Talking Simpsons - Talking Simpsons - A Star Is Born Again

Episode Date: January 31, 2024

What happens when a "Flanders has a girlfriend" plot meets Notting Hill and the Bush-era culture war? You end up with one of season 14's more complex episodes as we discuss A Star Is Born Again. As Ned meets a new woman who loves how down-to-earth he is, how will Ned deal with Hollywood values? And what does that have to do with references to Cher, J-Lo's famous dress, LA's NFL teams, dead jellyfish, Jim Brooks, and other mysteries? Hold on to your nachos as we describe it all on this week's podcast! Support this podcast and get over 150 bonus episodes by visiting Patreon.com/TalkingSimpsons and becoming a patron! And please follow the official Twitter, @TalkSimpsonsPod!

This podcast is brought to you by patreon.com slash talking simpsons head there to check out exclusive podcasts like talking futurama talk king of the hill the what a cartoon movie podcast and tons more. I heartily endorse this event or product. Ahoy, hoy, everybody, and welcome to Talking Simpsons, a mighty big kettle of premarital doodly. I'm one of your hosts, the hobo Oscar nominee, Bob Mackie, and this is our chronological exploration of The Simpsons. Who is here with me today, as always? Your best friend's gay baby, Henry Gilbert.

And this week's episode is A Star is Born Again. I've got a date with a movie star. Sure you do. And I'm going apple picking with Scooby-Doo. Toy, toy, toy, toy, toy, toy, toy. This week's episode originally aired on March 2nd, 2003. And as always, Henry will tell us what happened on this mythical day in real world history. Oh my God!

Oh boy, Bobby, 50 cents into club tops the charts. Cradle to grave tops the box office and the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center, the U.S. Custom Service and Unit S Secret Service are now officially the Department of Homeland Security. Making travel easy, fun, not stressful at all. Thanks. Hats off to you.

Consolidating all of those things into one horrible monster makes it even nicer and more wonderful to deal with. I was briefly only tolerant of those hired goons for most of my life until I had to fly to Canada to move here and I had my pet parrot with me, Louie. Listeners, long-time listeners know about Louie. So they have to send Louie's carrier through the metal detector

and I have to hold him in my hand and he is in a big airport. He's freaked out. He's never been in a space that big before and it's at that point they want to swab my hands and I almost had an incident at the airport. And I said very calmly, you're going to have to wait until I put the parrot away. And the man calmly agreed that would be a good idea.

So at first he went in with the swabber and Louis freaked out. So I was like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Let's just wait for the carrier to get here. So TSA, don't pick on people with parrots. There's not a bomb inside of them. That's insane to see the parrot in your hand and they're like so can i get to your hands right now with this you're a very unhappy bird at this moment a man holding a parrot well he clearly has whatever we're looking for on

his hands explosive material i don't actually know what they're swabbing for at this point or you know when they take your phone and they swab it too i don't even know what's happening there all i'm saying is it's it's a real damn shame that we have to be poked and prodded so often when we just want to fly yeah yeah every time something happens i think like yeah bin laden won he got what he wanted he ruined our lives destroyed all of travel it's no fun yes and i know everyone loves hearing people complain about having to fly a lot also it was a big weekend for the hip-hop community because yeah first off 50 cent or 50 cent in the club is a huge hit it'll be the biggest

number one on the billboard charts the whole year i think it is like the anthem of 2003 i i've heard felix biederman of chapo point out why 50 cent is like the most iconic rapper of the Bush era because he is so like militarized yeah although I just did a 2004 podcast for Retronauts I think it'll be up by this point in time when this goes live 50 Cent fell to the house of Usher because Usher's Confessions was the number one album of 2004 wow okay well you know Fitty can't keep it up all the time though I I could just do the Chris Rock bit about it but i do remember that when he was arriving on the scene with dr dre and eminem's you know approval he was like kind of their guy they appear in the into club music video as like mad scientists but the way he was sort of like you know he had been shot nine times, and that made him like a real gangsta as part of his marketing push.

Right. And what befell 50 Cent? Is he behind some sort of sports drink or something like that? I believe he's the vitamin water guy. I'm pretty sure. I wanted to make sure it was him before I confused him with another rap man. I definitely know he dated Chelsea whatever. The woman, Chelsea Handler, yeah.

Oh, no, Chelsea Handler, not Chelsea Peretti. No, no, that's Jordan Peele's wife. Oh, right, right. We're confusing everyone today. Chelsea Clinton, odd pairing, but they make it work. And of course, 50 Cent, a star of multiple video games as well, which I'm sure hold up to, they're very sensitive now of him shooting

his way across a fake middle eastern country i wonder how often you hear the word bitch i just need someone to clock that for me i think there's a swear button in it i remember that being a thing fans of the game really loved about it yeah i mean characters in the games that we play now stop saying bitch but there was a real peak peak bitch i think it crested when the catwoman dlc came out for arkham city and everyone was like let's get peak bitch. I think it crested when the Catwoman DLC came out for Arkham City and everyone was like, let's get that bitch. You really did hear that. I think even Paul Dini complained about that.

He's like, did they need to say bitch? Because he helped write the game. But I don't think, I think he was washing his hands of this interstitial dialogue. The barks, as it were. Ah, right. And yes, Cradle to Grave, it was part of a... I saw this movie in theaters. It was part of an unofficial trilogy film.

Now, Henry, I'm going to ask you, put the the back in the title and then say it. Oh, Cradle to the Grave. Boy, I don't know why I keep doing this. We have to give you a CAT scan. We have to find out where the missing thes went. Cradle to the Grave is part of an unofficial trilogy of films directed by Andres Bartkowiak, an Eastern European film director, but he did. This was his second movie with Jet Li, his third movie with DMX.

They team up together, gets a kung fu guy and a street smart guy who's a diamond thief. The coolest scene in the whole movie, and also Gabriel Union's in it, she's good too, but the coolest scene in the movie, as I remember the is the late dmx for no good reason finds an atv while he's uh the cops are chasing him and he also like beats up the cops in a in the start of the scene which i think man i feel like you don't see this nobody in a fast x movie gets to beat up the cops anymore it was just cool and then he gets on a fucking atv and drives over a cop car while his ex gonna give it to you song goes over it it's the and then he gets on a fucking atv and drives over a cop car while his x gonna give it to you song goes over it it's the coolest he ever looked on screen it was at the

debut of x gonna give it to you i think it was a pretty established song at that point okay i was wondering if it debuted on this soundtrack but innovating in titles by making the word to the number two we're going to see that a lot in the future i think it was in the theater at the same time as too fast too furious actually it makes you think it's a sequel to something though when i see that title i'm like where's cradle to the grave one where's cradle one the grave also i think i saw them too because you know jet lee i was a big hong kong action fan and jet lee had made his move over to amer. And I think thanks to the success of Rush Hour, there were a lot of, you know, famous black star with famous Hong Kong star.

And Jet Li, well, it was Aaliyah in the first movie in Romeo Must Die. And now DMX, who was like a supporting player in Romeo Must Die, he moved up to co-star with Jet Li in this one. Oh, and also, all of them had Anthony Anderson in them. And the token white guy in the movies were Tom Arnold. Oh, and also, all of them had Anthony Anderson in them, and the token white guy in the movies were Tom Arnold. Oh, hey, you know, he's always fun. I believe he was the cinematographer for the Lethal Weapon

movies, so that's how he got this big director gig. Yeah, I'm looking at his filmography, and we have Romeo Must Die, Exit Wounds, and then we start getting into Uwe Bull Territory, because we have Doom, and then Street Fighter The Legend of Chun-Li. And there's a few more after that.

We can just stop there, though. Yeah. Have you covered that Doom movie? I feel like we talked about that Chun-Li movie on RetroNuts. We did, I think, a decade ago. I have not covered Doom yet. I've always been a little bit curious about that movie, though. Okay.

Funniest thing about the Doom movie movie and then we can move on the funniest thing about the doom movie to me was that the trick of the movie is that you think the rock is the lead hero when he then turns out to not be the hero but in the middle of the movie he just says like fuck and that's when that's like the first swear said and then swears are said the rest of the movie and it's a really interesting like turn where it's like a pg-13 movie and then in the middle they're like you know what we're an r-rated movie now they just made the movie become self aware and it crosses the fuck barrier and yeah remember when everybody said that like wow they did a scene in first person isn't that amazing they're all forgetting about the terrible adaptation of the raymond chandler story lady in the lake that was a first person movie they didn't do that again for a lot of reasons but that's what happened on the day this episode all about hollywood aired and yesterday

we were talking about the season 14 episode a star is born again and it is a parody of nodding hill the 1999 mega hit romantic comedy i know i was spying on henry's letterboxd account and i know he is a recent viewer of nodding hill i abstain from watching this movie yeah i mean you were right too bob it's uh i i feel like i had seen some of it on cable like one of those laws we hate movies would call it you know like hangover viewing or something but there's a reason romantic comedy cliches are so easy to make fun of because when you watch something like nodding hill from 1999 before everybody learned all the tropes and could make fun of them it just hits every single one i was like oh these are where the tropes came from yeah i think i've seen so many parodies of these that i feel like i don't need to watch them but the clever trick of it is in case you haven't seen

nodding hill from the writers richard curtis who would go on to write love actually and i believe he's like one of the co-creators of mr bean but so basically it's a british movie with one american in it and julia roberts plays a fake julia roberts but just even though they call her like anna in the whole movie you're just like no i'm you're julia roberts this is about what if julia roberts dated a regular guy and yeah and Hugh Grant's in the movie because Wonka is currently in theaters and Hugh Grant looks absolutely miserable during the press tour for that movie my wife sent me a compilation of headlines like Hugh Grant hates life comma self Hugh Grant hates every movie he's been in Wonka miserable movie says Hugh Grant just he's not having a great time I don't want to say I feel bad for this man who is you know fame and wealth and everything but what's going on Hugh Grant. I don't want to say I feel bad for this man who has, you know, fame and wealth and everything,

but what's going on, Hugh Grant? What movie do you want to be in? I thought he seemed like he was having, or at least he was masking his revulsion better when he was doing interviews for the D&D movie. I thought he seemed to be having an all right time in those interviews, but. Oh, he was in that? Yes. Yeah.

He's, well, guess what, Bob? The most famous guy in the movie is a villain, but who's British. Like, yeah, he's. Just like the other D&D movie. Yup. Yeah. He is the Jeremy Irons of that movie's a villain but who's british like yeah he's just like the other dnd movie yep yeah he's he is the jeremy irons of that movie though that movie is much better my i mean it'd be hard to not be better yeah it's just we're past the holiday season now but i've been seeing a lot of trailers for wonka and i thought you know seeing hugh grant as an oompa loompa a he's stealing work from little people but aside from that i i just think this this is a low for you you don't look like you want to be doing

this and i feel bad for you i would think he just has a lot of like bad bad business dealings or whatever so it's distracting though in the notting hill that when you see like he's supposed to be the regular guy and it's like but you're one of the most handsome british men who has ever lived like you're not the regular guy it's ridiculous casting though also i think richard curtis is not very good at writing women everything julia roberts says in the movie doesn't sound right especially like he really can't write american women like she just says things that i'm like that doesn't sound like what she would say but it's cute and then of course i didn't know this until previous guest of talking simpsons david simms brought it up notting Hill is also an extremely whitewashed movie because Notting Hill is apparently one

of the most diverse neighborhoods in London, but everybody's white in the movie. The most diversity the film has is that the best friend who's basically Homer in this episode is played by Reese Ifans, who's Welch. Oh, yeah. That's diversity for you when you're in the uk i guess and yeah i'm looking at this movie and the writer yeah you said he did love actually and you know we're just coming off the holidays and as of this recording we mentioned we hate movies they're about to do an episode on that and i know that was once i assumed a beloved movie now it seems everybody hates it it feels like the sexual politics perhaps have not aged very well, or maybe they started from a dated point. Well, Richard Curtis also is very into stories about being famous.

I mean, Hugh Grant's character in Love Actually is, well, what if the prime minister had sex with one of his secretaries, but it was good and it was fine, and there are no power dynamics at play at all? Well, all I know about Love Actually is at some point in the movie,ary clinton holds up white cards with words on them i could be confusing that with something else though i'm not sure in notting hill though i think the most famous line is like but i'm just a girl standing in front of a boy asking him to love her like i think that's like the most famous line and also when i watched the movie like maybe i'm gonna say maybe because it's british it seemed less cliche to use American songs in this way. But like, guess what? When she breaks up with him at a certain point in the movie, what song plays?

Ain't no sunshine when she's gone. Wow. What a great pick. Hate that trend in movies. It really actively pushes me away. In The Simpsons as well, when it's done as a joke, I'm just like, I know this is the joke, but you did choose choose the most obvious song we're in that era of simpsons montages by the way julie roberts i mean she's great you could watch worse things like the simpsons also did the joke called love is nice which is just watching one of these movies it was more making fun of runaway bride but still yeah

that and that was a funny send-up of those kind of movies like one groom and two grooms oh then the the pastor passes out i would say i guess there's worse romantic comedies to watch but there definitely are more than a few moments in this episode that is like it's not just the concept there's a few moments in the movie that i'm like oh okay that's in the episode so i'm glad i watched it in that respect you get to see julie roberts being a real karen a lot of itch instead of a uh erin choco snitch it's and then it's funny to hear brian kelly say on the commentary that it's like oh yeah my my pitch for this was al jean told me to write nodding hill starring ned flanders okay boss did it also hit you bob that this is a lot like the first episode of the critic oh you know what i didn't

even think of that but i can see some similarities in case you haven't seen that one in a while that's where jay sherman dates with and sleeps with once a sharon stone type the critic has terrible views on women and then she breaks up with him without saying like one word to him afterwards she just vanishes yeah i can see some similarities there but they do remember to name this woman and that's an important distinction from most of the women on the critic that jay dates but i would figure this is probably also just pulled a lot from like you know not every simpsons writer but i would think for nerdy hollywood screenwriters you actually do probably have a not impossible chance of dating a gorgeous actress who will be working with you like hey you know what dork i'm gonna date you sometimes it happens i think arthur miller is name checked in this episode it happened

to him the liah lovett is famous like he was he wasn't just some nobody he is less attractive than julia roberts but yeah also i do think this is a better ned post widow episode than the last one with the Praise Land. I'm losing track because there's been a handful of them and they kind of run together in my mind because they try to set Ned up immediately after his wife dies in Alone Again, Natural Diddly. And then there is the episode where he dates the singer, correct? Yeah, yeah.

Who is, is she from the end of Alone Again, Natural Diddly? Sean Colvin character. And then he cuts her hair into mods and it horrifies her. And then they both realize he's not ready for something like that. And I guess the tragedy of these Ned episodes is that he can never actually stay with the woman. And then when they find him a woman to stay with, the voice actress dies. It's a cursed position to be married to Ned Flanders in many ways. I mean, also funny timing that like maggie roswell is back

in this episode when they really i i stand by just unkill maude i wish they'd done it now does feel too late but in season 14 it was not too late they could have just written one bad episode where maude comes back to life and we move on with it yeah they say they can't think of a way to bring her back i think let's say if david merkin figure was in charge of the show he would do it just to annoy people but it would be for the better of the entire show okay the problem with her death scene is dr hibbert is right there to pronounce her dead we don't see her body but he does and ned seemingly does too there's no way like her body doesn't disappear if she fell off into nothing you'd have some chance there but it could have been a real obi-wan i thought you said mod was dead uh yes in a manner of speaking briefly she

was but then we resuscitated her and we had to hide her from you that like i mean look it doesn't make sense and the excuse would be crappy but the end result would be better than ned dating i also just don't like that these ned dating ones, they turn Homer into a wingman, but I just don't like him in that position with Ned. They turn him into a weird bro. I mean, Homer, I guess they're trying to rehabilitate him from being less of the party animal that Mike Scully made him into,

but those qualities still seep through. And I don't like when Homer is actively horny for other women in an uncomfortable way, which happens in this episode. Yeah, I'm not a fan of wingman homer either and it just doesn't feel comfortable for him and ned like it's a relationship they never have except in the rare ned dating episodes where he's like homer i gotta turn to you for advice every other time ned is never looking for advice knows what he wants and

homer does not want to be his friend yeah homer briefly drops his guard when ned needs dating advice but yeah it is an odd pairing because homer he is happily happily married but has not actively been dating since before he met marge so i don't know 20 years ago yeah homer has literally no game i think he is not dated a woman i it's plausible to say homer has not slept with any woman other than marge yeah possibly same with versa vice but and yes this episode begins though with a mac reigning couch gag though he doesn't voice himself like a certain other executive producer on this episode yeah i forgot until the commentary brought it up that both mac reigning and james l brooks appear in this episode we start the episode with the Simpsons go to the beach

comedy, which I wish Bart's book was Little Bastard Inc. I wish instead just a parody of Boys Life, but obviously we're past the Little Bastard era. Yeah, they forgot about it, but I did look more into Boys Life. I know everyone's on the edge of their seats. Get ready for this, folks. It's now a different magazine name. It's called Scout Life. It was renamed Scout Life in 2021 because in 2018, they started letting Goyles into the Boy Scouts, which is now just the Scouts of America. Wow. So it's been woke-ified then, I guess. I guess.

I mean, I don't know the distinction. I said girl in a funny way, and now I'm stuck on that. There were always Girl Scouts and Boy Scouts, but they had very different you know badges and activities but girls wanted to get into the boy scouts and it took until 2018 i guess i think i remember hearing back then that like that the girl scouts as an organization was much more open on gender stuff than the boy scouts were to that point and like that that trans girls could join the girl scouts as well it wasn't just for they didn't test your chromosomes or whatever bullshit uh they were just like hey you want me in the girl scouts here you go my

only experience with boy scouts i was never a scout the kids who had to stay after school were the boy scouts because it's like they had to bring their uniforms to class and everything and change into them it's like oh you have to stay in school longer that stinks goodbye my only interaction with boys life was that i would read it for free in the library because i was like uh i want to read more comic strips and i've read every comic strip that's in the school library i guess boys life has a comic strip in each of them like this is what you had to do when you couldn't just go online to read like eight million web comics at your at your disposal and i'm sure the boys life comic was sub mark trail yes yeah also this you know this drawstring

thing happened to me recently but with a with a hoodie i actually did fish it from halfway in the hood out and then i stupidly did not think to tie it in a knot at the end and it did it again and the second time the washing machine when it did that i was like ah fuck this and i just ripped it out and so yeah you know relatable pain in the ass whatever the string it makes a mystical journey back into the clothing item i feel for marge looking so tired after staying up all night with that and we have our second dirty diaper maggie joke of the season two which they're not talking about how stinky it is but it's more than just she's so slathered in sunscreen that

it's impossible to change her diaper today there's nothing as vile as the phrase of fudged her huggies oh man thank you for reminding me of that god that is one of the grossest things then there's one of these the only secret deleted scene on the dvd is here so after the maggie sunscreen thing there it's it's a clever joke i kind of wish they kept it in homer is about to park at the parking lot for the beach he's told it's 20 he says man when i was a kid it was 18 that's a good joke i did watch this uh the lead scene on the disc and then they go over the severe tire damage spikes the right way and then they back out the wrong way and lisa's like oh i always wondered how those worked and they decide to leave the car we're getting more severe tires damage spike comedy it used to be a hallmark of the classic

simpsons now it's back do you think they cut it because they're like oh wait we've we've done homer here except it should be all four tires don't do that that's much better and then we find out that this is a special jellyfish day at the beach where red jellyfish wash up on the beach brian kelly says he took that from his own childhood except it was not a celebrated thing it was a nuisance yeah people don't normally like when this happens and he he was talking about on the commentary how he was once like stranded on a raft when the tide came in or whatever phenomenon happens that brings all the jellyfish and he had to swim through all the jellyfish and it scarred him for life and apparently one little sting is not a big deal but when a bunch of them are constantly stinging you as you're going back to land it does

hurt i think i've seen like one or two it's not like i go to the beach all the time but as a kid i think i saw a jellyfish here or there on the beach and i i think i got one time it definitely felt like i had been stung by a jellyfish but i cannot say for sure but i never seen all of these like a bunch of dead ones on the beach like this but then i didn't grow up in the new england area like most of the simpsons writers and you're not supposed to pee on it that's just a joke people tell you to get you to pee on yourself so don't do it oh man the sons i didn't realize that that's uh i blame friends in the scene featuring the late mat Perry. TV's full of lies.

Though they celebrated in Springfield where I would have held this episode to air in May if they're going to do a third Tuesday of May sweeps joke in the episode. And if they're going to the beach. I mean, they've never observed the actual month the episode is airing in, but it was like, oh, we're in early March and they're going to the beach.

Actually, this month is really crazy because the Spelling Bee episode was the school year is beginning episode and now we're going to the beach actually this month is really crazy because like the spelling bee episode was the school year is beginning episode and now we're going to the beach in may back to school and did you get this reference to the fox network getting a new president oh i mean i looked up the number of presidents but i i had assumed that this was like is this still them just mad about the critic it's partially that so lisa is saying you know the jellyfish thing happens every year like the swallows are turning to capistrano and then bart says or like the fox network getting a new president and i think this is a reference to recent events where doug herzog was the president

just from 1999 to 2000 but the guy who canceled the critic who mike reese on the record just hates with all of his uh being uh john matoian he was there from 95 to 96. So Fox had a few presidents that only hung around for like 18 months. But I assume, and prove me wrong, children, the Simpsons would never joke about Bob Iger or Bob Chapek. I know. They really would. Or even like the guy right below Bob Chapek or the two people below Bob Chapek.

I mean, I did see that at the time of this episode, Gail Berman had been the president for a couple years and would do it till 2005 which is pretty long to be a fox tv president you know that doug kurtzall guy i remember him he didn't fuck over the critic he fucked over futurama he's the guy who screwed futurama and i think he was a comedy central guy but yeah he i recognize a lot of these names from who fans were the most mad at like people hated Jamie Kellner for destroying a lot of the Warner Brothers cartoons like Freakazoid and Pinky and the Brain and things like that and uh yeah Doug Herzog was in all of the discussions over who killed what and who replaced Futurama with the pits I don't know if it's still this way

anymore but I wonder if like the people can directly blame any executive anymore. I mean, definitely now we're hearing like, well, this thing didn't get released because David Zaslav did this or that thing, which is true. But like, do the network presidents have as much power as they used to even? I think so. I just I just feel like people are now too afraid of them to say anything. I also have heard another previous guest i heard jack allison he said that one of the problems is doug herzog is an example of this that it used to be executives were like shitty but they didn't think they knew how to make movies they would just be like i'm making a business decision i run this thing but now in 2023 they all think they know how to make

movies so not only do they make like the business sense stuff but they also say hey act three needs this or you should cast this person like they they are even more creatively involved than before yeah i mean katzenberg that was always his angle so he was a pioneer when it came to that well actually i think he's just attacking the unhoused in la now that's his only real job these days i thought he was her powell on the bus getting his next big idea oh i think i saw him give an ai comment recently that's right that was one of the last times i saw him in the news he said like you know back in the old days we needed 300 people to draw the lion king but ai is going to really smooth that out and make it a lot easier to make stuff like that i was like man fuck this

guy less jobs for all i mean you could totally tell he was still pissed thinking, I wish I didn't have to hire 300 artists to make The Lion King because I did everything that mattered in The Lion King. They screwed me. Yeah. So we get a couple jokes, including a rare Hibbert family joke in our first clip here. What a sight. It happens every year like the swallows returning to Capistrano.

Or the Fox Network getting a new president. I made a new friend. I'm going to Africa to see lions and giraffes and monkeys and Santa and gorillas and... Daddy, why is everyone so happy the jellyfish are back? Well, in the old days, people thought jellyfish venom had curative properties. Now we know it just makes things a whole lot worse. Like laser eye surgery? Exactly.

Yeah, we don't see his Cosby-style family often. They were really introduced in the Bart sells his soul episode when they go into moe's i feel like that's the last time one of his kids has spoken in the show like it smells like peepee in here or something like that yeah but this time they're back to like i guess just dunk on laser eye surgery which this they haven't done that since bart to the future maybe their third joke about lasik the things like this make you terrified of actually getting it. Oh, sure. I mean, well, not this. I mean, Homer's crusting eyes and Ned saying, oh, they don't tell you they fall out in 10 years. Now, all those things are not true. I did have, you know, my old California optometrist had told me they suggested against

me looking into it even because they said, you're my eyes are so bad that they probably can't cut i don't have enough meat in my eyeballs to cut into to make my eyes good i have a sense that my optometrist was very anti-lasik and was just trying to talk me out of it i'm curious i'm gonna see what my seattle optometrist has to say in the new year on this well we are in the future i think we will get the geordie laforge robot eye soon. I could use them. Last I checked, my eyes had plateaued some, but it has been, now it's been 13 months since my last eye doctor visit. So I'm due for one in the new year and I'm lucky enough to have the insurance to do it. So good, good for me. I have, okay. I think it's starting to slip a little bit. We're just checking in with our

listeners so they know what our vision's up to lately. But I think I'm still on the brink of tiny text needing something, some kind of assistance. But maybe in a year or two I'll be there. I'm still glasses-less. Repeat, glasses-less. I'm still very jealous of my husband's 2020 or maybe 2025 vision. Like, he can just see everything clearly. I'm very jealous. The Simpsons will be right back.

Flanders dates a movie star. She does look pregnant. Now, who might you be? A tabloid? Is that one of those really strong men? The Simpsons. Monday at 6 on WB33. When you really care about someone,

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See shopify.com slash POS20 for details. welcome to the break everybody it's henry gilbert aka zelda fitzgerald and we want to thank you for listening to this week's episode of talking simpsons where we're going into this episode based on nodding hill it has been a wild month for talking simpsons as we get back into 2024 we just got back from doing a live show, and we can only do all of this cool stuff if we have the support of listeners like you at patreon.com slash talking simpsons. Not only do $5 and up supporters there get to hear every episode of this podcast a week ahead of time and ad free, you can hear this week's right now.

You also get access to a ton of exclusive podcasts like every month we do a new episode of talking futurama and talking the hill where we cover both of those shows super in-depth just like we do an episode of the simpsons there are so many awesome podcasts there you are not hearing and you can hear our huge back catalog of all the previous episodes of us covering futurama king of the hill every episode of the critic every episode of mission hill and many of our favorite episodes of batman Futurama and King of the Hill, every episode of The Critic, every episode of Mission Hill, and many of our favorite episodes of Batman the Animated Series. Check it out for yourself at patreon.com slash TalkingSimpsons.

But if you want something even nicer than an NFL team in Los Angeles, you need to sign up at the $10 level because that is where we have our premium once a month podcast what a cartoon movie that's where we cover an animated feature film super in-depth just like we do an episode of The Simpsons and that means talking for over four or five or six hours about classics like this month Walt Disney's Bambi the 1942 classic Bob did a ton of research reading the original book and then going through all of the stuff that happened in the production of Bambi and this month you will hear us talking about Porco Rosso Hayao Miyazaki's classic about the crimson pig that we

all love so much that's also about making cartoons and those are just the two most recent ones we have over five years of what a cartoon movies that you can hear us covering everything from akira to a goofy movie spider-man into the spider-verse to beavis and butthead do the universe and our longest podcast ever six and a half hours about who framed roger rabbit and many other great six hour long podcasts too please check it all out for yourself at patreon.com slash talking Simpsons. So yes, then comes a Frank sinatra style jellyfish singer and that'll be the closing song for this uh this podcast because they play it over the credits but i totally forgot this this random parody song in the episode i love i love this song it's very clever and cute and they they

hired the right singer in fact i did my prep for this and then I watched the Bing Crosby movie, White Christmas. It sucks. Don't watch it. It's terrible. But when he was singing, I thought, I'd rather hear that jellyfish song.

That was better than this. Letterboxd snooping. I read yours too. I forgot the plot of it. I think I got it mixed up with Holiday Inn, but is it White Christmas or Holiday Inn that has the minstrel show in it? It's very funny in giant quotes

because Holiday Inn has the minstrel number in which the performers are in funny in giant quotes because holiday inn has the minstrel number in which the performers are in blackface singing about thank you mr lincoln and everything like that for the president's day song or for the lincoln's birthday song because i believe every song in that movie is based on a holiday and that's why white christmas is in that movie white christmas there is not a minstrel performance but there is a song about how much they love minstrel shows. So weird. Huh. Weird.

But they're not in blackface. Although my wife had to point out to me, like, did you notice that they're wearing like watermelon pattern dresses? I was like, oh, I didn't notice that at all. Oh, dear. So they couldn't put the face paint on, but they still found a way to be offensive. I now want to look into the making of that movie, of White Christmas, if they put that song in because the NAACP and other political groups rightly said, hey, you shouldn't do blackface

in your movies for Holiday Inn. And he's like, fine, we'll tell you how great minstrel shows are in our new movie. It felt like a big so there. And yeah, I mean, we're past Christmas, but we started watching it thinking it was a Christmas movie, but really it's Bing Crosby saying, people don't respect my army general anymore.

So he puts on a big show about how great his army general was. It's very, very strange because it takes place a decade after the war. And this poor general, all he's got is this giant property in Vermont. Boo-hoo. Oh, man. Yeah, I mean, and of course, Bing Crosby, horrible man. Horrible, horrible person. Yes, but what a voice. What a voice. I say it and of course, Bing Crosby, horrible man, horrible, horrible person. But what a,

what a voice. What a voice. I say it paves over all the sins. That's syrup. Uh, yeah, the, the jellyfish song in the episode though,

is sung by Jean Merlino, who was also the singer of South of the Border in the Camp Krusty episode. Yeah. One of Alf Clausen's guys, apparently. And I now have a follow-up listeners the spelling as fast as i can episode i said i don't know who sang taste of liberty i hope to get a copy of testify the simpson soundtrack in the mail so i can learn this because nobody uploads the liner

notes online well i did here are the liner notes in my hand right here bob can see them he's holding them folks and so i could finally look up who is the credited singer of tastes like liberty and that man is mark campbell and the interesting thing about mark campbell is that he is the singing voice of marty mcfly singing johnny be good in back to the future the completely different voice that erupts from that small man's mouth that's him yes yeah it's mark campbell who sings it wow incredible so what was the simpsons song again he sings the taste like liberty oh it's the the mcrib song or sorry the rib witch song right yes yeah okay wow okay great good pull so there we go now you know the rest of the story for spelling as fast as i can so i know that i

researched this before the episode is published so if you had comments like hey it's mark campbell i looked it up fine but i didn't know that i bought a five dollar copy of testify on ebay what will leave you a real snotty per my last email style comment one of my favorite memes is that combo meme of per my last email of like each punch each word is a punch yeah that's any time i've ever been sent that i just i felt the urge to kill it was like homer urge to kill rising rising but yes everybody is having a jellyfish wonderful time as the we get a tour of the couples of springfield frank's dancing with a robot marge can't dip homer very low skinner and edna are teasing that wedding

which every time i see they should have just gotten married god i'm so pissed knowing where this is going to end up next season season 15 is my big fat geek wedding is when this all comes to an end but i'm guessing this is the own this is the first instance that they are engaged the first mention of that they got engaged at the end of the epcot episode and that's right they're following up with it yeah completely forgot about that. So there is continuity here. I mean, that episode was so not about her that I completely forgot

that there was a proposal at the end. It does feel like Gene and the rest of his team throwing up their hands because I feel like they said it, they end Epcot with them getting engaged. Epcot. They end that with them getting engaged. Now this episode, they're teasing it.

And I feel like they tease their engagement a couple more times. I think they had plans of like, we do the wedding it'll be a big deal and then it feels like by the next season they just go like what are we thinking with this wedding screw it let's break him up and he dresses up like catwoman yeah and it's all for the sake of an episode i feel they started with the title and then wrote backwards like oh my big fat geek wedding how can we turn that into something another aljean trope this is the second episode he's showrun that is a

star is born title parody oh yeah we forgot to mention uh I love when we get to the point where they have to reuse episode parody titles so we have a star is burns and then we have a star is born again and I want to say there's at least one more i think you're right yes i also think so i mean you know look there's only so many classic movies that aljean wants to take the titles from i get it and now the lady gaga version has overwrote the old version right people love that movie from five years ago i think yeah yeah i mean bradley cooper it's his big directorial moment there yeah i mean the streisand one did not erase the Streisand Chris Christopherson one didn't erase it but I think Lady Gaga with her wonderful

original songs in it I think that erased it yes yeah though she didn't win an Oscar for that will she win an Oscar for playing Harley Quinn next year in the Joker 2 we shall see my my bets on that one and then we also see this is almost like a muppets uh a muppet show style like tour of the couples i thought the exact same thing as they're all dancing and we get like little jokes from all the couples actually that would the same thing was in white christmas i think like oh that used to be a stock movie scene just to work in little jokes and the muppets took that and ran with it characters dance by the camera and they each say their joke and we get clancy and sarah which there she says the only word she ever said back then oh clancy we found out that he met her by arresting her and planting crystal meth on her

i like a good joke about evil cops planting evidence that's always good the reminder that they have completely reset the character of sarah wiggum and she's voiced now by megan mulally doing her megan mulally thing pamela hayden doing a wiggum impression sounds a little like megan mulally so they landed on the right actor though she definitely has a lot more depth to her now i feel though again another job taken away from pamela hayden i mean she still is in most episodes of the show she's not as many as were taken away from hank azaria but he's doing fine. That's true. Boy, this has probably been a rough year for Hank Azaria.

I think Matthew Perry was like his best friend. I feel for him. It's come up in episodes, but he made a very touching video about the death of his friend and about his own sobriety, which I didn't know about. Oh, I should check that. I actually missed that video. I'd seen the friend's actor statements, but not his actor friend's statement. Pretty clever of me there.

I got it. Oh, now I get it. And so then we move over to Sea Captain. And guess what? One of the five jokes they do with Sea Captain is he's gay, but only on the sea. Yeah, that's been a recurring thing. It's like no blank till we get off of a dock or whatever. There was something like that in one of these episodes.

Well, I love the joke. Oh, sorry. Like he gets pornography from someone and it's like, this will keep the men from homosexuality for at least three hours or something like that. Yeah, that's right. And then the guys say, you're one to talk. And then he goes like, oh, and laughs it off with a tilted wrist. Yeah.

Though the delivery of, are you hitting on me? That made me chuckle. That made me chuckle. And now as we're doing our state and federal taxes around this time, Ned talking about it, I was like, hey, that's just like us. Wow. When it comes to doing taxes, I have an open relationship. There's a third party involved. That's true.

Yeah. You become kind of a throuple when it comes to taxes i'm kind of paulie when it comes to taxes because i have a canadian guy an american guy various costly experts that need to weigh in it's too many specialties in this in this bedroom now it's true it's true yeah homer i i do like homer too love rubbing it in just like oh yeah this isn't for widows uh it's you're gonna miss cinco de ocho and the hobo oscars which those are good random things to bring up uh the tongue kissing festival is a good one and so ned walks away he gets a newspaper in his face that lonely men die early i think that's actually true if you look at the stats it's it's tough out there for the lonely i agree it's sad

our hearts are with you we wish you all happiness but all the holidays are over you're doing fine right oh yeah hey if you made it this far you're doing great yeah we're supporting you all the way i think the funniest lines to me in this episode are the brutal ones where ned is revealing like how deep his like grief still is like happily married to a dead woman like that is like oof yeah i mean the absence of maude is just so uh a factor of his life still uh and we are i guess i guess three years later yeah yeah three it feels like even longer but yeah it's only been three years since they killed her i mean i think it's been six years since we did that no not six years but it's been a number of years since we did that episode yes this is when notting hill begins where so the meat cute in notting hill is that hugh grant's character runs a travel bookstore

and then in walks julia roberts into his bookstore but she's wearing sunglasses and a hat to try to look conspicuous though in the movie he knows who she is immediately it's not he does not not recognize her were there ever so many romantic misunderstandings? That guy just is drawn to me. Hugh, oh yeah, Hugh Parkfield is Hugh Grant. Yeah, what am I saying here? Well, there was the little Hugh Grant kid in, I think it was Bard of Darkness. That's the one you're referencing, yes.

But then there is Hugh Parkfield, who is Hugh Grant, voiced by Manny Patinkin, who is not British. Yes, yeah. But he has a wonderful accent. Yes, this is where Ned meets our guest star. Formed a business. Sole proprietorship. Owner's marital status. Happily married to a dead woman.

Excuse me. Are you open? Mm-hmm. Open as a tomb on Easter. Now, what can I ding-dong-diddley do for you? Boy, they don't make them like you in L.A. Oh, I should say not. I gave up on L.A. when those TV people made that poor nun fly.

All those Puerto Ricans looking up her dress. That's not right. Do you have any left-handed eyelash curlers? Do I? No, I don't, but i can have them here by tuesday well for now i'll take a left-handed crimper so yeah that is the the big guest star of the episode marissa tomei playing sarah sloan i have a little marissa tomei corner but i do want to point out that i i think there are more references to the flying nun than there were episodes of the flying nun

they really it i mean it had a big effect on a lot of the writers growing up the gen x writers i guess or boomer writers in the case of uh aljean i'd say oh yeah i mean i've never seen a frame of it but i know it's sally field yeah and she's a flying nun and adventures occur to her as she flies around the country and i don't think she likes people remembering the flying nut either i don't think it's it's a thing she's proud of no but hey she was a mary jane as is this woman oh no aunt may oh aunt may god damn it one whatever woman in that show that spider movie yes i can't keep them all straight in my head yes thank you thank you henry she was an aunt may as well and uh yeah marissa tomei so no stranger to sitcoms because she has a great guest role in the 1996 Seinfeld episode, The Cadillac Part 2, where George, while engaged to Susan, is trying to get with Marissa Tomei.

And her hair is crazy in that episode. It was just a mid-90s hairstyle, but it's like a giant helmet. It's not what she normally looks like. So she looks very odd in that episode, at least according to how dated that hairstyle became. It's weird. Yeah, no, she's, I am a big fan of Marissa Tomei. Before she became Aunt May, I saw her, when this episode aired, I'd seen her in Slums of Beverly Hills and In the Bedroom, which I think she is a very good actress in both

of those movies. I haven't seen her in a whole lot outside of the spider-man but recently i think last year because it turned 30 and i had probably like watched half of it as a kid when my parents were watching it but never as an adult i sat down and watched my cousin vinny it's really great that's the movie she won best supporting actor for which she deserved people were so stunned by this new actor in a comedy winning an oscar that they were very mean about it uh and there were many a joke told about this on you know the critic and futurama going back to that movie though i think she fully earned it but if you look at what she was up against and i think we talked

about this in the zoidberg goes to hollywood episode of futurama she was up against a lot of older actresses in serious movies so i think this this dark horse winning made everyone think like oh this was a fix yeah i mean the movies like husbands and wives and howard's end and enchanted april those are all like those were what were viewed as the important good actress movies back then and i think especially joan plowright and how right and vanessa redgrave like they were seen they were seen as much more serious actresses. It felt like a lot of classicism mixed in with, of course, misogyny at the jokes directed at Marissa Tomei, for sure. Yeah. And I don't know if you have the clip,

but there's a critic reference that's very mean. It's also very mean to share as well. Oh, yes. Yeah. Sorry. I shoot. I didn't set it aside. I can get it real quick. Hello. Hello, Jay. This is the devil. Despite what you think, I am not the reason Cher won an Oscar. I am the reason Marisa Tomei won an Oscar. There you have it. And Cher is in this episode. Well, the Cher Crow was in this episode. So a lot of a lot of things we're talking about are appearing here but I also saw Moonstruck for the first time a couple weeks ago which was Cher's Oscar role and you know she wasn't as impressive as Tomei was in My Cousin

Vinny but I think she won because people were like oh I guess she can do this now and yeah it's a great movie she does a great job in it and they both deserve to win when I read the Snopes article about it it mentioned for Marisa Tomei that a lot of these conspiracy theories link back to like Rex Reed, who was a shitty film reviewer who had a lot of influence back in the 90s. I believe he did a joke that he pushed as a real thing that Jack Palance, who read the Oscar winner for that category, misspoke or perhaps is too old and made a mistake and said the wrong name which now that we've lived through what happens when you say the wrong name we know

that that's not what happens at the oscars when you uh say the wrong name of a winner oh yeah these are the oscars at which jack palance did the one-arm push-ups yeah very famous when i pulled up that scene from the 10th episode dr j one of, one of the best episodes of The Critic, I thought like, oh yeah, Aljean says on the commentary make fun of. So I don't think she would have any hard feelings. But in terms of what she was doing at this point in time, I assume she was here to promote anger management because that would be in theaters the following month, the Jack Nicholson and Adam Sandler movie. And of course, we can't forget she was nearly the lead of an animated show.

She played Raquel Smash and Burn in the pilot for the very short-lived animated sitcom game over and if you don't know what that is we did an entire retronauts episode about it but lucy lu ended up playing the mom character in the series proper but apparently there was a pilot that never aired and it was marissa tomei that's insane i mean credit to her for getting unattached from that before it goes to series that she was able to wriggle out of that one bob produced a whole retronauts on that that i was on it it is if we had done it for what a cartoon it would be the worst cartoon we ever covered on our podcast yeah absolutely uh worse than capital critters

even but yeah you know she won in 92 and then she was nominated for in the bedroom and the wrestler so you know it wasn't a fluke she is great oh yeah i'm glad she escaped the marvel cinematic universe she can do her own thing now her interviews after no way home it was like a free person who's now freed from prison saying like well now i can say this prison wasn't as fun but i think she at the very least was saying like yeah i kind of wanted to do more stuff i thought my character would have more things to do and all that but she's great of course the bit with her character is that she's the hot aunt may everybody wants to fuck like that's what makes her aunt may different yes uh congrats congrats to that movie though part of the joke too at least in the first her first very first appearance is that she shares

a scene with robert downey jr's tony stark who clearly is into her and wants to date her and they dated in the 90s like they they were they were a couple back then okay yeah i i did not read that issue of star snoop so yeah i had no idea i i learned that for reading how she was in charlie chaplin or chaplin that he was starred in and that they were dating at the time of chaplin so yeah if you can date marissa toomei in 1993, I say do it. Don't look back. She's a good date now. She is still, yeah, she's a gorgeous woman.

If I wasn't a married man, who knows what could have happened. But, you know, it wasn't to be for me and Marissa Tomei. So I hadn't seen My Cousin Vinny in the 90s. I didn't watch it until later. But I did see 1998 Slums of Beverly Hills. And that's where beforehand I had heard. I only knew Marisa Tomei for all of the jokes, like the critic and Futurama are hardly alone in it of saying she was an undeserving Oscar winner.

And I think everybody expected she'd go away. Like, Oh, she's somebody who wins an Oscar once and then goes away. But instead she is in slums of Beverly Hills. And it's so funny. Like her and Natasha Lyonne, it's one of Natasha Lyonne's first movies. It's really really really good it's a fun dark dirty uh period piece of the 70s which yeah i mean some people i'm not saying she didn't deserve the oscar but some actresses like uh hallie berry they win the oscar and then they do go away yes yeah yeah some of them go away because harvey weinstein

destroys your career in some cases that's true as well well, yeah. Yeah. But, yeah, I mean, I feel for her that she had the, I looked up to, like, oh, what was she in when this came out? What the, is there a role more thankless in Hollywood than playing Adam Sandler's wife in something? I'm sure you have a good time and get a good payday, but those roles are nothing. I didn't know that was her role in that, yeah, playing Adam Sandler's gorgeous wife. Many an actress has had to do that. And I never saw that movie. I love Jack Nicholson.

Adam Sandler, I'm okay with. But I found out the plot twist of that movie. And I'm like, that sounds stupid. I don't want to invest in anything if this is going to be the resolution. And then it got turned into a hit Charlie Sheen TV show. Yeah. And I heard it was one of those tv shows where they they immediately bought 100 episodes just so it could be syndicated immediately and then charlie sheen gets into the

whole tiger blood i'm hiv positive part of his career he becomes much less marketable and they are kind of stuck with making this show funny we're talking about star snoop here as well when this is like the plot of the movie or this episode as well but i think she is overcast for sarah sloan like she's too good for this nothing character who the the episode is just like well she's a very sexy actress the end and like marisa tomei brings so much more to the character yeah her line readings are really dressing up a bland character it's it's something that they've had a problem with for a very long time especially when it comes to ned's not suitors i guess sutresses whatever you want to call them in that it's like it's just a pretty woman to look at and there's nothing wrong with her in fact she she was very

funny on the show too julie louis dryfus playing snake's girlfriend and burns his girlfriend the character is nothing but the act the actor just makes the lines great and fun but what's on the page is like this is this is no one this is nothing they're too afraid to make a flawed or silly female character so they just kind of sit on the page jerry seinfeld's girlfriends are written with much more depth for their one-off episodes than a simpsons girlfriend is yes absolutely i mean partially i think they sacrifice any characterization for the guest actress for a new girlfriend character because the family has to fit in somewhere so they take up all the time when it's jerry seinfeld's girlfriend he's the main

character but when you have to make time for the simpsons family then you can't ed homer being a wingman to whoever's dating the guest star then that takes uh they're going to sacrifice even more time from the the woman they cast marissa tobey she's wonderful sarah sloan and i'll have a couple more thoughts on her career as we go on but i think the character they're writing her though as is more like sharon stone i'd say yeah and in fact they on the commentary the director mike marcantel i believe his name is said she's designed kind of like sharon stone because the actor's name is sarah sloan and then going back to the critic the actor jay falls in love with

she is a sharon stone clone basically she's in a basic instinct style movie boy what if abc was right to hate it being so filthy in that actually speaking of how mike reese talks crap on that john matonin executive or however it's pronounced he talks crap on that executive names his name in his memoir i was just reading mike reese is nice about the guy who canceled the critic on abc because that's bob eiger oh okay uh can't step on those toes yeah he's like you know what he was right we didn't fit on abc and we moved over to fox and that was good i think with john mottoyan and we've talked about this on talking critic it was more personal because john mottoyan literally would call al g and mike reese into his office put on an episode of the critic and say why do you think this is funny tell me why you think it's funny and just be being very aggressive about

how much he hated the show he was a jerk to them first and i totally approve of mike reese sharpening up his knives and naming names against like some asshole who still probably has a lot of power in hollywood but yeah they they then have some jokes about uh left-handed things which i guess sarah sloan is left-handed and that's why she's there though she never like literally says that yeah that's not explore i'm surprised that's not explored anymore and that could be something that they share in common they could bond over but it's it's i mean this is just being very nitpicky but what time is it at the mall there's nobody else there.

No other store appears to be open. You can't just leave your store open in the mall. I've worked at the mall before. I mean, in Notting Hill, which is a longer movie and has time to make excuses for things. She's in London to promote a film. So that's why she went to Notting Hill to look for a specific book. Sarah Sloan in this episode I thought I remember like oh yeah she's in town to film a movie that is never mentioned like Ned does go to a film set

she's filming on but she doesn't say yes I'm filming in Springfield even though I live in LA because we have all these LA specific jokes later like none of that gets uh clear in this episode yeah apparently there is a Paramount style film studio in Springfield yeah I think that element, I thought at a certain point in the episode, I was like, oh, I guess she is in town to film something, because Marge says, oh, they filmed part of Stroker Ace at our airport. That's a great line. I do love that. But yeah, so this is when Ned gets asked out on a date. I'm here for a while, and I don't really know anyone.

Would you like to have dinner tomorrow night? A woman asking a man out? Well, why not? And maybe I'll eat my steak with a spoon. Call me. I'm staying at the Springfield Four Seasons. Ask for Zelda Fitzgerald. What the...

That's a soodidly-oodonym. Well, I've got a date with a girl with no name. It sure feels good to be back in the game at dessert. Maybe I can ask her her name, cause I can't pray for her without the right name.

And at this point, he finds out she's a movie star after seeing the poster for My Best Friend's Gay Baby. Yes. This also is a more political episode than I remember, too, as well. It does feel like they're pushing back against having a born-again president in the White House. Ned is a little more hateful during this period because they are sending up the change in culture, how things are getting more Christian, more conservative. And Ned is the conduit for those kind of jokes it is so it feels so different to think back on when like the republican president was a true believer in that stuff or the very least an outspoken believer how much he truly believes in his heart i don't know but he was an outspoken christian

to then go to the next republican president who's trump who literally believes in nothing no one no no one believes he believes in in god either but nobody cares no religious people love him of course yeah because they just want their side to win they don't give a shit like he knows i'll go to a couple churches and say yeah the bible it's great i love that book that's all he's got to do yeah just just you know say what they want to hear and then look very bored during a service that's about you and of course i think i'm very clever to point out that he's a bit of a hypocrite when it comes to uh what the beliefs in christianity are well he is not winning in 2024 now i'll tell you that much no way when people hear of this hypocrisy but we should stop recording now and let the press know so she does a joke about her fake nose which

they actually do have a joke in notting hill that the julia roberts's character also says she had nose and chin stuff done in the movie too so it's not a out of nowhere shot at women getting plastic surgery or whatever but or a cosmetic surgery i i'm saying very outdated terms with plastic surgery i'm trying to take that out of my vocabulary i like that she is not ashamed of it she's like yeah real and she clangs her fake nose where she's like yeah every my face is not real i have to become a fake person to be a celebrity also uh speaking of fake the sue diddly udin name she gives that is also a notting hill reference though it's a fun reversal of it so in here she says zelda fitzgerald the writer of the great gatsby's girlfriend or wife or whatever and that is what

the legend of zelda is named after and uh and so that was not that's actually serious in case actually needs to know it's real trivia the great gatsby is huge in japan it's a very popular book in japan its localization uh was very was very beloved. I remember reading an interview with Murakami, one of the most popular Japanese writers, at least, is translated work in America. I think he's popular in Japan, too. But he talked about how Great Gatsby influenced him to be Great Gatsby. I did it again.

The Great Gatsby influenced him to be a writer because he read a Japanese translation of it growing up. So it's huge there. You know, I need to sit down and read that book. It was never assigned to me in school, and it is an afternoon of reading, basically. I only remember it from high school. I have not read it since, but I've watched a couple of the movies. But okay, so Sarah Sloan says Zelda Fitzgerald. Well, in Notting Hill, an important plot point is that when she goes to hotels, Julia Roberts' character uses fake cartoon character names. She goes under Miss Flintstone, Bambi, and Pocahontas.

If I was a hotel, I'd just be like, well, you're a sex worker and you're not going to be allowed in. Goodbye. I would figure when a famous person stays in a fancy hotel now, they don't even have a fake name of that. They just go like, hey, concierge, you'll be fired if you tell people I'm here. This is also the 21st century. There's not a giant book on the counter of the hotel where you sign your name and everyone can just page through it, you know? Yes, yeah. I guess Richard Curtis, when he wrote it in the movie, that he was remembering that from movies in the 80s or whatever. I think he was remembering detective stories from the 40s yes that's right so but so in a clever reversal it's a cartoon name in Notting Hill it's a in this cartoon it's a real

person's name so cute cute yeah I never would have known that was a Notting Hill reference unless you told me and also uh I think Shearer feels a little more lively in this one though maybe i'm just saying that because i know aljean says shearer recorded in person with marissa tomei so i think he was actually trying a little harder as ned here yeah yeah i mean i think even at this point he was doing remote recording probably around this time so hey i think there's a reason he went in to see marissa tomei and it was to see marissa tomei oh yeah though doesn't it feel like ned shouldn't know uh the the song a horse with no name by america yeah that seems a little too edgy for him though it's a cute way he sings a song and i also like it was the opening bit they know how silly it is to do a joke of sure you are so they literally have like police chief miles clancy o'hara from the

batman 66 show show up to say it you know it's been a while but that does strike me as a dana gould joke well i feel like any irish cop is i credit to dana gould so we come back from the break homer eats a caterpillar and spits out a butterfly a very wacky moment very weird it's like that joke in the movie where he grows a lizard tongue to eat a piece of shrimp off the barbecue is that the movie yes that's the movie yeah yeah that's true oh there's a piece of shrimp in there whip yeah that has a weird joke yeah but again i don't like flanders asking homer for help with this but i do like that homer is like drinking alone on a wednesday morning that's a funny line yeah can a man just drink alone on a wednesday morning and homer thinks that it is skinner's mother that that's

the tree that net is barking up and i think i mean i think homer is insinuating that she has a penis because his comments are she sure knows how to swing it boy i hope he just thinks like she has a good butt and knows how to swing it like as a good but i don't know we're in the era of transphobic jokes maybe i was reading too much into it let's just say it was the butt yeah i hope it's about well again you know when you have good dana ghoul jokes sometimes you get the flip side of that in this era and so you you wouldn't be wrong to assume these things i had to cut that twinkie and ding dong joke though i don't think it's like in in france they call it a dinky i was like the simpsons is better than just like in this country they call it this i was like that's a

very in 2003 that's a very stock comedy line yeah i mean it doesn't seem far enough for homer to combine a twinkie with a ding dong there should be it should be like a little any dirtbag could do that on their own we need a homer level of gluttony yeah like and then comes in nacho cheese or then you deep fry it or whatever you know if bill oakley was in charge of this episode he'd have made sure a better disgusting snack specific was in there but i my only favorite thing in this scene though is when homer when homer says that ned then replies with like well that's very encouraging which like why would you say that yeah i guess homer's proving that twinkies and ding-dongs can

mix although it is weird to call a woman a twinkie when i think of i mean the word twink is in there and i don't associate that with women no no no no yeah i think uh which by the way as a gay guy i don't i i i've seen this statement out there and i agree with it that i feel like there are some people who straight people who use the word twink when they just want to say like the F slur to just say like, oh, this is an effeminate homosexual. And they learn the gay people call people twinks. And so they're like, oh, this twink. And it's like, you just want to say the F slur for gay people when you say twink. I'm not saying that for everybody.

I've seen some times though, where people use the word twink in a derogatory way. Whenever I say the word twink, I'm referring to the character from Paper Mario. Oh, that's a very nice twink and i met some very nice twinks recently too who gave me some good tips on my upcoming japan trip they were very friendly but uh it shows the twinks and bears can be friends it's not we're not in competition there was a peace treaty yeah uh but then then comes a joke that this is the era of i hate my wife in com in simpsons comedy isn't it oh oh absolutely are we talking about a poo or is that coming up oh i was gonna say homer saying that she was always trying to fix me but then something in her die yes yes sorry i was

thinking about like a future apu jokes where his personality becomes i hate my wife where yeah homer talks about you know mar tried to change me but then she died inside and that's that's very dark yes yeah again it's like i don't want to take a a full count of it but off the top of my head four of the guys on this staff are divorced at least once you know i that'll change your perspective including one that i did well i guess technically they were never married but i'll i'll reveal a secret decoupling in this very episode oh more this is an exclusive star snoop yes yeah see i'm just as bad as the tabloids in this episode but yeah homer saying that like something died inside of her i mean it's a fun dark joke but it's right

up there with in in a future episode homer will say you know if you stay in a marriage long enough you're just waiting till the other person dies. And I'm just like, Jesus Christ. I guess the end of that statement is she doesn't try anymore. So we're all where we want to be. Yeah. So then Ned takes her out to the only nice place in town, the Gilded Truffle. And during their first date, we run into Lenny.

I'm sorry for the disguise, Ned. I just don't want to cause a commotion. Excuse me, Miss Sloan. May I have an autograph? Sure. Oh, man, this is going right on eBay. I mean, my wall, which I will then sell on eBay. Sad to say, this isn't the worst I get. Oh,

oh, can I just push this plaster cast onto one of your boobs? Okay. Now you are the worst. Rod says Marco, and darn it if Todd doesn't say Polo right back. Oh, listen to me, just running my gums about my kids. You're probably bored silly. No, it's a nice change from all the actors I usually date.

All they want to talk about is their Botox, their Taibo, or their Xbox. Huh. Sarah, there's something I've been dying to do all night, so let's just get it over with now and hold hands yeah i like ned's response to that he does not recognize any of those three terms that's a good that's a good one i will also like credit to microsoft for getting their xbox brand to such a level that the simpsons can write a joke about it just two years after its launch or less than two years after its launch uh i was watching a lot of i guess mid-season 20 episodes uh with nina when we were quarantining

for covid and there is a lot of wii humor in those episodes except it's called the z the nintendo z interesting zii and then when they want to make wii u jokes yes the simpsons has made wii u jokes it's called the z zoo interesting wow i didn't yes interesting is right interesting not funny not funny no no i think this is the first mention of xbox on the simpsons and it was in case you didn't live through it the xbox i remember when it launched that it was treated as like oh bill gates is trying to buy his way into video games well it's not gonna work but uh it did work it did work it eventually paid off and it's still pretty good i'm still well the xbox one was bad but the series x is my main

non-nintendo gaming machine these days oh yeah so this bit of the gilded truffle this also happens sort of in the movie i mean there's multiple times in notting hill where like the main bit they have is a weird thing happens on their date because they're famous or whatever and that uh the two bits are somebody asked for an autograph and uh when they're on a date and then also he's eating dinner with her and then at a table near them is a bunch of lads talking about how much they would like to shag her you know actually I don't think they said shag apparently there's some big cuts in the movie to get it to pg-13 a lot of f-words that it would have gotten in an r in the movie to get it to pg-13 a lot of f words that it would have gotten in an r in america versus england they wanted to give that bird a jolly good rogering

selling signatures on ebay is a more lucrative job than ever for scummy people if you watch the movie uncut gems the safty brothers actually just cast the real guys who do that as characters who are chasing after like they see a basketball player and they're like hey could you sign this and sign this and sign this and they're instantly going on sale you need to sign the certificate of authenticity as well and take a photo while they're doing it too actually some of the worst i've seen out there is for pro wrestlers get it the worst because they're only famous to a very niche group of people and so they're not even treated with like a certain level of respect that like say a big nba star is or julia roberts so these pro wrestlers everybody knows where they get off

in the airline they fly commercial and when they get off their plane two dozen losers with 80 things to sign are just like can you sign this and sign this and sign this and it's just like it's so they even when they get roasted by being filmed by people who are just like hey stop doing this they never stop they're they're they're some of the worst and i love giving autographs by the way if you see us in public and especially for with our spouses track us down and make us sign something i'm cool with that as well i mean i accidentally was around those guys once where unplanned i stayed in the same hotel as pro wrestlers and i was trying my best to be like i'm a wrestling fan but i'm not here to hector you please don't think i'm these guys who are waiting for you outside of the hotel gym to

ask for an autograph like i felt just like dying of cringe just being even near them it was very it was it was sad but so then this is where the only other cut joke is in the episode or deleted scene which is where lenny very rudely says you look so pretty in the movies is that computers or makeup or a face double you know i guess the boot plaster joke is what you need to get out of the scene but the other little jabs are nice too and i think we can all just assume that at least for the past five years every actor you see in movies little robots are improving their faces and we don't even know for sure yeah i i think every time you see uh at least if it's in a major movie you're seeing heavily touched up stuff in it and ai is only going to make it worse i this was a joke rumor

i'd heard but maybe it's true about how like the in the most recent fast and furious movies they say a big bunch of the budget is spent on or a not insignificant part of the budget is spent on shrinking vin diesel's stomach in uh he's got a special team for that which uh yeah i uh but so then they they get the kiss out at well so i couldn't find the movie that this is from by it because it just feels like a romantic comedy cliche but you've seen this in movies too where there's like you know what let's get the first kiss out of the way early in the date and see if it works like i i know i've seen it in multiple movies yeah it seems like a trope but i really can't place uh where i've seen it before the only one i can think of

by name is a movie that was doing it because it's a trope but it's because last month i did the gayest episode ever podcast about the sarah silverman program and kissing jessica stein came up that movie and it happens between the two women on their first date in the movie but it's done as a comment on the trope of like oh but we're two women doing it in a movie in the year 2000 so it's it's different we're playing with the trope but i don't know where it came from first i i hope it's not a woody allen movie but it could be it might be hey listeners let us know we can count on you but yeah she gives him a kiss and you know what in notting hill julia roberts is the first to

kiss him as well like she makes the first move in the movie too but this is when the family is reacting to the news or at least homers told them it hasn't hit the papers yet but marge is already thinking about it and uh bart gets rather saucy in this scene sarah sloan has been involved with every tinseltown hunk from Affleck to Zamed. Yeah, she's had more stars on her than Lisa's homework. Mm-mm-mm. Now she's dating Mr. Flanders. That's so romantic.

Who the hell is Mr. Flanders? Oh, Flanders. Yellow. Yes, I'm that Flanders' close personal friend. That's right, Hot and happy. They've never been happier. Oh, yeah, she does look pregnant. Now, who might you be? A tabloid?

Is that one of those really strong mints? Hello? Hello? This was the era of very strong mints. Altoids, specifically. But I remember there'd be a new painful mint every few months. I love the painful mints altoids are just like a a baby's treat now that i've i've evolved beyond them frisk japanese mints very powerful altoids are in the past now for me i haven't heard of these mints all well i will have tried them in tokyo i think that by the time you've heard this but are you a

mint guy you know i S'mint back then. I think mainly I like their mint delivery system, but I'm not the biggest mint fan. You know, the last time I was really doing mints regularly was it would be more of that Listerine acid tab, basically, not the mint itself. That's more of an acid tab than a mint. Yes, yeah, it burns.

Just, I would do sometimes if I was like, oh, I really need it to be top of the tongue and under the tongue as well but i like smint because the way it spit it out was fun if you remember that well i am a gum guy henry knows this a lot of listeners don't know it if you see me out in public i might i'm probably chewing gum yeah i think it just like an anxiety thing i like having the motion of chewing constantly and keeps your teeth clean it's costing us a lot with the editor though to cut out all of your chewing the gum'm chewing on the i'm always chewing on mike too you know i just can't spit it out but they realize that bart saying she's had more stars on her than

lisa's homework they know that that's a sassy gay guy line so they just have him do the three snaps and it is it is funny on the commentary where aljean uh comments on the snapping of bart he's like oh i hate when people do that joke now. It's just so tired. And I thought it wasn't that fresh in 2003, Mr. Jean. No. But I always appreciate a reference to Adrian Zmed, who I think was last referenced in the Branson episode where they actually go to Branson. That's right.

Yeah, that's where he ended up. I mean, an Affleck to Zmed is a very funny. It's a good a to z and i believe adrian zamed was the he was like the sidekick to tj hooker he was just a young pretty actor but it's a memorable name too that's why i'm glad he didn't like you know change it to something more marketable keep it zamed everybody remembers it and we'll mock it for a minute i just it's there's another one of those times it's like oh this reminds me of a better episode a fish called selma is a better the simpsons are friends with somebody dating a person famous oh yes

actually very similar and it came before nodding hill because troy mcclure goes into the dmv and that's when he meets uh selma yeah yeah and i mean you know famous people date unfamous people all the time though now the only times i remember hearing about like celebrity dating that seems like surprising is when it's like basically somebody at the higher echelon dates somebody below them i i'm just i love jenny slate she's very funny but i when i say that chris evans dating her like she joked about it that it's like oh yeah he he's too famous to date me why was he dating me chris so they were a thing for a while not no longer together for a little bit not all not too long like a year or so yeah yeah adorable pairing i'll say i'll say yeah chris evans i think has a different younger girlfriend i think it's one of those it's like

you know 2023 versus 41 or something look i'm i'm guessing here i could be wrong anyway but i do like that homer just says oh yeah she definitely looks pregnant. What a horrible thing to say about, well, he's saying that she's fat and to spreading the tabloids are just going to publish that. Yeah, immediately telling them all they want to hear to the point where they hang up. They have all of their headlines already. And in Notting Hill, the tabloids are a major part of the movie. Basically, the door opens and there are a flash of light bulbs and a huge pile of tabloid reporters outside.

Same deal moment in the movie the tabloids in that are also just treated pretty much the same as just a pile of evil people who are indistinguishable from one another except they are said to be oh it's the british tabloids who are much worse than american ones which was uh was the feeling at the time i guess still is yeah i guess they were pretty fresh off of the death of Princess Di. So I understand that sentiment. Yeah, yeah. Though I do think like, I don't know, could any UK tabloid, can the sun be any worse than TMZ in America or all of the TMZ copycats?

Hard to say. It's hard to quantify that level of evil. I just don't like thinking like, who can be, come on, America gets to the lowest of the low. I feel, I almost feel a jingoistic feeling about this. A weird sense of pride in being the worst. Yeah. Yeah. gets to the lowest of the low i feel i almost feel a a jingoistic feeling about this a weird sense of pride in being the worst yeah yeah so we see ron todd singing a song and aljean has an interesting i feel like this is the only time he's mentioned his daughter by name in this in

the commentary right yeah i think so and he mentions that she went to camp or something and she came back singing this song and i don't think he has raised his kids to be religious because he was asking her do you know what this song's about because he was kind of offended they taught his kid this song about jesus yeah i feel like there's a deeper story there yeah i think it's like oh it's kind of insidious how they they prey on children like this it's a fun song though jesus is the rock that rolls my blues away shooby dooby and that they also think jamming is a swear this is the closest to like any explanation of where why sarah sloan would date ned that she grew up in a religious family i guess seems to be her he's like oh i i didn't know they made people like this

uh i you i grew up like this in a house like this you know yeah i guess she's been in la la land she's enjoying her trip to blah blah land as lisa would say later in this episode i wish they'd done more of her like oh yeah i was raised hyper religious too and like this you remind me of growing up that's why i like you ned but i just also don't like that like ned okay this is my bigger point with ned now that this is the one where he like basically calls her a coastal elite ned flanders just seems so apolitical to me that he wouldn't be saying a thing that religious conservatives were saying in 2003 about like yeah i live in real america yeah yeah like i said earlier i really feel like he is the conduit for their rage against conservative christians and their rule over america that seemed a lot more kind and harmless in the 90s because uh we assumed the world would just at least america would

just remain pretty much secular for the most part i mean of course you know there are religious pockets all over the place but there was a dominant presence of religion especially when we are we were essentially doing a version of the crusades basically a fun new one in the early aughts yeah it was a shitty time and so bad that we actually thought bill maher was funny for just taking pot shots at the at the ridiculous religious conservatives we got over how hideous he looked and just wanted to laugh he is the worst that fucking guy man i hate even having like guys don't even tweet about him he just sucks like i don't want to read shit about bill maher unless it's his obituary all right yeah I'm not I will refuse any invitation to club random not gonna accept it is that I don't want to smoke weed with

a 73 year old man if you were on club random like that just means you couldn't get on Rogan and that's sad for you oh yeah right it is kind of like Rogan jr. I figured he's like well I have to start a podcast Rogan stealing my bit like of being the conservative guy who acts open-minded but anyway yeah i mean having a joke about like middle america is the real america joke in there from ned it just feels it is you're right bob it's correct for the time but i just hate seeing ned it feels wrong for ned to say it even though this is what conservatives were saying and do still say to this day yeah turning i i like enjoying ned and thinking he's nice 90s ned i enjoy more than this one where he is more of the middle american christian conservative that was having a much louder voice in politics and then we get jokes that are accurate to who ned would be at this time

but are ugly ned is very homophobic in this episode ned is a touch anti-semitic in this episode and yeah they're they're channeling their rage for american christians conservatives through ned but i don't like ned having these qualities but to be fair they are realistic yeah it's tough i feel two ways about it because i also i don't like it when other shows make up like the good christian character and be like well we have to show both sides fairly and this christian is nice when it's like but that's if somebody is an outspoken christian in a political or entertainment context they aren't nice they have a very specific bad or morally wrong uh vision of the world they want to enforce on people and they suck you shouldn't give them

the benefit of the doubt that like oh well they just believe in jesus i'm like no they they are hateful and they say this book set lets them be hateful like that's why they like it or that's why they become politicians or political leaders and you know previously we saw ned didn't believe in vaccines either so yeah he's just becoming an ugly character in this time period i think he does get rehabilitated when george w bush is no longer a factor in politics. But this is just who, because they're too afraid to make fun of Bush, this is who kind of gets propped up to take all of the hits. In the monkey suits episode, I think they nice up Ned a little more. Like, I remember that one ending with Lisa and Ned basically agreeing to, like, be, like like agree to disagree on the topic of creationism

in schools but uh yes then the scene is interrupted by the tabloids breaking through in notting hill they stay outside of the door they don't rush in but i i love that cletus is there as a reporter he was there in the epcot episode and now he's back again yes i i definitely flag that i wonder if we'll see him again as the outhouse times picayune reporter cletus i hope we at least get a third one i can't remember off the top of my head i'll be keeping an eye out for it though and also i love the headline sarah lives in sin comma mess that's uh which they caused they trash the house and then take pictures of the mess oh and also i do love the line do you plan plan to kill Sarah like your last wife? Like, that's a great line, too.

Brutal. Yes. This whole polystar pictures thing. We are on the set of The Zookeeper's Wife, which apparently was being filmed eight whole years before Kevin James' Zookeeper. Right. Oh, The Zookeeper. Boy, that movie I think is less. Oh, no, wait.

I think he's single in the movie because the animals help him get a date, right? Yeah, it's sort of like D dr doolittle basically or adam sandler version of dr doolittle yeah except it's not good enough for sandler he's like kevin you can take this script this is for you buddy no uh okay well this led me to read a lot of uh stuff in about uh nudity in movies these days but uh but yes let's why don't we hear about Ned objecting to a nude scene whoa whoa whoa whoa this movies turning into Spongebob no pants cut sir there's no reason Sarah needs to do this scene in the all together Sam he's got a point Katherine Hepburn never showed her breasts there's still time.

I want a rewrite with no nudity. All right, but you're gonna have to kiss a woman. Deal. Ned, we won. Yep. Now all we gotta do is turn that woman into a fella and that kiss into a game of Scrabble. You're so sweet to look out for me. The public may not see me naked,

but you just might well that's a very interesting uh easy ned think of the bible and then we're getting sexy striptease by the bible yeah i like the anthropomorphic bible who takes the little red ribbon bookmark out starts waving it around like it's a bra or whatever a top the bible tease is opening up but that's where ned's vision ends because he he simply can't imagine more than that so henry really cracked the books on nudity well i was thinking about this lately because it's been in the news right bob especially this year of like i feel like somebody on twitter will say a dumb thing about like i don't need to see sex scenes in movie and then everybody dunks on them all day for

having a dumb today you've seen that on social yeah obviously yeah but but i feel like it's been talked about more this year because like one of the biggest movies of the year oppenheimer has multiple nude scenes in it from killian murphy and florence pew and they they're steamy sex scenes that are important to the plot and i feel like nudity is back like that there's not been nudeness in movies as much these days in the last few years at least of like movie stars but like this year not just them and oppenheimer but also jennifer lawrence and emma stone do like a bunch of scenes and barry keegan shows is flopping around ding dong in uh in a salt burn well i'm glad we're keeping this conversation mature but yeah i i'm noticing that too where um that movie poor things is coming out and i one of the things i know about is that emma stone is

naked in some parts of the movie and that surprised me like oh i didn't think she would do this not that there's something wrong with it but it just feels like that it was not a factor in movies for a while yeah i feel like and i mean hey i get it there was a lot of i felt like it was a reaction to how in the 90s and the aughts it was sold as see this movie to see movie star who does nude scene and then that turned into just the entire business model of mr skin and most of the internet of just uploading the nude scene and so then that made actresses in particular not want to do nude scenes in the movies or men who do nude scenes wear a fake penis on their penis though barry keegan he says he's

hanging real dong in his movie but well maybe it was because the for a very long time and it's starting to fall apart now the most popular movies were the marvel movies which are absolutely sexless repeat sexless yeah and that that was like i guess driving other creations like oh i guess people don't want sex in movies if these movies are doing very well and there's no sex in them maybe just viewers can get that somewhere else so i feel like that could have been a factor as well yeah i well and talk about this joke in the episode about like oh you will you'll have to kiss a girl brie larson has been trying to kiss a girl and tessa thompson have been trying to kiss girls in marvel movies for a few years now and it keeps getting cut out at the last minute like even in the marvels there's a moment that it's supposed to so obviously be that tessa thompson

and brie larson's characters have a romantic history together but then they just have like a friendly hug or whatever and i'm just like oh come on they can't even like have broken up in the past and just have a goodbye kiss they can't even do that i think they're thinking of other territories they need to sell that movie and unfortunately it's sad it's sad especially when like tessa thompson has been very open about her queer sexuality and wanting to express that in a marvel movie and not being allowed to like that i had to watch that shitty south park enter the panda verse movie but one of the things i really didn't like about it was they make up that cardman is playing the executive uh the Kathleen Kennedy that everybody hates.

And she keeps saying, put a chicken in and make it gay. Like, that's her catchphrase. But I was like, no, Disney doesn't make things gay. Like, that's bullshit. Like, I hate that. Yeah, if they do, it's something that could be removed or something that is just like, oh, did you look for that little pin on the character's backpack? Yes. Yeah, God.

Check the 20,314th frame and you'll find it. Also, her nudity is a plot in Notting Hill, by the way, but it's the opposite. Her character doesn't do nude scenes in movies, but then nudes leak of her from in the past Vanessa Williams style. That's a plot point of the movie. But Julia Roberts also doesn't do nude scenes. And she basically in the movie describes her actual nudity waivers and rules for filming movies. But meanwhile, Marisa Tomei, she has done a lot of nude scenes and is not shy about it.

She's nominated for The Wrestler. Yeah, I don't think she won for The Wrestler, but she plays a stripper in that movie, so nude scenes. And her and Philip Seym hoffman have a memorable sex scene in before the devil knows your dad which i remember just because like wow seymour hoffman showing that fat guys can have sex on camera too well hey uh katherine hepburn had six months to live after this episode aired she never got naked it's uh the guy was wrong he did say there was still time but uh yeah it's's funny on the commentary. They say like, well, we know when this came out. It's funny though that Ned is basically like being the people online and saying like, we

don't need nudity in this. We don't need, though now, you know, it'd be controversial. Sarah Sloan, probably as a heterosexual woman, I'm assuming her kissing a woman in a movie would be like, hey, she's taking a, she's a straight woman taking a part from a queer actor. movie would be like hey she's taking a she's a straight woman taking a part from a queer actor so then uh we cut to dinner with the stars here and i feel like they can think of better things than sleeping with pinocchio and honey i scotch guarded the kids doesn't that they can do better they sound like rejected troy mcclure uh movie titles yeah maybe i need phil hartman to say these movie titles and i'd like them more maybe also. Also, I mean, I feel like they had a darker joke about how she doesn't know what happened

to the young actress who played her daughter. Yeah, yeah. It could have gone much worse, but I think we are now beyond the child actors robbing liquor store jokes. Yeah. Then Ned also has another line that I'm like, wow, I forgot this line was in here. Yes. It's important to let people

know with the january 6 crowd or whatever uh a lot of the reaction was elections don't get stolen you're crazy no we live through it we live through it happening i thought i was going crazy yeah well and also especially to see say vice president dick cheney showing up to be like we need to care about election integrity yes i fuck it that man to see to see nancy pelosi shaking his hand and be just like yes finally some a republican who cares about election integrity it's like but these guys did steal it they stole it and ned admitted to it and then homer said i have some info on this by the way homer says don't look at me i voted for the green eminem so they referenced this in the springfield files where Homer's like red M&M, blue M&M. It

all comes out the same in the end when he's drunk and talking to Scully, I think. Because in 1995, there was a poll by the M&M's company where you could vote on the newest color of M&M to replace tan. There used to be two kinds of brown M&Ms, very boring. And the choices were blue, pink, and purple. And blue won by like 52% of the vote, and that's what Homer's referencing, but it was a landmark day when the tan M&M went away. You know, I miss tan, and obviously they all taste the same too.

There's not flavoring in M&Ms. It's all just sugar, but I miss the tan M&M. I'd rather get rid of the darker brown one and have kept tan around, but we were the last generation to live through comedians saying jokes like why is there no blue eminem and homer voted for an eminem that already existed and that's the joke

ah right yeah yeah wait homer voted for green that wasn't even on the list was it yeah yes yeah well then speaking of lame jokes they have a sharecro joke uh i i kind of like this because it's so bad and it and it works i think they're saying like the tabloids yeah i thought they said it didn't work and then we cut to it working that's yeah that's right yeah and then also we have a joke about chas bono being a lesbian which like was a joke that like i feel like for a lot of people older than us like it was one of the first like gay celebrity children you ever knew about like that you know that chas bono was famous since his birth pretty much from sunny bono and chair was there a joke

about chas bono in bart to the future yes yeah yeah that he'd been president at some point i think is the lesbian president i think yes yeah who went by chastity back then that was their name then chas bono today and hey you know they at least paid charity to use the song. They spent some of that music budget. It might actually be the actual song, not someone doing it. I think it is. I think so too. Do you think she can't sing that song anymore?

I wonder. Oh, I don't know what songs of hers she sings, but the context of the song is it's an insult directed towards her family. So I think of the song is it's an insult yeah directed towards her family so i think in that context it's okay but i'm not the arbiter of this that's true yeah all of you roma listeners weigh in in the comments this is when we have mo up here for no good reason which is the best time for mo to appear yes he was all over some recent episode maybe it was barding over maybe it was i don't know but i just just random mo appearances again we can blame dana gould for this or credit him rather

we'll get to it i i have heard people it is the widely recognized belief that mo baby blues is the best episode of the season which is the season finale so i'm looking forward to watching now but mo is great like we like yeah we've been literally on a podcast with dana gould saying moe's his favorite character though and and it's perfect for him to to work for the uh the weekly world news but meanwhile i blame al jean for like this is so critic-y rainier wolf castle's fine but i do not like him for like the third time this season being in the same room as homer simpson too many appearances to go back slightly we did miss a reference to winona rider's shoplifting spree that's right of all the things to pillory

that poor woman over i swear i'm glad she's recovered and is doing well now but that's what that was a reference to but i do agree reindeer wolf castle's interacting far too often with the simpsons and i also just hate that they have him say lines that Arnold would say, which I'm like, especially says my libido has been terminated. I just want to like pound my desk of like, he's not in the Terminator. Rainier Wolfcastle is not literally Arnold Schwarzenegger. Yes. But hey, a funny little joke on the commentary where, well, there's a joke in this about

how John Lovitz apparently groped Sarah Sloan at an award show and Rainier Wolfcastle beat him up. Aljean talks about how John Lovitz beat up Andy Dick. He's like, oh, I wish I could have seen that. I guess I have to side with Lovitz right now. But I mean, Andy Dick is like a horrible, horrible person. We let Andy Dick exist for too long in polite society. Yes.

In fact, his name was in something. He was an actor in something that i was looking at and i thought of this that south park christmas time in hell song where one of the last lyrics is we got to make room for andy dick and that was 25 years ago yeah he's got some tenacity not good tenacity and in fact he never knows when to take no for an answer i'd say a part of his tenacity but his days of appearing in ghibli movie dubs are long over i believe love it's uh the story was that like andy dick came up to him somewhere and said i'm gonna put the phil hartman curse on you and that's when love it's like

bounced his head off of the bar table or something yeah and i was listening to a gayest episode ever drew and glenn had both been on the show and they were covering suddenly susan and one of the actors on that show took his own life and the last person he was with was andy dick andy dick has a real body count i had no clue about that until they talked about it too i did not know that i didn't even know they did a whole like episode of saying farewell to his character on the show too which like i mean who remembers suddenly susan at all really but i i forgot they that happened and then of course here we thought it was just phil hartman and andy dick what other too which like i mean who remembers suddenly susan at all really but i i forgot they that happened and then of course here we thought it was just phil hartman and andy dick what other bodies is and andy dick connected to we have to follow the money or the lack of money in andy

dick's case these days i i'm shocked he doesn't have a jim brewer style podcast somewhere or maybe he does and i don't know about it i think he tried doing live streams but he kept getting arrested for sexual assault too much that'll really shut down your operation uh i don't know about i think he tried doing live streams but he kept getting arrested for sexual assault too much that'll really shut down your operation uh i don't want to laugh too much at that but god that's funny i would believe john lovitz has accidentally missed a handshake in real life it seems it's a believable joke to me i don't want to put that on him but he plays that kind of a character so it's easy to see it happening unmarried right john lovitz i think so yeah he's a bachelor well you know these are his friends joking about it yes so yeah hey if he's allowed if he can say that aljane and mike reese are gay and have sex with each other they're allowed to say that he gropes women i think that's fair you're

right tit for tat there no pun intended hey okay so so uh yes we then we get more gay jokes of ned to her assuming he's gay like again it was like mustaches mean gay guy thing which they did that with the uh the tap wasn't that also the thing with the towel guy that marge was in love with that that he looked gay with his 70s mustache yeah i think so i mean it made more sense in the 90s i guess homer referred to the mustache parade yeah he picked up his we're here we're queer chance i feel uh now where a mustache is at now i've a mustache by itself on somebody i don't read as as gay or not gay i feel like 98 of all men just have facial hair now i'm keeping it smooth everybody because i have no other choice

but i i feel like straight men they took back the mustache. I think so too, though. Of course, the previously mentioned Drew Mackey, he's looking great with a mustache. He has a quality mustache. Quality mustache. Hats off to Drew Mackey for his mustache. Another previous guest, Tim Kalpakis, he's grown a pretty good mustache too,

if I'm reading mustache. Oh, I must have missed this. Yeah, see, they're coming back. They're not just for gay men anymore. It's for gay and straight guests of Talking Simpsons. Yeah, for a long time it was like pizza chefs and then gay men, and now we're back to straight men. Sometimes I think about what I'd look like with a mustache

because if you could see me like Bob sees me right now, my beard part is blocked by the chin is blocked by the microphone. I see what it would look like if I just had a mustache, but I don't know. I don't have the confidence of Tim P. Alpacas or Drew Mackey. If I grew a mustache, I'd get carded more often because I looked like I was 13. But yeah, Ned then is given the offer to move to Los Angeles, which, believe it or not, does not happen in Notting Hill. I think because they just recognize that if you're Julia Roberts famous, you have eight

houses and one can be in london and you don't have to make your partner move to los angeles with you but this is when ned envisions la ned i'm james l brooks oh can i call you jim james l brooks is good how about some sponge cake well i can't see the harm with a brandy glaze no Or perhaps you'd like to go to a football game. We don't have a team. No! Hey, Daddy Baby, we're movie producers now. And we're Jewish!

Yay! Sarah, I'm sorry, but I can't move to Hollywood. Heck, even Dollywood's too far out for me. Too many people appreciating it ironically. Well, then I'm staying in Springfield with you. For good. Forget my language, but I'm one happy camper. Oh, James L. Brooks is great in this.

Would you believe this is his final acting role as of this recording? Wow, really? He doesn't do a lot. It was just, you know, a thing here, a thing there. But this is it. 2003, A Star is Born Again. He is so funny. Directed by Al Jean, I think.

I love his... James L. Brooks is fine. Yeah, it's very concise. I think that's about as many words as he said to us when we shook his hands at the table read. He was very good at pretending to like us. i really wish there was a third joke when i get two jokes and there's not a third i'm like oh what did they cut because these are very funny of course the rams moved back to la in 2016 so this joke no longer is accurate but still very funny it was only good for 13 i mean for 13 more years it was true and definitely people always thought why is los angeles which is such a big market why does it not have one nfl team and the joke about ned being horrified

that rod and todd are jewish written by matt selman so uh he is a jewish fellow i think gene asks selman hey you wrote that one right just i think it's gene covering for himself like the jewish guy wrote the joke here not uh i think you might take credit for it but it's very funny but then you think like why do i want to root for ned yeah he kind of sucks i want to believe that in ned's mind that he's just mad that they would stop being christians but yes i mean he's extra insulted that they're jewish it does feel that way i also love the the art design i haven't complimented the animation too much in this one but the art design of the like evil la as ned the middle american would imagine it like i love the twisted tcl theater and the evangeline billboard and of course the the sex workers and unhoused people all standing around in this horrible place of los angeles we've been there i would not call it holly

weird but it was uh a place to visit let's say it has its ups and downs but there's lots of cool people there i was just in holly weird a couple months ago and there's it's full of nice people who are our friends and that's what i like about la a friend of mine lived in west holly weird for a bit and i visited her a bunch and i did like it but uh driving can go to hell uh i refuse to participate because i i had to do that to visit her i would say yes when i went to la now i could just ride share app everywhere and don't have to and i had a couple i wish bob was here moments when i was in los angeles but bob was enjoying tokyo so i understand why but when they're coming up all over this one but i went out to grab drinks with uh drew and glenn from gay step sons ever

and we went to in in japantown the in little tokyo they have a whiskey bar that was so good man there were so many like great whiskey drinks we had there and i was like boy bob would look we loving this if he was here right now i was thinking i had a lot of good japanese whiskey in japan so i wasn't missing out but yeah i uh i was scared of hollywood as a place to like when i first went to los angeles i guess would have been for e3 in 2011 and it did it did scare me of like oh man i don't well also i hate driving but i never had like i'd lived in sf enough that i don't think i had like safety fears though right i mean that but that part of hollywood that net is in is not a fun place to be no no that's it actually was the worst place i went to on my most recent trip to hollywood but that was

because i was on hollywood boulevard on cinco de mayo so it was like yeah how many elmos were there you know at least two i think i saw at least two muppets and i remember jack sparrow as well but i drank it the classy musso and franks uh just like frank sinatra would have done that great man who did nothing wrong but so what you want to emulate frank sinatra but you're throwing bing crosby under the bus what's going on here uh well you know sinatra was a democrat for some of that time no no sinatra is a horrible horrible man too actually i was thinking of sinatra as well because there's a mia farah joke not soon after this too oh okay yeah we got him on the mind yeah oh and lastly as well because there's a Mia Farah joke not soon after this, too. Oh, OK.

Yeah, we got him on the mind. Yeah. Oh, and lastly, I like that there's a star for adult situations, which was a new a new warning at the time. Yeah, we would see that like TV 14. And so in another great animation bit, a big like 180 turnaround on Ned screaming and then how the background morphs from his vision of holly weird to standing in front of the android's dungeon which is uh it's a really good shot though again when it's because the show doesn't care about sarah sloan as a person they don't interrogate like she's seemingly sacrificing her entire career to live with a man she hasn't even had sex with yet yeah she seems a

bit nutty to me but they're not making a joke about nutty flighty actresses who like oh all actresses are crazy like they're not even making that kind of sexist joke with it i mean it would be she'd be a funnier character if there was something more to her a letter let her be shallow let her be crazy let there be some sort of reveal in the third act if ned must be alone yeah instead it's just like well not to cut to the end, but she just leaves like very, very emptily, honestly. But so she's trying to live it up in blah, blah land. This is when she's driving around in her Oscar as well. I think about how Al Jean really wants to have that Oscar, but those shorts aren't going to win an Oscar until they let David Silverman actually have like more than three months to make a short. Can they be submitted? The ones that they've been making for the past

couple of years? Playdate with Destiny, that was the last one that was released theatrically, so I think that's the only one that could have been nominated there. Disney Plus shorts, I don't believe are in contention for Oscars. Not that I think they would be nominated anyway.

Yeah, I mean, I think he just needs more time in general because I saw him do a live talk recently within the past couple of months, and he was as negative as he was allowed to be in public about the how little time he was given to work on that uh one of the shorts one of the more recent shorts it's really sad because david silverman i feel like has earned the right

to not have 12 producers being writers on his fucking shorts and i feel like he could actually do something good if you just let it be a david silverman written and directed short but then who'd get the oscars not al jean and uh and beck reigning and 13 other producers yeah i mean i think i think they've cooled off on the shorts because we haven't seen as many i mean i think they're working on one now maybe but we didn't celebrate plusiversary again with lisa i mean what's going on and then there was no singer trying to prop up his talentless kids via the simpsons boy was that christmas one the last one then i think you're right it might have been yeah yeah well by the time this comes out maybe they've already announced the next one to advertise the next well you know what there's no marvel movies until deadpool so they don't have the simpsons have got to meet

deadpool right you know ryan reynolds wants to do it it's gonna happen but uh but yes uh we we also see everybody asking him questions including a nice twofer of Otto asking, what's it like to kiss a movie star? And then comic book guy asking, what's it like to kiss a woman? And you know what? I like Chief Wiggum. There's a better joke with Krusty having the same four pictures of him in different outfits. But I kind of like that Wiggum has an insensitive chinese caricature among his uh things for no good reason yeah the crusty joke has a better payoff because

he's actually cast as four characters based on his four headshots the payoff to wiggum's joke is i don't do tv which is very funny but not as funny as the the crusty resolution and you know what the next 20 years of television would be a lot of actors finally saying yes to TV. Like I guess by the time this airing Kiefer Sutherland, he is the star of 24 and it's a big deal that he and it's a popular show. More movie stars are starting to do TV by 2003. Yeah, I mean, even Julia Roberts sunk to that level because the stigma isn't there. There's only a very few people like Tom Cruise. He has never done TV or Marvel as far as I know. I think he I hope he keeps that

respectability i hope he does and then we go to the quickie mart where again my favorite ned jokes are the dark ones where he's the last thing he bought for a woman was a casket and we see a poo is getting he's done with the kids uh next season in all's Fair and Oven War, we see a joke where Apu plans to sneak back to India as a guy named Steve Barnes and abandon his family. Wow, man. That's trying to give away every single one of your kids and already, I mean, obviously this doesn't stay in continuity, but for this joke purposes, Apu has gotten rid of three of his children already, which is like, whoa.

He hates being in a family. That's who Apu is for the rest of time also this feels like one of the last times you could do a joke about mia farrow adopts a lot of kids because that was like a 10 year old joke in 2003 i don't know if we were there yet but an aughts joke would have been something like angelina jolie right yeah she had just started her adopting of children which she has done a lot and now those kids are old enough to be adults and give interviews about how shitty a dad Brad Pitt is. Oh, yeah. He's not smelling good these days, folks.

Who knows? Well, hey, it's a month from now. Who knows what's come out about Brad Pitt? Also, when I look up the Mia Farrow's adopted kids beyond the Sunyi thing, like, it's just a lot of depressing stuff that i'm like boy it feels apparently mia farrow is not a very nice person either but it still feels like boy these are mean jokes about children like you're the i don't like these jokes now in retrospect yeah yeah it's a bit ugly but i guess i guess if you are next to woody allen you look like a hero yes yeah i i would i definitely side with farrow and farrow versus allen for sure he? Woodsy Allen, I don't like that nervous guy.

But yeah, now I also don't like that Apu says sucker. Like, it's like he's stealing Homer's catchphrase. Yeah, although I like Hank Azaria's read on that. I do like that, yes. And then Azaria pops in as another character. Mo's hanging out in the frozen treats section. Isn't it great that he even just gives himself like, oh, Movable loser like he's basically reviewing himself identifying his character i like how the kids walk in and they immediately start talking like variety headlines where uh bart identifies

her with a very headline style description and lisa's like how's what's it like going from la la land to blah blah land it's all the kids have to do in this act isn't it yeah they become actually it's more like they become e entertainment television red carpet people yeah exactly they're steve kameko and uh i forget melissa rivers okay yes yeah but i do like that mo turns a book club into sarah sloan to attend girl on girl book club that's a good line too but okay it's time for the other big guest star of the episode we got we got like three in this episode right yeah well what's uh marissa tomei james l brooks fielding and who else james l brooks oh james l brooks yes you're right of course

but yes at least this makes sense because another celebrity brings her in otherwise it's just a family guy joke how she teleports into the book club in our next clip. Look, it's celebrity boy toy Ned Flanders and his arm candy, Sarah Sloan. Miss Sloan, how are you handling the change from La La Land to Blah Blah Land? Lisa, Springfield isn't a cultural wasteland. Part of Stroker Ace was filmed at her airport.

And, um, oh, there's our ladies' book club. Sarah, you're more than welcome to come. Oh, I'd love to. Another scoop. Sarah Sloan to attend girl on girl book club. Oh, Moe, you lovable loser. You just made yourself five dollars. Woo-hoo. Today's book is

Bridget Jones' Diary. Now let's go around the room and analyze why we didn't read it. Cramps. All my friends are dead. Well then, I guess it's time for margaritas. Well, I wish someone had read the book since I did invite the author, Helen Fielding.

Oh, never mind. As long as they all bought the book, I'll still get the money. Besides, mosticans can't understand the sophisticated subtlety of british humor i bid you good day helen fielding she's on the show well i'm sure they respected her and everything but also she was kevin curran's partner from 2000 until his death in 2016 so buck bundy partnered up with helen fielding and they had two kids together so that's

why she's there like they're like oh well you have a right well that well actually bob this is my star snoop they actually broke up in 2009 really okay i need to check my sources well it okay the wiki will say they're still together but when i clicked on another thing about her moving and getting a new house selling her house in la it said they had broken up in 2009 okay i trust that my reasoning for trusting it too though is because i wondered after i looked that up or i saw that kevin curran was with her too i was like wait why don't they mention this in the commentary the commentary is like 2011 so he's still alive yeah he's still alive and they're not gonna want to say oh yeah his his still alive, and they're not going to want to say, oh yeah, his ex.

That's why they're not going to want to talk about how they just broke up. Okay, yeah, that's a smoking gun to me. I was looking into her. I never read Bridget Jones' Diary. I never saw the movies. Hugh Grant is actually, he's in those movies, right? We're talking about Hugh Grant? I feel like she's not, I mean, looking at her bibliography, not a very prolific writer. I was kind of surprised by this because she wrote Bridget Jones' Diary.

It was a huge hit. She wrote one other kind of book and then just thought, I'll just keep making Bridget Jones books. So, you know, more power to her. She found out what worked and they made movie versions of all of those books. As far as I know, I think there was a recent one in 2016 or something like that. It was Bridget Jones Baby. Yeah.

Yeah. No, I saw the first movie with my mom. With your mom. It was a Christmas movie watch with my mom. It was a special occasion. I see. But my mom your mom it was a christmas movie watch with my mom it was a special occasion i see but but my mom loved the books that's also why i wanted to go see it with her but yeah the it basically you know i can't say that the book version is definitely this but the movie version is like a it's a spin on pride and prejudice also the plot of it and so it's fitting that colin firth who got one of his biggest roles early in

the 90s was in a pride and prejudice adaptation so for bridget jones they're like can you just play that same character even his name is darcy it's mark darcy instead of mr darcy as he's referred to in pride and prejudice i had no idea so helen feeling total ripoff artist is what we're saying here well and hey it's not bad well I guess uh save this for next year folks but I'm saying it to Bob it is set somewhat during Christmas so if you're looking for a holiday film uh it's uh it's not a bad movie and here Renee Zellweger's accent impeccable oh yeah well and also she gained weight for the role as in she's I'd say 10 pounds heavier than the average weight of an american i think

but i remember liking the movie i didn't see the sequel i'll say then helen fielding what's the one thing they can do with her is uh they do a benny hill joke but they at least pay for yakety sacks yeah and i think we were in a very benny hill rich time in terms of parodies in fact during our halloween live show with bill oakley the um the groundskeeper willie segment ends with a benny hill parody i forgot it was a benny hill one too yeah and mr show did a very involved one as well around this time well actually a few years before this aired as in the the it was the it was the ending to the racist in the year 3000s right right but yeah no i i remember benny hill as being on comedy central and i assume the only reason

americans watched it is because it was a rather saucy show with limited funniness from benny hill that's why i watched it and i think it's also because it was on before kids in the hall or after kids in the hall i was parked in front of the tv for both it was and also i think you could maybe talk yourself into thinking maybe this actually has naked people in it because it's from england maybe you get to see some arse in this well it didn't pay off for me all these wasted hours in front of benny hill but and so we then cut to day tonight and we have a joke about the dress the dress which they referenced already with uh agnes skinner wearing it i think in gump roast correct that's wow you're right yes yeah help me why do i know this i mean

it was a very memorable dress back then we're still talking about it i think aljean says on the commentary is like eventually some woman's just going to show up nude to one of these things to get the headlines and i mean women have showed up in very sheer dresses that are essentially see-through at many award shows i do you recall the rose mcgowan one next to um photographed with horrible person marilyn manson oh uh no but uh i probably have taken a gander at that at some time in my life this is really the j-lo dress she's doing and talking about the illusion of nudity and this is the only time and i like that jean says it on the commentary when she rolls her eyes at this it's like it's the only time she realizes like i'm talking to a crazy cartoon character here yeah it is i i think aljeet is

just taking up a real like i don't know high-minded stance about sitcom writing he's asking why doesn't no one respond to these things ned's saying it doesn't make any sense but that's just for the sitcom to continue. You have to have your zany characters never be questioned. I mean, Beavis and Butthead is kind of the same thing. Like no one ever stops and says, why did this kid just say this? Yeah. At least in most Beavis and Buttheads, don't they just go like, uh, yeah.

So anyway, are they just like, they try to paper over it. At times they acknowledge it like, uh, so as I was saying. Right. Yeah. And this leads todd to ask dad where the babies come from and then she stays dressed up that way and obviously she's seen as she's turning heads and i would say in an episode about how springfield is not like la they shouldn't go to a parody of the hollywood bowl yeah that is very strange which they were at this thing at the beginning of the Springfield connection.

Marge gets robbed right after this, but it's an existing building, but it makes Springfield seem too much like L.A. I'm glad they didn't go to the, did they go to the Springfield sign? No, not in this episode. Okay. No, no, yeah. That would make it even 10 times more obvious. But yeah, why go to when they... Get ready for Las Vegas style action at BetMGM, the king of online casinos. when they... slot games, a large selection of online table games, and signature BetMGM service. There is

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if we were where we are now we would definitely pay to fly down there and see it oh absolutely we see everybody turning heads we hear that skinner is a veteran bedwetter then she's accused of your tops upstaging the pops which is a clever reference to the pops orchestra which plays popular mainstream music in orchestral settings and they got the horniest animators to work on this next part where ned offers uh sarah his jacket she ties it around her waist and it accentuates her breasts even more yes like wow these will lift her boobs up more and just to let you know that it's sexy homer stares at them for about a minute it's uh yeah he what happens he looks at her breasts he moans he drops his nachos so he's

on the ground with his nachos moaning about the nachos and looking back over his shoulder to moan at her breasts yeah and then it's one of those things where much later you find out homer is still there and this was a real uh we've identified a new runner for season 14 where they really like replaying dan's clip over and over again like he didn't do new oh yeah oh like they don't they just play the same two sounds over and over hey it's funnier than doing a new take every time also i like that even sloan's kind of bored with it she'd like cross around like okay so you've you done looking at my chest then they cut to sarah making a proposition to ned and i think she's i get that why ned and it's a funny situation because ned of course would want to be abstinent until marriage with with a new girlfriend but she is right to want i she is totally correct to want to have sex with somebody she has changed

her whole life for yeah and also for as pious as ned is he seems to believe that there's wiggle room because yes they do have sex and he's like well i'm like basket robbins you get you know a free taste but if you want more you've got to you know pay for the whole thing but that's not how abstinence works no no and i mean if ned is supposed to represent a w era hypocritical christian then yes every christian man who says that they want a woman to stay a virgin until marriage would of course have premarital sex every man who says that would do that i totally believe that but the character of ned i would not he's a true believer and i think they pointed this out on the commentary but this was put in at the

assistance of james l brooks where he thought well ned should be able to have sex with this woman uh just just throw him a freaking bone here i i mean i get that you feel so bad for him but i feel it's truer to the character ned if he didn't have sex with and also ned i mean i guess ned wouldn't want to have sex with his kids in the same room or in the same house with his children. I could see that. But then it's like, so Ned fucked her outside, like in a public park? Yeah, having sex in public seems very not Ned Flanders. Also, did he ask Homer to take his kids home?

Because they, well, they are dressed up to go with him, though. You don't actually see them at the concert of John Williams directs Itchy and Scratchy music. But he either abandoned his children or asked the Simpsons to take the kids home. I guess so, yeah. Because they find some secluded hillside to hang out on. Yeah, but first, Ned asks Homer for some sex advice. Sarah, I love you, but I get the feeling you're just not a Ned head tonight. Is something wrong?

Actually, there is something. The time we've spent together has been wonderful, but I want sex with you. Well, that's a mighty big kettle of premarital doodly. I knew you'd say that. I need a glass of wine. Oh! This is quite a dill-diddly-emma. I better talk this over with the big man.

Homer, Sarah wants us to have S-E-X. Stupid Flanders. I'm not giving you any of my secret moves. I'm not sure I want to do it. I mean, who'll buy the cow when you get the milk for free? You know, the cow being me. Look, Flanders, I'm always interested in talking about free milk. And if there's cookies involved, so much the better.

And that's the end of that scene. Yeah, yeah. Homer plays no part in this, which is very odd. I guess Homer just makes the little spice to keep people interested, but he just serves no purpose here. You know, for as off as Ned is in how he's become more hateful, Harry Shearer is doing a great job. His stammering over a kettle of premarital diddly, it's so great. And that's why I made it my opening line. He's doing great in this, and I think it's benefiting from him playing off of another actor uh recording in person i think he cares to show marissa tomei

that he's actually like good at acting or he feels like oh there's a fellow real actor here who like stars in movies and has won an oscar he's like oh i'm gonna i i want to keep up with her and try hard instead of literally phoning it in harry surearer never won an Oscar, right? Nothing he's associated with? Did any of the Christopher Guest movies, was he an Oscar winner for those? You know, I think the, well, let's go to the awards section. I want to say one of the Mighty Wind songs was nominated. Well, he was in the movie Oscar with Sylvester Stallone.

Does that help? No, he has only been nominated for Grammys and Emmys. I would have thought, that's no he has only been nominated for grammys and emmys i would have thought it's that's no fun a mighty wind that deserved an oscar nom for one of its songs yeah yeah i mean i mean who knows that that spinal tap movie is coming they're making it so if it's really good who knows but i kind of doubt it oh uh but yeah i think he's i i do love also that sarah's reply is like i knew you'd say that to saying like that's an awful kettle of doodah's reply is like i knew you'd say that to saying like that's an awful kettle of doodly and she's like i knew you'd say that and she needs more wine but also isn't

homer it's so weird homer says and all the better if cookies are involved and then ned smiles of like that's right homer good answer well we should point out in case you haven't watched this one there's a lot of adr here especially i mean throughout the episode but especially this scene homer might have said something else uh probably dirty i'm guessing you know my first guess was that when ned spells sex to him homer says i he is confused by it and can't spell it and maybe maybe that was deemed too stupid that's that's my first guess on a joke they'd rewrite but yeah so then ned enters with bible versus giant pile that says he shouldn't have sex before marriage and three that he thinks say the other thing. The wind blows it away, which I guess is what Ned's feeling is like.

Okay. I mean, again, for a character who's not Ned Flanders, this would be like, okay, God is telling me to have premarital sex. Done and done. And I guess it might be a joke. I don't know. It's an interesting visual device for him to decide. But a character like Ned would not just rip pages out of the bible you know yeah that's kind of sacrilegious ned basically quotes exodus 22 5 i believe based on googling anyway it says a man

should make restitution if he eats his neighbor's grain definitely the word restitution and grain are in there and it but it's a list of many things, including restitution for grain. So, yes. I rewinded a few times because they start making out, and he pulls her down to the ground, and they're kissing on the ground. Does Marissa Tomei say, yum? Is that what she says? I think she does. I do think she does. That seems like an ad lib, but I do like the passion she's putting into that yum.

What I mean, we've seen the pixelations. We know she's taking 14 inches of net here it's true yes she needs time to recover i hate look i i don't like bringing that up either but i can't i can't forget about that moment it's one of the craziest jokes they've ever done and it's in the episode where his wife dies yes i literally within four minutes of her funeral. It's insane. Okay, so then we get to hear them the morning after. Wow. Wow. That made me completely forget about Bob Balaban.

That's what Maude used to say. A girl could get used to that. Well, and you will. Right after the wedding. You want to get married? That's right. I'm like Baskin Robbins. You get one free taste, then you got to buy the wedding. You want to get married? Mm-hmm. That's right. I'm like Baskin-Robbins. You get one free taste, then you gotta buy the scoop. Ned, I love you, but I'm not ready to be tied down.

I love you, too, and I always will, but unlike the Bible, I guess this ain't gonna have a happy ending. I'm sorry. Oh, darn the luck. That like the lupus fun run fight lupus good character to put that in the mouth of oh yes yeah haha fight lupus that's a good line and i appreciate any reference to bob balaban walt a it's a fun name to say b he's a fun looking guy and i like him in everything I see him in. He's the greatest. Though also, you know, he's been married to the same woman since 1977.

And obviously he's not a Hollywood hunk, which is what makes it funny. Yes. Could you believe that it took him until 2021 for him to be on the show though? Oh, he was on the show. Okay. I didn't know this. I had to be reminded of this. I did actually see this episode.

It's the Dad Feelings Limited. the comic book guy is a dad episode i saw that episode i forgot he was on it it's because there's a lengthy wes anderson bit in it or several and bob balaban has been in several wes anderson movies and he does he's the narrator in that episode i think actually the uh for asteroid city uh i think he helped with curating short stories that inspired the writing of it because he's also uh i was reminded by griffin newman on a blank check podcast he's written multiple books about a crime solving dog oh yes i think blank check made me aware of that too apparently he's in asteroid city and he plays larking's executive whoever that is oh yes yeah that's right it's a very short scene i forgot he's

also in it he's he's in multiple other ones i mean bob balaban is like born to be in wes anderson movies like yeah you bought that uh asteroid city collection of short stories right does he have one of those in that book i do not recall i think he's definitely a credited editor on it but i forget if he wrote something and i'm gonna i uh that's gonna be an air uh uh i'm bringing it for the flight we'll see if it gets read i've got a lot of i got a lot of flight plans for my 20 hours in planes i'll be spending soon but i bought it in portland the important thing is that i patronized the portland bookstore but which one was it powell's was it powell's it was powell's yes i went there i went there the same day you guys did powell's rules we then learned that she's it feels just a little weak that they're

like uh but i can't i'm not ready to be tied down now okay that's good boom the end yeah it's it's i guess maybe it's realistic and that they both come to terms with this but i don't know not super interesting well and she should i don't if you cared more about her as a character or ned for that matter she'd be like i was ready to throw away my entire career for you but if you don't want to get married and we're not gonna have sex again then i guess i'm done but also like people in hollywood get married and then instantly divorced all the time i feel like she would just rush into the marriage and be like okay cool and then two years later break up with him yeah and i i guess the resolution is uh it's very odd because what ned gets out of this is that after i guess being attached to someone famous he's now more popular with the ladies but all the evidence of that is the man hungry cookie

kwan driving by and hitting on him and she's already met we saw her with lindsey nagle in an episode where they're both aggressively hitting on homer yeah with that already happening in large marge i feel like why aren't they would have made their overtures towards uh ned many times over at this point i mean i had completely forgotten that this episode all began with ned is lonely and so the answer is now ned is getting dates again thanks to his rep of dating a movie star but he doesn't want to date women like he wants a new wife who is committed to christ also he's not looking forward sleeping around he wants a new wife who is committed to christ also he's not looking for sleeping around he wants a religious woman to marry and help raise his kids it also feels like a very dude move of just like phew okay ned is sexually desirable again it's a happy ending for ned he doesn't

want sex and he's quite good at it he doesn't doubt his ability and sex good on the animators that when he takes his shirt off, when he's shirtless in that one scene, he is the perfect Greek god physique that we are used to of Ned. He's one of the super hunks. Just as much of a super hunk as Bob Balaban. And we have in our final resolution here, we get one more appearance of another guest star.

Screen siren Sarah Sloan shocked Tinseltown last night with a midnight marriage to Gosford Park mega-hunk Bob Balaban. This was followed three hours later by a quickie divorce. I bet we would have lasted twice that long. Poor Ned, gardening away his misery. His answer's not at the bottom of a hedge. Hey, Hollywood. Call me. my number's on the bench you know it's the darndest thing women love you when you've dated a movie star i'm very happy for you ned me too

uh-oh here comes helen fielding i believe they said that came in very late it seems like it did uh so i was looking this up because i wasn't sure if it was referencing this but it happened a year later i mean there have been lots of quickie marriages and quickie divorces in the celebrity world when i saw this for the episode i thought oh are they referencing when britney spears married a man named jason alexander not george costanza and they were married for 55 hours but no that happened in 2004 wow okay so this is more like simpsons predicted it then i would never say that no no no actually as of this recording al jean just took a frame from one of i think one of the shorts where there's a joke about trump 2024 and

now he's contributing to the simpsons predictive phenomenon. We cannot encourage these people, Mr. Gene. I know. I remember that scene. We talked about that directly on the stage with Matt Chrisman, who couldn't believe what he saw because he'd never seen that short before. But yes, when Homer, in the 2015 short, when Homer enters Trump's hair, he sees the joke is Trump 2016, Trump 2020, Trump 2024. The joke being that, oh, what a joke candidate. He'll keep running and never be the nominee over and over again. But now Al Jean's using it of like, see, we predicted he'd run in 2024, but like the joke

doesn't mean the same. I hope he recants shortly after this episode is released. I just hope that, you know, we dump on those plusiversaries it has kept aljean from doing more trump comedy yes and we pointed it out well we rather they do advertorial content than political content although this is an election year and i'm terrified i am i am terrified the what the most terrifying thing about the 2024 election is that simpsons might try to make jokes about it yes forget about uh you know reproductive rights and immigration and all that stuff we are most terrified about a bad short being released but doesn't it feel lame that marge is just like i'm very happy for you now like what because cookie kwan hit on him like this is this big victory like that's bad it's it's marge announcing i guess ned got something out of this anyway uh you know king

of the hills on next yeah we're gonna have yakety sax play us out here and then i'm sorry malcolm in the middle is on next king of the hill was on before yeah yeah but i mean i like that they do the run into the camera thing in animation that's like cute and all they did a fine bit with the animation on it but the homer is the bald guy who is uh actor's jackie wright who was like by the time we watched benny hill on comedy central in the 90s he was long dead that actor oh yeah i think so well he died in 89 so i don't want to say long dead the the actor being northern irishman jackie wright if you dug him up and you saw the state of his body you would say long dead he he was 84 years old when he died in 1989 wow that comedy kept him alive not a

healthy looking guy benny hill but uh yeah the uh i also think helen fielding running through again i wonder what their original ending was i wish i wish i knew that but yeah i wish this had an okay idea and notting hill is a fine thing to rip off it's not too old in 2000 to rip off a 1999 movie and marisa dome brings way more to the character than they write in sarah sloan but it's uh it's an okay episode yeah one of many middling and kind of forgettable ned dating episodes and we've seen some real lows in season 14 like with uh barding over and pray anything and strong arms of the maw and you know things have surprised us like i'm spelling as fast as i can this is about like a c c minus so no i wasn't like

groaning out loud but uh i'm not a fan of this kind of a ned story and you know they admit on the commentary that part of the reason for killing maud is to give ned more stories because there's it's just boring to have a loving couple you need to split them up you need to have ned you know meet other people and it's not going to happen with his family unit intact but i don't know i don't really like these that much they wanted fun sitcom dating stories by killing off mod but it's like one they're hampered with him constantly talking about how he's a widow which is depressing and then it's just about like well but he can't have like sexy fun because he's a hardcore christian yeah it's uh it's a lose-lose situation i don't know when

the next one of these is but never like them and maybe one will surprise me in the future i don't think i've seen all of them so that has been another episode of talking simpsons thanks so much for joining us everybody if you want to support the show and get over 150 bonus podcast on top of that head on over to patreon.com slash talking simpsons sign up for five bucks a month you get every episode one week at a time and also access to those 150 bonus podcasts i mentioned earlier those are podcasts about shows like futurama king of the hill mission hill the critic and batman the animated series and that five bucks a month also gets you regular monthly access to new episodes of talking futurama and

talking in the hill if you like hearing us talk about the simpsons there are full-length podcasts about us talking about other shows that you haven't heard if you're not a patron at patreon.com slash talking simpsons when you sign up for that you can access all the five dollar stuff naturally but you can also access one mega long podcast once a month only for patrons of that level or higher and what is that henry bob is mentioning our what a cartoon movie podcast which if you're a regular free simpson subscriber you've heard are you would get a podcast that big each month if you were a ten dollar subscriber hearing us talk about animated feature films once a month this month we're talking about the disney classic bambi can't wait to do that last month we talked about the 2000

underrated disney film the emperor's new groove month before that The Muppet Christmas Carol we've been doing this for five years so there are over 60 what a cartoon movie podcasts we've covered so many classic Disney's we've covered many of the Pixar films we've covered a lot of anime classics many of them by Hayao Miyazaki and so so many others Batman movies Scooby-Doo movies everything the Transformers movie come on Shrek we've covered so much i could list them all but you should just see it for yourself at patreon.com slash talking simpsons and as for me i've been one of your hosts bob mackie you can find me on twitter as bob servo and i have another podcast by the way it's called retronauts that is a classic podcast all about old video games you can find retronaut wherever you find podcasts or go to patreon.com slash retronaut and sign up there for two full-length bonus episodes every month and henry how about you

please follow me on social media at h-e-n-e-r-u-i-g even that letterbox that's h-e-n-e-r-u-i-g on letterbox as bob mentioned and if you're following us on social media you definitely need to follow at talk simpsons pod instagram twitter blue sky at talk simpsons pod we'll keep you in the loop whenever new podcasts come out whenever we have cool stuff on the Patreon, whenever we have live shows going on, at TalkSimpsonsPod. And of course, if you need an easy to follow list of our previously released free episodes of Talking Simpsons and the What A Cartoon podcast, head on over to TalkingSimpsons.com. Thanks so much for listening, everybody. We'll see you again next time for the latest episode of our community podcast, Talk to the Audience, everybody we'll see you again next time for the latest episode of our community podcast talk to the audience and we'll see you then jellyfish i held

you close and told you i love you but then the ocean took you back and now i just hold good. Jelly fish, I held you close and said that I love you. But then the ocean took you back. My jelly, I'll miss you. For now, I just hold good. Hold your horses. I was up all night fishing out the drawstring from your father's swimsuit. It came out again.