called Many Ducks Were Given that I put up in honor of DuckTales that I made of like... There's a bit of duck man

in that episode if I recall. There is, absolutely. It's one of the only panoramas he appears in for Laser Time. But I mention him a lot because I really do like the show. And again, it's on YouTube and we have stuff running on Laser Time TV, which mention them a lot because I really do like the show. And again, it's on YouTube and we have stuff running

on Laser Time TV, which I don't really care about. But patreon.com slash laser time. 30, 20, 10, a great show if you care about what happened in the world 30 and 20 and 10 years ago. We'll probably talk about

the Duckman finale, sadly. Oh, it's coming up soon. Yeah, it's coming up very soon. We're in 1987, 97, and 07 right now. And I've had too many beers. Somebody take the plugs away from me. Thank you so much for listening. We're in 1987, 97, and 07 right now. And I've had too many beers. Somebody take the plugs away from me. Thank you so much for listening. We'll be back next week

when Homer loves Flanders. Thanks for listening to Talking Duck Man. Outro Music