Talking Simpsons - Talking Simpsons - 22 Short Films About Springfield With Conor Lastowka

Episode Date: June 13, 2018

Author, Rifftrax writer and podcast host Conor Lastowka to discuss perhaps the most experimental episode of The Simpsons ever. Steamed hams, Middlebury, bee stings, Albany expressions, skin failure, a very tall man, and Aurora borealis?! At this time of year, at this time of day, in this part of the country localized entirely within our podcast! Listen and enjoy! Support this podcast at Patreon.com/TalkingSimpsons!

Attention Talking Simpsons listeners, would you love to hear us give the same treatment to Futurama? Who would do a thing like that? Who could do a thing like that? Then you'll be delighted to know we're doing just that for Futurama's entire first season! Hey, when you look this good, you don't have to know anything. And it'll only be available for people who donate at the $5 level to the Talking Simpsons Patreon. Oh god, no! And along with 13 episodes of Talking Futurama, you'll get all

23 episodes of Talking Critic, the entire first season of Talking Simpsons, monthly community podcasts, interviews with Simpsons writers, and so much more! Shut up and take my money! Remember, go to patreon.com slash talking simpsons to get your hands on podcasts from the world of tomorrow!

I heartily endorse this event or product. Ahoy, hoy, everybody. Welcome to Talking Simpsons, where the answer is fries. I am your host, skin failure patient Bob Mackie, and this is a chronological exploration of the Simpsons who else is here with me today Henry Gilbert events delightfully devilish Bob and who is on the line with us today? Hey, it's Connor La Stokka and I have gum and mayonnaise in my hair Oh disgusting and today's episode is 22 short films about Springfield Sometimes I wonder about all the people in this town. Do you think anything interesting ever happens to

them? I mean, there must be thousands of great stories out there. And today's episode aired on April 14th, 1996 and as always, Henry will tell us what happened on this mythical day in real world history. Oh my god! Oh boy, Bobby! A tornado strikes the Ozarks, killing seven and wounding

thirty. Abigail Breslin is born and it hits Oh boy, Bobby. A tornado strikes the Ozarks, killing seven and wounding 30. Abigail Breslin is born. And it hits theaters, but no one watches Kids in the Hall Brain Candy. Boo. I mean, boo to no one watching it. I don't know. Connor, do you have any strong feelings about Brain Candy? You seem sad that no one watched it.

Well, I don't, but it was a shameful moment in my history. We did a couple live shows at the SF Sketch Fest, and the kids in the hall were occasional guests on those. I never had cable growing up, so I didn't really have any baseline of who they were or what I should like about them, and I always felt bad because people would get excited when I told them I met them. They are fantastic. I think we talked a lot about kids in the hall on this podcast. Quite a lot. We might have even talked about this.

Henry and I and a few other friends saw them do Brain Candy Live. At SF Sketch Fest, yeah. It was amazing. We thought it would just be a bunch of middle-aged men sitting around a table reading, but they were performing. They were performers, so duh. But man, they were bringing it. And God, it was great to see them do it all live in front of us.

Yeah, and Riff Trax alum Janet Vardy ran it. I think she brought it together. And it was great. She read the script directions and several parts that they had like three stock actors on stage to play parts that were not played by the five kids but then the five kids did the rest and I would have been perfectly fine if they sat down and just

read lines like that's fine just do that but they got up they did physical stuff they jumped up and down like they worked they sang. and based on the q a they'll never do that again because it's that unpopular they can only fill one room once cold comedy central shows didn't have great track records with making themselves into movies in the 90s i guess like yeah you bought strangers with candy yeah that movie's not good well and around

the same time this movie came out was the mst3k film too which also nobody watched which i couldn't see it until it was out on vhs it was nowhere i would have gone to a theater same with brain candy i yeah i was scouring my newspaper every week for both movies and they never appeared in my crappy town so uh uh nuts to you grammar c or whoever but so our special guest connor we're big fans of you but in case some of our listeners don't know who you are, can you explain exactly who you are? Well, yeah, I am a my lot in life is that I'm a senior writer, producer for Riff Tracks dot com. And Riff Tracks is for those of you who don't know the it's essentially an extension of Mystery Science Theater 3000. We watch new, old, bad, good movies and sort of crack jokes throughout them with Mike, Kevin and Bill, who played Mike, Tom and Crow on Mystery Science Theater.

And I think I probably spent thousands of dollars on Riff Trax over the last decade. So that is my glowing endorsement. Thank you so much. I bet a buck or two of that might have trickled my way. No, I'm also a big fan of Riff Trax. I think the most recent one i watched was one that's on prime now and it was partially just because i've never seen the film and as a kung fu film fan i wanted to see the first american film jean-claude van damme was in oh wow but then when i watched i

was like this is patently ridiculous this was uh no retreat no surrender oh that's great yeah yeah i think it was one of those things where they, you know, he became famous later. And so then they put him on the cover of the DVD and played up his role in the movie. But he was sort of like looking menacing in the background for most of those scenes. Yeah, it's hilarious. They do a Karate Kid ripoff, but hire a far more charismatic actor to play the villain than the milqueto in in this ripoff so we do live shows we're doing an upcoming live show in june of space mutiny the beloved mst oh that's good classic which should be fun i've never seen that all the way through so i'm looking forward to getting a

crack at that and we're doing crawl later in the summer oh awesome okay so i have to give you guys credit you you found on riff tracks the worst movie done by any of the riffing groups it's worse than anything done on mst3k or cinematic what do you say uh roller gator oh god yeah i do not recommend it unless you've seen 20 years worth of this stuff because it is unbearable connor can you please describe what roller gator is and like it is literally it it's it's one of those it shouldn't even be called a movie well roller gator is oneator is one of the few ones that make my colleagues physically angry. It has a puppet of this cutesy-looking alligator. And he's sort of like what Barney looks like when he's not big, Barney the Dinosaur.

And a girl finds him, and then ninjas are after him. And the gator raps and does impressions. Joe Estevez is also a carnival owner who's probably drinking the whole time. And for some reason, they got a guy to score heavy air quotes on score the movie by just picking up an acoustic guitar and just sort of emphatically strumming it literally throughout the entire movie. It's bizarre. It's unbearable.

And the entire movie is basically stolen shots at a carnival using like the camcorder your uncle had in 1992 it is just it's amazing it's like again i don't recommend it but i kind of do but you have to see it it's it's so funny to see what the bottom of the barrel is for joe estevez who is only in the worst things like unless he gets hired as a joke by tim heidecker that's really the only things joe estevez does so kind of what's your personal history with The Simpsons? I'm curious. Oh, man, I was I was thinking about this as I was gearing up to this. I have a long history. It's still one of my favorite. I mean, it's my favorite TV show. And I love I love the way that Twitter use for some people is pretty much just devolved

into posting Simpsons captioned pictures or posting a picture and then posting a Simpsons screenshot next to it to make fun of it. That's my favorite thing to do online. But I'm not sure how old you guys are. I was born in 1981. And so I was in third grade, pretty much when the Simpsons hit. So I was probably Bart's age. And it was just pandemonium. We did a mock city in our third grade classroom where you could bring in crafts and sell them for fake currency and stuff like that. And all the boys in class voted to make the currency named Bart's. So you would be like, oh, that costs three bars for that Rice Krispie treat. And then they had, you know, a picture of Bart on the one and Homer Simpson on the five. And I'm Facebook friends with my third grade teacher, and she does not have any of those

currencies left over, which is a big disappointment. But yeah, so I would, you know, I'd VHS tape them and keep a look in the TV, the Washington Post TV thing to see which one was coming up. So I would know if I didn't have one. I don't really remember sort of the middle years, but I remember in high school, you know, having those and still kept watching them throughout college, even though they were not as enjoyable. And even now I will watch, that's what my either cold day or hungover day will involve is sitting down and watching the Simpsons reruns. So is there a reason why you chose this episode in particular to do with us? Oh, I mean, this one just has had so much recent press, so to speak, just with the resurgence of the steamed hams meme. And I wanted to delve into that, and I wanted to see what else it had to offer, just because that's by far the most memorable thing about it. But it does have a lot more great stuff and a lot more quotable and memorable and memeable stuff in it.

It's also just weird. This is a very weird, unique episode still from the show's golden era. Yeah, it's so great and weird, and we'll get to it. But it is also very weird to see the steamed hand scene untreated and it's in its original context it's just like i'm waiting for there to be something more to it but it's like no this is the original bomb what is zelda gonna make a what is link gonna start rolling and making a grunt or something i completely forgot the scenes that came before it or after it so when i saw them in context again i was like oh right that's what leads into this.

That's what leads out of it. And so this episode was inspired, I guess, because of the Ned Flanders short at the end of season four's The Front, right? That's right. Everybody loves Ned Flanders. Yeah. They should have put that on so many more episodes. And it was only there because the front was painfully short. They had to stretch so much in it.

Yeah, go back to that episode. The front is kind of a mess, actually, for a season four episode. We didn't like it that much. A lot of wasted opportunities. Like Homer going back to get his GED. That's an episode. And they just kind of like, yeah, three scenes. A lot of wasted stuff.

And so many dream sequences uh if you took it all out if you took out the dream sequences and the flanders thing you're like this is a 12 minute episode but they they were notoriously stretched in it by the end of season four i mean algae and mike reese were creating the critic at the same time so i get it and everyone was leaving but the net flanders scene is such a funny scene. And then when you think about it, like, why didn't they do more of those? But they're always so pressed for time in regular episodes that when would they have time to put a little sketch at the end, you know? Yeah, I guess if they were doing them in this era, they could have put those on as DVD extras or something like that.

But we're ways off. Webisodes. But the title of this episode was inspired by the 1993 Canadian film 32 Short Films About Glenn Gould. And when we interviewed Mike Scully, who was the showrunner after Bill Oakley and Josh Weinstein, he said they were trying to de-Harvardify the show a bit. And this is one of the most Harvard-y. They named an episode after a Canadian film about a pianist.

I mean, who got this in 1996? Sorry, Henry. Something no one has heard of, and it is not mainstream at all, and proudly so. Proudly not mainstream. Yes. And they mentioned it, they mentioned Glenn Gould one other time on The Simpsons, as far as I know, when Homer gets smart, I think, when he's, I think he's doing Rubik's Cubes, and they,

NPR announcer makes a joke about the fact that something is good as gold. That's right. That's right. Yeah. It's very NPR. That's after the crayon is removed from his brain, as we all remember. I think it was nominated for an Oscar.

I think I got the joke when this came out because I think that did show up on a broadcast. So I was like, oh, that thing that I've only heard of once is what this is referring to. It was way off my radar. I'm sure it's good. I have no experience with that movie or that documentary, I guess, or whatever. Though, as a dorko who counted everything, I counted it even on first viewing. And it's more, but even now I'm still like, it's not 22 shorts. It is more like 19.

I would guess 22. Obviously, 22 sounds more similar to 32. And also, 22 minutes is the standard length for episodes then without commercials. So, I get it. But still, it's not technically correct. You're forgetting the scenes they cut, which they talk about on the commentary. There was a scene with Krusty, I believe, and one other. Maybe a few other scenes.

Marge had a fantasy sequence, too. So, all right. Bye. Yeah. So, more production stuff. I have to say that Jim Reardon, who would become the supervising director in seasons nine through 12, I believe,

man, he does an amazing job on this episode. It is so beautiful and he has so much to do on this episode. So many different locations and characters. Like everyone makes an appearance in this episode. And it's every style of story as well. Like he makes it all work beautifully yeah his team did and everybody wrote on this episode but greg daniels is the one who basically

supervises so he was like a showrunner for an episode which i guess would pay off because he would later be showrunner of king of the hill and almost immediately after this episode aired he's showrunner that's right he left and for season seven and eight uh bill oakley and josh weinstein had a roadmap like in every season we do we want to do a sideshow bob episode an itchy and scratchy episode and a format breaking episode and this is season sevens and season season eights would be the spinoff showcase i like this one a lot more in terms of format breaking spinoff showcase is fun but it's more directed at gen x fandom, I think, and this is more of a wider range. Yeah, I'm just looking at the, I have the episode up on a video file,

and the written by credit, and Sanjay is talking to Apu, looks like when you take a Frankie Act image and try to put way too much text on one image, and it goes up to like the top third of the screen. It looks like the Vietnam Memorial for a minute on the screen. All these names. And also working on this episode but i don't who knows how far it got but they have

said internally this made them think they could do a springfield spinoff that would be a show that would work just like this of just a series of vignettes or maybe a whole episode just all about springfield with no real connection to the Simpsons family as a core. But their reason, Matt Grady said the reasoning was that the staff seemed stretched too thin to do 22 episodes already. Oh, yeah. So to then do another show at the same quality level, just he didn't feel confident in that. And the one thing I wanted to say before we start, I know we've been talking for a long time, but the thing I paid attention to this time upon watching,

and I've seen this like 50 times, is the transitions. And I have to feel like they must have been inspired by Mr. Show in some way because they are very Mr. Show style transitions. You know, I had that thought, but I,

you know, Mr. Show, I think was just getting started in 96, but it was 94. Oh, was it? Oh,

okay. Well, I just thought it was Monty Python in general because Mr. Show got... It took inspiration from Monty Python as well of the interconnected sketches. But yeah, they were really cool. Just watching them again today,

just, I mean, sometimes they make sense. Another time it's just, you know, a thing floating down the sewer and where it ends up. I thought of Mr. Show because on the commentaries for Mr. Show, they make fun of how bad some of the transitions are. It's like, hey, look, it's a newspaper headline about the next sketch, which is exactly what happens in this episode a few times. My favorite of them complaining about their Mr. Show commentaries is that the last transition ever on the show is a tombstone to a fake tombstone on someone's desk that says, I'm dead unless i don't get my morning coffee and they

just go like this is so terrible why do we even do this it's hard to do but uh so let's get started with the episode after that opening line from bart and millhouse they're standing over the overpass and you even get the title on screen which is quite rare in the show and i think that's the it's the show telling viewers this is a different episode so you know get ready for it guys don't complain i think the last time it happened that was not a halloween episode was barkett hits by a car yes i remember which that is a joke in of itself it's like barkett's hit by a car and then he's immediately hit by a car like that that's the joke and i love their discussion about whether anything interesting ever happened to the people in this town. I guess it's probably a sort of winking at the camera type of thing.

But it's like, well, sure, I guess things do happen. A baby shot the power plant owner. And we hired a bunch of major league ringers for our softball team. And Milhouse, you were literally in a major Hollywood picture. That was filmed here. And also a bunch of stuff explodes quite often here and i i also it starts off with something that happens a ton in this episode which it is a very self-referential episode for the simpsons starting just with them spitting on the overpass which is

establishes bart's favorite pastime and bart's inner child all right yeah i forgot about that oh there's a lot of these can just be followed back to a previous joke like this is a refinement of previous jokes too and i also love that millhouse is just like he knows you need sociopathy to spit on those cars if you think too much about the people in them it makes it harder and mustard is better than spit yes yeah then we we we start off with apu here which it's nice to see the return of sanjay and i guess this is a little different in the post problem with apu apu world to listen to but i see the joke the joke is that apu is a workaholic and it's not really i don't feel the joke so much is what what a strange culture India is but still uh let's play the

first clip I wish you'd come to my party Apu you could use some merriment listen serving the customer is merriment enough for me thank you come again you see most enjoyable oh I guarantee a wing ding of titanic proportions you will be be there or can't be B-square. Well, I don't like to leave this door, but for the next five minutes I'm going to party like it's on sale for $19.99. It's a cute joke. And the joke is

he's such a workaholic, he takes a five minute break every year. That's the only thing Apu does. It's really only a four minute break. I mean, I like this scene because it's fun to see Apu having fun, but also how fast he has to do everything in this scene. It's very well-paced. That is fun, and he also, like,

you get to see that there's more than two Indian people that live in Springfield. That's also interesting. When we watched it recently, I think it was right the day before the show addressed the Apu thing, so it sort of cast it in a different light with that that sort of tone deaf response they had because it does have more jokes about the uh you know in my next life you're cooking and you're only arranged to

be married type of thing so i was like well they're you know there was a bit more jarring than i thought probably when i would have seen it for the first time but um yeah i do think it's funny i don't think that it doesn't offend me, but it does make the points that other people are making seem more relevant. Yeah. If you were looking for a scene to have problematic Apu content, you could just pick this one minute out and you're just like, well, here's a bunch of jokes right together because of how sped up this scene is supposed to be just in writing.

I mean, in light of... And like Bob pointed out online when I made that point, like there's not... Sometimes, you know, Homer is there to be like Bob talked, pointed out online when I made that point, like there's not... Sometimes, you know, Homer is there to be like, well, like when they were handing out gods, you must have been out

taking a whiz. So the joke is that Homer's an idiot, but there's nothing really like that on this scene to cast it through a different idiot's eyes. Right, right.

I mean, there are jokes like this culture is different and therefore funny. They're wearing different clothes than me, but I do like Apu dancing is great and that scene where

they're all falling into the pool is super well done. Is that a reference to something? Because I have seen that before and I don't know where. It feels just like a stock thing that happens in house party movies or any film at the party. And they're doing Wonderful Life, you know,

when they're dancing. Oh, yeah, yeah, that's true. But animating like 20 people falling into a pool in a chain on TV animation is just amazing. Like Jim Reardon did it. And I also love most coital clothes on backwards. That's just what I was about to say to that. Just the look of the,

like the one sleeve, just like flopping off of him the whole time for, for the rest of the time you see Apu is, is, is quite funny. And I like the, the tofu dogs thing where he says it will plump in my stomach i i guess that is a reference to the ballpark franks oh yeah tagline of they plump when you cook them

which which i've only ever heard used in a sexual innuendo contest oh so uh yes we get the the tail end of the party here i love this song let us bo I am hot. Let us get out of here. Don't worry. I'll tell everybody you were untouchable. Oh, Sanjay, never have I partied so hearty. Same time next year, yeah? Yes. Made it. And with one minute to spare.

You took four minutes of my life and I want them back. Oh, I'd only waste them anyway. I do like seeing any Simpsons character smoking. Yes, yeah. It's very fun. I don't know why. And this also had the first of, you know, well, there's an extended one later,

but Sanjay's be there or being the square is foreshadowing all the Pulp Fiction allusions that are coming out. Oh, wow. You're right. And that's probably from something else, but I mean, if you're my age and your guy's age, you probably only know that sort of gesture from Pulp Fiction. No, that's true. The square

gesture is straight out. A gesture is straight out of that. I didn't connect it, but I think they didn't draw the little diagram on the screen. Right. So that song Apu dances to is Freak-Azoid by Midnight Star. And if you want to look up the music video, it's a very fun early 80s music video,

meaning it looks like they had $8 to work with. But here's bits of the song folks have probably never heard i like it you can probably feed that into a computer and it would give you the exact week in the 80s All of the physical me. You see me. I'll be your freak. And then it gets on the computer. You could probably feed that into a computer and it would give you the exact week in the 80s it came out based on the sound of it. I wasn't looking at the video screen, but I'm just imagining fog and lasers and mirrors everywhere. Yeah.

And the people playing keyboards all around it. Yeah. And also conventionally attractive dancers with bad haircuts or 80s hair big shoulder pads too well no because they're like either shirtless if they're men or bikinis if they're women so no there's no space for shoulder pads unfortunately so it's a fun song i never really listened to all of it it's it's quite a uh conceptually a freakazoid is a robot that is meant to have sex with you and it's but it's it's more that a human is presenting themselves to another person as a freakazoid who is uh just like think of me as a robot meant to

only make you feel i really like you calmly deconstructing the song what if you were a sex robot i also love hans bowman demanding four minutes of his life back. It's so great. It's a customer service nightmare that happens so much in your life if you've ever worked behind a register, which I did like a decade ago. So I'm out of it, but I have to think it's unchanged. This made me think of, we talked about Kids in the Hall,

the Kids in the Hall customer sketch. Oh, yeah. If you've never seen it, it it's uh bruce mckella playing an angry customer who has waited five minutes for his bill to be given to him and he's like i've waited eight minutes for this like well here it is now no i don't want it now i want it five minutes ago that is a great sketch it's uh talking kids in the, it's happening right now. The Sentence will be right back. We hope you're enjoying this delightfully devilish podcast with connor on here

and we love talking about the simpsons so much we started our own patreon for it which you can support at patreon.com slash talking simpsons what do you get for that well not only do you get access to every episode of talking simpsons a week early and ad free you get access to our sister podcast what a cartoon a week early and ad free as well as a ton of exclusive interviews on there where we talk to folks like david silverman a longtime director on the simpsons mike scully longtime writer and executive producer on the show bill oakley executive producer of this season of the simpsons dan grainy a writer for this episode and a writer for the last 20 years and Nell Scovel who wrote the classic Blowfish episode of the

Simpsons back in season two plus our exclusive Talking Critic podcast where we talk about every episode of the Critic from the beginning and to the end all the way to the webisodes as well as Talking Futurama where we just did the entire first season of futurama in the talking simpsons format you can hear all that with tons more exclusives to come for just five dollars a month at patreon.com slash talking simpsons supporting us there really helps us out and lets us pay the bills while doing this full time. We hope you aren't suffering from skin failure because if not, you could listen to What a Cartoon, our weekly podcast where we go through

a different cartoon each week in the Talking Simpsons format. King of the Hill, batman beavis and butthead steven universe fully cooley so much more and we even have a family guy episode coming can you believe it all of that is on what a cartoon our weekly podcast and that is part of your talking simpsons patreon package but if you just want to listen on itunes stitcher all those places check it out what a cartoon and if you're watching along with what a cartoon you might be able to watch a lot of the shows we cover

on hulu and if you want a 30-day free trial of hulu you can sign up for it at tiny.cc slash t s hulu t s like talking simpsons tiny.cc slash tshulu. Check it out today and be sure to check out What a Cartoon, another awesome podcast from Hank and Bob. How we use electricity can be smarter, cleaner, and greener. At Electric Ireland, we can help guide you there. You see, our new Net Zero Hub has all you need to know about smart meter plans, EV tariffs, solar panels and much more. Making your usage clearer, your trips greener, your home cozier and your world brighter. Find our Net Zero Hub at electricarland.ie we we get to the simpsons place and marge is having the end of a fantasy or something like

the way she's looking off is that they in the original show they had her fantasizing and she washes dishes about lee majors uh they that one i don't i don't know exactly what she was fantasizing about but that on the deck of the ship kind of when lisa comes in complaining about homer the miracle grow guy that's that is quite random that he is throwing his beer can yeah is that a specific reference i tried to look it up this morning, and all I found was those creepy Duracell people. That was the 90s ad that showed up. Yeah, well, so I looked up who is the Miracle-Gro guy, and it's a man named, at least from this 1995 commercial for Miracle-Gro,

which would be contemporary with this, is an older man named James Whitmore, who just tells you about how you can grow your lawn here's a quick clip to keep your lawn springtime green start using miracle grow lawn food now with the new no clog four-in-one feeder you can apply it with your sprinkler goes on cool and wet doesn't burn miracle grow lawn food for a green lawn all summer long not the same james whitmoremore who played the guy who kills himself in Shawshank Redemption, is it?

Oh, it is, yes. Yeah, you're right. He's a classic Hollywood actor. He's dead now, but in his Twilight years, he was doing Miracle-Gro ads on TV. Wow, I completely forgot. I thought he looked familiar, but I was like, well, all old people look the same.

It's just another old man. I do think that that somehow enraged Homer enough to throw beer at the TV. I know. I mean, maybe he hates growing his lawn and lisa being a goody goody like oh i can recycle that i'm gonna recycle that now and marge not caring it's pretty great she's like whatever yeah and and poor lisa gets gum stuck in her hair thanks to bart i think she it's even more tragic that bart pranked her without even knowing he did it. And it's just, I feel real bad for Lisa in this.

Like, honestly, she could be dead with a bunch of bees on her head as we would later see. Lisa's got gum in her hair. Mom! Someone threw gum in my hair! Are you sure? Maybe it's just shampoo. That washes right out. No, it's somebody's gross gum!

Get it out! Ow! Ow! It's somebody's gross gum! Get it out! Ow! Ow! It's pulling out my hair! Wait, if I remember my Hellowees, the trick to getting out gum is peanut butter. There. Now that gum should lift right out. Ow! Hmm. Maybe it needs a little mayonnaise to get going. Okay, you go sit in the sun and let it melt then. Why me?

You smell like a sandwich. It's really interesting that Lisa is sort of the anchor for all these stories throughout the three acts because Homer is barely used in this episode. You feel like it'd be the Homer show for this, but I feel like they were putting more light on other characters for once. The thing that I took away from that is I went and looked up Heloise because that was in the Washington Post when I was growing up. You know what Heloise's real name is? What?

Ponce, Kia, Marshall, Heloise, Cruz, Evans. That's like 40 names. Yeah, it's amazing. I never knew she was, I never knew of this lifestyle columnist until reading about it for this episode. When Mark says Heloise, I guess I assumed it was an Ann Landers type. But that's all I assumed in first viewing as a kid. I sadly read some heloise growing up because it was like opposite the comics page i'm like uh what's heloise up to

what what kind of tips does she have uh so yeah it was in our sunday comics it would be like right it would be like on the back where the bad ones were like prince valiant and then the sherlock fox uh strips i they weren't carried in my local papers so i definitely would in desperation for more distraction after finishing every comic on the comic page i would read ann landers just to be like i need nothing good is on tv right now so i guess i'll read this other page i always read dave berry r.i.p harry anderson who played him uh heloise was also the weird thing that only happens in the comic section where her mom was heloise and then she just got to take it over because she was her daughter an inherited now it's terrible i have no idea i guess so heloise is still in practice i went to her website which is

uh just like warmly old like it feels like it was last updated in 2004. And in a way, that's quaint in the Hellowees style of quaint household tips. Is there a button to break out of your frames? Trapped in a frame? Click this. No, but there is a ticker on the top that says today's date. Oh, how nice. JavaScript. I assume it's under construction.

Always. And I also do love that Marge's hopefulness of like are you sure it's not shampoo because that washes right out she does not want it to be gum yeah i i've been in that way too just hopeful like maybe you're wrong maybe you didn't like jam your toe and break a nail on it or something maybe your appendix isn't inflamed yeah this probably isn't a cold if i keep thinking to myself this isn't a cold it's not gonna be sleepy i'm just sleepy to know the bees in the hair the real life thing had a similar thing like this happened to my mom once and it uh it was not funny where so she was cleaning out the garage well there was as we would find out later some standing water in a corner which had turned into

a wasp nest they'll do that which she picked up and then not a comical like beard of bees or whatever but it was dozens of wasps were on her and i heard and i was the only other person home that day this was like uh when i was like 20 and she comes screaming into the kitchen and she's like she's asking me to smash the wasps which are in her hair so i am having to like basically hit my mother to kill wasps that are trapped in her hair it's a nightmare henry yeah it's it's it was rather scarring for me i i don't know what it's okay my mom's fine now i don't know what it is about the bay area where we live but i think bees have like a non-aggression pact with humans because i've never been chased or tormented by a bee.

But like growing up in the Midwest, bees were up in your face constantly. Like I associate going to fairs with just like bees hovering around you trying to get into your like can of Coke or eat your cotton candy or something. But man, the bees here are very friendly. Yeah, I have a specific memory

about going to like a state park or something in Virginia and there being like a don't be a pig uh trash can with like a pig's face on it to put the trash in and so as a kid you're intrigued by that because it's a friendly pig but the amount of bees hovering around like you know the most terrifying creatures in the world at that point in time was just it's seared into my memory probably when I was four I well I mean also my little brother, my brother is deathly allergic to peanuts, slightly allergic to bees. So sketches about bee allergies definitely touched my family, which we get right here.

Smithers, what's the meaning of this slacking off? There's a bee in my eye, sir. And? I'm allergic to bee stings. They cause me to die. But we're running out of forward momentum. Perhaps you could paddle for just a little while, sir. Quite impossible.

You can try to bat him off if you like. Uh, really, that's... Holy cats, man, we're starting to wobble. Get me to a hospital. No, you have to pedal. Oh, Tuttle Sunday Trousers. Fear not. I'll get you to a hospital, you have to peddle. Oh, toddle Sunday trousers. Fear not. I'll get you to a hospital.

The only way I know how. Smithies, you infernal ninny, stick your left hoof on that flange now! Now, if you can get it through your bug-addled brain, jam that second methodic clodhopper of yours in the right doodad. Now pump those scrawny chicken legs, you stuporous hunker.

One more jostle, you wretched shirkaday. They basically had to use every word for Burns they haven't used yet. Every 19th century antiquated term. I was really pleased to see, to hear holy cats. I've met someone who uses that in real life. Kevin Murphy of Riff Trax uses that right ironically and uh claude hopper was a favorite of my grandfather who uh you know served in world war ii as a 19 year old so he would say that when we

started getting big basketball shoes he would be like look at those claude hoppers i mean yeah i like old people in my in my life as a little kid would say claude hopper a lot but i do like i wish he had said milk stop that's the only one that i would read in old comic books and be like oh why i what is this insult this is a uh kind of a reference to who shot mr burns part one right in which uh smithers is exercising for burns while he plays pinball they're wearing the same outfits even in both of them so it's definitely a it's a direct continuation and building of that joke but it is nice to see that smithers values his own life over inconveniencing mr burns you have to

pedal slightly yeah i like that burns was reading auto gyro enthusiast that was a pretty oh yeah yeah it's good too though it's too realistic like you feel so bad for smithers you're like this is a dying person who's like the tongue just hanging out of the mouth. And he was stung in the eye. And he very pathetically reaches for the orderly when they come out and briefly decide who to take in. He tries to grab at them and his arm flops to the ground. We have to assume that Smithers died. Yeah.

Well, the Burns looks much worse. Even when Smithers is clearly dying from an allergic reaction, Burns on the ground looks more in need of care than Smithers does. Smithers needs booze. You need booze. Though also that he has an unnatural ability to still be ordered around even when going into anaphylactic shock. He's like, well, I still have to do what Mr. Burns tells me to do. It's like part of his lizard brain now. I also love the comedic conceit of,

obviously, the bike would fall over the second he's stung, but it's able to just keep rolling, and Burns is just like, ooh, we're almost about to fall over. It's also one of the better connectors in this episode, not just B to B,

and you get to see Bumblebee Man before you see him later in the episode. It's cute that the B pauses to look at him. Yes, and then it does the next handoff Not just B to B. And you get to see Bumblebee Man before you see him later in the episode. It's cute that the B pauses to look at him. Yes. And then it does the next handoff at the hospital for a hospital scene. It's not the same as like, well, this radio is being listened to by two people. Yeah, or this donut fell into a sewer and we're going to follow it.

So then we get Dr. Nick and this feels like the last Dr. Nick scene or something. I think they had already run out of interest with Dr. Nick mostly. This really is one of the better ones, though. I mean, he gets, I think, the most attention here. And I'm disappointed that Dr. Nick did not stay dead in the Simpsons movie. They did bring him back. It should have been, like, who cares? Let a guy stay dead to have a more important things happen in the simpsons movie that like stay but they they since brought him back but my curiosity

with dr nick so he says that he the charges that he's brought up on one of them was cadavers and he says i could get there faster when i use the carpool lane so i looked up whether that had actually happened and there are no records of that actually happening unfortunately there's all sorts of like quarries about the ethics of doing that or for hearses. And there was one woman in Orange County in 2010 who drove around with a dead homeless woman in her car for eight months because the woman had died in her car and she didn't know what to do about it. Oh, yeah. Specifically about the willful abuse of the HOV man. Wow.

I just love the visual of Dr. Dick happily and with no moral qualms driving around with a corpse in his passenger seat. Not worrying about the smell or the disease and filth. And then it transitions to a pretty good parody of the TV show ER. Tell Dr. Nick where is the trouble? Oh, I'm edgy. I got ants in my pants. I'm discombobulated. Give me a calm attempt. Slow down, sir. You're going to give yourself skin failure.

Okay. Now, the symptoms you describe point to bonus eruptus. It's a terrible disorder where the skeleton tries to leap out the mouth and escape the body. No, you're talking. Our one chance is transdental electro-micide.

I'll need a golf cart motor with a thousand volt capacitor. Stand. Doctor, I can't in good conscience. Now there's no time, man. We'll have to improvise. Keep doing that every five seconds. Dr. Nick, we owe you an apology. Consider the charges dropped. All right. Three nose jobs for everybody. Yeah, you first. Give me a Van Heffernan. I love how that seems to work, shocking Abe in the mouth every five seconds.

It's a great placebo. Yeah. I mean, Abe is very satisfied by it like once he's given he's like abe is given the old-timey remedy he asked for so no matter how much it's hurt this is telling him like well this is what i wanted i also like the detail of that scene is the uh he's demanding to see a quack and they all look at dr nick and he his face narrows into the uh i mean business type of thing yeah we also we get a very sober, like, hi, everybody. Hi, Dr. Nick.

Yeah. He becomes George Clooney's character from ER at the time. And they even, they do a great job. This is something, like, Jim Reardon and his team on the animation, when they're asked in this crazy episode to also correctly parody a show or film in style they do it like the camera jerky camera motions as abe is trying to cut people with a scalpel that's really well observed that's exactly like er did a ton of handheld camera stuff on the show for the but only for the intense like doctoring scene that's true and there was previously an er reference but it wasn't very good it was just the er music played

over an establishing shot of the hospital and the stars burns. But ER was like, strangely just massive. It was on must see TV Thursdays. I think that's why on NBC, like after Seinfeld or whatever, but like,

then it quietly just continued for 15 more years. And like, I think most people might've just forgot about it, but I, I think it just ended maybe somewhat recently or maybe like in the two years ago. Yeah. It definitely made it into the two thousands. about it but i i think it just ended um maybe somewhat recently or maybe like in the 2000s yeah it definitely made it into the 2000s like i figured the first ever gray's anatomy where you're like it's still on what is going on yeah yeah it's like i figured the cast just turned

into sand after 1999 but no people were watching it i was a regular viewer of er for the first few years uh then like several people when george clooney escaped i was like well i don't know why i'm watching this regularly just because other than my just natural entropy of like well i did just watch seinfeld i may as well watch the thing that's after this there's some ludicrous clip online where a helicopter kills two of the cast members it just falls on them i think they wanted to escape from the show but uh so watching this with my mom she's a nurse, and she was a nurse back then. It was sort of like watching The Simpsons with a Simpsons nerd in that she would point out how wrong they were about all the medical stuff. It's also very kids don't try this at home.

Like, don't pull a wire out of a light and zap your teeth. It may calm your skeleton, but there's horrible things afterwards. And that's all they need to drop all the charges on nick like he has committed clear crimes like we drop all charges god by the way er ended in 2009 my i thought it was like 2004 or something yeah wow who are you people watching er 2009 i think they lost their last i think they still went like five years longer even after they lost their last original cast member of the show which uh was it like on like oxygen or something by the end of that or just showing exclusively on make a night

i think nbc put it somewhere it was also weird on that show that like i enjoyed news ready radio and then i saw like multiple stars of news radio more at least two just transitioned to being regulars on that show you're right yeah wow that is weird it's like the hbo effect just cycling between shows yeah i know as as a as somebody who was watching oz when sopranos was new i was like they're just stealing everybody from oz this soprano show is pretty lazy it's over for this show and uh jasper wants a van heflin who i gotta admit looking at pictures of that oldie time film star he has a he has a good nose i'd want that nose yeah born in 1908 in case you're wondering

how old this reference is you can see him in movies like shane and 310 to yuma those uh those westerns so he's not really the star of them but but he was really bitter when he didn't get the miracle grow guy take a quick commercial break. We come back. And the Mo scene is great. I love that it starts with basically a cheers joke, a joke that was done to Norm many times about his bar tab. But then Mo's like, well, no, I called them, and here is a giant pile of printed paper about your bar tab. I just love that.

I've been drinking for, I don don't know let me think um 15 years maybe and i've never been to a bar that had tabs that seems like well do these exist anywhere like getting beer on credit seems odd to me at a bar yeah when it was just a town you know when it was the one bar in town and you were the uh you'd be coming in there waiting for your paycheck i guess maybe after the factory jobs type of thing yeah it seems more like a small town type thing. I've never, I mean, at a night at a bar, you can get like in modern days, I've given them a credit card to be like, this is my tab. Do you want to start a tab? But you don't get to keep coming back.

At my favorite bar, there's a thing where you can buy someone a beer in advance and then they will put their name on a chalkboard. So when they come in, they'll get a beer. But that's like a reverse tab situation. That's a's a pay well you used to do that at grocery stores i mean like in some of the old like shorts that we do uh they'll have you know grocery tabs where you're paying it at the end of the month so you probably figured this is a good system we can apply this to drunks and it will work just as well i only know jokes about tabs because they were a recurring joke in Archie comics. Like it wasn't about beer. It was about malts.

Jughead's tab is too high at Pop's chocolate shop now if he's going to do it. And he's not selling him a burger just yet. So it was constructionally the same, but it was about burger and malt things. So Barney's just walking around with two thousand dollars which i think actually would be a more that's easily more than his tab could possibly be like yeah he's he's very blase about just handing over two thousand dollars and pulling it out of his pocket and well yeah mose was not the type of place it was you know the glorious days of probably two dollar beers maybe even if that so oh yeah this smirk on moe's face tells

you like this was not two thousand dollars he just ripped off barney with his bad joke and barney's just too trusting so then we get to the arrival of snake another of the recurring characters in this uh episode yeah middlebury graduate freeze dude with a muscle and i'll blow this wino's head off. I'm behind three inches of bulletproof glass. Do your worst. Alright. No, stay out of there! Stay out of there!

Good God, no! Oh, goodbye student loan payments. Come back here, you stinkin'. Hey, I wonder how much air is in here. Hey. No concern for Barney's health at all, but if I ever come into a windfall of money, like just a lot of money just hits me at once,

I do want to say goodbye, student loan payments. i like that he flicks the light on and off in an effort to dissuade him like uh marge did when i think lisa and bart were fighting about the hockey team that's true that's the only thing he built into his panic room was a light switch and and also yeah just most complete and utter disregard for barney's life like he doesn't stop moving once he's told to don't move. And he says, do your worst. Do your worst. Murder Barney. I do not care.

And Barney doesn't seem to care. A reference to Middlebury. I mean, there's a Middlebury University in Vermont about half an hour down the road from me. I don't know what else it would be. Oh, I think so. I mean, yeah, it's funny that like an ex-convict covered in tattoos with like a mullet is a Middlebury graduate.

He went to the liberal arts college, though. Two thousand dollars in student loans is like that's nothing. Yeah, it's like that's like two books. I'm about 40K in the hole, but at a certain point that money doesn't mean anything. It's just the thing you pay every month. I was I was 80K in the hole a long time ago, too. Well, hey, go to college. You got a master's degree, though. Don't go to college, kids.

You got a master's degree, though, Bob. It is true, and look what I'm doing with it. I'm kidding, I'm kidding. I also love when he's flicking the light switch, just a little animation on Barney looking at the ceiling like, what? What's happening? That's what's attracting his attention, not the gun being held to his head. There's a real innocence to it. I love that. And Smithers and Moe mo both seemingly dead at the end

of their sketches and this they both just like they fall down they're kind of like what happens to mo he's run out of air and he's locked in a room that only he could get out of like he's dead hopefully barney will get him out of there so here we are we've gotten to it we are at steamed hams now listeners i i normally get the clips on The Simpsons Show. I sometimes just, I wouldn't do the entire scene normally. But for Steamed Hams, we kind of have to do the full three minutes of it. It calls for self-indulgence. I mean, that's why it became a meme.

Yeah, so Hendrix guitar solo. Exactly. Well, so here we go with Steamed Hams, but it's part one. Well, Seymour, I made it, despite your directions. Ah, Superintendent Chalmers, welcome. I hope you're prepared for an unforgettable luncheon. Yeah. Yeah.

Oh, you gods! My roast is ruined! But what if I were to purchase fast food and disguise it as my own cooking? Delightfully devilish, Seymour. Ah! Skinner with his crazy explanations The superintendent's gonna need his medication When he hears Skinner's lame exaggerations There'll be trouble in town tonight Seymour! I love Chalmers' just guttural non-dialogue Like, meh, and not, meh, meh

So the writing of this episode I think it worked in that Writers would submit their three top characters they wanted to write for. And maybe Bill Oakley would choose them or they were chosen at random. But Oakley, co-showrunner Bill Oakley, who we interviewed twice, he chose Skinner and Chalmers because Chalmers is one of his favorite characters. Because the joke is he's a normal guy reacting to all the crazy sitcom stuff around him. And Bill Oakley told us, and I think he said in other places too, this is his favorite thing he's ever written for TV.

And it's the only Simpsons thing he wrote solo, he said. All the rest he wrote with Josh Weinstein, his co-showrunner and co-author. This one he wrote alone, and he was quite proud of it even before it became a meme. We interviewed him pre-meme. He just loves this scene so much. And it became even greater

in in the post-meming but and we all liked this before it was cool right oh yes very oh yeah i mean please but the it constructionally what i love about this sketch is that it is a horrid old trope of say bewitched or the donna reed show or all these things are just like oh what will i do what if i were to fool the person i invite over for this dinner date to a person who does not care wouldn't give a single like chalmers doesn't care if he just said well i burn the roast chalmers just like yeah it sounds like you all right get out of here quicker please let's order pizza or let's reschedule this or I'll just go somewhere else. And meanwhile, Skinner has to then try extra hard to be in a sitcom trope that he doesn't have to be in. And I like how on the nose and unnecessary his dialogue to himself is, what if I were to do the whole delightfully devilishly?

But he doesn't need to be talking to himself throughout this whole sketch. It's so great requires chalmers to then you know know exactly what's going on and question it to an aggressive degree that nobody outside of you know someone interacting with larry david would ever push back on that much which is also very hilarious yeah like in like in a sick in a regular ass sitcom uh the characters would not question things because the jokes would need to work but in this one like uh chalmers is sort of the anti yes and to all the jokes like no way what are you talking about like i'm not gonna yeah yeah it's really really yeah and it's just i also i i've i've read in interviews oakley and i think

oakley said it's us too but he said he thinks the general appeal of it right now is possibly based on current political situations where you have a person saying a lie that everyone knows is a lie and you're just like could you just admit it just admit it they're like no what are you talking about this this is from this place i didn't do that like it's a politician lying works for any time in any party anywhere but i i think that was an interesting reading on bill oakley of why he thinks it feels so current again yeah that could be why it resurfaced i mean there have been plenty of lies flying around lately yes but the it's also interesting that the crusty burger is so central to multiple plots in this episode oh yeah yeah i totally forgot about that again i i'm not used to

watching this in the context of the episode yeah it would have been neat if they when uh when the cops are seated there if they you had seen skinner dart by in the background that would have been neat if they when uh when the cops are seated there if they you had seen uh skinner dart by in the background that would have been nice the cop car is drawn into the parking lot when he gets across the street though awesome man it is there and the uh i just love the the crusty just skinner is so satisfied like what if yeah and i also just love the theme song is so corny and silly and and because this has happened so many times they have a million clips to show of Chalmers just going like god Skinner like you're the worst they saved on like 30 seconds of animation too with that and just that he ends it with Skinner like it's his catchphrase yeah it's like he's in a gomor pile. Yeah. All right, so the theme song's over.

What's Skinner going to do? Superintendent, I was just stretching my calves on the windowsill. Isometric exercise. Care to join me? Why is there smoke coming out of your oven, Seymour? Oh, that isn't smoke. It's steam. Steam from the steamed clams we're having.

Mmm, steamed clams. Ooh. It's steam. Steamed from the steamed clams we're having. Mmm, steamed clams. Superintendent, I hope you're ready for mouth-watering hamburgers. I thought we were having steamed clams. Oh, no, I said steamed hams. That's what I call hamburgers. You call hamburgers steamed hams? Yes. It's a regional dialect uh what region uh

upstate new york really well i'm from utica and i've never heard anyone use the phrase steamed hams oh not in utica no it's an albany expression i see that's so great again uh he should not be questioning this but he's just like come on he's just like skinner please you just just admit you bought hamburgers just say you did that that's all you have to do i looked it up utica and albany are 95 miles away from each other about an hour and a half and uh it reminded me of so there's no way they would have different slang terms or anything like that yeah but i uh just last summer I learned about my favorite upstate New York regional delicacy slash slang, which is something called the Syracuse salt potato.

And get this. This is potatoes that when you boil them, you put a lot of salt in the water. Well, slow down, egghead. And some guy was like, you know, it was the 4th of July and he ended up going back to his house and he had a bag of salt potatoes. His parents brought him when they visited and it's just a sack of potatoes and then it comes with like a package of salt for you to pour in the water wow so there are weird uh you know upstate new york expressions and foodstuffs but uh i think steamed hams i looked it up they were uh steamed hamburgers rather were they've been around since the 30s like that that's been a way to cook meat. Who would want meat steamed?

I don't know. Sort of like pressure cooking. I mean, that's fine. All right, sure, yes. But I just want vegetables, which taste bad to begin with, even tasting worse. I just want a salty potato right now. Like, man, who'd have thought? Just put a bunch of salt on a potato.

It makes everything better. There are some small details I love in this scene in that Skinner serves hamburgers in a way that they've never been served. Like on a huge silver platter on a bed of french fries. There's like eight hamburgers there. How many hamburgers are these men going to eat? They eat most of them. Yeah.

He's like, well, I have to present these in a fancier way. I gotta do that. I'm like, you don't. You don't. How we use electricity can be smarter, cleaner, and greener. At Electric Ireland, we can help guide you there.

You see, our new Net Zero Hub has all you need to know about smart meter plans, EV tariffs, solar panels, and much more. Making your usage clearer, your trips greener, your home cozier, and your world brighter. Find our net zero hub at electricireland.ie. There was a McDonald's ad about a decade ago where some guy was told he needed hors d'oeuvres, and he was a dopey man. So he went out and bought McDonald's burgers, and then he stuck

like a toothpick in them at the party. I don't know if you guys remember that. I just remember Dervs and he was a dopey man. So he went out and bought McDonald's burgers and then he stuck like a toothpick in them at the party. I don't know if you guys remember. I just remember that maybe it was influenced by this. I don't understand that because like, I don't understand getting McDonald's like delivered to you or, or anything like that, because there's, there's maybe a five minute window in which McDonald's tastes good. After that, it just turns into like wet slime. Yeah. I was curious though. like if someone completely out of the blue served you a mcdonald's hamburger at your house if you if it would even occur to me what it was i think it probably would they have a distinct taste but just out of context i was

wondering i mean even a cheap bun you buy at the grocery store won't have the specific type of like paper flavor that a burger bun does yeah i mean they're designed to all use like the same flavor chemical so the burger tastes the same no matter where you get it so i feel like like no no this is mcdonald's burger as a kid i could probably tell like that's wendy's that's mcdonald's that's burger king oh yeah for sure i could i could do the same with french fries that was a real trash taste tester i i also love smoking steam don't look at all the same. Chalmers isn't fooled, but he just doesn't care. He's like, whatever, fine. And that you also, it's so great that it comes later.

You think, well, part of his plan has to be putting out that fire, right? Like, no, he doesn't. Chalmers should be smelling smoke the entire time. Saving this meal is more important than his house or his mother. Yes, yes. Also something in every steamed hams meme i love that they all almost entirely keep in the music cue of it's it's such a silly bad cue i just love it it's some great sitcom music and then also that poor skinner in his lies picks the one area that

chalmers is from to say it's an expression from there and i was like really that's where i'm from is like no patent skinner burgers also big thumbs up to harry shearer says yes and no in this it's just like yes yeah yeah i love that i love that skinner yes. It's great. It feels so. Yes. So where could this possibly be going? You know, these hamburgers are quite similar to the ones they have at Krusty Burger. Oh, no. Patented Skinner burgers. Old family recipe. For steamed hams.

Yes. Yes. And you call them steamed hams, despite the fact they are obviously grilled. You know, one thing I... Excuse me for one second. Of course. Oh, well, that was wonderful. Good time was had by all. I'm pooped. Yes, I should be. Good Lord, what is happening in there? Aurora Borealis. Aurora Borealis. At this time of year, at this time of day, in this part of the country, localized entirely within your kitchen. Yes, yes.

May I see it? No. Seymour, the house is on fire! No, Mother, it's just the northern lights. Well, Seymour, you are an odd fellow but i must say you steam a good ham help help skinner is so proud of himself after that i think this is the one time uh an encounter with chalmers has ended well he's he's only won in this one time with him.

And I don't know if it was the same yes, but I think it was. Yes. It's so great. Yeah, I had to look it up. Because I was, you know, you said, do we like this before it was cool? And I was like, well, I knew what it was. But I looked it up and the only steamed hams reference that we've ever done in a Rift Rex was sadly just from last year. So it was definitely popular again.

But it had a guy researching monsters in the like finland or something like that and there was a joke about aurora borealis and he was trying to pass it off his steamed hand awesome i think as a big as a big skinner fan i think this would be the highlight for me like watching it before the meme so i am saying i was the one who was cool ahead of time but uh yeah i mean it's a standout for a reason all the reasons we talked about and bill oakley should be proud of it. Yeah, the Aurora Borealis. Aurora Borealis.

It forever changed Aurora Borealis for me. Anytime I would see it referenced or I'd see it in a movie or anything, I'd be like, oh, the Steve Hayles. I would just hear Ed Chalmers. Zooming in every sentence, every little bit he says is a very nice touch. Yeah, the direction is so great.

It's like a stock sitcom scene, but he had so much to it uh jim reardon yeah it's just such a great just like cut every time it's just and also the just quick in and out uh from going in and then coming right back oh boy he just wants to end it right there and shalman's like yes i probably should be good. Good Lord. What is happening in there? And also just the sweatiness. It says so much in just the sweatiness and thumbs up that Skinner gives of like, nope, everything's fine. Go away.

While his mother is screaming. He's ready to let Agnes die. And at Chalmers, I think it's very sweet in a way the chalmers just like i could humiliate you by pointing out how obvious this deception is but yeah whatever you tried so hard i'll give you this one i'll give it to you uh one of my favorites uh memes that probably wouldn't wouldn't translate for a lot of people but a guy who had listened to our uh ready player one podcast made uh made uh charmer saying well seymour you are an odd fellow but i must admit you gun to good rig oh man nice rig that is a nice rig yeah boy uh has has gunting entered the the lexicon of

americans now i saw the movie only twice and i think that they only said gunting like in the very beginning and then spielberg was like we're not we're not going to be saying gunting anymore yeah i think it checked a box to be like look we said it once you know this is gunting maybe maybe they said gunters like a couple times but it's it's not it's not smashed over your head like this is going to be the cool word everybody says it just again send me a link to a uh picture he took of the uh like gunter life t-shirt that was already marked down 33 you can't name a thing a gunt i'm sorry yeah it's kind of a word already uh and i also have movie one of the most ridiculous things in the film version of it is that they that no one tried an exploit of

driving backwards in a race like that's the first thing any person who plays a racing game would try at least what if if five billion people were playing a game at the same time one of them would have tried that in the first day it's for five years it had been going on yeah for five years nobody's like what if i drove backwards which is a thing you do in every video game it's a racing game just to test it out it's like let's just complain about ready player one for the rest of this like no uh steam hams the greatest it's it became a meme in the last year of just steam hams but it's. And we could each say billions of them. My favorite that comes straight to mind, there are dozens I love,

but my favorite as a musical theater nerd who loves Les Miserables, there's one called Steamed Hams, but it's Les Mis. And it re-does several songs as basically, if you Les Mis fans out there know, there are multiple fight songs between Javert, Jean Valjean. Jean Valjean versus Javert. In this, they recast Javert and Jean Valjean as Chalmers and Skinner having song arguments about this. Oh, my God. It's really good.

Do you have any favorite steamed ham memes yourself, Connor? Yeah, I like the one that was uh it was george lucas's steamed ham special edition so there you show the crusty burger and then a giant out of place uh cgi like brontosaurus or you just hear uh you know a sound effect or something or r2d2 would be burning in the background that was a nice nicely done that is awesome i mean mine are my favorites are very deep cut video game things like my favorite ones are the Phoenix Wright Ace Attorney one and the Danganronpa one because both of those games are about trials where someone is testifying and you have to point out their lies, and that's exactly what Chalmers is doing.

And my other favorite one is someone auto-tuned Smash Mouth's All-Star to the entire scene. So they're basically singing All-Star but with all the dialogue, and it works so perfectly. the most recent one i saw that i was a big fan of was uh seymour's getting there and across the table from him is ken griffey jr saying and you claim it promotes robust health despite the fact that it obviously causes gigantism that is great i love that i i also another of my favorites last one i'll say that i just watched was steamed hams but it is a fan sub in the 90s and unless unless you watch fan subtitled anime from the 90s it makes no sense it's a joke about bad subtitles but what i'll give them extra credit for is they took the japanese language version of steamed hams that the official one that aired in japan and

subtitled it with but poorly how a fan subtitler would in america in the 90s that's great there's a great part when he says dame for no and he's like can i see it no anybody says dame then a giant wall of text on screen says like dame means no in japanese dialect it's like yeah we get it that's perfect inspired a lot of creativity you got to hand it to people it's not just it's not just the nerds in the uh homer goes to college repeating the the lines of monty python a nice uh a nice new twist with the with these type of things there's serious video production skills going into all of these it's amazing that's what i love about popular memes like this is that it creates such a constraint for joke construction or writing or creativity that working within it causes people

to be extra creative or like well what new can i do with steamed hams that hasn't been done before and and then the extra level of effort you see in it is beautiful like okay we have spent 20 minutes on made any uh any of these things that have i've tried my my damnest they they like they never go anywhere on these groups i don't think so i come up with ideas but then i think about how long it would take for me to execute those and then i just give up i'll put a meme on a frankie at gif that's that's the lengths of uh work i will put into yeah i'll just rewrite i'll rewrite dialogue on a simpsons line and then post that but i won't photoshop all right well so out of steam ham we go then to the best scene of this episode to the weakest

scene of this episode i would say it's just like it's cute maggie homer funnies it's just like i do like that they i think they identified that maggie and homer basically never do anything together so if they're going to do a novel scene with homer then put him with maggie and slh let's say it's a little helper that's right it's very gentle and cute but it's not like i mean coming off of steamed ham it's sort of just like uh when's the next scene happening yeah the though the my favorite well first first off, that Homer smashed all his quarters at the railroad. That's cute. Though Maggie should be wearing a diaper.

He's kind of irresponsible. That is true. And lastly, I do like the headline of, I guess it's not a palindrome, but just dead beat dad beat dead is quite a funny headline. It's a very, what, New York Post headline? Yeah. Oh, yeah. Oh, and I also love just Sandsville Helper

immediately eating all of the cheese. Yeah. I mean, it's kind of weak in terms of writing, but the animation of Homer juggling all the items to get the newspaper

is very well done. A lot of work went into figuring out, like, where has Homer put everything? Well-observed juggling of things, which I have been that as well, but more like, I want to eat this ice cream cone,

but I did just go to the grocery store. How like i want to eat this ice cream cone but i did just go to the grocery store how am i gonna handle this and the solution is for homer to just rip the machine out of the ground and then put it in maggie's crib and hopefully marge will have a quarter later yeah i appreciated that they they went to the effort of making it jesse helms calling for the donut tax just to pick a random political world oh yeah i mean uh look up jesse helms kids he was not a nice guy. Not a great guy. That would remind me that only from either Simpsons or MST3K would I learn the names of, like, congressmen, really.

Yeah. I didn't know who Trent Lott was until I heard Mike Nelson say the line, I'd rather get a lap dance from Trent Lott. Oh, dear God. I remember what he looks like. That's not a pretty image. Yeah, MST3K taught me who he was. He had a large head. He really did. I think MST3K taught me who John Sununu was. Oh, yes.

So thank you, everybody. So then we get a nice little match cut from Maggie to the most disgusting Krusty Burger that's ever been eaten. I think they just, unless he's having like a pork sandwich, it's just miscolored. It should be a dark brown, but it's like a pink slaw in it it's so gross i think it was a mistake but wiggum has never looked hilariously fatter yeah on purpose i mean on purpose he is a huge like food monster in this scene it's almost a ren and stimpy-esque close-up with that amount of uh yeah it is well it it grossed me out and then i will say in 1994 maybe pulp fiction references were a little played out but i i still hadn't seen the movie i think i saw the movie a year after this i i just

it it took a while to convince my parents to rent it for me because i was 14 at the time of the center i uh i watched it at a friend's house so i was probably a freshman or sophomore in in high school came home and was like oh this you know it's a great movie like i'd love to share this with my dad my mom must have been out of town or something we went downstairs and you know there's early early scenes about gross you know sex stuff um with with um jules and vincent and my dad is just like obviously uncomfortable he's like i'm gonna go upstairs connor i don't need to shockingly i saw pulp fiction for the first time in like 2013 because at the time i was just like all right all right i understand all the references whatever i was just kind of annoyed with the

references but i think it was after this but i knew this was a pulp fiction parody it was only until 2013 did i know like what the subtext was of some later scenes yeah this scene and it's the the skit from it i mean the dialogue from it was on soundtrack. So that's how sort of ubiquitous it was. If you listen to the soundtrack, you heard this whole discussion. I listened to that soundtrack a million times, but it was like sketches on a hip-hop album where I'm just like, look, I love these quotes and all, but I wanted to hear the song. Like, I didn't want these sketches. A couple years ago, we were in a bar or something, and it was playing on a TV on silent. And my wife and her sister and brother

and son were like oh it's been a while like we should probably re-watch this just see like what we've forgotten like what we never noticed and re-watched it i'm like no this is pretty much seared into my brain i'm not picking up anything new here this is all very familiar stuff i've watched it somewhat recently i think it really holds up it's a great it's it's much better than forrest gump the film it lost to at the oscars that's for sure but i and i think something that'll make people appreciate the honestly quite you know everyone's used to tarantino style dialogue now so it doesn't feel as in 1994 hearing uh hearing cops and robbers talk in a way that like a stoner loser would talk it was interesting a novel but then every goddamn film after this it was like well what if a guy who shot people ate at a diner like i think it goes something like

this it it makes you appreciate the work tarantino put in uh his his writing is uniquely better than his dozens of imitators yeah i mean watching it much later, 20 years after it was released, I was like, I could see why this was mind-blowing at the time. But now every movie, this is like Joss Whedon and whatever. Everyone picked up that naturalistic. Boondock Saints. Which, by the way, folks, if you've never seen it, the documentary Overnight is one of the best documentaries ever. So much better than boondock saints it's about the making of boondock saints and how troy duffy the maker of the movie is one

of the worst people ever and yet now he is not the worst person in that film because a key player in overnight is harvey weinstein that's a great documentary yeah Yeah. But anyway, so this is the Jules and Vinny argument about the differences in what McDonald's is called in France, except with a Simpsony touch. You know, I went to the McDonald's in Shelbyville on Friday night. What? McDonald's restaurant. I never heard of it either, but they have over 2,000 locations in this state alone. Must have sprung up overnight. You know the funniest thing, though?

It's the little differences. Example? Well, at McDonald's, you can buy a Krusty Burger with cheese, right? But they don't call it a Krusty Burger with cheese. Shut up. Well, why do they call it? A Quarter Pounder with cheese. Quarter Pounder with cheese?

Well, I can picture the cheese, but do they have crusty, partially gelatinated non-dairy gum-based beverages? Mm-hmm. They call them shakes. Huh. Shakes. No, no. What you getting? Well, I know what I'm getting. Some donuts. Ah!

Help me out of the booth, boys. I think I'm just noticing now the sound of crows in the background. Yeah. It's some nice texture. Was that on there or was that outside of my window? Oh, that was on the soundtrack. I thought it was on our window, too. No, it's in the scene.

Ready to hit the cough button. The idea that there's no McDonald's in Springfield at all is pretty funny, too, which has definitely been broken on the show. I mean, within this episode, it's questionable that that's true. 4,000 locations. Yeah, because there's two. I mean, there's the Hamburglar coming up later, and then there's a very similar character to the Hamburglar

in the Bumblebee Man episode. Oh, yeah, yeah. The idea of eating a giant pile of fast food and then just being excited for like, I don't know, I'm getting some donuts. It's like you just ate four meals at Krusty Burger that reminds me of Wiggum at the barbecue and Lisa the vegetarian oh yes I struggle to get up on my own anymore Homer I haven't had a McDonald's shake in a very long time have they improved any like they they

were the worst of the shakes that you could get in fast food, I felt. They partially gelatinated gum-based beverages is a perfect descriptor for shakes because it doesn't feel like there's much milk in them. I wonder if McDonald's had a Domino's style ad campaign of like, no, the shakes are better now. We know they were garbage. They're a joke. I don't think they did. But now as a sensible adult, the idea of having a milkshake with a meal sounds terrifying like 1400 calories on top of your bad meal maybe going in for just a milkshake and like i got a milkshake today but not like i'm gonna have three cheeseburgers and a large fry and milkshake and

like a bucket of nuggets yeah i mean as a kid strawberry shakes were my go-to you know they come in the same size glasses of soda and like that is bizarre no i uh actually i just had a shake at uh the my viewing of infinity war at the almo draft house i had an i am fruit shake i don't like it get it oh cancel everything sorry i i will say as an adult though uh boozy milkshakes are a new thing for me and they're good i've had those at almo draft house they're fine but that's also i felt so i just went to disneyland for the first time and everybody i'd heard everybody talk up the dole whip get the dole whip which is just it's it's pineapple soft serve like it's and it's fine it's fine but then people told me like well have the have the dole whip float with rum and so i did it, and it was good and all, but I was like, I mean, anything would taste better with a nice rum in it, wouldn't it?

Yeah, I think so. Were you in the Club 33? No, I was, you went to the coffee shop that is across the street from Disneyland Hotel and just bought it there. Was that an official Dole Whip then? It was official Dole whip then it was official dole whip it was it was it was called a dole whip this was disney owned and operated this coffee shop got it got it yeah parents island well because you can't buy a rum based drink to disneyland still no alcohol that always struck me yeah that always struck me as weird you

know growing up being like that's crazy there's that one spot and it's like well yeah clearly if you were into that you would sneak in any booze you wanted to and it would not no one would be prevented from doing that that's true totally uh so so then we go to uh the next scene which is written by rachel palito which i believe is her first written thing on the show uh she was one of the uh few women on the staff at the time maybe two jennifer crittenden and her yeah who and they're both credited writers on this and rachel palito i believe is of latinx forgive me if i'm saying it the wrong way folks descent and so she put the spanish in the scene intentionally poorly so people would it would be it's transpondent of just like well this is english to spanish with no real sense of what spanish

grant spanish language grammar is compared to english and by the way she's married to bill oakley yeah she is also the wife and my wife to bill oakley mother of his kids it's cute on the things when both of their uh and also i think she's the one who brings it no it's josh who brings his kids onto the commentaries but not that one they're it's really cute they're very small and cute now they're surly teenagers yeah not so cute oh but uh but yeah so it turns out the bumblebee man's life is exactly the same it's almost it's it's almost like he presents the sketches on his show as real things that happen to him and then his life is just a sketch comedy from Mexico, basically. Yeah, it reminded me of the opening scene in Roger Rabbit, like flying around the kitchen like that.

Oh, you're right. And it's all very understandable if you took the first year of high school Spanish, so kudos to them for making it comprehensible. That must have been a load-bearing light fixture because it just takes down the entire house it's it's shocking the house hasn't been destroyed before and that yeah that they use naranja that was the one i was like oh naranja capeza i learned that in the first year of high school spanish i took french yeah oh you you failed bob you had you and your fancy french uh And also that Rachel said that she was, as a kid, sometimes she would watch the red cricket show that the Bumblebee Man is based upon.

Oh, yeah, Chesterito. Not happily. I enjoyed that his wife had divorce papers sort of pre-notarized and ready to go should the moment call for them. She was planning on this. It's like one of those that brings the deed to his house to the blackjack table. It's like, sort of sort of itching to lose this at this

point you feel like her bags have been packed for uh weeks now just staring at them every time he comes home she's like is this the day is this when it happens poor pedro uh hit that uh also though rachel said on the commentary that the design of the boss is based on the mean boss she had at the job she hated before before working at the Simpsons so that's nice revenge yes the best revenge is parody on a cartoon and yeah his poor life like it just is he's he's dead like bumblebee man is crushed by his own house uh so then we can do a quick cut to uh driving by is snake and he's changed into his middleberry shirt which he proudly wears which it's almost distracting that he is wearing

the middleberry shirt for the remainder of the show you're right yeah it's a good one-off joke but is it that he's uh i guess it's not not like the uc banana slugs it's in pulp fiction that uh they change into oh yeah you know probably not what they were going for maybe they were you never know yeah i i do like his fancy car i believe this is the same car that homer will later buy at an auction band did and i think we saw i think it was the same car and bart gets it by a car right yeah oh no no sorry bart uh separate vocations yes yeah yeah see you in hell cop they can still hear stuff so then we get perfect a perfect recreation of the scene from the gold watch section in pulp fiction where marcellus wallace ving rames gets run over by bruce willis's butch and the scene in the movie is so great because it is that what works in the film is that it is a dose of reality to a highly tropey section it's just like well it's it is you can't get more tropey and noir than

the gangster making a boxer lose a fight but then for no reason for dramatic purposes he just like oh i bumped into you oh crap uh run i'm gonna run you over he just smashes into him and that so the same thing happens to wigum but wigum is he's not mad at all he's like hey i know you he doesn't get it and then marcellus even in the movie is carrying donuts he has the pink box of pastries when he gets hit so i've only seen it once so i'm not picking up on all of these little things although the little things there's there's great little things in the movie too of like when he wakes up uh bruce willis after smashing into marcellus kathy griffin is uh is part of the group of people like saying hey let me help you and and somebody had apparently like a soft drink in their hand and they just pulled

the ice out of it and put it on his head it's just little details like that they're like oh this feels real i do remember seeing kathy griffin and be like what what her and um it's pat oh yeah uh julius yeah they're both in the film and it's now it gets more distracting every day i'm like what and i think it at least in one of their cases they were dating tarantino at the time and that's why they got cast in it i'm so bummed that he doesn't do cameos anymore those were just so entertaining they're so bad my favorite was in my favorite is in django because not only does he insist in being in it and giving himself lines he can't deliver but he also tells himself i'm gonna do this with australian accent like this it's so beautiful you set him up he knocks him down uh but yeah so uh here is the scene donuts i got donuts hey i know you

hey hey wait up. We got to swap insurance info. Hey. Hey. Hey. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Hold it right there. Looks like the spider got himself a couple of flies. So apparently Herman has served time for his counterfeit jeans operation at a farmer's car hole.

And he's back out and restarting his, his business, which it's, uh, quite horrifying when you know what the seed is in Pulp Fiction, which is as dark as they come. And yeah. And I didn't know until 2013 as a 13 year old,

I did not know this by, I think my mom who had seen the film just because she wanted to see at the time she was like i see every film that's uh nominated for best picture and so she just said like she definitely winced at it and implied like a bad thing happens in in pulp fiction yes like and but they if if the character of herman didn't exist they'd have to create him for the scene but fortunately like herman just is the guy in the movie like it's true actually it kind of reminds me of the uh the movie that i think we've all seen but it's not as popular as fall fiction falling down like the creepy like uh uh military store owner who is secretly a nazi yeah who if you asked him if you gave him a wink he'd be be like, oh yeah, I got the Nazi memorabilia here if you

want it. Like, I'll sell it. Do you think that's the only appearance of a Confederate flag on The Simpsons? I don't know. Several times in his story, the Confederate flag is a consistent background in his story. And Matt Groening wrote Johnny Reb, right? Yes. But yeah, like, so Herman, it's great that

Herman exists because you need someone that is sleazier than Moe and even sleazier than Snake. It's Herman. There's something more sinister about him than even Snake. Snake is violent, and he would kill any member of the show, but just to get money. He wouldn't plan on killing it, or he might even just laugh like, well, it's funny to hurt you in the moment, but there's not a sinister, dark plan to him. He's more reactionary.ary herman he's got a dungeon he's got these things ready he's gonna lock these people up they're never gonna be seen

again and he knows a guy named zed he knows a guy named zed just like in the movie too i'm really glad they didn't do a gimp joke that's the one i'm like you know what don't need to do a gimp joke please don't like other shows did it and that's the first thing every other show did yes yeah it would have been funny if it was like uh you know you could tell it was sideshow male because the leather covered up his hair or something you see the bone in his hair that was what uh when all the 12 year olds i had seen the movie and i did and that was the one thing they took away from it uh the gimp thing and they all told me about it that's because it was really weird and disturbing yeah it's quite disturbing yeah yeah it just makes it so much darker when you know the thing but but i do love

i do love that they the connective tissue of this is this scene of the implied like sexual assault that herman has planned for wigum and snake that then transitions into one of the corniest, silliest scenes in the episode that I just love. It's great, yeah. It is more sitcom-y stuff. It is Ned and his pastor doing jokes about dog poop. They go from that. I love Ned's good-natured reaction to it, too. Howdy, Reverend Lovejoy.

Nice to see you there on my lawn with your dog oh oh bad dog look at that right on ned's lawn now how could you do such a thing good boy don't stop now bad dog i condemn you to hell better get the old snow shovel back from homer huh good boy don't stop the music it must be like a huge dump because he needs a snow shovel to pick it up the snow shovel makes you imagine quite quite something yeah uh this scene was written by david x or then s cohen who it's just the kind of scatological thing you'd imagine from a guy who had just left beavis and butthead to work on the system that's true but just yeah it's like, better get

the old snow shovel from Homer. I feel like I condemn you to hell. And just his, like, with your dog. He's just so... He's putting the pieces together. He doesn't want to believe it. It would have been unlikely that Ned wouldn't have had one of those weird like, blonde statues

that, like, have no poop or a dog pooping and then they are trying to get you not to poop by putting one of those out there he's he's live and let live if your dog's there then i guess that's what god intended to happen it's all part of his plan uh and then that goes straight to ned talking discovering that lisa's hair problem and another of my favorites bob you gift this sequence which is just so wonderful just of like him saying that he would put ice in her hair and that you get it out and then her going like i'm okay with that and then just smash cut to this

i seem to have mashed more hair into it. Oh, well. Ace cubes are useless, man. Chewing gum's got to be chewed out. Does the whole town have to hear about this? Arr! Have ye tried a Baltic squid? They can suck the bolts out of a submarine's hull. All right. Fangory will give me 25 bucks for this shot.

I can give you the name of a good gum and hair man. I have a word of advice. Don't try to dig gum out with a bone. It just makes things worse. Leave it in as evidence. Bazooka Joe's got deep pockets. Perhaps I can help. My papa is foreman of the Dusseldorf Gum Works.

Even the Capital City goofball is in there uh but i love how ned's advice makes no sense he says when he gets uh gum in the old push broom he freezes it with a and hits it with a hammer is he hitting himself in the face with a hammer i never thought of that yeah does it make sense but uh that that shot is so painful of lisa just like on the table marge holding her down and ned just hammering her hair yes and then he's him, oh, well, I hear more gum into it. Oh, well.

They seem to have jam more gum into the hair. I like how this scene gets ahead of the common criticism of more modern Simpsons is that, you know, characters are just sort of there whenever they need to be. Like Homer will walk outside of Moe's and like Martin will be standing there for some reason. And this just like really, really wears that on its sleeve that Willie is just looking in their window seemingly everyone was waiting in the living room to come in one at a time and this fits in everybody who didn't get a scene except for Kent Brockman it would have been a nice Kent Brockman scene in here but yeah handsome Pete is there he what didn't he debut like two episodes before this five episodes before it yeah and one important thing though uh uder is alive uder did not die

he was supposed to die in the pta disbands he was last seen getting beaten by civil war reenactors and just saying like well they they come back with fewer kids every time but permission slips let him get away with it and uh as i would find out fangoria went out of print october 2015 but there's a new owner and they hope to get it back in print with quarterly publication october 2018 but i think print magazines are just like it's it's like artisanal bread or something it's just like well i want this because i remember it this is not where the direction went yeah i i i mean i miss having a magazine in my hand on the uh and flipping through it when the new one came in every month but that's just not reality anymore i mean i'm so poisoned by the internet that i'll be like oh

a magazine i'll buy a magazine and then i just don't read it you did your duty of buying a magazine but uh it it felt special for me in, I got my first thing published in a video game magazine. And that felt really special to me. I was like, well, I'm going to keep this magazine forever. It's my byline in a magazine. And that got thrown out of my last move. I was like, eh. I got an article into Electronic Gaming Monthly in its last issue.

Its last issue under Zip Davis. It's a real last issue. No offense to folks working on it now, but we take a quick commercial break. Then we get into another. This is another long one, but I love every second of this. Some folk won't ever ease good, but there again, some folk pull. Like cleaners, the slack jawed yokel. Hey, what's going on on this side?

Hey, Brandine, you might could wear these to your job interview. And scuff up the topless dancing runway? Nah, you best bring them back where from you got them. Okay. Back you go. Two weights for a woman or less discriminating tastes. Most folk will never lose a door when men against them vocal. Like cleaners to slack-jawed yokel.

Hey, you know what? I could call my ma while I'm up here. Hey, ma! Get off the dang roof! Thank you, Zaria. So great. I love how they just basically wrote a hee-haw sketch. Yep. This is just a hee-haw sketch. The whole backstory of what she's doing on the roof I would watch an episode about.

How we use electricity can be smarter, cleaner, and greener. At Electric Ireland, we can help guide you there. You're looking up! You see, our new Net Zero Hub and greener. At Electric Ireland, we can help guide you there. You see, our new Net Zero Hub has all you need to know about smart meter plans, EV tariffs, solar panels,

and much more. Making your usage clearer, your trips greener, your home cozier, and your world brighter. Find our Net Zero Hub at electricireland.ie yeah me too and just the very well-observed uh hillbilly uh dialect you might could wear these

i also just love it says okay okay jesse walks out okay and then he's just like he's just sitting on the telephone pole as his theme song is playing just like kind of like looking around yeah that's yeah i'm thinking of how they cut stuff for this episode and what they they could have cut from what's in there to get in other scenes but playing his theme song twice almost seems indulgent but the second time is better because he's just empty is empty staring while he waits for his theme song to end his grades i do like what's going on on this side what's going on on this side and the uh also this is officially so in the case of snake and cletus that's not how they were known internally

to the writers for years until they were named on the show in scripts snake was called jailbird yeah and cletus was always slack-jawed yoke. So he only became Cletus in the third episode of Season 3, Season 7, Home Sweet Home Diddly Dum Dum Doodly. That's it. And then Snake was named Snake. Oh, was it when Homer says, I love you, Cletus? Was that the first time he ever did? Yeah, yeah.

And Snake became Snake when Sideshow Bob was like, I'll miss you most of all, Snake. Oh? Yeah. They were both tender moments when these people finally got some humanity and a name associated with that's true i think there were some like stalwarts on the writing staff that didn't want him to be called snake yeah so he became like snake jailbird later in life in the late teens of seasons they officially had him name himself snake tea jailbird or something like that so uh but this they did it a little faster with this of

they he'd because he'd only been in his first cletus's first appearance which was bart's bar gets an elephant uh lisa's saying like like some slack-jawed yokel and then they cut to cletus look at the born a heredity little girl i could just see slack-jawed yokel on the script falling her life and his area is so good as him and i yeah it is the he ha design is beautiful on this and the and the banjo pluck in it's great it's yeah it's also a redo of their joke from a few episodes earlier in scenes from the class struggle of springfield of just uh hey you can wear this to your job like i gotta wear the shirt but dairy queen gimme he's always looking out for brandine and it's nice if you want to hear more about hee haw and you probably don't go back to our colonel

homer episode where we talk in great detail about hee haw because there's an extended hee haw parody in that 1996 is probably the last time you can make a hee haw parody a family guy did it like eight years later talk about a show that people were like that is still on like that one ran forever yeah it's true it's i actually horse apples is my favorite hee haw parody that's right but it's like so bizarre and meta that it's acceptable i remember being like in a dentist's office and the tv was on and there was just old this old guy selling so it's like remember when comedy was good and wholesome here's all of hee haw on 3 000 dvds yeah i love those i miss those commercials of just like, don't you want to just own all of Laugh-In?

Well, for $800. No thanks. So then we head to Comic Book Guy, which I'm glad he got a scene in this. I know this, not the pain of needing to use the bathroom, but of going to a comic shop and going like, what can I get for a dollar? And the answer is nothing.

Or educational Spider-Man comics, which no one wants. But this was the first time it hit me that Comic book guy is ordering more than one pizza for himself. Can I use your bathroom? No, you may not. The bathroom is for paying customers only. If you purchase an item, you may use the bathroom. Okay, how about that? That is a rare photo of Sean Connery signed by Roger Moore.

It is worth $150. What can I get for 75 cents? You may purchase this charming Hamburglar adventure. A child has already solved the jumble using crayons. The answer is fries. Milhouse, what's going on? You said you just needed to use the bathroom. Now I find you buying comics?

While our transaction is completed, you may take the boy. Wait! The answer is fries uh so one thing i noticed that will solve a mystery from the uh the chanel dress episode is that the way comic book guy is holding the comic his hand is awkwardly over the rest of burglar it just says ham so my theory is they can say trademark things but they can't show them like in text if you draw it completely then it breaks a rule like yeah yeah or maybe it they're like well if you do it in animation it's gonna be way harder to change if we're told we have to change it so yeah perhaps they're being safe of just like well we can't change it later so why why risk it because they say chanel like 30 times in the

episode but we see like shah in one scene andell in a later scene, but we never see it together. It's a very weird legal thing they're doing. But he was being chased by Officer Big Mac, you know, the distant relative of Mayor McCheese. That's true. So they were just mistaken from a legal standpoint. It was kind of a skinnier Hamburglar. Yeah, it's a little off model. I love the little point that he does when he says fries yeah the point on and it's in

this weird inflection like no you may not use the bathroom yeah and also the his the malevolence he takes in like oh he got 75 cents from millhouse and while he could let millhouse use the bathroom he's just like no no our transaction is done you may take the boy that's monster it's pretty horrible i we've seen kirk van houten before but i think they're really figuring out how funny kirk No, no, our transaction is done. You may take the boy. He's a monster. It's pretty horrible. We've seen Kirk Van Houten before, but I think they're really figuring out how funny Kirk is, especially everything he says begins with, Oh!

Yes. It's so great. I love doing it. This episode, I think, is when they discovered, We're going to do a Kirk-focused episode next season. This is happening. Yeah, his entrance on Milhouse is so good. This comic book guy is 75 cents richer

which in the comic book world uh of owning a shop like that's a lot of money things are getting pretty dark over at herman's uh and and the only thing that lightens it is the appearance of like the nerds of kirk and millhouse yeah as soon as zed gets here the party will begin Kirk in Milhouse. Yeah. So, uh, nice store. You know, when I was a kid, this used to be a pet store. Yeah. Right over there against that wall, there was a cutest little... Get in that corner. Hey, Dad, can we get this, please?

Oh, my gosh. Sorry, mister. I also think Hank Azaria is freaking out how funny he is to go, before every line. It's so great. It's such a nervous, like, hesitant nerd. Milhouse coming in might even just be like, that's Matt Groening or they're better angels of like

we need to end this scene now and also smash him in the face like just be like justice reigns this nothing horrible is gonna happen to our characters we we walked up to the line but now he's been smashed in the face hopefully he's dead yeah you hope herman is dead we've gone too far the party is gonna get started when Zed's there I think honestly this could be the only threat of sexual assault on the Simpsons thankfully I think so yeah and it's a reference so it's not like they're just doing it straight it's always how they sneak in like I I've said this before about Rain Man jokes like you can't you can't directly make fun of an autistic person that's just bullying but if there's a movie about a person with autism,

then you got it. Fair game. Same with like, oh, I want to make a transphobic joke. Well, fortunately, a film called The Crying Game came out, so we can just reference The Crying Game. It's nice and easy that way. But yeah, Kirk is talking about the old pet store really lightens the mood in that.

But apparently he's about to be murdered and have horrible things happen to him as well. It would have been nice to see their discussion with Luanne when they got back about what they had done that day. That was a pretty good stammery Kirk moment as well. We're not talking about this. Our lives are changed forever now. I mean, this could have exacerbated the unhappiness in his marriage that he's seen. The darkness of humanity. He's just like, what even is this?

What is this sham of a marriage? This could have been a catalyst. You never know. He saw the darkness of humanity. People just let Wiggum hop away with a ball gag in his mouth. Never to be seen again. So then again, we go from that to the lightness of a little girl getting a haircut. And the barber is way from the Tracy Allman shorts.

It is Jake the barber. That's his official name. He had appeared in the shorts in Bart Gets a Haircut, or Bart's Haircut. And he is voiced the same as he was then. And that's also why he is grandfathered in on the beard line as well. Yeah. And he is an impression. He's Dan Castaneda doing an impression

of Floyd the Barber from Andy Griffith. The famous freakazoid opening, Floyd the Barber cuts his hair, freakazoid, freakazoid. Want me to cut off the gum or just style it? Cut it off, but be careful. Don't worry, sweetheart. I know how important hair is to a little girl.

You keep squirming, there's going to be a little bald girl with no lollipop i love it i finally look like a real person thanks the one disturbing thing is they have to convey like a bald patch on Lisa's head. So underneath her hair is just like Caucasian pink skin. It's very odd. Yeah, it is a bit distracting. Yeah, it's when they show them as real. When was that one where they show them as very realistic Caucasian people? It's that type of skin underneath.

That's when Homer imagines if Marge and him were brother and sister and creating inbred children. That's interesting about floyd the barber i just thought he was a for some reason a an elderly like upstate maine guy you know saying you can't get them from here i i also they have to they have to communicate it i think it maybe would have looked weirder if you just saw stubble among lisa's yeah drawn on hairline. It was a choice they had to make. Yeah. I mean, it's an interesting thing they had to explore.

Just like her hairline doesn't make sense. And when they had to make 3D toys of her, it is just like it's a pine cone is what her head is. It's freakish. Yeah, it's like a hedgehog. And she finally does look like a normal person with hair that way and i'm glad they ended with a extended ha ha in this episode like first off that nelson just hangs around to ha ha at anything he sees that's like great it's a real window into his sad life just like what can i laugh at today yep just make somebody feel bad like poor

lisa she's so proud of her haircut and then just one ha ha just ruins it it's like oh i i've been there of like wearing what i think is a cool shirt and one person makes fun of it i'm like well i i guess i'm a pariah like i'm a leper i will never wear this shirt again i'll burn it when i get home uh and then mrs glick who's really getting a workout in this season of like, anytime an old lady has a horrible thing happen, it's often her. And he laughs at her. But then he goes a bridge too far laughing at a very tall man in a very small car. I love this guy.

Do you find something comical about my appearance when I'm driving my automobile? Yeah. Everyone needs to drive a vehicle, even the very tall. This was the largest auto that I could afford. Should I, therefore, be made the subject of fun? I guess so. Would you like it if I laughed at your misfortune? Huh?

Maybe we should find out. Now, march. Hey, everybody, look at this. It's that boy who laughs at everyone. Let's laugh at him. Ha! Wave to the people blow them kisses i yeah i love very tall man and i like how the town is completely on board with this they've been waiting for nelson to get his comeuppance finally he's humiliated blowing them kisses is such a nice time to do the guy

blow them kisses he sounds sounds like Art Carnian Valium or something. Should I therefore be made? I love the way this guy talks. They call it a tippy turtle voice. I don't know. That's probably from some old cartoon. I assumed he was based on the Guinness Book of World Records

tallest man, Robert Wadlow. He does look just like him, actually. Do you remember that like he him the guy with the long fingernails the fat twins those are the guys i remember all their all their superstars or from ripley's believe it or not museums which yes but i looked him up he was 8 foot 11 wow 490 pounds and he died at 22 and he just never stopped growing he was still growing when he died he's still growing now 8 11 yeah that is obscene like that yeah people can get fatter every year like they then get and guinness stopped you know giving awards for overweightness but wow they were encouraging

people i think the wrong way but a very tall man his official name is based off of uh ian maxton grammy six foot eight simpsons writer who had just joined the writing staff i don't believe he talks like this but the idea of a freakishly tall man uh but that he put that in their head yes yeah he's uh ian maxton graham comes from saturday night live he is a very like urbane writer who came to be one of the most hated writers in the simpsons fan community i believe how come um well one of his things was in one interview once he's like i didn't really watch the show before i started here i don't care about the history he was he seemed to be purposefully antagonistic to the internet fans as well which is kind of the opposite of how everyone who gets cast in a superhero movie now

like pretends like they've exactly read the comic oh i grew up reading the source material i love aquaman i'm aquaman right yes i love him i'm a fan just like you guys oh no i read all the books like i have deep respect for the source material spider-man means so much to me andrew as andrew garfield i just love him so much but uh but emaxogram did the opposite and also, everybody writes a Simpsons episode. Being credited writer doesn't exactly mean you're the writer of it. But one of his written episodes was the one where Maude is killed, which is such a hated episode. And his name's on it. He didn't have a writing credit on the show at this point he didn't get one until next season's

burns baby burns which it really fits for him as a kind of a defeat college type dude he is true a college boy huh but i like how naturalistically he explains how like look i have a tiny car but it's all i could afford yeah give me a break and nelson uh not getting it he's still like being uh truthful like uh should i be made the subject of fun i guess so yes uh and also you notice in the background i only noticed matt graining as a kid watching it but oakley and weinstein are there too in the crowd laughing at him i believe that's because the uh the stage direction for that scene is all the biggest idiots in springfield are laughing at nelson so they drew in like oakley weinstein and green i just noticed disco stew who also was a relatively new yeah i'm surprised he didn't get

his own little story in this but i guess he was too new yeah they i i think uh he didn't catch on as quickly with the writers as handsome pete did the second they were like well we gotta shove somebody in here gotta get handsome pete in again everybody loves him he'll be dancing for hours and i love that the nelson scene ends with him saying wow yeah and then back to bart and millhouse with the mustard and ketchup to wrap everything up well millhouse i guess interesting stuff does happen to people in springfield yep everybody in town's got their story to tell. There's just not enough time to hear them all. Ha, ha.

Oh, sorry, I'm late. There was trouble at the lab with the running and the exploding and the crying. One of the monkeys stole the glasses off my head. Oh, no, wait. Please, no. Please, I have a funny story. If you listen. I even wrote theme music. Now, wait. Please, no. Please, I have a funny story. If you listen. I even wrote theme music.

Listen. Hey, hey. Professor Frink, Professor Frink will make you laugh, will make you think, he likes to run, and then the thing with the person. Oh, boy. That monkey is going to pay.

There are so many stories that one is going on over the credits in this episode. Yeah, I kind of wish it went all the way to the Gracie Films logo. But unfortunately, for the extended full-length credits, they have to pipe back in the music because his story ends. But I just love how he's talking it up of like, oh, have you just seen it? This monkey took the glasses right off my face. It's so funny. And there were explosions.

Yeah, this episode was before any of these characters. They were still an appearance of Dr. Frank or Disco Stu. It was like they were treats because they hadn't really been shown up. They weren't as cliches as they sort of became. So it was neat to get more glimpses at them. I mean, it was odd but cool to see, like, in season seven, Troy McClure gets an episode. But that was a very rare thing to happen,

like a B-level character getting an entire episode about them. And this kind of episode was for fans like myself who collected all the Simpsons trading cards. It was like, oh, I know every character in this, but I bet the regular viewers don't know this. And so they name all of them. They're like, well, to get all these things, you got to know who Professor Frank is.

You got to know Apu. You got to know all this stuff. I think also around this time, 95, 96, that first big poster came out with all the characters on it that had appeared at that point. I know every one of those because I have no life. But I was thinking about this. We go back to Bart and Milhouse.

And notably in this episode, Homer gets very little to do, and so does Bart. I think that's intentional because they are sort of the stars of the show, so I think intentionally, especially Bart, but they really gave Bart nothing fun to do.

He's just sort of like, in the beginning, he buys gum, and then you see him at the end, and that's basically it. I didn't realize that he buys gum at the quickie mart, which he then puts in Lisa's hair. I didn't get, I...

Yeah, because the gum had a very, like, unfunny, not very clever thing on the, printed on it, which is like gum juice in today or something. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, it was just like... He spotlighted that too. Yeah, that was boring, that gum. I was like,

couldn't you guys think of something to put on this? Some, like, gum, chew it with your mouth. I don't know. I guess it's hard to write a gum jokes there are so many jokes in this episode though but this is fantastic and it's it just i love how it breaks format but it's still a simpsons episode and it just shows um what you can do with the simpsons and i think this gave future showrunners a lot of different ideas i think a trilogy of error would be the next one that would really play with the format i'm not

sure if i've seen that one. I think that's the one that's a parody of. It's Run, Lola, Run. Yeah, but it's like. Okay, sure, yeah, yeah. Is it Everyone's Day is a different act? Yeah, so Homer blows off his thumb. Lisa has her show and tell thing.

Linguo. Linguo. And Bart and Milhouse find counterfeit things. And you just see it from different angles in three different sketches. Yeah, it was creative. It has the Milhouse line, this is where i come to cry yeah i love that i love that that's a good episode i people have called those like the start of the bad season but that's a good episode in the weaker seasons if as folks would call it and yeah i love this one too i think it's it's so creative it gave them permission to do weirder stuff.

It gave other shows on network television permission to do weirder stuff too. I know, for example, David Cohen directly cites this episode as the inspiration for the 300 Big Ones episode of Futurama, which is about random adventures that all the characters have when they're handed $300 in a tax rebate. Any final thoughts on this one, Connor?

Yeah, I just appreciate it. You know, they did do something different, but it wasn't, you know, they weren't trying to be super gimmicky about it. It wasn't like a Seinfeld backwards episode. It was just like, hey, we're good at telling stories and we have interesting characters and people. So let's just take a glimpse into their worlds. And it worked really well. So we're going to do our plugs once we get off the line with you, Connor. But is there anything you want to plug?

I just realized that we were talking a lot about Ready Player One. We did not say a damn word about your podcast. So please talk about that. It's great. So me and Mike Nelson from Riff Tracks and Mystery Science Theater did a deep dive into the world of Ready Player One. And then Armada on our podcast, 372 pages. We'll never get back. So if you want to check those out we had a lot of fun talking about that and we just talked about the movie so you're welcome to listen

to that I have written a couple novels so I would love it if you would check those out yeah most recent one is called the pole vault championship of the entire universe it is a fun comedy sci-fi thing that I had to make great efforts to make sure that I wasn't ripping off things that were from the Simpsons in the back corners of my mind. And you check us out on Riff Tracks. We do stuff not every week, but we release titles very regularly. We just did one. By the time this is out, we'll have the last Jedi Riff Tracks out, Bob. There was a line, someone compared Emperor Snoke's costume to a designed by Bob Mackie. I'll take that as a personal

shout out to me, I think. And we have lots of old B-movies up all the time, and our Space Mutiny live show will be in June, so check that out. I'll be there. Yeah, I can't wait for that. I kick-started that. Oh, nice. Thank you so much.

I think I had upgraded I didn't do it at first but when the upgrades came in I upgraded to the DVD I was like I even

like for the reunion show I got the Blu-ray as part of kickstarting even though I'm like well I'm just gonna watch this streaming but isn't it nice to just have it on a shelf

I just like seeing it on a shelf and what I like about when they do again the things they've done in Mystery Science Theater they don't have to write all new jokes, but they're all new. And it just shows you like, wow, there are so many opportunities for jokes in all of these movies.

They can come up with different ones for every riff. It's so impressive. Yeah, that's a fun aspect of it because most times I haven't seen these before we do them. So we'll go through and then usually as we're flying to Nashville to do the live shows, I'll watch it on a plane and be like, all right, well, we did make the same joke, same type of joke. Let's just do it to do our due diligence and not trade on the same ground just to yeah it's a challenge it's fun and i think there are a few movies that have been done by cinematic titanic mst3k and riff tracks santa claus conquers the martians is one of them and i watch all three versions every year and every joke is different between all three versions

but i have to say connor before we let you go your your podcast about ready player one has almost ended friendships in my life because my relationship with ready player one is I was in the games press at the time it came out and everyone told me to read it so of course I didn't and then I forgot about it forever and everyone read it then the movie started happening and I listened to your podcast because I remember Ernest Cline not being very good and I was just sitting in horror listening to you describe the podcast. My favorite part of the podcast, it starts off with Mike Nelson, the good natured Mike Nelson, playfully chuckling at lines of dialogue.

By episode three, he is exclaiming, son of a bitch, after the same kinds of dialogue. But now when I meet people and we talk about the movie and it just comes up a conversation like, oh yeah, I like the book.

I'm like, how? How could you like the book? I don't even understand you. It's truly baffling. I don't understand it either. And it's like trying to understand someone who's telling you that the sun is green, you know? Yeah, I have forgiven them,

but I do look down upon them. I love the fanfic-a-real test because they're both, one I was sure was like, no, this can't be in the book. or real test that, cause they're both one. I was sure was like, no, this can't be in the book. This is too bad. Where use the,

use the word whilst, whilst I was like, no, he wouldn't use that word. No. And he did. Klein picked up his quill pen for that one. And also when also with Mike Nelson in one of them,

he exclaims like like you guys are listing all the things that they could be looking at he's like and on his shelf where oh what could they be and then mike nelson finally just screams it's video games of course it's video games yes everyone out there please listen to 372 pages we'll never get back it's fantastic uh give all of your money to riff tracks i do it and i recommend it and thank you so much Connor you've been great and I love all of your stuff yeah thank you so much guys I really enjoyed listening to you guys talk about The Simpsons 2 it's a great way to revisit these

without you know sitting down and watching it myself and I learn a ton every time I listen to one awesome thank you so thanks again to Connor again like I love Riff Trax so much I does not like it's I hold it in my heart on the same level as MST3K and please check out their movies and stuff. And their live shows, they do a great job.

They usually live stream to your theaters by Fathom Events, so check those out. There are tons of... If I were to suggest one for viewers to watch, if you've never seen Samurai Cop, their riff on Samurai Cop is my favorite. I've seen many people make fun of the film Samurai Cop, but Riff Trax is the best

I'd say yeah all of my recommendations are the most excruciating movies so you might have to be like a high-level misty to enjoy them like Santa Claus and the Ice Cream Bunny or like how to set up a room oh yeah that's a great okay anyone can enjoy how to set up a room that's the short pay a dollar for it and watch it it's great but as for us we've been talking Simpsons I gotta tell all you guys about our amazing Patreon as of this week all of our $5 level patrons have gotten a new exclusive piece of content every day this week that is not every

week I'm just telling you that to let you know how much stuff we're making just for patrons but yes if you join at the $5 level if you go to patreon.com slash talking Simpsons here's what you'll get you'll get every episode of talking Simpsons and what a cartoon a week ahead of time and ad free you'll also get the entire season one of talking Simpsons you'll get. You'll get every episode of Talking Simpsons and What a Cartoon a week ahead of time and ad-free. You'll also get the entire season one of Talking Simpsons. You'll get all of Talking Critic. That's 23 episodes of Talking Critic.

You'll get all of Talking Futurama. That's our take on the first season of Futurama. And a lot more. I'll have Henry tell you about everything I missed because there's too much for one. I've decided personally there's too much to talk about on this Patreon just for one person to talk about. Well, back in our backlogs for $5 a month, you also get access to every episode of Talking Critic, where we go through the Critic in the same style. Our season wrap-ups, where we go through the major events in the news and deleted scenes and commercials that happened during that particular year of The Simpsons from seasons 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, and soon 7. As well as our deleted scene commentaries, which we did for both seasons 5 and 6.

Audio versions only for $5, and if you go up to the $10 premium level, you can watch the video versions, as well as other premium videos, such as Bob and me further completing our Simpsons retrospective by watching the shorts. We go through all of the Tracy Ullman shorts and have a lot of fun and yes our

most recent interview David Silverman tons of fun like he was great he is a Simpsons legend like the capital L legend I would say a fantastic interview and again that funds everything we do it funds our our luxurious lifestyles sorry our our very our very

nice and comfortable lifestyles. So please check out the Patreon if you haven't. We've added new goals. We've been hitting new personal goals all the time. We're very happy with it, and we can't wait to make more stuff. So yes, that's patreon.com slash TalkingSimpsons. And as for me, I've been your host, Bob Mackie.

You can find me on Twitter as Bob Servo. My other podcast is RetroNauts. That is a classic gaming podcast. We've been going on for almost 12 years. Go to retronauts.com or look for retronauts in your podcast device app or machine you will find it uh find a topic that interests you download that episode i think you'll like it if not try another one that's my that's my advice uh henry how about you and i'm h-e-n-e-r-e-y-g on twitter if you have any questions about talking simpsons or alerts you want to let me know about or you want to know when news is happening about the show

it's all right there along with too many other tweets from me too but we have fun there so follow me H-E-N-E-R-E-Y-G Thank you so much for joining us we'll see you next week for Raging Abe Simpson and his Grumbling Grandson in The Curse of the Flying Hellfish yes I said the entire title we'll see you then aurora borealis aurora borealis