Talking Simpsons - Talking Simpsons - A Fish Called Selma With Nathan Ortega

Episode Date: May 30, 2018

Chimpan-a to chimpanzee needs to tune into this Phil Hartman tour de force, and we've got Nathan Ortega here to chat all about it. We've got more Troy McClure movie titles, more Hollywood rumors, and one of the best musical moments in Simpsons history! It's not quite a mop, it's not quite a podcast, but it is a super fun podcast!!! This podcast is brought to you by VRV, the streaming network full of cartoons, anime and more. sign up for a free 30-day trial at VRV.co/WAC and help support Talking Simpsons! Support this podcast at Patreon.com/TalkingSimpsons!

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I'm your host, Leather Muppet, Bob Mackie, and this is a chronological exploration of The Simpsons. Who else is here with me today? That took a lot of class, Bob. Henry Gilbert, hi. And our special guest. Hating every ape I see from chimpanzee to chimpanzee, Nathan Ortega. That's the best line. And today's episode is a fish called Selma. Well, it's not quite a mop. It's not quite a puppet. But man! Today's episode aired on March 24th, 1996 and as always, Henry will tell us what happened on this mythical day in real world history.

Oh my God! Oh boy Bobby! The Mark Hopper mining disaster happened in the islands of Marinduque, Philippines. The first volume of Stephen King's Green Mile serial is published, and Showgirls wins the Golden Raspberry for Worst Film,

while Braveheart wins the Oscar for Best Picture, which I would reverse those two. I agree with you on that one. But the Green Mile, I want to talk about that. What a bad way to release a kind of short book. I read it. I bought it and I read it. I mean, like all teenagers, I was a Stephen King fan,

but I bought it and I read it when it was a full book i'm like why did they ever chop this up it was pointless a weird experiment an episodic book release yeah i don't know well stephen king had gotten kind of bored with how he had been releasing books so he was just like yeah let's let's try it serialized i remember i i read the first two volumes i didn't read the whole thing but i remember in the first volume there's like an intro that says you know dickinson did the same thing with all of his novels so i wanted to try it myself dickinson dickinson okay whoops i was like emily dickinson i failed famous author sorry famous author i owned you and also yeah showgirls way better than braveheart i think we're memorable braveheart uh I know Braveheart has the hilarious scene

where the king murders his gay son by throwing him out a window. That's so funny. Oh my gosh. I mean, Elizabeth Berkley deserves work. I feel like that was unfair. I agree. Nobody was ready for that movie. I mean, I feel like they're only starting to appreciate it now

as like a weird cult comedy hit. Yeah, I guess Saved by the Bell was too fresh in most people's memories. I think now a child star graduating to taking her top off would be celebrated and cheered in the streets instead of looked down upon in the sex negative 90s. Joe Esterhaus also just wrote, he didn't write a funny script. He wrote a ridiculous script that then was made funny by the director, Paul Verhoeven. I think Gina Gershon, too, just fucking rules in that movie. She's so fun. But all right, this week's episode.

It's funny to talk about all that Hollywood stuff because this is a very Hollywood-centric classic of The Simpsons. Before we start, though, should we introduce Nathan to the audience? Oh, yes. Sorry. Hello. Nathan is here. What's your history with the Simpsons it's pretty much that Mr. Show are the two most formative pieces of

comedy in my life I watched the show religiously I think like a lot of us during the kind of heyday up for the first decade plus of the show's existence as it started getting syndicated like four or five six times a day I would be watching episodes either the ones that are airing multiple times a day or like VHS tapes. So like, this is definitely my life, but especially the way I communicate with like my brother and my friends at the time was just quotes, constant Simpsons references. And they still, even though some episodes like this one sort of faded from my memory, uh, as opposed to others, it's still like watching this episode was a lot of jokes were flooding back to me. I'm like, Oh yeah, I have referenced this a lot. I lose track of where certain jokes come from.

What's the earliest episode you remember watching? We were watching from, I remember the pilot. Oh, nice. I remember my mom was super not cool with us watching it, but we were like, my dad was like, just don't tell her about it. It's fine. It's fine.

I think the one I remember most clearly being in front of a tube TV watching was the camping one. Oh, that is season one. Yeah. So it was like really early on. We should know across this entire network, Henry and I do judge people by the date they started watching something. If you're not a day one person, then fuck you.

That's fair. As long as you were old enough to have watched it day one, I won't judge someone who wasn't alive or even like five. As harshly. You can still blame them for not being older i i do blame them for not being born earlier and at the right time which is the year i was stop making me feel old yeah i don't like thanks ernie klein and and were you a tape every week type person or just more like were you watching in syndication i well i couldn't start taping it till a little bit later because i was not allowed to have access to the vhs player for that that's

my brother's responsibility it's a big bit later because I was not allowed to have access to the VHS player for that. That was my brother's responsibility. It's a big responsibility. Yeah. He'd be putting sandwiches in there or something. Who knows? Right. But I definitely, once I had control over that and could access. Funnily enough, I associate recording The Simpsons with my dad.

He worked at a local TV network, like the local syndication. And we would get these leftover promotional VHSs that I would then would then tape over with stuff and simpsons like a regular thing so i had like constant influx of free empty tapes to to record that's awesome it's sort of like the aol free disc scam where you could just rewrite those and format them right whatever you want on them most of them were only like 30 minutes to an hour at best they're the short ones but still it's like an episode or two the simpsons like in a catalog so yeah when did you fall off when did that's the other question we asked when did you begin and when did you I think honestly was whenever Maude was killed oh yeah I remember like Grimes showing up and Maude in that area area and then I just sort of like drifted off after that slowly the Maude death is a real good like period end of

sentence thing like oh this is just what the show is it's the jumping the shark moment for a lot of people i think yeah i felt like they recovered but that was uh a lot of bad choices were made with that with that decision it only takes one goof for people to kind of drop off of a show especially one that was around as long as that you know yeah that's why i can't believe people always say uh the principal and the popper is a turning point and not the mod death because i feel like one is actually a fun enjoyable episode the other one is like mean-spirited and just ugly and it makes you feel gross yeah principal and the popper i think just gets recontextualized too much it's like oh this was the moment or this was the like stumbling block it's like no it was maybe an episode some people liked less but what even happened sorry i don't want to

show too much, but I don't even remember what that episode that is. It's the one where Principal Skinner is revealed to be a fraud. His real name is Armin Tanzer. Oh, he took over the identity of Skinner. Okay, I do remember that. That didn't bother me as much as the mod one

for some reason. I don't know. I guess it struck people as a betrayal of the character or whatever. But yeah, the mod thing, I mean, we'll get to this episode soon. Sure, sorry. No, no, but it's like... Well, about that a character die but then uh you then in the in the next act you have an

act you have a joke about uh ned's giant dick yeah in the shower just like it's all over the place in terms of tone it's so crazy in tone and also like how it is peak jerk ass homer where homer more or less causes mod's death it doesn It doesn't care. Yeah. It doesn't care. There's a level of cruelty at the center of that that just is hard to get past. Just her getting smashed with a t-shirt and then she falls to her death. Like it's, oh man, it's harsh. But not so much in this.

We'll see you in two and a half years for that one. Maybe just two years, who knows. This episode has also had things that I forgot were a little troublesome from a moral standpoint but not quite as like line crossing and something like that yeah i think this one deals more in like just the the hollywood gray morality that everyone's just like yeah it's hollywood who cares like it's also punching down on patty and selma this is something i't remember being. I think young me didn't really get bothered by it as much but older me is like oh this feels a little

harsh. I feel there are less jokes about them being ugly and hairy and kind of masculine in the episodes that are about them trying to find love or the stories that are about them. If there's a joke. That's a good point. If they're just a side character like for a joke the joke will be about them being ugly or masculine or whatever.

They dehumanize them in these episodes more so they're less battle axes i think of the previous selma marriage episode where it is uh she is portrayed as like an unfuckable monster like just a beast of like well no one no one want to have sex with her she's she is disgusting all this there's not as much stuff about her looks in this. You do feel more sympathy for her in this episode compared to some of the other ones. Yeah, and I think there's one joke about her being gross, but it's her making a joke. Not necessarily her being gross, but making a fun joke that Troy doesn't get. But I want to talk about the writer for this episode before we start.

The famous writer, Jack Barth. He's gone on to write so many Simpsons, create all these shows. Of course, I'm kidding. It must be an honor to have written this episode, but he was a freelancer because, as we've said in the past, every union show needs to take some freelance scripts every year to give people chances. There's the rules. Yeah. And this guy, I looked him up.

He's basically, after this, he kind of basically just worked on documentary series as a writer for documentary series. British documentary series. I'm confused by the number of BBC programs on his IMDb, which almost makes me think that he either moved to England and just got into the BBC or it's a different person. Like IMDb pegs the wrong person. It could be.

Yeah. I'm sure he's got a nice career and is living well, but it's weird to see a Simpsons writer just do this and sort of... I'm done with comedy now yeah on the documentaries well in the oral history for this episode or well for a scene in this episode that's on vulture bill oakley i believe it is or weinstein they talk about the jack barth was a friend of theirs that's why so i feel like you can safely assume he is another Harvard attendee. Do you think anybody did punch-ups on the script for him?

Oh, entirely. Oh, for sure. It would have to be, right? Yeah. I mean, not just for freelance scripts, but for every script. It's a process. They go through the rooms a few times. So there are several filters of extra jokes and tweets and stuff.

That makes sense. Especially on freelance written ones. There's not even the writer in the room with them to say hey wait guys don't cut that joke or don't change that so they they rewrite everything including as they mentioned the uh the oral history on the plan the ac musical they say that it was not even in the original script they they completely added that it was probably just like a story by credit ultimately that they end up having, right? Yeah.

Yeah. It's ultimately very complicated. And I think we talked about it before. Just because somebody's name is on the episode, we have no way of knowing what amount of content they added. It could be like not their pitch or not their story. It could have been assigned to them. Like half the jokes could be other people's jokes that were added. It needs to be credited to somebody.

So one person gets that credit. That's writing credits in general for movies everything oh yeah wga is very complicated like that and same with uh it was something we had to navigate with dan grainy who has a joke in this episode he's very proud of but in our interview he's like when we started asking him questions just about episodes he is has his name. Then he kept having to say like, well, I didn't write that. I didn't write that. So he said, well, if you're taking credit away for me, you have to give me credit for the jokes I wrote in episodes that I don't have my name on. I do have one minor note about the animation in this episode in that previously in episodes about Patty and Selma, actually in episodes about just one of the characters, they will give Selma S

earrings so the viewer can differentiate them. But characters they will give Selma S earrings to so the viewer can differentiate them but in this episode she has S earrings once and that is in the like five seconds she's on stage uh for the Apes musical that's the only time they give her those S earrings I guess I guess it's because Patty isn't around that much Patty doesn't really do a lot in this story which is I I feel like they may have missed a little something there Patty really is just a background character it's the couple scenes she's in made me go like oh this drama is more interesting this drama is interesting to me between them but they also said this script came in way too long they had to cut

a lot of stuff and so when you've got fun super fun guest stars like phil hartman and jeff goldblum maybe you don't want to have patty say. Maybe you just want more space for them. I feel like the Apes musical probably overwrote any potential Patty scenes. Yes, yeah. Everything just got out of the way for that. I'm shocked that they didn't do a Troy McClure episode before this. This almost feels like something they wouldn't have waited to season seven for to be like, why aren't we doing a full McClure episode?

This is actually, I don't know if you guys agree with me. i felt like it was kind of shocking and even daring at the time where you could see them doing episodes about a b-list character like mo or otto or apu or ned but troy's kind of like a c-list character and that he's not like living in the simpsons or like area he's not always there in person he's usually appearing via a video they're watching so like he barely he rarely interacts with any of the characters. In fact, I don't even know to this point if he has appeared in the universe as himself. It's like a Kent Brockman type of character.

It's like they're pop culture icons within their world, but they don't necessarily have to interact with the Simpsons. Because you already had like, Krusty is a celebrity character where a lot of their Hollywood jokes probably went previously, right? So they probably consider it redundant to have him interact with them more so beforehand that's true like crusty is the vehicle for all of their uh horrible celebrity jokes but if they want to make

fun of a specific failed actor like doug mcclure or troy donahue man yeah though i actually just remembered the one time they shared physical space with the Simpsons that I can remember before this. And it is when at Karusty's funeral where Troy's giving an eulogy. Oh, you're right. They're in the same place. They don't speak to each other or share a line. But that was like three episodes ago. Yeah.

But other than that, like Troy, in fact, Troy has the magical power of being outside of the Simpsons and talking about the Simpsons as a show that exists in the 138th episode. He's Puck the trickster guy from Shakespeare. I was thinking Mr. Mix's Pitlick, but that's a more literary reference. Puck's better. I mean, he'll also go on to host the spinoff showcase, and yet he also exists in the world of the Simpsons. I never thought of that while watching this episode, that he also exists to comment on of The Simpsons. I never thought of that while watching this episode, that he also exists to comment on The Simpsons. And I guess no viewer did at the time, because that just struck me as odd.

The first time I thought about it is when you just said it, Henry. Yeah, I had never really considered it before, but it makes this even more fun of an episode. And I'm so glad they did a full Troy episode before Phil Hartman's tragic passing yeah they would have completely regretted it like just thinking now like how how much better say season 11 could have been if they would have been like let's just do a lionel hutz episode oh my god yeah i mean i guess the closest we got was realty bites but that was not really a lionel

hutz episode it was the closest to the hutz although i I mean his tour de force in Margin Chains, like that's bad. Phil Hartman, from a vocal performance standpoint, is almost too good. You almost don't want to have too much of him because then it's like too much of a good thing because like he is so able to harness the timing of the show comedically more than I think even

a lot of the other major cast members, at least from my perspective. I've always thought he could read out of the phone book and I'd be laughing my butt off. Yeah, I think he really gets the phoniness of Troy McClure, the sad phoniness, and then he's got to put it on for people, even though he's very sad privately. Yeah, I wonder how much of that is Phil Harbin. They talked about not just to get into his sad home life,

but Conan O'Brien told this story about working with him in snl is that like you never knew the inside of him he was just like hey how's it going phil boy it's like all right like he he masked a lot of pain but i think he also they joke about how they are they tell stories on the commentary how they would joke with phil like you could could be live-action Troy McClure. You could just do it. It would have been so easy. Like, it would have been perfect, too. But with him being a magical god that can appear anywhere,

like, he could have done a live-action thing with no live-action Simpsons in it. I mean, he looks just like Troy McClure. Maybe not as old at the time, but he's got the look, you know, to him. This episode, too, is such a great distillation of 90s celebrity culture. Yeah. Because it feels like a more innocent time, though, when it was just like, oh, you know that rumor that this guy's a weird sex freak?

Instead of just finding out, like, horrible crimes committed by most famous people you may have liked at some point. Yeah. And now every celebrity has had their phone hacked and you can just go wherever you want and see anything you want from anybody. Suddenly liking fish a little too much seems a little tame.

It does. I was like, that's fine. Well, that's why they needed it's such a perfect invention the fish thing in this episode because I guess it's kind of a it's really on the

Richard Gere hamster thing. Yeah. Actually, it's a gerbil. Huge difference. Huge difference. And though also I went watching this his his career revival reminds me more of uh john travolta's mid-90s revival because he had basically vanished after like 1982 then had a big revival which was followed like preceded and followed by people going like isn't he though gay or he's a weird Scientologist?

What's the deal with Travolta? I guess there was a slight hiccup in his career for the better with Look Who's Talking, but still nobody cared. No, no. I mean, it wasn't until Quentin Tarantino was the obsessed fan who finally wrote a great role for him. And from then on, Travolta has been like the weirdest superstar ever since then. But come on, Travolta, deal with your stuff. He's a good dancer.

Oh, he is. Yeah. He seemed to feel so free when he was in Hairspray. And it's just like, just be this all the time, John. Let him be a manic weirdo. Yeah, just be this weirdo. Don't try to pretend that you're a regular guy who likes kissing women or something. He's paying an evil cult billions of dollars to convince him

he's normal. Will we turn on him for the positive if he ever makes Face Off 2, though? Oh, yeah. I'm still on the positive with him, but it's... Face still off. Yes. I mean, it's great. Yeah, Face... Unfortunately, Caster Troy dies at the end of Face Off, so it'd be hard.

He could be a cyborg. Or just just a twin a secret twin think of how dumb and bad the science is in that movie they could just bring him back to life like oh we found the magic potion here yeah i'll have another movie yeah just have a magic potion why not i or they should just remake it but it's still nick cage and john travolta in the same movie like that that's all right. But anyway, we start off this episode with the classic movie for a rain in ball game, which I think perfectly sums up what weekend bad entertainment was. It's also sums up the, the status of the Muppets in 1996. I think this was probably written before Muppets tonight debuted.

It actually was being canceled as this episode aired, but no one cared about Muppets tonight. It's true. But I mean, I guess if you were a Bart or Lisa's age, you might need someone to remind you who the Muppets are if you didn't see the Muppet Show or the Muppet movies from the 80s and late 70s. They're on syndication on TV on Saturdays and you're like, what is this crap? I mean, as a 13-year-old boy who loved camp and show tunes, I was a huge Muppet Show fan.

I love the Muppets, but I i think in 1996 it was true to say a lot of eight and ten year olds didn't know what the fuck a muppet was fair enough their their their legacy was really in danger after the passing of jim henson and before disney bought it like they didn't have kids just weren't as into the muppets anymore and quality kind of dipped a little bit too. Oh, yes. Outside of Christmas Carol, which is like the best version. It's really good. I've seen people argue,

like YouTube essayist Lindsay Ellis, that Treasure Island is actually the best Muppet movie. Everyone's entitled to their opinion. They can be wrong. It's fine. I mean, maybe she was just the right age at the time. I haven't seen it. I watched it.

Tim Curry is great. He's good in anything. Well, that's also what I love. The casting of Troy McClure on a Muppet movie is perfect to the level he was at. The actor that they would get in this movie. Yeah. Seemingly the villain of the movie, too. I mean,

it's basically the role that Charles Grodin played in The Great Muppet Caper, and he was at the same level of like, oh, yeah. Hi, I'm very affordable. yeah i mean you don't go from the great muppet caper to clifford to beethoven if you're a serious he had it all for like five minutes didn't he yes yeah i think he eventually bowed out with like beethoven three well and then he got his own like uh wasn't it like an msnbc or no cnbc show whoa really an interview show where he like complained about oj the entire time like that's awkward he was one of those guys who uh old white

guys who just snapped when he saw the oj stuff i'm like weird he's had enough yeah he was like what the yeah as a beethoven enjoying kid i had no idea he was uh so old like he's like almost 60 as the dad in beet. It's crazy. He's dead now. He doesn't look that old at that point. I forgot he's dead now. I'm sad. We didn't do it.

But also the co-star Diane Cannon is another one of those, oh yeah, her. She was a huge star in the 70s who, guess what, as an actress who aged, she got cast in things less. But she's still alive, 80 years old, is looking pretty good for a woman in her 80s who had a lot of work done. Which, I mean, hey, if you can afford it, do it. Yeah, really. I mean, so there's a connection to The Muppets. She was a guest on the fourth season of The Muppet Show. And I get a, Diane Cannon, yay!

I love that everybody has a Kermit impression. It's kind of an easy voice to do. All right, The Muppet Show. I didn't know that Diane Kane was a multi-time Oscar nominee, including as a filmmaker for a short, like a live-action short. She is a nominee for that. Yeah, the first big movie was Bob and Carol and Ted and Alice. Which is about swingers?

I think so, yeah. She's still alive. And also, I just think it's crazy to know that an ex-wife of Cary Grant is still alive today. Wow. Isn't that wild? She was 33 years younger than him when they got married. Simple times. It's like when I see a picture of Frank Sinatra and Mia Farrow, I'm like, gross.

Who let that happen? I also think that the voice actors do a great job imitating the Muppets. Like you said, they're both easy. Like, hi-ya, pig! And whoever, I think it's Stan Costano doing Piggy muttering under her breath like, Not now, frog! It's very good. It's spot on.

Yeah. And I also love the animation on Troy's wrinkly face. Like, it's a way they never draw a face on the show otherwise. Actually, the one face that's similar to that is when they have the parody of Luke Perry arriving at the monorail. It's the exact same, like all the wrinkles appear. You would never see those on a character. You have to think about how long it took to animate, probably, with all those little details.

Yes. He's 34 years old. But yeah, so we heard what are Muppets the not quite a mop but not it hurt my feelings as a muppet fan to even have homer say he doesn't know what they are the in part is i quote all the time to answer your question i don't know but man uh just as they're confused by the muppets they're also confused by that leathery muppet why they make that one muppet out of leather that's not a leather muppet that's t McClure. Oh, back in the 70s, he was quite the teen heartthrob. Yeah, who'd have thought he'd turn out to be such a weirdo?

What are you talking about? You know, his bizarre personal life. Those weird things they say he does down at the aquarium. Why, I heard... Oh, Homer, that's just an urban legend. People don't do that type of thing with fish. Troy McClure is a perfect gentleman. Like Bing Crosby or JFK.

I wonder where Troy is now. That's a great on-the-nose sentence from Marge, just to cut to Troy. Yeah, it's a pretty great comment early on of just like, you don't know who celebrities are, like in general. Is it me or did the part where she says, people don't do that kind of thing with fish look like it was redubbed or something? It might have been. It was one of those moments where you had to question

if there was an original joke there that they changed. Yeah, they had to make it vague enough because I, as a 13-year-old in first viewings, I didn't completely get that the joke is he has sexual relations with fishes. Same here, yeah. You just can't think, what could he possibly be doing that people would be troubled by with fish i guess i guess i didn't know about the

richard gear thing until later but i can talk about that a little bit i mean the um the urban legend about richard gear was that he was hospitalized for having a dribble up up his rectum um he had to get it removed and there are no cases of that ever happening on record and uh i mean you know stick things up your butt it's fun. But a live animal doesn't sound great, you know? No. It's not fair to the animal. No. It's abuse.

It's got teeth and claws and it's going to find a way out. Yeah, there's also that danger. And I mean, if you want something that moves around in your butt, you have lots of options that do not involve animal abuse. It's true. So how this spread was during the Pretty Woman era era it's it's very vague i don't think they could track down the person who did this but one prankster uh sent out a bunch of press releases all all over hollywood saying this is what happened to richard gear and it it caught

on so much that people just started started saying it was true and like on radio stations and things like that so this meme spread via fax and now it's something that everybody knows it's a proto meme yeah for sure it was before who did he piss off in hollywood i have no idea it could have been this meme spread via fax and now it's something that everybody knows. It's a proto meme. Yeah, for sure. It was before. Who did he piss off in Hollywood? I have no idea.

It could have been potentially an enemy. I don't know, but just like the power of that, I guess it's like before the internet, it's such a captivating idea. Dribble stuck up someone's ass that, uh, it's just plausible enough to be believable,

but still audacious enough for people to go. Oh my gosh. Did you hear? South park would write quite a few stories based on this urban legend. I had first heard of it because it's a line in Scream. Like somebody says that in the movie of like, oh, it's just a rumor, like Richard Gere and Gerbils. I was like, what?

What is this? I think there's a little bit of Michael Jackson mixed into Troy as well. Like the reclusive celebrity whose career is over, who has strange sex habits that we don't know behavior yeah like i don't know you seem morally gray at best yes well they work overtime to make troy innocent enough that it's like well one he has a sexual proclivity that that only hurts fish apparently or even who knows if it even hurts fish it probably does but no person is hurt in this i like to hope they're dolphins and same with like his arrival of the car thing it just seems like that you're supposed to think oh he's about to get pulled over for drunk driving like

so many celebrities have especially at a time yeah but they had to make it vague they're like no no no it's his glasses he's not a drunk driver that's interesting i never thought of it that way the shot was set up so you would think he was uh you know drunk swerving all over the road like you're definitely supposed to think that but uh he gets pulled over all right captain rush rush out of the car oh i'm seeing stars here no just one i am troy mcclure you may remember me from such films as the greatest story ever h Hooled, and they came to burgle Carnegie Hall. I'm afraid not. License, please? Says here you need corrective lenses. Put those glasses on, mister.

You wouldn't ask a handsome man like me to wear glasses. It'd be a crime against nature. Well, they do kind of make you look like a nerd. Tell you what, just get out of the DMV tomorrow and try to pass that eye test. I'll tear up this ticket, but I'm still gonna have to ask you for a bribe. It is interesting now that I'm thinking about it, is

we've never heard up until this point Troy speaking as a human, not just as a presenter, so these are like new readings out of Troy that we haven't heard before. Yeah, that's true. It's not him in awe and acting. And it sounded very Charlton Heston there when he starts losing his cool.

Oh, for sure. The Simpsons will be right back. Hey, y'all. It's Henry Gilbert. hey all it's henry gilbert you may remember me from such podcasts as this one talking simpsons and also the what a cartoon podcast talking futurama talking critic you may remember me from so many things but if you don't remember me from a couple of those that might be because you're not a supporter yet at patreon.com slash talking simpsons if you go there and sign up for just five dollars a month you'll get access to so many exclusives that we do on talking simpsons patreon like our entire first season of futurama where we go through each episode in the talking simpsons style with tons of cool guests talking critic

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a month and you can be satisfied with knowing you're supporting me and bob doing this full time so thank you very much also if you're a fan of cartoons, let me just tell you, you're missing out if you're not listening to What a Cartoon. Me and Bob and a guest each week go through a different cartoon in the same Talking Simpsons style, but open to all types of cartoons. We do anime like Cowboy Bebop. We do primetime sitcoms like King of the Hill. We do Saturday morning shows like batman the animated series we

do current hits on cartoon network like steven universe and so much more we have a ton of fun there and we have so many episodes already you can listen to and again if you sign up at patreon.com slash talking simpsons on top of all the other simpsony goodies you get you'll also get a week early and ad free every episode of what a cartoon what a deal sign up at patreon.com slash talking simpsons or at the very least check out what a cartoon in your podcast device I like when Phil's Charlton Heston impersonation kind of leaks into Troy. It's hard not to because it's just so overly dramatic and ridiculous. I think Heston was in a similar situation as Troy McClure until he rebranded himself as a gun nut.

Like until then. I mean, that tells you he's a dude who's not getting cast and shit because he's he's like i guess i'll join the nra since i'm not in movies anymore but so and that's how we'll forever remember charlton heston other uh it goes from play of the apes and then nra bowling for columbine yep bowling for he started no films in between those two the delorean is the perfect car for a hollywood oh yeah for somebody who's clinging to a past when they were more successful and it's really run down too it's beautiful it's clearly he's been crashing a lot just because he's like he

just can't wear glasses he just can't be a nerd he refuses to i also just love his wiggum sets him up for such a great line like i'm seeing stars here I love the way it's animated too because he just he clearly is calculating his reaction to line up with his statement yeah slowly turn his head at just the right time to have that photogenic that angle he's let down so badly

Troy works hard to be this is the first time he's you know what also another cool thing about this joke is that it's the first time someone has replied to Troy. All these times he said, you may remember me from, and then a line. And then he just keeps going because he's in a movie. This is the first time he's said it in real life. And a person has to reply to them like, I don't remember you.

He's losing his mojo. And there's a few times later where people say, I remember you from this. And it's great because they had to work overtime they had to come up with like 20 troy mcclure movies for people to remember him by they probably have a book yeah in the writer's room of just all the fake movie names i want to know which ones they didn't use they're so great because they all have to sound like movies that were made between 1968 and 1978. The kind of films that no one would make now. They're just like, well, this is a wacky, funky, like Gladys, the groovy mule.

Who would make a film about a mule? In the 70s, they just would. Just try anything. And then war epics that always have blank on blank hill or whatever. Yeah. But so it's also, then we cut to the DMV, which is great that there's a lot of memories of Selma and Patty in this episode, like Jub Jub reminding us of that and Patty's jealousy of Selma and wanting Selma to just be her live in person for the rest of her life until they're dead.

I also just love Abe thinking they're both Marge. Hello, Marge. Then they get some some really spices up their life with the arrival of Troy. Oh, hello, beautiful. John Lott tells me I might need to wear these glasses. You? Oh, nonsense. You're Troy McClure.

I remember you from such films as Meet Joe Blow and Give My Remains to Broadway. Stars like you don't need glasses. Oh. Ugh. Now, Mr. McClure, would you like to take off those glasses and read the top line? Uh, W7 star pound. Ugh. Look, Miss Bouvier.

As an actor, I depend on my remarkable looks if you could find it in your heart to pass me i'm sure i could find some way to repay you say by buying you dinner that took a lot of class uh one thing we missed and i i noticed for the first time we get a rare appearance of Hank Azaria playing Fat Tony for one sentence I never I didn't realize it was him until last night because he just he speaks for like two seconds it does sound just slightly different than normal performance but close yeah it's really good if he would have talked longer I think I would have picked up on that way earlier but man I think it could be the last time Joee montana did not play fat tony because he came back or he'll

be back in a major scene in season eight for uh the home reverse the 18th amendment and i think from that point on they've said that joe montana has told them like if fat tony burps call me like i'm playing him at all times but this uh this one he was not invited to for but they're only there for the the wonderful mafia gag of sleeping with the fishes. Yes, I like how they twisted the head. The season 18 sets have the Fat Tony's head on them, and Joe Montagna's on a few commentaries, and he talks a lot about his restaurant. Oh, jeez. I wonder if they sell ding-ga-ma-goo there, which to my research is not an actual dish.

Well, Matt, at least it's done in a nice way on the commentaries matt selman complains about his wife's business a lot uh it's just like come on matt selman comment it seems like a real money hole and look he's a million he's a millionaire he's a tv millionaire what's what's the point of having those millions if you can't throw it on your spouse's side projects yeah make her dreams come true this then kind of falls into the thing you'll hear about in like people magazine or us weekly of like i went on a date with a movie star wow and it wasn't until this research that i realized that pimento grove is an olive garden parody like pimento to olive garden to grow okay i get it that's uh that shows you the also the level of money troy is going to

spend on this uh dinner he owes her he's like i'll take you to olive garden you're not going anywhere better than that his picture is on the cat door though yeah i got that also shows you how bad this place is of like they just have cats walking around that they need a cat door that just implies there are vermin there that the cat is killing. It's also good that they set up the scene with Marge early in the episode to let you know that you have to be, for a woman to be attracted to Troy, they have to be at least

in their mid-30s to remember the 70s whenever he was famous. Otherwise, you would not be attracted. That's why he's taking her to Olive Garden, because that's the level of, that's how long it's been since he was successful. He can't afford probably a nicer place. Yeah, I guess Troy's got a good probably 20 years on Patty or Selma and Marge.

Yeah, I think so. Well, if she, let's assume Selma was in there, Patty and Selma were in their late teens in the 70s, like in 74, when it was Marge's prom. So they were in their late teens then, and he was a teen heartthrob, which probably would peg him at like late 20s. So he's got to be close to, he's got to be mid-50s. I don't know. In that Muppet movie, which was like 1977, he's that leathery then.

So I feel like he's in his 30s then. Maybe he just had a lot of work done or was tanning a lot and prematurely leathered. Like a George Hamilton. Man, did George, did he die or turn into jerky or what what i think he's still with us man so he's also on the trimacolor level of just like you'd see him as a guest star and things you're just like what are you famous for that you have a lot of that you're very tan when were you famous for being remembered or something at some point uh and also all the drawings on the wall are pretty much every guest star

they ever had on the show up to that point. It was a great way of going, like a tribute to themselves, I guess, and just being very meta. I saw one, when I saw Tom Cruise on the wall, I was like, is that what he was going to look like in Brother from Another Planet? Sorry, what's the name of that episode?

I always forget. Yeah, Brother from Another Planet. Okay, yeah, I wonder if that was what that character was going to look like in that episode. I don't know, it's so extreme. Okay, yeah. I wonder if that was what that character was going to look like in that episode. I don't know. It's so extreme. I feel like he would have said, my nose isn't that big.

Calm this down. Oh, though it's Brother from the Same Planet. Anyway, I think he would have objected to that drawing of him. I love the gag on the classic, like when an actor isn't being cast regularly and stuff, he's like, I'm reading a lot of scripts. And then the turn is that he's just doing that because it's cheaper the movie the one joke about selma's unattractiveness is uh what i mentioned earlier is her saying i think i'm getting repetitive stress disorder from scratching my butt all day it's cute that she's trying to be funny and he just is like staring at her he has no idea how to interpret this i i think of that

line whenever I was had a boring day job and just like, oh yeah, I'm getting repetitive stress disorder from scratching my butt all day. Well, there is another joke on her looks when he puts on his glasses. Hey, that just means he's being judgmental. Yes. No. It's almost like Troy McClure is not a good person. It's true. Yeah. It's like he's very shallow he's quite shallow i'd say the the nicest thing about troy is that he's not this whole episode makes him innocently using her he he lucks into you getting into a scam marriage with her not from not from a real plan same with he has to be told by the actual evil person in his life his agent to be evil and like no no, use these people.

Use them for this. Use them for that. He's complicit in cruel behavior. He's not necessarily instigating the cruel behavior. The agent is sort of the devil on his shoulder in this episode. Oh, for sure. As I'm sure all agents are. So they head outside, and this is when Troy gets lucky.

Well, thanks for holding up your end of the bargain. I had a pretty good time. Yeah, me too. You need a of the bargain. I had a pretty good time. Yeah, me too. You need a ride somewhere? Hey, get a load of this. Try McClure and what looks like a date. Here you go, boys. A little something for page one. Hey, Harlan.

Isn't this your sister-in-law on a date with Troy McClure? Troy McClure? He's a washed-up movie star. He could be dating washed-up supermodels. Oh, I don't know. Maybe those rumors about his fish fetish weren't true after all. This changes everything. I'd pay to see him in a movie now. If only that were possible. So Lenny and Carla are there to show you that works

on the American public like oh he's he's into women he's living a heteronormative life I want to see more of him now he's not a weird freak even a recent version of that I remember was before Ellen Page came out she there were like stories that were clearly

placed by somebody on her team or somebody with an interest in making her look straight of just like here's her hanging around with this guy are they dating like she that was part of just the selling point because if you're not even if you aren't openly anything if you're famous and you aren't seeing a heterosexual pairing people start asking questions they're like huh i've never heard about this person's wife or husband. Yeah, that plausible deniability. So at least you're seeing near people.

And they're like, oh, well, straight's the default. So they must be dating or something. If she's hanging around with this handsome man, it must be dates. Those are called headcanons in fandom, by the way. That's real life celebrity headcanons. And Ellen Page even said after her big coming out thing that she was tired of lying by omission. Just letting people assume those things, like even innocently. Yeah, just how everybody reacts like, hmm, you know what?

I kind of like him now. It's the same as like if people saw, say, Elton John starting to date women, they'd be like, huh, I guess I like him now. I'm going to buy some of these albums. I'll finally buy these Elton John albums. Now I know what he's singing about women. I love whenever characters in The Simpsons project exactly what they're thinking and also what the point of the scene is. Way too transparent about stuff. If only that were possible. Carl recognizes that obviously Troy would never be in a movie now. He isn't in movies.

And I also, another great compliment to Phil Hartman's acting, which also Julie Kavner is so good in this episode she finally gets a lot to do but Phil Hartman's acting on Troy at nothing like it's zero he's like you want a ride yeah it's a sign of Troy

we don't hear the down Troy ever until now the completely disinterested Troy who doesn't want to do anything for it all but he's like I guess I should drive you home. It's good it's very observational especially if you've been on bad days just the body language of Troy and Selma like she's

way into it and he's not he's just like very bored and just kind of suffering it's kind of heartbreaking honestly I've been on both sides of that by the way Selma doesn't realize it too these are all these things that should just be warning signs to Selma but she wants she wants to believe

she's so starstruck I mean that's something that can easily fall into if you get even close to fame like glamour is a real thing like if you meet a famous person you just want to assume the best about them especially if you're near them you're like well this famous person must be really nice.

They must be my friend. They're famous. They're being nice to me. I think I'm the most famous person a lot of my friends know, and that's very sad. And I also love that it's on page 10, which is a parody of the page 6 gossip column in the New York Post. The headline writer had a clever one for Troyroy but then for ramir wolf castle it's just look who's drunk look who's drunk that's all it is which one what was troy's headline troy a little tenderness okay yes very very clever the writer was at least trying but they used up

all their cleverness look who's drunk that just shows you too like the the cruelty of the gossip column that they're just like look who's drunk fuck them so then we get to hear from this uh episode's other great guest troy my man it's macarthur parker macarthur parker the agent macarthur parker my agent just checking in my friend so how's my favorite client We haven't spoken in eight years. Yes. So I saw the papers today, Troy. Looking good. That wholesome stuff really helps when I'm trying to find your work. You haven't found me work in 12 years. Hell, you.

Joy duty is work. And listen, you keep getting seen in public with human females, and I can get you work in the entertainment industry. Hey. Hello, Selma Bouvier. It's Troy McClure. You may remember me from such dates as last night's dinner. Last night's dinner.

That's so great. Yeah, so MacArthur Parker, obviously a take on the song MacArthur Park, but played by Jeff Goldblum, who actually recorded all of his dialogue twice because the first time he was playing it very differently and talking much more talking much more slowly and the final audio for the episode kept being like 28 minutes long so like no we need you to talk fast we have too many slow talking characters Troy talks too slow Selma talks too slow you need to talk faster because apparently he was fine with

it he was happy to come in again he's actually on the commentary for this episode oh that's right yeah I mean it fits more with a peppy agent he's like come on guys hey he's real snappy and I'm surprised that they would get that read from Jeff Goldblum not exactly known for slow methodical scenes he's very manic a lot of times

he's given some these are some Goldblum-y ass reads and that's why I love them I just love they look like you and these are some Goldblum-y ass reads. That's why I love them. I just love they look like you and wife. Yeah, Goldblum, I think the Simpsons were ahead of the curve on Goldblum as a comedy figure. Like this was 1996. He's about to, I think Lost World isn't out just yet. I think that's 97. Yeah, but he's a movie star now.

Like he's not the comedy figure we all know and love for the last decade or so. Now he's a hunky grandpa. Yeah, he's everybody's sexy grandpa. And he reads memes for you when you interview him. I love how innocently he's like, what do these mean? What does Stan mean? He's very accepting, though. And that's what I find so comforting about him.

He has a very gentle presence. You're like, you'll never judge me, Jeff Goldblum. I love you. Yeah, I hope to never find out any horrible things about him. Why would you put that out in the world? Sorry. Thanks. The point of this episode is you don't know celebrities, guys.

That's true. Also, ironically, that his character is named after MacArthur Park because Weird Al's parody of MacArthur Park was Jurassic Park, a film he starred in. That's right. Yeah, actually, I was like, was that in their mind, too, from the Alapalooza album from three years ago? Who knows? They're all nerds. Yeah, it was Ken Keeler who came up with the MacArthur Parker name.

And he's a musical dork. They work so well together, too, the McClure and MacArthur. They're just so funny bouncing off each other. You need an even more Hollywood guy with him. I would say, okay, if he's his agent, but they haven't talked in eight years, who's getting him all those infomercials that Troy's in? Is Troy booking those himself? Does he have a separate infomercial agent, I'm guessing?

I wonder if those are all just old infomercials and he's just been kind of in limbo. They could have been filmed in like 1987. Yeah. That's it. But I do like his end of the bargain. I can get you working in the entertainment industry. It's like, yes, you're an agent.

As opposed to. Yes. I mean, that's also great too that the agent is like, if you do all the work, I'll finally get you jobs. Like, isn't that your job? It feels like they're venting as writers about their own experience with agents. He does specify human females. Human females.

I also, let's talk about Troy's apartment, too. Yeah. It's wonderful. It's great. It's like 60s space age that is just rotting from the inside. But I want to live in that place and it's a real place that you can live in it's based on the chemosphere which uh was built in 1960 and is somewhere in the valley you can visit it still it's like an la landmark now wow can you go inside of it i that i'm not

so sure on but you'll definitely see it driving by and reading about it there are some real wild parties there in the 70s with with playboy playmates and famous people all doing the cocaine. Aw. That's adorable. But it's a great symbolic thing for Troy that it is stuck in time in the 70s just like him. He's literally living in the past. He can't escape it, but it's all crumbling, and he's doing his best to keep it going. He's like, I can't afford a new bean bag.

I got to repair my own bean bag i gotta repair my own bean bag i love that great egg chair he has i really want one of those it would not look good in my crappy apartment with all my other crappy furniture but i just i want the egg chair and it's like gigantic aquarium around him which you know i didn't think about this until just now the reason he would keep an aquarium on his own and have a constant upkeep of it would fit with his sexual pathology as well. I mean, we don't know what he does with the fish, but those fish seem too small to interact with a human

penis. What if he's just turned on by having them around and then the women he had sex with would just embellish the story and it became a thing about him wanting to sleep with the fish? It's something he can look at while sleeping with women. My thought was much darker, but... His headcanon is he's like a merman or something i don't think he's ever we'll get to it later in the episode but i don't think he's ever actually had even attempted sexual relations with

another human his his in his like honestly innocent naivete about it makes me think like has he ever touched the bathing suit area of another person or something and just like going along with being a ladies man because it helps his career or something he knew the deal he had to be a ladies man well he started movies about sex like uh the electric gigolos that's true he's done he's done simulated sex uh so troy is back on the market. That's too funny. I can't remember when I've heard a funnier anecdote. Okay, now you tell one. Well, not much happens to me.

But I once had dinner with a movie star. And it was the most wonderful night of my life. Really? Who was it, George Segal? I hear he plays the banjo. Excuse me, I ordered a Zima, not emphazima. Please, don't smoke in our restaurant. We don't serve contemporary California cuisine in your lungs.

Everybody being so smug and awful is definitely, a smoker wrote this scene. Yes. I can tell you why. Because in 1995, when this episode was written, that is when the smoking ban took place in California at most workplaces indoors. So they were freshly reacting to all those scumbags who said, don't smoke inside. Yeah. You know what? To that, I say, fuck you, smokers.

Your smoker's rights. Smoke outside or do something else. I don't even like walking behind somebody smoking on the sidewalk i now i am more accepting of when i can tell it's marijuana that i'm like well at least you're getting high they're contributing something to the community because you could get a contact high from exactly i'm saying like i can breathe in the smoke it's good for all of us unlike just the tar and spent nicotine of that like my secret favorite simpsons character that is is named and only seen once is the Zima not Emphasima guy. He's fun. He's so smug and proud of how clever his line was.

He was saving that, I could tell. Before she even lights it, just the movement of it. It's almost a Chandler line or something. It's so artificial. Smarmy. It's sort of like, who think you are bro well an ugly is such a great name for a fake LA eatery which I feel like every time they go somewhere fancy I think it's actually capital city in this world they travel over to capital city uh the apes musical is in capital city so maybe Troy lives in capital city too

that would fit yeah that he just moved there for local gigs. I mean, that is the one issue with this episode that like Troy doesn't live in Springfield. Like it's never been established. He should, he should probably just have the same place in like West Hollywood. But yeah,

I mean, they don't say in this episode that he does live, but he has to, because they visit him a lot. He doesn't fly into date Selma. He has no money. Maybe there's like a part of Springfield that's sort of like gentrified by rich people who want to get away from the city proper. That's where Chester Lampwick lives.

That's why they have like the local suburban version of this ugly restaurant. It's sort of an expansion of the main franchise from Capital City. It's like Petaluma. I like this. You know where it's like that's where all the people who are too good to be in Marin go to. Oh, man. I didn't know about these local politics. Oh, I can tell you all about Northern California politics.

It's ridiculous and all terrible. I also love Troy's line of like, he's back from the gutter and he's brought someone with him. He's giving them the headline. And he is insulting Selma to her face. But she's enjoying Mr. Troy's wild ride too much to even notice. And by the way, George Siegel does play the banjo. He has three albums released of banjo music. Yeah, George Segal, again, another Troy-esque character

who was a star in the 70s, who, though by 96, he had transitioned into being a sitcom goofball. Like, he was, at the time of this airing, on the Taylor Leone sitcom, The Naked Truth, which I'm sure we all remember. I sadly do. Me, I do, yeah.

I like Taylor Leone. She's fun. She she's fun uh but then by the next year he'll be on just shoot me and now he is playing the wacky grandpa on the goldbergs as well so i didn't really watch a lot of just shoot me but in doing research for this i realized what the pun of that show was supposed to be and i felt really bad because i should have figured it out much earlier. Just Shoot Me is a good show. I mean, it basically, I think it's a great spiritual successor to Wings, really, where when you watch it, you're just like, You're not selling me on this.

Well, like Wings, it has a great cast with good writing. It's a perfectly cromulent sitcom. I mean, Wendy Malick is awesome like in i agree with that and uh and so is george siegel and david spade's fine there was also rebecca romaine stamos she had a good little run on there the reason i watched this shoot me though was before i mentioned mr show yeah me too i watched it for the mr show guest stars news radio also had mr show guest stars on it's all because they were run by Bill Brilstein Ray. So it's just all very, a lot of cronyism and incestuous stuff there.

I remember one of the first articles I read about David Cross, like an interview with him. He talked about how at the time, the thing he was most famous for was Just Shoot Me. And the thing people would stop him in airports for was how his character on Just Shoot Me, who was pretending to be mentally deficient, would chicken pot chicken pot chicken pot pot i do remember that part and he would get that repeated to him all the time in the airport and it was driving him

that's unfortunate i guarantee you still more people have seen that episode than all of mr show one thousand percent i could go for zima right now too man i you know they still sell them in japan bob you should try some zima while you're in Japan. I choose not to. I'm drinking that Japanese whiskey. I also like the smoking thing is just a nice sign that, like, Selma doesn't fit in this world. Like, she is not part of it. That everyone's making her feel unwanted in it.

But then they also get to tie into another very 90s thing which is the attempt to rebrand cigars is the a cool power move for famous men i do remember my stepdad and mom uh briefly buying cigars and being into cigars in the mid 90s what the what what happens yeah cigar aficionado it really it just made it the cool thing they unlike cigarettes which weren't really able to rebrand as cool in the 90s cigars did it my dad is is still a cigar addict like you i never think of him as a smoker but then when i think back to like no he smokes that cigar he smokes through one cigar like five times a day and he's just like well i just need a couple puffs and then he puts it away and that's like actually way worse than just smoking a pack of cigarettes a day maybe it's like smoking five cigarettes at once yeah i also i wonder whose directive it was it

feels like a mac raney directive they have a romantic scene with cigars and cigarettes so they have to start hacking coughing so kids don't get the wrong message that smoking is good or fun but it's a good little gag they have the brief thing of the marge and patty reacting to it i wish there need to be more scenes of like the sisterhood of the boobies i agree i love this episode but i feel like uh thing like i said before things had to get out of the way for the apes musical but patty should have been a more important character in this in fact she should have been like what marge was in this uh episode I think but jealous sister that's kind of like not liking that all of her time is being co-opted by somebody who she doesn't trust anyway exactly

and just just being present more because she she is that now and she's there and she agrees with Marge but she's only there to agree with Marge Marge is sort of the driving force and the opposition to the upcoming marriage in a different episode Patty would be the one to learn the secret and to tell her about it but that would remove homer and marge from active participants in this episode and you know on multiple commentaries also like in the um millhouse divided the divorce episode of the millhouses they said they regretted it but they're feeling what that they made the simpsons take a bigger role in it but they were still worried about like the show is called the Simpsons we need the Simpsons in this like once he starts saying Selma you don't really

need Homer or Marge in this at all they're not important at all except for a Homer knowing the secret and that's it I think there's also an element of like if you don't people care about Marge more and take her if the audience I would imagine cares more about her perspective and doesn't wouldn't interpret it as being selfish or petty when she does voice her concerns. Yeah, that's true. So maybe it's like the viewer would handle that conflict coming from somebody

who they care about and trust more so than the character who's just only been petty and selfish in every scene you've seen her in in previous episodes. It sounds like a network note type of thing. Or a James L brooks type no yeah they talk about it uh some in the vulture article as well but just about how they bob is as mentioned spank times v2 of how they wanted to program this season like a season like season three and part of that is having a selma episode as well so you need to get in

selma selma's life and her sadness and just be sad with selma i guess it's just established from the beginning that she is sad because in previous episodes like principal charming and duff gardens we see a little of her home life and a little more of her work life to set up her desperation but i think they trust viewers now to understand like this is selma you know her life is very mundane and mundane, and she's going to live with her sister forever. I feel like there's more trust there. If you're on board for a Troy McClure-focused episode, then I think they can safely assume

you know what the deal is with Patty and Selma as well. It's a great little line. Selma calls it his latest movie. Yeah. In the start of the episode, they say 1977 film. 1977. So he has not starred in a film since 1977. Does that actually predate any Muppet movie?

The Muppet movie, I believe, was 77 or 78. Okay, got it. Yes, yeah. Which, excuse me, guys. You're not real Muppet fans on the Simpsons writer's staff to not know the year. They look down upon those Muppets. That's not Harvard. I mean, it did feel like a little bit of contempt in that depiction of the Muppets.

Yeah, the Muppets aren't for them. Whenever I feel like staunchly defending the Muppets, I remember The Onion had a great parody article called You Couldn't Possibly Understand the Muppets on the Level I Do. But so yes, they head to the drive-in, which drive-ins barely, at least in my town, drive-ins barely existed in the 90s. I went to one drive-in once,-ins barely at least in my town drive-ins barely existed in the 90s i went

to one drive-in once and it was sparsely attended and almost as bad as the one in springfield they all looked about this bad in the 90s uh there's still some in like some parts of rural ohio but um i associate them more with the like the 80s for some reason i mean they were still closing down but i i believe i saw my first movie at a drive-in the first one i can remember and that was space balls so i saw space balls i only saw hot shots part two that was the one i saw and i could barely hear half of it because like oh you just tune it to your radio to this station and you'll hear the the sound and i was like it was cutting in and out i it was so weird that there's a scene in the movie where lloyd bridges character barfs out his teeth all right to a bag and then is looking around for them and but there was no sound for that so i was like this is this

is extra strange this bit here ours had the uh speaker you hang on your car that is preferred but this was that's how cheap this drive-in was. They didn't even have that. But so, actually, we talk about them making fun of Selma's looks. This scene kind of mocks her looks a bit, too. But I feel so sad for her that she doesn't realize Troy is just repeating the lines right to her face. Oh, my head is swimming. That's not cigars, baby. That's love. No longer canst I conceal my love, my wimpled turtle dove.

Oh, Princess Fair, willst thou grant me thine dainty hoof in marriage? Oh, Troy, I will. Just a second baby i i think i want to believe they're being more sensitive about selma because they want you to care about her and i think this is more troy being insensitive as we see him spraying her mouth i love the take the fake out part is so good but i think it's like oh this would be a great way to propose if i say the same lines as this movie I'm in. And he doesn't realize he's calling her like a swine. Or a dainty hoof. Yeah, or a dainty hoof.

Yeah, I think that's Troy realizing, like, I don't know how to ask someone to marry me. I need to see this scene to remember the lines, just to say it. He's not good at going off script, period. And I love that Selma's pause fits in so that she is still lined up with the name. She waits for the longer name to be said by Miss Piggy there. It's a very well done shot with their silhouettes in the foreground in the Muppet movie in the background through the car windshield. It's done very well. It's beautiful.

So then we head over to an entertainment tonight pastiche. Tonight, 70s leading man Troy McClure has finally met the woman of his dreams. We may remember woman? Huh. Huh. Okay. We may remember Troy from such films as The Verdict Was Male Fraud and Leper in the Backfield. With his high-profile romance,

Troy's managed to shake the rumors that have dogged his career. And with news of his upcoming wedding, rumor has it he's up for some very choice roles. Looks like you were wrong when you called him a washed-up deviant, eh, Laurie? All right. She's got a great look of discomfort on her face. So many good fake laughs in this scene. All right.

I love it. Like, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha. Rumors. Yeah, it's great. I also love the acting on hank there just like what woman all right it's yeah i like i like how he breaks out of that like phoniness immediately to question the line i like the writing that it makes troy more likable that he stumbles into this as opposed to the more like careful image management of, say, a Kevin Spacey type ad in the 1990s. Yeah.

I mean, he is following the instructions of his agent, but he's sort of clueless as to how all this stuff will line up for him after that. And also, The Leper in the Backfield is one of the first times we've ever seen a movie named by Troy. Yeah. That's something we remember. Even though he says like calling all quakers technically we hear that movie but we do not see it it's like but irrigation can save you chief smiling bear it doesn't count because it's dan castellaneta too doing his voice so

even even worse than yeah which i just realized what's so funny about that scene, which is that the Quakers would teach irrigation to the natives, not them teaching it to... I guess I didn't think of that at the time, but yeah. We got to redo that episode. Let's go back. We're going to redo them all once we get to season 12. Selma moves in. Welcome to your new home, baby.

It's fantastic. Garbage collection is Monday. If you want to throw out a box, you have to cut it up. It's so modern. It's ultra-modern. Like living in the not-too-distant future. Now, you make yourself at home here. I'll be sleeping downstairs in the visitor's center.

Ha! Okay. I'll see you in the morning. And get ready for tennis. It comes on at ten. Troy, Mac Parker. Ever hear of Planet of the Apes? The movie or the planet?

The brand new multi-million dollar musical. And you are starring as the human. It's the part I was born to play, baby. So every time I hear that, get ready for tennis, it comes on at 10. I know it's coming, but it's such a gut punch to me every time. I that get ready for tennis it comes on a 10 i know it's coming but it's such a gut punch to me every time i just love the misdirect there yeah it's tennis playing is the thing you expect for a fancy celebrity they're just like oh it's i stay healthy play tennis every day good times and his house has a visitor center yes yeah which he will stay in i that again should

have been another red flag to selma but maybe she's telling herself like he's he's just traditional he doesn't want to sleep in the same bed until we're married gentlemen and there are three posters in troy's uh room or his house that you can see if you pause for like a second uh astro heist on gemini 3 incident at noon and my darling beefeater all barely legible but someone thought up those titles and someone drew them into the background so that is great i man i i also love troy's chair is great i kind of want that egg chair i love those egg chairs it looks uncomfortable to be in but i i want to be in that kind of cocoon i don't know yeah it feels very uh comforting i'm safe in here and it's a great panorama shot of his apartment too i love that which and another thing that lets you know that this is written by simpson nerds they're the only people who would remember jub jub nobody would care to mention jub jub in this episode he's everywhere you want to be i think i was about to

say i love that line because it's like clearly he can't do something that isn't written by someone else like either a script or a commercial yeah he feels nothing like he just has to be like well what did a commercial say and jub jub is making the sound of a sheep because that's uh iguanas don't make noises so they went through a library of animal sounds until they found that one that was funny and conceivably lizard like wow yeah i've never heard of exotic pet trivia well it's from the commentary so you can think bill oakley all right but planet of the apes let's talk about yes i i wrote in my notes i don't need notes for this because i i've seen this a billion times.

But also, this entire segment from the phone call to the end of the musical was on Songs in the Key of Springfield, the first Simpsons TV song CD. So I've heard that and the entire song probably like 200 times, 300 times. Easily. Yeah. Easily. Yeah. And also, I learned a ton about this as well i will once more throw people to the vulture oral history that was published in 2017 when it was the uh right after the 20th

anniversary of this episode and they dig super into it with not just the writers uh weinstein oakley david cohen uh and and the rest but also with alf clausen they interview alf clausen about it which is might be it might have been right before he was fired. Oh boy. I think so. And we're talking about how they were drawing back to season three and technically A Streetcar Named Marge is a season three production episode.

Wow, yeah. And I feel like there's a lot in common with this, including getting the ending completely wrong and applying a musical to a thing that should not have one with a very strange tone. Yeah. So, I mean, I don't think they're ripping themselves off but i feel like i love those choices but this also fits with what were the

mega musicals of the 90s what were they well the this kind of calls back to like sunset boulevard which was based on a movie also the i mean it's it's just in general very Andrew Lloyd Webber with very expensive and with one major prop in it. In the case of Phantom of the Opera, it's the chandelier. In the case of this, it's the Statue of Liberty, which pops up. Yes. But yeah, it's great that it completely misses the point. Well, to this day, musicals, you can get financing for a Broadway musical if you base it on something that people have heard of way sooner than if you try to make something new. Whenever I am near whatever place in SF has all the musicals, that theater, it's like

in Bumtown or like the Junkie District. The Orpheum is right on the edge of it. Yeah. It's like, oh, I'm going to see this. Actually, the three of us were in one of those places to see Mystery Science Theater live. We were. And it was a great time. And then when you come out, you're like, whoa, I forgot.

That's when the wackadoo people start mulling around and yelling stuff at you. Yeah, we're trying to just have a conversation by the tour bus. And then several people come up like, yeah, what's going on? So can I have some money? You're like, no. But I try not to go to that area very often but whenever i do i walk by the orpheum the orpheum is that what it's called and it's always like shrek the musical or matilda the musical it's always like something you know

the musical so yeah one of the most recent ones is the spongebob musical which people say hollywood is bankrupt yeah look at like obviously no musical gets made anymore if it's not an IP of some sort. I think every industry is now bankrupt. I mean, if you're walking down, if you're some hick walking down Broadway, you're just like, whoa, the SpongeBob musical, I'm going to see that. I love legitimate theater.

Normally I think musicals are a little fruity, but I'll see this one. I will say I watched a performance of a song from the SpongeBobgebob musical and Spongebob, the guy they cast as Spongebob as a human Spongebob is perfect. Like, I'm like, holy shit. I think I have seen that. He I have heard from, well, not friend of this show, but friend of me, Lewis Pitesman, who's like the entertainment editor for BuzzFeed and who lives in New York and sees every show. He says Spongebob is for real good.

That's what he says. I'll never see it. All right, let's hear it. Planet of the Apes, part one. Help, the human's about to escape. Get your paws off me, you dirty ape. He can talk. He can talk, he can talk, he can talk,

he can talk, he can talk, he can talk. I can sing! Ooh, help me, Dr. Zaius! Dr. Zaius, Dr. Zaius! Dr. Zaius, Dr. Zaius! Dr. Zaius, Dr. Zaius! Oh, Dr. Zaius! Dr. Zaius, Dr. Zaius!

What's wrong with me? I think you're crazy. Want a second opinion? You're all so lazy. Dr. Zaius, Dr. Zaius What's wrong with me? I think you're crazy Want a second opinion? You're all so lazy Dr. Zaius, Dr. Zaius Dr. Zaius, Dr. Zaius Dr. Zaius, Dr. Zaius Oh, Dr. Zaius

Dr. Zaius, Dr. Zaius Can I play the piano anymore? Of course you can Well, I couldn't before This play has everything. Oh, I love legitimate theater. The show just reminding you The Simpsons is still a thing. Yes.

The family still exists. They came to this. You're still watching The Simpsons in this. It's a little indulgent, but I love it. Apparently, it was Oakley weinstein who put in the rock me amadeus parody they said that it came to them because it was a running joke with them and also with the their friend news radio creator paul sims oh where they would constantly say to each other like thank you amadeus but in the rock me amadeus line style and so then when

they realized dr zeus and Amadeus sounded similar, they just had to go for it. And I had not seen Planet of the Apes at this time, but I still thought it was funny. I loved Planet of the Apes. I had seen it probably because in The Simpsons they had done a previous reference to it and I was like, well, I need to see this movie so I understand references. Is that the Planet of the

Donuts parody? Yeah. No, that's actually after this. Oh, okay. Or I just liked seeing monkey people and i was like well i gotta see this movie uh it it's uh it's quite a great movie guess what guys it's also in the oral history they uh dana gould had nothing to do with this but he is both a simpsons writer and a planet of the apes mega fan oh yeah in the oral history says like we thought of doing one in the ben stoller show and then we didn't and then when i saw this i'm like i'm glad we didn't because we would have

been worse than the simpsons probably been harder to pull off in like live action sketch comedy versus an animated setting yeah i mean you're you're asking performers on a sketch budget to put all those masks on and costumes it's not comfortable it's gonna look bad it's gonna be hard to act and communicate through them yeah like i feel like kevin murphy um back to mystery science theater again there's only so much he could do in all of that makeup and i kind of felt bad for him because it's just like man you're really trying under there but i can barely understand you yeah it was i really appreciate that he not only would became a puppeteer and was just holding up a puppet most days but when he wasn't holding up a puppet, he had to have extensive ape makeup on every day.

He really earned, Kevin Murphy earned those bucks. And so then let's get to part two of the song, which I call the chimpanzee to Z line of the show, right? Yes, I believe that's David S. Cohen who wrote that line. That's the joke. I hate every ape I see from chimpan-ay to chimpanzee

No, you'll never make a monkey out of me Oh my god, I was wrong. It was Earth all along. You finally made

a monkey. Yes, we finally made a monkey. Yes, you finally made a monkey out of me. I love you, Dr. Zayas! Thank you. It's great to be back.

It's all so beautiful. I also like that they avoided the obvious parodies, like damn you all to hell, you blew it up, you bastards. I just love the simplicity. Oh my God, I was wrong. It was Earth all along. But then he's happy. He's like, oh, you made a monkey out of me.

It's like a more crowd-pleasing rewrite of Planet of the Apes. I didn't think of it that way. The original ending was a downer, man. It leaves the people happy. He now learns to love Dr. Zayas by learning the truth, which is not the feeling he is left with, but they have the final.

It is a complete missing of the point to have the final line. Be like, I love you, Dr. Zayas. That's how you appeal to the suburb people who don't go to plays and want to be challenged. You know,

they just want everything to be happily ever after. They want to be like, well, I half remember the planet of the apes and i want to feel happier at the end of this i i also like if you imagine that this is a two hour or even over two hour musical that when you get to the end they speed to the end so fast they're like uh he hates every monkey he walks away oh my god i was wrong they just zip right through it it's just it's uh hilarious it's good set design too i love that statue of liberty in the background it's there's so much reality to it all works within the reality they built like the set looks real the costumes look real it does uh oakley pointed out in the oral history too just like it has to be the only time somebody did something well in the world of the simpsons and that like everybody makes crappy things when they try to

make things in the simpsons yeah i mean the streetcar musical uh the songs are catchy but it is a crappy musical but i think on the commentary oakley was like i would watch this musical i want them to make this it's shocking i wonder if it's poppy how popular this scene is is why they never have done a play on the Apes musical. They're like, well, it's just a joke on The Simpsons. I mean, if any time is a good time to cash in on nostalgia for The Simpsons, it's now. So make that musical. It could be the next Hamilton. Fox owns the rights to both. I say go with it. So Troy is back. You can see that his house has been renovated. It looks good enough to have the family, the Simpsons family, arrive.

And now, after all the years of watching educational videos with Troy McClure in it, Lisa and Bart finally meet him. My good looks paid for that pool, and my talent filled it with water. Hi, I'm Troy McClure, your future uncle. Hi, I remember you from such film strips as Locker Room Towel Fight, The Blinding of Larry Driscoll. You know, I was one of the first to speak out against horseplay. Uh-huh. Remember when we were kids, we used to dream about our ideal husbands?

Who knew the dream would come true for one of us? Oh, come on, guess which one. I know, I know. It's Thelma, right? right march can't even respond to that because she knows it's true just looking off into the distance just the blank stare of marge as he turns and then it's even funnier the reveal of homer you know that she turned to look at homer who has probably not looked more it's looked more attractive than he does in that interview at that moment. I also love her outfit. It's probably because we were just doing season one of Futurama, but Selma's bathing suit with the diamond cutout in the center

is the same one Leela wears in the season one. She's dressed like Marilyn Monroe at some point in this episode, too. Well, yeah, with her uh with her uh hair wrap yeah everything but this I I also love the implication that Troy did all those educational films because he thinks he's being like making a political statement like that he's speaking out against something either Lisa is already bored with him or she's looking down upon his bad uh his bad uh I don't know community service yeah, her judgment. That he wants to be awarded for speaking out against horseplay. Or that she would think that no one,

she feels sad for him maybe that he thinks he's the first person to speak out against horseplay. Which has probably been happening as long as horseplay has existed. And children. Yeah. In the original script, they had a full bachelor party, but they just had to cut straight to the drinking at Moe's. Yeah, that's a good idea, Homer. But they've already made some movies about World War II.

Oh, hell. Well, what about Dracula? Homer, I'm really touched you invited me out on the town. You're going to be a four-star brother-in-law. Try, buddy. I gotta know, what's a great guy like you want to marry a guy like Selma? Come here, Homer. Okay. I'll let you in on a little secret. This is a secret.

Some good drunk rhubarb from Phil Hartman. Yeah. That also feels like it's more Homer judging her looks, but definitely him calling Selma a guy. That's a little mean to her as well. But it's Homer. He hates Selma. I'm surprised he's not too drunk to realize it's a bad thing that Selma is getting her heart broken or the marriage is a sham. It's a great storytelling moment where he

looks up and it's like oh homer's all sober now yeah he's gonna tell the secret now this will have dramatic consequences like no none at all uh we cut straight to the botanical gardens where it's the where it's the wedding and i wonder if it is that lovejoy was told to call Troy fabulous or that Lovejoy just likes Troy McClure he's like the fabulous Troy McClure either way it's beautiful it's just him the way and also his line of like you may now kiss each other yeah

and that he identifies her as Bouvier to Williger Bouvier another acknowledgement of continuity on this show by the Simpsons nerds wait how does that work? When it's her maiden name and then hyphenated maiden name. I always thought that it was. I mean, that's the joke.

But it is. When people get divorced, they just revert back to their maiden names if they want to do that. They don't go by three names of like the sequence of which you were married. There's some joke later where there's a lot of other names in there like Hudson, Hasapima, Pedlon, I forget when that happens. That's in Muchapoo About Nothing, where they try to sell to her, marrying him for citizenship.

And she's like, next time I'm going to marry for love. And maybe once more for money. But yes, the wedding seems to be going great. And to you, Selma Bouvier, Terwilliger Bouvier,

take the fabulous Troy McClure to be your lawful wedded husband. I already to you, Selma Bouvier, Terwilliger Bouvier, take the fabulous Troy McClure to be your lawful wedded husband. I already told you, yes. If anyone here knows why this couple should not be wed in holy matrimony, let him speak now, or forever hold his peace. Da-da-da-da-da-

Hey! Da-da-da-da- Da-da-da-da-da- Hey! Hey! I now pronounce you husband and wife. You may now kiss each other. Ha-ha. This is the best day of my life. It's a good day for me, too, baby. Now smile.

We're going to be on every newsstand in the country. Mwah! I really enjoy Troy, while kissing Selma, looking around to make sure people are seeing this. Like, you see, huh? Look at this. He's only gonna kiss her so many times. He's gotta like, people better

be seeing this when I'm doing it. But he's also too cheap to rent a limo. They just drive off in his DeLorean, love too and uh homer's homer is humming a uh copyright free version of rock and roll part two that's true it's not quite the song i mean you get what it's supposed to be but i had a feeling they'd have to pay just to have him hum that yeah probably a lot of money in 1996 it's funnier that it is off because he doesn't even remember that song correctly. We all remember songs. I looked it up and it's way off but the hey should tell you what it is

at the end. And ironically I guess it is this is a year before Gary Glitter's own fall from grace in Troy like fashion though his is an extreme example. Oh yeah. He's currently in jail thankfully at least

like it at least he got punished unlike a lot of other people just like well your career's over but me no that's your punishment you'll be rich uh so then homer steals the candy bride and groom this is just a quick gag but i just love this so much liquid ice nag march the candy bride and groom from the wedding cake. Pointy. That scene is always so upsetting to me. Does the sound effect work? Like the Lego, chewing on a Lego noise followed by that wet plop sound. Watching the two things work their way down his throat.

Actually, I think the joke is they're plastic, right? Just based on the sounds you hear. It's pretty cruel of Homer to steal the bride and groom off of the cake anyway. You're supposed to keep those, right? Yes. I've still got them in my freezer right now. With a piece of the cake, right? Well, yeah, just the cake. Okay.

Well, we were non-traditional in that me and my husband, our thing were Amiibos anyway. You never want to freeze an Amiibo. No, no way. I knew gay marriage would tear this country apart. All of our traditions are gone now. Stop taking our Amiibos. Instead of a man and woman, it's a Mario and a Bowser Amiibo. I ship it.

Your little avatars need to live in the freezer or your marriage will not work. That's true. That's where Homer put theirs. Divorces happen when the power gets knocked out oh my god uh but yeah i also i love in that gag not only pointy is one of my favorite yeah but that marge with no reaction watches homer almost choked to death while eating what she must know is plastic and this isn't going to end well for homer too either he has a very bad uh passing of those guys those things are not going to break down or they just cut it out of him and he has to require surgery but either way it's just another day in the life of being married to homer simpson though at a certain point there there you have

to like judge what you yell at homer for and this is a minor infraction compared to what... In your battles? Yes. Somewhere in the middle. And also the gag that Homer's just like, oh, yeah, you told me a funny story, and that's how Marge finds out about it. And this is the first time in continuity we've seen that,

oh, the Simpsons can see the eyeballs of somebody and it lights up a room. Such a good gag. That is nice. I like them acknowledging that yeah it's it's great now instead of eyeballs people say that by like could you turn off your iphone i'm trying to go to sleep like or go to another room or something uh so then we get troy on his wedding night which man that sign gag about share with a contest winner i feel so bad for

share yeah they're picking on share a lot in the mid 90s what did share ever do to you yeah she's more famous than so many other people from the 90s and the 70s. She's pretty good on Twitter, too. I don't know if you've seen her Twitter account. Yeah, I wonder, with any celebrity Twitter, I'm like, okay, who's really handling this? It seems like an old lady's doing it. It does, yes. With no

social media training. I believe she's about to star in the next Mamma Mia. She's going to be in Mamma Mia Part 2. She flies in on a helicopter, and it's a very weird, surreal Metal Gear Solid moment from the look of it. It's so odd. But okay, yes, it's Troy's wedding night. This better be important.

It's my wedding night. I'm trying to sleep. Hey, sleep is for husbands, my friend. And you're about to have a very crowded schedule. This marriage scam is paying off big time. Phone for you. D. McSee. Troy, darling, come to bed. I want to see the Troy McClure I remember

from such films as Makeout King of Montana and The Electric Gigolo. Yeah, in a minute, darling. Well, she may be helping my career, but she's starting to cramp my style. Oh, who cares? The offers are rolling in.

Paramount wants you for a buddy comedy with Rob Lowe and Hugh Grant. Those sick freaks! Okay, then get this. I think they want you to play McBain's sidekick in... Brace yourself for the new McBain movie. McBain's sidekick? Hot damn! I'm going to SeaWorld! So I have to assume that Troy didn't have sex with selma on

their wedding night then i don't think so i mean uh it's implied in the later scene that they have not consummated yet yes it's true which should mean they should just be able to annul that marriage instead of getting a divorce is that how it still works i mean i feel like that's how we have bullshit old marriage laws so i would think that still is it. But if you say you haven't consummated, I don't know. I've never tried to end all a marriage before. Those sick freaks. Those sick freaks. That's another reference to dudes who had a fall

from grace for sex things. And then they bounce back. Yeah, they both bounce back mightily. Like Hugh Grant, he even, he just had to get embarrassed in some interviews and then he was straight back into movies he's like yep i'm in movies he was basically playing the same character in interviews that he plays in every movie like the flustered gentleman like oh oh dear oh my oh which i mean

in the grand scheme of things like it was it was embarrassing for him obviously and you know he's cheating on his partner the famous person liz hurley I mean, he's paying a sex worker to do their job. Like, that's, I don't judge that as much as, say, filming sex with a 16-year-old, which is what Rob Lowe did. True. I mean, yes. I mean, if Liz Hurley said, yeah, go for it, have sex with sex workers, it's cool with me, it would have been all fine. But apparently it wasn't.

No, it was not. But, though, I mean, the Rob Lowe thing, it's not but uh but though i mean the the rob low thing it's uh it's something you just kind of forget you're like oh yeah he had sex with a 16 year old and it was filmed like that was fucked up it was i believe his defense was he didn't know her age she was in a bar yeah she was in a bar so he assumed that she was carded or something like it also is it would turn out that like it's not that wasn't that was the age of consent in Georgia where it happened so he didn't

even get in like legal trouble for that and now and I remember there was a they did his celebrity roast a few years ago and people were joking about how like uncomfortable it was them doing his statutory rape jokes in front of his

family at it not the best but i i just love that reading on those sick freaks get a little hestiny again yeah very very hestiny oh yeah this is the first time i really heard it as a joke when he's like i got an offer from mcbain about the new McBain movie. Yeah. Yes, of course the offer is a McBain movie. It's about McBain. Also, just say Rainier Wolf Castle. They could finally, the McBain ban was over. They could finally start saying McBain again on the show. They had been told briefly not to because it had been a,

it was a B movie called McBain. And they're like, well, we don't want to advertise this. And even though the writers were like, we wrote McBain and they're like well we don't want to advertise this and even though the writers were like we wrote McBain before this movie was existed nobody remembers what that movie was it doesn't even matter it's basically like a beam riff tracks riffed it uh like five years ago maybe six years ago it's it's it's a bad action movie with I believe uh Christopher Walken or James Woods I forget who's in it somebody like that yeah but I want to say that the uh McBain for fatal discharge is uh i think they might be riffing on true lies because arnold had a very like non-traditional sidekick in that movie and tom arnold so maybe troy could be pulling

that off i think it also fit with how like the batman movies like if you got to say i'm gonna be in the next batman movie i'm gonna be a villain in the next batman movie it was a big moment for your career as well or getting to be in the new diehard movie a sidekick in that things things of that nature i also love that how hollywood selma has gotten that she's wearing that the marilyn monroe are just like the famous person going out outfit of the glasses the long cigarette holder she's she's of the hollywood before troy m McClure was in Hollywood. Yeah. And so that's when she hears the bad news. Oh, I get

it. My sisters have come down with a case of the green-eyed gazungas. I guess I shouldn't be surprised. You're stuck in a menial job you'll be doing ten years after you die. And you're tied down to a man who'd have to bathe to be a slob. Selma, Troy doesn't love you at all

he's only using you to swatch the rumors about his bizarre personal life and further his career you don't know what you're talking about i have to go now and see true i i like that she has to be pushed to do it marge didn't want margege wanted to gently push Selma away from it. She had to be insulted first. Yeah, she had to be insulted. I also think of that, when I think of bad jobs, I think of like doing 10 years after you die. Oh, boy. You die inside first before you die on the outside.

Yeah, though what job is that stable that you'd have for 10 years after you die? In the 90s, they had different times. Then we get a cute little variety headline about Troy ankling obscurity, which means in variety terms, ankle means leave behind. There's boffo, B-O. This is so fucking inside this episode with all the lingo. It reminds me of the season one episode of The Critic where it was like a variety gag every episode.

Every act. But yeah, so then Selma confronts him. Is this a sham marriage? Sure, baby. Is that a problem? You married me just to help your career? You make it sound so sordid. Look, don't we have a good time together?

Yes, but... Don't you have everything you ever wanted here? Money, security, a big hot flat rock for Jub-Jub? But don't you love me? Sure I do. Like I love Fresca. Isn't that enough? The only difference between our marriage and anyone else's is

we know ours is a sham. Are you gay? Gay? I wish. If I were gay, there'd be no problem. No, what I have is a romantic abnormality. One so unbelievable that it must be hidden from the public at all costs. Stop! You're asking me to live a lie. I don't know if I can do that. It's remarkably easy. Just smile for the cameras and enjoy Mr. Troy's Wild Ride.

You'll go to the right parties, meet the right people. Sure, you'll be a sham wife, but you'll be the envy of every other sham wife in town. So what do you say, baby? Tell me again about Mr. Troy's Wild Ride. He steps into the shadows to talk about his romantic abnormality. I like that. I've got to make this dramatic. But I think this is the first time, and I searched, I think it's the first time the Simpsons use

the word gay in the history of the show. This is the very first time. It will happen a lot in the episode with John Waters, but it's the very first time somebody says gay to mean a gay person. Not gay as in, like, it's a pun, you know, you're kind of hinting at it. Yeah.

Like saying, are you gay? I can remember one other time. Ooh, is there one other time? Yeah. Okay. I searched Frankie Yak. It was when Homer told Lisa how to turn down Ralph. Like six simple words.

I'm not gay, but I'll learn. That's right. Okay. Boy, I guess I was wrong about that. But I guess it's um a different take on it though because uh selma is not like grossed out or anything she just is like well you're probably gay if you don't say you love your wife you know yeah there's something going on i mean it was the first it would be the first thing you would go to like are you gay

now that was more explicitly the the other time is just a joke about like gay haha but this is more of her saying like she can understand the idea of a beard of being the fake wife of a gay man. Yeah I guess it's the first time gay the word gay is not used as a joke like see we said gay haha. I can't think of any other time they actually said the word gay on the show than that one. But apparently if he was gay, there'd be no problem. I don't know if that's so true in 1996. There were not, I mean, the stars that were out were like obviously out. No, that's hilarious to me. The gag of like, if I was gay, there'd be no problem.

I think the idea is that, yeah, there's a system in place to help them kind of have plausible deniability. But not for the fish fuckers. Right. That's a little too far. People pretend they'll just turn a blind eye to being gay in Hollywood. Yeah, that's why there'd be no problem for him. Not that the world doesn't have a problem

with a gay actor. He'd still have to be in the closet. At least Hollywood would roll with the lie. Yeah. And sadly, I mean, that is still the case of like that. Who knows how many actors are in the closet now, but it's the out actors that you know about, they get cast and stuff.

They still star in things, but are they starring in the big Marvel movies? Are they playing the like mega blockbuster roles? Like not really. Yeah, I don't really know what Kristen Stewart's up to since she came out. She's kind of on the Ellen Page thing of just like starring in artsy movies,

which are the types they want to be in. Like, I'm not saying that Kristen Stewart or Ellen Page isn't in big blockbusters anymore because they came out. Kristen Stewart has enough money for like 45 lifetimes after five Twilight movies. She put in her time. Yeah.

And she's having fun. She just wants to have fun and be like a baby butch. Staring at Cate Blanchett's boobs in that one photo. I love that. Living the dream. But I also love, like, nobody loves Fresca, right? I've never drank a Fresca in my life, but it's pretty low on the center.

It's very LaCroix-esque, where it's fashionable to hate on it for its bougie thing, I think. I mean, what? It's just seltzer water, right? With, like, a drop of flavor in it. Someone said a joke on Twitter that LaCroix is like, it tastes like someone is vaguely saying the name of a fruit in another room. And I wish I knew who said that because I think about that all the time. That's great.

I gotta give it to Troy. He's given a really convincing pitch to be a sham wife. I'm like, you know what? Yeah. You can tell when he's turning on his like infomercial educational film personality when he needs to sell somebody something yeah but i mean it what you know what was selma doing it's that she gets to be famous she gets money she could even get uh jobs in hollywood too like and i would assume implicit in this is an open

relationship yeah i the way troy goes no problemo that then if selma was like oh i'm having sex with this i'm having an affair with this guy he'd be like great good for you i think in the in the reality of the show though is that no other man would want selma so that's sad i i though i also do like that the way troy goes troy's about he's like the public must never know you see the secret is oh you see what i have oh god i love that but then so selma accepts it and so the hollywood walk of fame is bullshit i found out like you have to pay so much money to even get considered to get on it like it's not just it's like a scam like but for celebrities it's like one of those uh who's who's who's who books it's like my child's in this because i gave them money to put my child in this like i've seen some

celebrities even have to like start some people start a fund for like well this celebrity doesn't want to pay for it but they should have a thing on the walk of fame so let's get together the tens of thousands of dollars to pay for this true buster Keaton's name gets for me when we get this great scene. One day my lady Selma's gonna have a star right next to mine. So watch out, Laszlo Paniflex. I love their fake names. Not a real name.

Presumably he invented the Paniflex camera or something like that. So the opinions I found on the internet is that it is a reference to Laszlo Kovacs, the famous cinematographer who has since passed away, who used a Panaflex camera to film scenes. That checks out. I'd believe that, but it's just such a great...

Hearing Phil Hartman say, Laszlo Panaflex. After a dramatic pause of him recalling the name. Just reading it like, Laszlo Penaflex. That is an experience you have if you've ever. I've gone on the Walk of Fame once, and that's because when I went to E3 one year, we were staying in Hollywood,

which, boy, that was great, having to drive like 30 freaking minutes to go to E3 each morning. But it was the only... But, hey, why should a company book hotels for E3 until like a month beforehand? You don't need to. It's not like you know a year ahead of time you're going to E3 or anything.

It just sneaks up on you. I'm complaining about press trips, guys. But when you walk it, you are like, I don't know who this person is. I don't know who this person is. And then you have to dodge the guys in costumes. Oh, God. Yeah. I mean, I think when I went there in 1999, there were the guys in costumes. Oh, God, yeah. I mean, I think when I went there in 1999,

there were no guys in costumes. So it was before the era of, like, filthy Elmos and Pikachus trying to take your money. Paul F. Tompkins has the best jokes about that. The filthy Pikachu that he sees where he's just like, maybe he cleans himself in dirt to stay cool. I don't know what Pikachu is. I saw one of those poor bastards outside in Vegas.

I'm like, dear Lord, is there a father? And you already have to fall in your life. That's where you wind up as mascot guy in Vegas. Are you such an ex-con you can't even apply for jobs? I know. It's one thing if you're like the Vegas street magician or dancer or beatbox rap guys that I saw, but those you at least don't have to be in costume. Or even if you're like the metal man

who just has painted gold skin. I stay away from them. They creep me the fuck out. I hate them. Though in Vegas, the one I saw was the Elvis. It was a metal Elvis. He had a little more to it than just playing. But meanwhile, the guys in like the Elmos,

the Hello Kitties, worst of all, the Transformers, when they have to be Bumblebee. It's just like, how do you even move? What are you doing? It just must be hell. But yeah, so Troy maybe is going to get McBain for Fatal Discharge, but he needs a little something extra. Oh, you're watching?

Mac, you got to get me that part. I will, but you needs a little something extra. Oh, you watching? Mac, you gotta get me that part. I will, but you gotta do something for me. Problem is, the big parts these days are all going to family men. But I already got married! You have it for a role like this, you gotta pour it on. You and, uh, a wife. I've gotta have a baby. A baby, eh? What do I do?

I'll send you over a pamphlet. Uh, listen, you can't buy that kind of PR, but you can get it for nothing by having a baby, which, by the way, your insurance will cover, except for the deductible, which I'll reimburse you for if you get the part, which you will if you have a baby. C'est Troy Bien. Okay, now listen.

Let's talk baby names. You can't use Montana, Dakota, or Florida. They're taken. Oregon? Oh, Pacific Northwest, very hot. Those baby names, first off, i'm guessing florida is the joke one based on my research and it's the third but uh the the other two are montana is the last is the name of laurence fishburne's daughter born in 1991 and dakota is the name of melanie

griffith and don johnson's daughter now all all of the white people names that are overdone are like Zayden and Brayden and Jaden. Lots of whys are mixed in there. Yeah, a lot of whys these days. Yeah, listen, I'm Bob. It's fine. It's how you keep white names while spicing it up just a little bit, but not that much to where it's weird. Oh, boy. I think I've said this before.

As a college writing teacher about a decade ago, I saw maybe 43 variations on Ashley. Let's have all the Ashleys. Let's calm down and figure out one Ashley name we can all spell. My favorite Ashley is Ash from Evil Dead. It can be a boy's name, too. It's not just for girls. I'm going to need a French speaker or someone knowledgeable in French

to tell me the pun on C'est Troy Bien. It says C'est Troy Bien. It's C'est Troy Bien. So he's saying C'est Troy Bien. It's very good. I got it. C'est Troy Bien. All right.

See, I got it. I took Spanish in high school. You took French, Bob. Well, I mean, C'est Troy Bien has been in The Simpsons before. It was in The Way We Was. Oh, that's right. Marjorie Trey Bien. Oh, yeah.

And also Moe didn't know what it means when she's like, hmm, Trey Bien. He's like, yeah. Dramatically, I wish they'd explored this more, but it's a really good idea of just like not only, it's not that she's given Troy's wild ride, but it's that Selma is faced with a moral conundrum. She has this life that she is comfortable in,

and now it's her dream of having a child, but it's all wrong. That's true, and I totally forgot that previous episodes explored her need for a baby, too, like Duff Gardens. Yeah, Duff Gardens was all, she has Jub-Jub to replace the child she didn't have, and in about a decade, she'll adopt a Chinese baby for this same reason. And yeah, just her moral dilemma is a really emotional moment in this very silly Troy McClure episode. And it's good that in this upcoming scene, it's not that Troy does not want to have sex with her because she is being portrayed as ugly or gross or smelly or boring it's it's that's a different reason that they're not

compatible he just he doesn't know what to do with a human like he needs a brochure to know how babies are made that's that's just where he's at and selma's trying her best in this scene come here tiger would you like some wine yes why don't you come over here and make yourself more comfortable? No. Why don't you come over here and make yourself comfortable? I'm sorry, this whole concept's foreign to me. Who knew a baby would be so much work?

Having a baby isn't supposed to be work. It's supposed to be an expression of the feelings we're supposed to have for each other. Oh, like how we built that snowman together in that new poor dad? Remember how alive with pleasure they said we were? They said we were. I love that line. The most of you are like, well, we'd make a human together like we built a snowman. Is that how this works?

He's out of touch with humanity. I do like his response to foreplay is a very childish no you come over here yes yeah and his i i love the uh him acting as the tiger is the sexy tiger yeah and then him going from that act to the honest desperation of yes it's great i love how the shot is framed too where they're both very far apart and very small on the screen. So it's communicating their distance emotionally as well as physically with how it's staged. She realizes that it's just not going to work. Look, I'm sorry. A loveless marriage is one thing. We're not hurting anybody. But bringing a child into a loveless family is something I just can't do.

Oh, great. We'll adopt. I'll call my agent. He'll find some kid who wants in on the deal. Goodbye, Troy. I'll always remember you, but not from your films. And then it ends. Yeah, that's a I love her line of it's it's really sweet.

The I'll always remember you. He's always telling people they might remember him. And she's like the I'll always remember you every he's always telling people they might remember him and she's like I'll always remember you that's very cute yeah and I feel like if they had more time they would have had Selma like one final scene with Selma at the Simpsons you know but they could they couldn't work it in because they're barely in this in this story and that's not a problem but it just feels like if you're gonna put him in uh needlessly why not just have one thing to wrap it up? Yeah.

Or at least a scene before this one where she talks about her moral quandary with the family before the sex scene or the would-be sex scene. I'm sure the original script was much longer. I feel like it cut off pretty quick. Like they had to wrap things up. Yeah. Pretty economic. Yeah. Well, it's also one of the rare times where they have jokes over the credits, too. That's true.

And also, though, it feels like they had added something later when she's talking to JubJub about the microwaving crickets. They're like, eh, we can't just have it silent here, but we're not going to play music, so let's add something here. And don't forget that JubJub was created so they could make a joke about Murphy Brown. That's true, yes. And he was named by Conan O'Brien just because that was a nonsense noise

he made in the writer's room. But then, one of my favorite endings of a Simpsons episode ever. In a bold move that has stunned Hollywood insiders, newly divorced comeback kid Troy McClure has turned down the supporting lead in McBain 4 to direct and star in his own pet project, the contrabulous fabtraption of Professor Horatio Huffnagle. Will the gambit pay off? 20th Century Fox is betting it will. Whenever the 20th Century Fox jingle is a

punchline in the show, it's always great. They're ruthless towards their own company. Especially in the here we go again so this that gag is a great way to one they need to get troy back to obscurity so he needs to make a garbage film no one would watch anytime i hear of a pet project of an actor who's just like this is a movie i've been dreaming of making for forever like whatever warren baby makes now pretty much mr mcgloriam's wonder emporium yeah there were there were two movies like this that's the other one the imaginarium of dr panarsis is that what it was just like when those movies were announced i'm like have you guys seen the simpsons you can't name your movie this it's it's such an

old way of calling things i i love the drawing of him too that it again looks like a 70s kids film of a guy with his crazy fab trap shit on him it's quite the flying machine he has yeah like uh like figment or what's the name of the guy with figment the guy who works with figment in the old imagination right yeah okay i'm not a disney super fan but i yeah it's it it's very similar to that old world steampunky kind of weird goofball willy wonka nonsense yeah very willy wonka and uh dan graney in our interview said that uh he's half of that joke because he came up with a fabulous contraption and then bill oakley turned it into a contabulous fab traption which Dan Graney said, you can't come up with that if you

don't know a fabulous contraption, though. It's so confusing, it's actually contrabulous fabtraption. God, it's beautiful. I had to write it down because I can only say it, but I actually don't know how to spell that out. It sounds like they took normal words and just magnets to have parts of

words and phrases and you just scrambled all together. Refrigerator poetry. Right. And it is like one of those things that it immediately flops and then you're going to hear about is one of the biggest flops of all time and the fox would be the place stupid enough to invest in this is uh troy mcclure's john carter yeah oh god yes god so or toys i think it really reminds me of toys too yeah which uh came out about four years before this episode, I believe it was. Three or four. And the story behind that is that it's Barry Sonnenfeld, right?

He was trying to get it made for a long time. It was sort of a dream project. And that's the reason why Robin Williams spat upon the genie. Because Disney used them in his marketing. And it cut toys off at the legs. Yeah, and who's going to see toys when they can hear them as a genie? Let's be honest. Toys cut itself off at the legs.

By existing. It did, yes. That's so weird. Well, so Nathan, what do you think of this episode? You know, it's funny. Like I was saying earlier, I really didn't remember how much I remembered of it. And it has some of my favorite lines from like the mid sort of tier Simpsons episodes that I'm just like, man, this series is such a part of my brain that I almost have a hard time remembering

certain subplots for specific episodes. I'll remember the A-plot, but yeah, there's a lot more here that I expected from a Selma episode, too. It's just a lot of free-floating jokes in your brain, and then when you see this episode, it comes together. It's like, oh, wow,

this had a lot better material than I remember it's like puzzle pieces falling into place like oh that's where all those were right yeah this is uh this is one of my favorites too it's it's really just like phil hartman's the greatest r.i.p him this is a tour de force for him jeff goldblum only makes it better and sad selma stories are always fun and this also i i think it's timeless in a way and that there will always be celebrity as long as hollywood has existed there have been celebrity scandals in the covering up of them and so this this always will be relevant relevant yes yeah i mean we get a bigger format breaking story with uh 22 short films about springfield in a few episodes but i feel like this is only like second to that in terms of being

daring and not using the Simpsons that much I mean previously with some episodes there were stronger B stories with main Simpsons characters but like Bart gets one line Homer gets like four lines Lisa gets a line yeah but it's still very funny and Phil Hartman's amazing

this is like his biggest episode probably ever of the simpsons um and it's it's it's great just for that but it's also like look what we can do in this universe we don't need the family all the time stay tuned for 22 short films that's not next but it's coming up soon but yes thanks for joining us everybody uh this has been talking simpsons before i uh i tell you about all of us let's talk about nathan what do you do uh what how can we help you in some way? You can go to my website for the game studio

my friend and I started. It's called Doxin Studios, but it's D-A-X-N-D.com, just to keep it simple. Yeah, that dog name is hard to spell. Yeah, that's why we lucked out that there was such an easy alternative spelling for it. But yeah, we're making a Space Pirate-themed

sort of throwback to LucasArts style adventure games. Cool. With character management stuff that is sort of inspired by Persona and Mass Effect. So it's all about like who you want to choose to spend more time with in this crew of Space Pirates. It's very inspired by like Captain Harlock and Leiji Matsumoto anime. Nice. But tonally it's more kind of like in the realm of like Venture Brothers comedically. But with some kind of anime drama influences.

Anyway. I like all of these things. All of the things. That's why we called it Slipstream Scalawags because Slipstream is a term for basically a bunch of different disparate concepts and ideas sort of mashed together. And we just wanted to take all the things that really like make us passionate about art and storytelling

and kind of shove it all into one thing. Awesome. But yeah, we're, we're hopefully going to have some method for people to give us money at some point for it. So just keep an eye on, on our social media,

DAX and D on Twitter and Facebook or on our website. Um, we have a couple of trailers on there so you can kind of get an idea of what the game's like. Um, and then bother me on Twitter at Kenji Salk. Um, if you don't like my opinions on podcasts,

I'm used to getting yelled at for them. So I'm kind of like, I sort of embrace it. I'm like, just bring it, please. I don't, our audience opinions on podcasts. I'm used to getting yelled at for them, so I'm kind of like, I sort of embrace it. I'm like, just bring it, please. Our audience is very nice, I think. Yeah. Everything I've seen on the Facebook page or response to your Twitter account is definitely pretty positive. We have good following. So let me tell everybody about

the amazing Patreon that funds all of the stuff that we do in the Talking Simpsons network. Go to patreon.com slash Talking Simpsons. If you go there at the $5 level, it's a very popular level. If you donate to that, everyone will love you more. You'll be more sexually attractive. You'll live

longer, but also you will get so many bonus podcasts. Number one, you'll get every episode of Talking Simpsons a week ahead of time and ad-free. Every episode of our other podcast, What a Cartoon, a week ahead of time and ad-free. That is us our other podcast, What a Cartoon, a week ahead of time, and ad-free. That is us doing this with many different series, one episode at a time, but not chronologically,

of course. We're just kind of picking and choosing. We also have tons of other stuff, like all of Talking Futurama, the entire first season of Futurama with the Talking Simpsons treatment. The same goes for all of The Critic. We did all of The Critic. There's 23 episodes of Talking Critic on the Patreon. Stuff like interviews with Simpsons writers and directors,

a monthly community podcast, the end of season wrap ups, deleted scenes, so much stuff going on there. And also if you give to the Patreon, what happens is they give you a little RSS link. You plug that into whatever you use to listen to the podcast and it downloads all of our bonus stuff automatically,

just like how you listen to all of your podcasts. So no matter what you use, there's a way to get all of our bonus stuff really really easily and i think i've covered all of everything uh yeah pretty much the only thing i'd add is that there's the ten dollar level where if you give it that you get a access to a monthly video that we've been doing now there's about 10 of them where including some where me and bob go through every simpsons short original and we also go through the deleted scenes, not to mention,

oh yeah, one last thing you didn't mention, at the $5 level, you'll also get access to classic, classic, crusty, but classic Talking Simpsons. What was I on?

The entire first season of Talking Simpsons, only available there. I think I was on beer then, but yes. I've been your host, Bob Mackie. Find me on Twitter as Bob Servo my other podcast is Retro Knots it's a classic gaming podcast

go to retronauts.com or look for Retro Knots in your podcast machine you'll find it I think you'll like it Henry where can we find you? I'm H-E-N-E-R-E-Y-G on Twitter and you'll find me there to hear all about the new events in the world of Talking Simpsons where we announce all the cool

stuff we're working on and we're working on some really cool stuff for the summertime guys give it a listen thank you so much for listening we'll see you next week with Bart on the Road music music music music

music music Wow. Infotainment.