Talking Simpsons - Talking Simpsons - A Star is Burns With Toby Jones

Episode Date: October 28, 2026

"Let's just say it moved me... to a bigger house! Oops! I said the quiet part loud and the loud part quiet." - Krusty the Clown It's time for another cheesy cartoon crossover as Jay Sherman visits Springfield to introduce Fox viewers to The Simpsons' Sunday night time slot companion—for about half a season. But even though Jay Sherman wasn't long for this world, this episode full of parodies, classic lines, and Schwarzenegger slander remains a timeless installment we couldn't possibly say "boo-urns" to. Our guest: Toby Jones, writer and director of AJ Goes to the Dog Park Support this podcast and get over 200 ad-free bonus episodes by visiting Patreon.com/TalkingSimpsons and becoming a patron! And please follow the official Twitter, @TalkSimpsonsPod, not to mention Bluesky and Instagram!

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. Event or product. Hoi, ho, everybody, and welcome to Talking Simpsons where Jimmy Carter is smarter. I'm one of your host, the film cricket Bob Mackie, and this is our chronological exploration of the Simpsons, who is here with me today, as always. Henry Gilbert, and no wonder I was on the cover of Entertainment Weekly. And who is our special guest on the line? Look what you made me right.

This is Toby Jones. And this week's episode is A Star is Burns. Bart Simpson, meet Jay Sherman the Critic. Hello. Hey, man, I really love your show. I think all kids should watch it. I suddenly feel so dirty. This week's episode originally aired on March 5th, 1995.

And as always, Henry will tell us what happened on this mythical day in real world history. Man of the House tops the first. the box office. Model Zink is canceled before the Simpsons can even make fun of it, and the critic returns for its second season moving from ABC to Fox. Okay, now man of the house, this is one of a billion interchangeable mid-90s Disney family comedies. Does it have JTT and Chevy Chase? Yes. Oh my God. Okay. That's the combo. You got it. Yeah. Hold on. I did no research beforehand. So that's not, I think I always get it confused with getting even with dad. Who's in getting even with Dad. That's McCauley Calkin and Ted

Danson. Okay, crucial. Same movie, right? And we also talked recently about the Ed O'Neill one of those. Dutch. Dutch. Yes. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Dutch has been a getting even with Dad all along. It's getting even with Dutch. It was a father figure, but not a father. You have to watch Dutch to figure it out. I've only seen Dutch.

We can all agree that the final evolution of this format is the non-problematic jungle to jungle. Oh, yeah. Not at all. Well, I mean, it's a remake of a French film, so it can't be problematic. I prefer the original Little Indian Big City. And also this Man of the House film, don't get it confused with the 10 years later.

Tommy Lee Jones is a federal marshal defending sorority sisters in their house. That film called Man of House. The exact same title. That one was on the DVD shelf when I was working at a video store in 2007. So I remember that one fondly. But yes, Bob, you remember correctly. It teams up Chevy Chase with Jonathan Taylor Thomas. It is historically the final film of Chevy Chases that opens at number one.

It will never happen for him again. Okay, very strange. Now, Toby, there's a reason that you might be confusing this with Jungle to Jungle. It's because on the cover of the video or the poster, Chevy Chase is wearing the stereotypical headband and Indian feather. Ah, uh-huh, uh-huh. Yes. So there's actual story overlap between them.

Yeah, I don't know why he is cosplaying as an indigenous person, but that's probably part of the rich story of Man of the House. From what I looked up, so Jonathan Taylor Thomas plays the son of Farah Fawcett. She has a new boyfriend who's serious and he might end up being his stepdad and JTT doesn't want Chevy Chase to be a stepdad. I wouldn't either. And I think they then try to connect and a series of pranks happened. And I do think one of the key pranks or set pieces is at a father and son togetherness tribal themed type experience. Yeah, I was looking at the Wikipedia summary now.

I know everyone listening is fascinated by this. But this incorporates the Indian guide, which is. a kind of Boy Scouts that co-opted indigenous culture that I think probably doesn't exist anymore or shouldn't? Right, right, yes. I think that's also famously, isn't that, maybe it's, I'm confusing it with something else as being prominent in like an early family guy episode as well. Maybe. Oh, King of the Hill, maybe. Oh, King of the Hill.

There you go. Well, the critic did it too. The critic also did that. That was at like the Fat Camp episode for where they also are singing kumbaya and it's like kind of indigenous deemed co-opting as well. Yes. And Chevy Chase also, I think to help promote the movie, it must have been. He got a DUI two months before this. So, you know, pretty good.

Just a little tie in. Yeah, getting the word out. Hey, all publicity is good publicity. Come on. Yeah, Chevy Chase, I think he just celebrated his 83rd birthday or something. He's hanging in there. Model Zink, yes, I guess we'll talk more about Model Zink when we get to two dozen and one Greyhounds, I suppose, because it's the only reason any person knows the name of the Melrose Place spin-off.

Now, I am watching through Melrose Place because our friends on, We Hate Movies, have a side podcast where they cover Beverly Hills 90210 and Melrose Place. And when we got to the episodes where the Model Zinc were part of the show, I was getting excited because I'm like, oh, they're about to launch Model Zinc. It's happening. We're seeing this in motion. That's incredible. How is Melrose Place?

Is it a pretty fun watch? Oh, it's pretty fun. It starts as a normal show, and then they add Heather Locklear and things get crazy afterwards. They start adding some evil characters, and that really makes the show what it was known for, like a crazy soap opera. On Model Zinc, it's like Heather Locklear's character's mom is the main on the show, or that's like it's big connection. When I looked at the cast list, like, Carrie Ann Moss is the biggest star to like come out of it.

And then the other weird thing I learned was is that it ends on a cliffhanger finale, which would never be resolved. But it apparently did so better in the European markets that they then maybe a little like the Twin Peaks pilot filmed a Europe-only finale that sort of resolves things of like. is in a five-minute tag onto it that gives any kind of resolution. This makes me really want to see all this. Yeah, there's 24 episodes. It's one of those times where Fox would begin a show in the summer. I think they phased this out by the late 90s, but it began in June of 1994.

And yes, the other big news tied into this week's episode is that the critic makes its big debut and is the first animated show that will follow Simpsons at 830, a beginning of a long tradition that still goes to the, this very day. Yes, not for the critic, though. No, no, no. And also not for Futurama for very long. And also not for King of the Hill, right? Yeah. For the first couple of seasons of a show, they're like, let's put you after The Simpsons. And then they're like, no, no, before, before the Simpsons.

You got to go into the football zone. Yeah. But that's what happened. The week, this episode of The Simpsons aired. And joining us once again is our old pal, Toby Jones. I believe Toby last joined us for Season 5's Lady Bouvier's lover. Welcome back to the show, Toby. What can I say? I'm back to talk about this episode, which I have a lot of thoughts about. Yes, Toby, you have many good reasons to be here. One, like, we know you're a big critic fan. We talked about it as well on your What a Cartoon episode we did about the episode of Jellystone that you wrote and imported, as well as your share of cartoon crossovers in your career as well. And you have made your own films and presented them at film festivals, just like the characters

this episode do. Correct. There probably isn't a single person on this planet more qualified to be on this episode, so I can't wait to completely fuck it up. But yeah, I'm especially excited to talk about film festival stuff since I, not only have I screen movies at film festivals, but also I've attended a bunch of film festivals. I love film festivals, but I do also, yes, you're right. I'm a huge critic fan. And it's fun to return to this one, because in the time since we first cover this episode, nine or ten years ago, Henry and I have covered all of the critic on our Patreon at patreon.com slash Talking Simpsons. We've covered all 23 episodes and the webisodes. So we are very steeped in the critic compared to the first time we cover this. We merely had seen the

critic a lot. Yeah. Can't forget the webisodes. I'd like to. Oh, yes. Oh, God. I can't. And in that time, there has been, like, not just teases of more critic in the future

that may or may not happen, but even more things have come out. More dirt has been dished out, too, that can be quoted by podcasters like me who love the gossip. And more critic cast members are dying. RIP, Garrett Graham. Oh, God, RIP, Garrett Graham. Indeed, he's one of my favorite actors in the world. That was very sad when he passed.

And also, yes, Toby, I was going to say you've traveled for your movie. I want to promote it early. AJ goes to the dog park. It's on Blu-ray. It's a great Blu-ray disc. I've complimented it before. But yes, I saw you traveling, you know, the world, well, America, at least, or North America, showing your film everywhere.

Like, you racked up a lot of miles. That's true. Yeah, we played a bunch of film festivals, and then we did, like, a theatrical tour in the lead-up to its release, which was a lot of fun. And, yeah, I got to know. So now I've experienced kind of film festivals, both from the audience perspective and from like the filmmaker perspective. The only thing I've missed out on is the programmer perspective,

which I'd love to do some time and get involved in programming and be involved with complicated moral decisions like homers in this episode. You know, I think if you want to be a film programmer, what I've learned is you need to become a very famous, rich movie star, director first, and then buy an old theater, and then you move over and whatever you want. Sounds pretty good. I would guess we were all waiting with bated breath for this crossover when it first aired, right? You know what?

I don't know if I was waiting for it. I think I was surprised by it because, you know, at this point, I probably was reading Entertainment Weekly and reading the entertainment section of the paper. But I remember being surprised, oh, Jay Sherman is on The Simpsons. What's happening? And, oh, they're kicking off a new season of the critic afterwards. Could this be the greatest day of my life? Yes, yeah. Because we both were regular viewers of the critic as much as ABC didn't want us to see it.

But I did the research. It was announced, you know, before, like, it was May 1994 that if you were reading Variety, you knew. the critic got renewed, but I feel like maybe it was January or February TV guide must have told me or something. But I remember not being a like total surprise, but it was certainly exciting. Like to later learn how much people didn't want this internally at the Simpsons was surprising because this was like 10 Super Bowls. Yeah. It is one of those episodes that you find out was hated internally and you're like, why? Like Cape Fear is another one of those where a lot of people on the staff thought, oh man, they're just phoning in their last episode of this production

order. What a shame. And it turns out to be one of the most beloved episodes of all time. This episode also, like, for me, it fits it in a unique perspective because it's like, specifically in that zone between the critic disappearing on main television and the critic reappearing on like Comedy Central. That was like a several year period of time. And during that time, the only way you could really access the critic would be to watch this episode in syndication. Yeah, it was very hard to see the critic until then, unless you had them all taped. And then there was a brief critic bubble on Comedy Central in the early aughts in which they mentioned it on the commentary. It was one of the highest rated shows on Comedy Central right under South Park

to the point where it seemed like is Comedy Central going to order more South Park? And they ended up not ordering it because I think they were not willing to pay for traditional animation until they produced Ugly Americans in like 2009, 2010. That was the first show I think that had full animation that was a Comedy Central exclusive. Well, I also think like the Gracie folks were not, especially if you go to James L. Brooks with like, well, it's time to take the cable pay cut in like 2005 James O'Brooks probably not agreeing to that. Yeah. Right. But the icebox.com pay cut, perhaps, you know. You know, then they did have, that was like the bubblehead and bursty at money. Like, it probably got a good paycheck for that. Yeah, I'm wondering with the crazy.

com boom money if Al Jean and Mike Race made more money from those episodes than they made from Fox on their critic run, their 10 episode critic run. It's crazy that it's 10 episodes as well. It's not a 13 order, though I looked into that as well. We know the answers, but, yeah. Hey, let's call it nine because that last one is a clip show with five minutes of new material, but it also has cigar-chomping comedian, old what's his face. Milton Burrell, yes. And a very late in life appearance.

You know, it's a clever clip show, though, because they're like, well, nobody on Fox watch the ABC episodes. We'll just use the ABC clips. Like, that's what we'll do. And Toby, too, you've worked on. The cartoon crossovers are so, like, everybody does it now. Like if characters from two cartoon network shows, you just always think of them existing in the same place

or Nickelodeon shows or whatever. So two Fox shows meeting, it doesn't feel like a big event now. They always crossover for just like a one-off joke. Though back then it was seen as like, the Flintstones meet the Jetsons, the joke in the episode, or if Scooby-Doo met Batman,

like those were event episodes, to me anyway. And I think that like when we did our crossovers on K.O., it was kind of with the understanding of all that history. And like a lot of the thing about OKCO was like, we were just taking as much pleasure as possible in being a TV show. And it's like, so we're doing all the TV show things. You know, we're doing crossovers. We're doing like backdoor pilots.

Like we're doing all that stuff because we love everything about like TV. It is crazy to think that the critic existed for like 18 months of our lives as a new property. But in that time, it had two networks. Jay Sherman had three different designs, including the one on this episode. And it created so much scandal internally for the show that barely lasted for. for two years, but we remember so much about it. This episode is also a major debut of a writer, isn't it? That's right. This is the first credited episode of Ken Keeler. So let's talk all about him

and his prolific career. And now it's time to talk about Ken Keeler. And by the way, folks, I'm going to peel back the curtain a bit here. We have already recorded with Toby, but we're recording this after the fact. And I feel like if I go on very long with this, this could be our longest episode ever, so I might try to do that. We might just camp out on wings for about 15 minutes. Let's find out. Filibuster about what we think of Tim Daly and his recent,

you know, he's got a new sitcom coming out. And also, I didn't even realize he was married to Taleyone in real life. I had no idea. So that's who she went to after the Dukovni split. Yes, it seems like out of 90s television stars, he is a more stable partner, it would seem. Very nice. I always respect his work.

Well, let's talk about Ken Keeler. So we don't need to go over him too extensively because he is a frequent. topic of conversation on our sister show Talking Futurama. By the way, Patreon.com slash Talking Simpsons. Do you want to hear us talk about Futurama for, I think we're in our fifth or sixth season of talking about it? It's all on the Patreon.

Check it out there. There's some free feed episodes you can find in this feed as well. So I'll let you know about that. But yeah, we talk a lot about Keeler on Talking Futurama because he is one of the many mega geniuses among those writers. In fact, he might be the highest level genius. Perhaps.

Yeah, on a lot of commentaries, whether he's on them or not, he will come up on Futurama commentaries as, you know, well, we asked Ken Keeler, he actually knows, like, all of these guys who were, you know, either bachelor's or even master's degrees from Harvard, it sounds like a lot of them do go like, well, but then we ran it by Ken and he said the math didn't check out. You know, there's so many stories like that. Yes, Ken Keeler has a Ph.D. in applied mathematics from Harvard, and then threw it all away. He threw away his job at Bell Labs, right in the

crashed under the disgraceful world of television comedy writing. And yes, he was a researcher at Bell Labs. If you are a super brain mega genius like Ken Kieler, that is where you want to end up. That's the end goal. You stay there forever. You develop cool technologies, hopefully nothing evil. Yes, you've been working at that your entire life to get into that space. Like, there are people in that world, you know, pushing themselves so hard to even get a chance of that kind of job.

Like, these are what the biggest money and influential science jobs are. and it can let you like step up to like being a tenure professor someday if you want to take that kind of track. I will say from personal experience, you want to leave academia enter the private sector. Oh, sure, sure, yes. It seems like Ken Keeler. You're making cool stuff, like you said, hopefully not a bunch of bombs. Hopefully fewer child thresheres. He made many death rays before leaving.

And by the way, we covered Jeff Westbrook not too long ago on Talking Simpsons. He's a Simpsons writer. He's a season 16. He was a writer for Futurama. Well, Ken Keeler was the former co-worker of Jeff's who convinced him to take a leave of absence from Bell Labs to write on Futurama, then they hired him full time because Ken Keeler originally left Bell Labs for this disgraceful world in comedy. Oh, thank you. I had forgotten, I was like, wait, when was the last, we've talked about Bell Labs

before. It was from your previous writer's corner on Westbrook. So yeah, bringing in, Ken Keeler is onboarding people from science into the world of sitcoms. Yes, he is the bridge from a highly paid research position to writing for a cartoon. Yes. In the increasingly shrinking money world of that, while meanwhile, it seems like in the science world, as long as you can fake that you know how to make an AI do something, the money is like blank checks are just handed to you left and right. This is back when you had actually had to make things that worked and had provable functions. Right. Yes, it wasn't entirely about cocaine bravado or you'd have one guy in the group who had the cocaine bravado. Okay, I'll

get this out of the way. Yes, he went to Harvard and yes, he wrote for the lampoon. If you're wondering how he ended up where he ended up, it's not just his PhD from Harvard. It's also he wrote for the lampoon. He was born in 61. So this makes him only a year younger than Al Jean and only two years younger than Mike Reeves. So I'm guessing they were in the same realms at the same time and working on the lampoon at the same time. It only makes sense. Yes, yeah. He would have been an underclassman to them and it could have even just shared the offices. when there. I wonder if would he have been at the Lampoon with Laura McMullen?

I demand that the Harvard Lampoon list, the full list of names of every person who worked in every year's editorial staff on the Lampo. I'd love to know. We might need to visit and consult the archives. Oh, yeah, it must be on the Masteads in all of those, right? Yeah, you know, I've never

actually read a Harvard Lampoon. Like, National Lampoon, I've read a couple articles here and there of that, that some are more dated than others, but I've never actually read a Harvard Lampoon piece, especially not from the 80s when Simpsons writers were running. Yeah, I haven't either. I don't know where to find them. Perhaps you have to be on campus at Harvard to see these articles. You have to storm the castle of the Lampoon offices. But watch out for the whiff and poofs.

Oh, God. You're going to get you. They see very much. It could be Yale. I'm not sure. Somebody out there, correct me. Yes, well, it's been a while since I've seen social network, which has an entire like Wiff and Poof or the Acapella group as like a side story in the social network movie. That's right. That's right. Well, so Ken Keeler got his start writing for late night with David Letterman. It seems he must have had a short-term contract like a lot of these joke writers on these late-night shows because he's only credited with 27 episodes. Though it's possible he was submitting jokes to the show before that. We don't know. Ken Keeler gives no interviews. As far as I know, there has been no podcast Ken Keeler interview and he's very slippery that Ken Keeler. Someday we'll nail him down. Someday. I know it.

And Keeler immediately transitions to a David Merkin show, not The Simpsons, the David Merkin sketch show The Edge. And after that series comes to an end, he writes for the critics. He's very much in this realm. So it's not surprising that he ends up getting hired for the critic and then The Simpsons because Al Jean and Mike Reese know him. He works for David Merkin, Harvard, all that stuff. It's all working out in the favor of Ken Keeler. I wonder if one of the onboarding help for that was that George Meyer was a writer for the edge. That's like one of the things he left

Simpsons for and then comes back onto the Simpsons when the edge goes down. And George Meyer was a major Letterman writer for a few years. So he could have easily heard from his pals who were still at Letterman. Hey, this Ken Keeler kid is good and he wants to move to L.A. Maybe hire him on this show.

I'm going to propose a future Talking Simpsons episode in which we cover the edge. We have to find an episode in good quality or maybe they can release a DVD set. But this is not the year 2009. That's not going to happen. I still need follow through on my plans to stalk George Meyer in the Seattle area to try to corner him. You tried once and he backed away. You spooked him.

He actually was very nice. Well, I maybe did spook him a little. Did he shake a jar of change at you? No, he was very nice. And hey, I think he appreciated that in this public space, I could have tried to sit next to him at the movie theater to talk his ear off the whole time. But after five minutes was like, anyway, I'll let you enjoy the show and move to a different seat. Yeah, with George Meyer, it's like bird watching. You got to, you know, maintain a quiet presence. Don't make any sudden movements.

Though now, you know, since I last saw him, I have bought a Saturday Night Live hat that looks like the logo from when he worked at Saturday Night Live. So if I really wanted to scare him, we could wear this hat. Where did you buy that? At the NBC store. Okay. When I was in Manhattan, we did a tour of the NBC Studios

and in their shopping center, I was like, okay, what's silly Saturday Night Live thing? I don't want to buy Shweddy balls or something. But I did, they had hats of the logos and they have the scratch logo of the unpopular seasons from 85 and 86. I was like, I want to wear that hat, but I save it for special occasions.

I'm glad that they are recognizing those seasons in some way. That's pretty neat. So yes, Keeler is writing for The Edge and then he goes to The Critic. The only episode he's credited for is Duke Arella, but he is a staff writer on the critic. He and many others are credited for that last episode, which is a clip show,

and I assume that's because it uses existing material that he wrote. Yes, and Duke Arella, It's sword. It's kind of the series finale. I mean, not really, but it's the last real episode of the critic ever, at least to date. And for The Simpsons, he works on the two season six satellite episodes, which is this episode and round Springfield. So these two are written by critic staff. We'll get to round Springfield very soon here. But he's part of that satellite staff.

And then when Bill Oakley and Josh Weinstein take over in season seven, he is formally hired. and writes a total of five full episodes, some of them being very controversial. One of them, of course, is the principal and the popper, which I think we have fully redeemed in the eyes of the world. We have changed the narrative. It's one of our greatest accomplishments as a podcast, I want to say. Yes, I think so.

And you know what? Many have said this, but so many things have happened since that episode aired in the nearly 30 years since it's aired that people no longer really think of it anymore, this infamous speed bump. I mean, I think, like we said this before, Once the Mod Flanders' death happened, I think it erased our memories of the controversy behind Armand Tamzarian.

Last time we asked Bill Oakley about it in our most recent interview with him, he was saying, I believe he put it too as like, well, for younger people, it's just like they see the episode and then they move on to the next one in the streaming. They don't have any time to really think about it or feel it damaged anything. And we had to sit with it for so long in 1997 when things moved a lot slower. Another controversial episode he wrote is Two Bad Neighbors, which I think is now universally below. love it. But at the time, fans and Harry Shearer both hated that episode. And we'll talk about that again within a year or so. You know, it's also funny to hear, we'll talk about it more after this part, but to hear how much people, including Bill Oakley, were not fans of this episode when they heard about it, that then one of the best writers of the Bill and Josh era and most prolific

ones is Ken Keeler. It shows that clearly they did not blame Ken Keeler for any problems they had with this script. And Keeler leaves the Simpsons after the Oakley and Weinstein era because he is then a big wheel at the Futurama factory. I would say he is third in line after Matt Grainning and David X. Cohen. He's not a developer or creator, but he has given a lot of trust for some important episodes of the show. And he's been an instrumental part of every iteration of Futurama and has written over

a dozen episodes. Some of them under pen names for reasons we are not aware, but it seems he's unhappy about some situation. and he's letting us know through these secret messages. I mean, it's good he's writing it anyway, but yet it could just be he is taking a pay cut, but not under his name because it would damage him in some guild way to work on it.

Who knows, but yes, he is such an important part of the Futurama landscape just as a guy who, like, he's written some of the best songs in Futurama. He's written all the finalees. He also wrote, you know, the first and best of the movies. of Futurama. He is a key part of deciding the universe of

Futurama and also, as we said, like the biggest science expert on it too. So he's kind of also doing a unpaid other job of being the science consultant for the show. That is true. And I almost forgot. You mentioned his music. He did write We put the Spring and Springfield and I'm checking in. I think both of those won Emmys for The Simpsons. Right, right. I believe it was checking in that beat like that Mr. Show song, right? I think that was like Bill Odenkirk and him were both competing over it and then end up at Futurama together, which is kind of funny.

Though they probably already knew each other as, again, Harvard grads. Yeah, checking this out now. And yeah, I believe both of those songs won Emmys. So yes, he won the Simpsons 2 Emmys just for his songwriting chops, very good. And based on our interviews with Futurama people like Eric Rogers, it sounds like Ken Keeler was basically formally retired after the Comedy Central run and maybe even before. that, but they pulled him back out of the trenches to write on the new season, which just wrapped up recently, and there's going to be three new specials. I have to assume Ken Kilo were writing one of those, at least the final one, because it is his role in life to write

every Futurama finale at this point. When he wrote the first finale, he's like, well, I'll never have to do more of those at least, and now he's had to write, I guess seven finalities. There'd be Fox, movie, Comedy Central 1, Comedy Central 2, And now Hulu-Rama. So, no, okay, that's five by my count. Yeah. Yeah, sorry, I wanted to look up his name he uses on Futurama now because he did this on Comedy Central episodes for at least one,

but his Futurama name is Nona Disparagement, which if you look at that for a second, it means non-disparagement, which means he's upset about something, but in his contract, he can't tell you why. And I have to assume it has to do with Disney and pay cuts. Yeah, I mean, it can't be anything else I would think either, no. Like Ken Keeler is the type of like long-term, long-time producer that Disney keeps like showing up with empty pockets to say, we can't pay your old raid. We can't afford it.

You guys like robots? What do you think about AI? Isn't that nice? Yes, yeah. I would hope no Futurama person is actually an AI friendly person either. I hope not. I hope we don't find out because most of these guys are not online. David X. Cohen also very elusive.

Though David X. Cohen will at least like, he appears at many conventions. I regret how many times I did not go to a Futurama at SF Sketchfest thing. I feel like they did that annually for like 12 years when we live there. I don't think I went to one of them. I regret that now. It is true, but I think a lot of those panels involve the Futurama actors saying quotes from different things in the Futurama character voices, which I'm glad to see the people in person, but that has a limited appeal to me.

That's true. It sounded like you probably missed out on so many impressions of Tracy Morgan by John DiMaggio in person. Damn it. Damn it. Okay. Well, Ken Keeler doesn't really do a whole lot outside of Futurama. He is credited with one episode of disenchantment. But here's a thing.

If IMDB is to be believed, and it might not be, between the last two Futurama reboots, he worked very briefly on an Apple show called After Forever. Now, here's a synopsis for you. Quote, a story of love, loss, and. fresh darts unfolds as Brian tragically loses his husband and tries to navigate the world as a single gay man in his 50s. So is this a side of Ken Keeler we don't know about? Or is IMDB incorrect? Either case could be true. I don't have enough time to figure this out. Interesting. Man, this is the first I've heard about this gay Apple product. You don't know about every gay show, Henry? Well, and especially something is anonymous as an Apple TV show, too, which those are like, they get the most money and nobody has ever.

hears about them until they win awards. I will say they've been win a lot of awards lately. That's true. But I mean, I don't know. Is this true or not? I mean, this is the one non-comedy thing Ken Keeler might possibly be involved with. I don't understand it. I don't know. But there is only one Ken Keeler and he is credited for

a very small portion of this show. Interesting. Well, okay, then I'm going to add to my list of things to Hechtram about his sexuality. I must know that too. Question one after forever. What's the deal? What's the deal? Are you married? What's your We've got to investigate his North Carolina residents.

But yes, Ken Keeler, he's a gem, he's a mensch, he's a very important writer, and a very nerdy writer, and perhaps the most educated comedy writer will ever talk about on any of our programs. Yes, even if he never wrote great episodes of TV, he is always welcome on any commentary other than the one for a star is Burns. Yes. Because he is a humorously combative, pedant kind of guy. He's just like, but wait, why is Lila doing this? Like those are always so funny to hear him say those kind of things.

And his commentary for The Principal and the Popper really lets you know his intent with the episode. And he's right to be mad. Oh, yes, very much so. And I think you just saw Ken Keeler's most recent episode, right, Toby, of Futurama? Yes, if the rumors are true, Ken Keeler just wrote his, like, fifth or sixth finale on Futurama. And look, Ken Keeler, I would say, is one of my favorite of all the writers of, like, adult sitcoms. And I think, for me, a lot of it came down to listening to his commentary from, Principal and the Popper where he just got really, really angry at people not getting the episode.

And I'm like, hey, he's right. Yeah, that's his most vocal commentary. He is on this one, and I think he only speaks up to confirm that Bart is dressed as Criswell from Plan 9 from outer space. Yes, there's a slight, I would say, discrepancy in how much each person speaks on that commentary track. I think it's because John Lovitz is being a huge asshole. He really is. But that's who John Lovitz is. That's his comedic persona.

And turns out that's his real life persona as well. love him for it? Question mark? I like it when he plays characters. I don't know if I could deal with being in the same room as John Levitts for that long. We were definitely, Maddie and I were listening to it and just being like, I want to hear more from Susie Dieter at every turn. And what I'll say about John Levitts is, if you're rebooting the critic, I'd love to work on it. Please give me a call. Okay. Yeah. That's all Toby has to say. It drives me crazy how little Susie Dieter gets to talk on this. But hey, don't worry, listeners. We interviewed her a few years ago. We asked about this episode. Again, Susie Deeter, major part of Simpson's history, one of their

best directors, the first woman to direct an episode of The Simpsons. And three weeks ago, at the time of this recording, so I guess four or five weeks ago, would you hear this, she posted publicly on her LinkedIn that she's now, again, directing on the Simpsons. So that was very exciting for me to see. It feels like they're staffing back up because of the, you know, obviously the resource demands of the new Simpsons movie. Yep, yep, yep. I've seen a few examples of that as well, people in the industry where I'm like, oh, damn, they're on the Simpsons now.

And it's because, yeah, they have to basically double or triple their amount of people doing Simpson stuff. You're not going to hear any great questions on this commentary, though, because John Lovitz is like, now, Susie, do you know how to draw? Yeah, that was an amazing moment. And she responded with the power of someone who's probably been in a million conversations like this in her storied career, just being like, yes, quite well, in fact. Oh, how do you direct a cartoon? You can't be like, oh, boy.

Well, it's from this commentary and many other John Lovett's appearances. We all know that his main stick, probably some of this day, his main stick is pretending people are gay or calling them gay when they're not gay. That is his, like, major bit that he does. It's aged wonderfully. It's great. It's so fun. A lot of times spent recounting times he had done that at what would have it then, at that point

been almost a decade ago to, you know, Gene and Reese while working on the show, just being like, remember when I did that a lot? And it's like, yeah, we loved it. You're still doing it now. His favorite critic memories are telling them to blow each other. Well, also, there is a little difference of feeling on the commentaries to when James L. Brooks is there. It's a little like Daddy's Here kind of vibes on the commentaries too. We'll go into the controversy.

There's a lot being not said. And I think, like, Mike Reese is holding a lot bad. He's like, I'm just so happy to be here for this treasured episode or whatever he says up front. All they say. Every single person is like, I'm happy to be here. I'm really happy to be here. I would describe it as like the negative space in that commentary. of like, as you said, what is being said is almost not as telling as what is not being said.

So, you know, we talked about the creation of the critic, the super in-depth when we did the pilot last year. Will Minnaker, give a listen to that one. But we only went up to ABC. It was a terrible fit for ABC and they canceled it. But May 94, which they'd have to renew it this quickly to have it ready for a March debut the next year, May 94, it's announced that Fox is going to get a second season of the show, James L. Brooks and Gracie are able to make a deal that also, I couldn't find the names of the company, but this is in Mike Reese's memoir, Springfield Confidential. He said that for the first time since the Vichy government,

they got the French and Germans to work together, two production companies from each of those countries, to help pay for it because it had very good overseas, I guess. I think it was, Canal might have been one of them. I feel like I couldn't find a production company name from either France or Germany. Yeah. But also, Fox his deal too was that they are going to have to make more Simpsons too. It was that they, as we've talked about this season, was the debut of the syndicated run. Single Simpsons episode is worth a lot of money now. Millions of dollars, one episode is worth no matter what you pay for it, it will run in syndication forever, making you millions afterwards. That is why season six through nine each have 25 episodes, which is nuts.

Yeah. It would take one, in a 15 episode. order of Simpsons era now, which is of highly copious amount of cartoon episodes in a year these days. Like, that is so different from the 25 they want to. And if they could have gotten 30, they'd have gotten 30. But the 25 was the absolute limit that like Brooks and Gracie and Graney would agree to then. And again, it was 25 with the kind of stipulation that like their main team was doing X number and the kind of like visiting or like guest team was doing several more, right? Yes. And also that John Vidi would be legally held to have to write two scripts for clip shows under an assumed name. But this was also a question of what goes at 830 after the Simpsons? Because I looked this up. I was like, okay, what's the history of 830 after the Simpsons? Martin was a perfect combo with the Simpsons. It was the most successful 830 of the Simpsons in the 90s, or at least in the, let's say the Bartmania years.

But then other ones were like, babes, true colors, Drexel's, class, the Sinbad show, and most recently, Hardball. I watched all of these shows because they were on after the Simpsons. It's a perfect strategy. I mean, Bart telling me, or amazing Bart tell Drexel to eat his shorts, I was like, well, I got to see at least one episode of Drexel's class now. Before you watch the Oscars, you've got to see the Springfield Film Festival. Young man, that appears to be a picture of your rear end on a brand new Simpsons.

Then John Lovett stars as America's favorite critic. Hello, you TV addicted couch monkeys. Move over, Ciskel and Ebert. I've created a new scale that shows which diseases I'd rather have than watch this movie. The critic. And the winner is Spatik Tolis. Premiers After the Simpsons, part of Fox's new spring season Sunday. Welcome to the break, everybody.

It's Henry Gilbert, and I hope you were saying Boo Earns, just like I was. And a big thank you to our guest this week. Toby Jones of regular show, regular show The Lost tapes, OK, KEO, Let's Be Heroes and so many other great things. And that includes the original independent film Toby wrote and directed. AJ goes to the dog park. Be sure to check that out. It's on pretty much every place you watch movies.

I really enjoyed it. And the Blu-ray is awesome too. Thanks so much again, Toby, for coming on. And if you enjoy this podcast, you should know that Talking Simpsons is only possible because of supporters like you at patreon. dot com slash talking simpsons you would get to hear this podcast early in ad-free and if you signed up for five bucks a month you get early and ad-free episodes of Talking Simpsons and our sister podcast what a cartoon that's right nothing like the ads you're hearing right now and it's early plus tons of bonuses new ones each

month we cover an episode of Futurama and King of the Hill just like we do The Simpsons and you can only hear that if you are a Patreon subscriber we are over 100 episodes in a Futurama and nearly at the end of season four of King of the Hill. That entire back catalog is there for you as well as all of our previous episodes where we cover The Critic, which is important for this episode for sure, Mission Hill, and many of our favorite episodes

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at patreon.com slash TalkingSimpsons. Simpsons because that is where you get an exclusive bonus each month is basically three extra podcasts in addition to all the $5 ad-free bonuses I mentioned before. That is our What a Cartoon movie, essentially three podcasts and one where we go super deep into the history of an animated feature film just as in depth as we do an episode of The Simpsons. Most recently, you can hear us chatting about the perfect for the Halloween season, Adams Family, 1991 Live Action Adaptation. We had so much fun talking about that.

And if you sign up now, you'll also get to hear the next one we're doing, which is Fern Gully, the last rainforest, which has a very interesting history behind it. And that's just the most recent of eight full years of what a cartoon movies that we have been covering. Studio Ghibli, the Disney Renaissance, Warner Brothers, many other live action adaptations, and so much more. Six and a half hours on who framed Roger Abbott included in there too. All of that is at patreon.com slash Talking Simpsons exclusively for you

if you sign up at the $10 level. And you get a 10% bonus if you sign up for a full year of either the $10 or the $5 level. And you can also gift memberships to your pals perfect for this holiday season. Sign up today once more at patreon.com slash talking Simpsons. I mean, correct me if I'm wrong

because we just talked about how a lot of these animated shows they didn't let them stay there very long. For a long time, it was Malcolm the Middle, right? I feel like that hung out in the right after Simpson slot for quite a while. I'm remembering incorrectly. No, no, it did. It did.

That was, it broke that in 2005. We're actually about to get to that with the creation of animation domination. When Family Guy is back with American Dad, they're like, well, then that plus King of the Hill is two hours. And so it's animation domination. It takes over the whole block. Definitely in my memory, it was always like Futurama, King of the Hill, Simpsons, Malcolm the Middle, and then X-Files is kind of the run that I remember. Yeah, I'm looking at the side.

Sunday night lineup this very night in history. And what follows the critic is married with children, which I expect. It was a 9 o'clock or 930 show. And then afterwards, I was surprised by this. Dream On. So I guess Fox had acquired the edited for non-pay TV episodes of Dream On were airing them for a season. I don't know. I totally don't remember this happening.

And they were putting them on their banner night. Yeah, yeah. Yes. Thank you, Bob. I do remember that because, like, Dreamon also got reruns on Comedy Central after that. And yeah, it was like, Dreamon. it was a sitcom where you'd see boobs and people would talk about masturbation. Like, that's what it was.

But they could cut around those things. You'd also see a lot of public domain clips. Yes. And clips from famous movies, because that was the joke. He's having an issue, and then it jumps to a scene from a movie in which a similar thing is happening. It's a very strange comedic concept. As was the style at the time, cutting to public domain clips, very Michael Moore coded. Oh, yeah, yeah.

You know, I was going to say the critic is the first animated show to directly follow The Simpsons, but it's sort of there's an interesting test case they did a few months before this that I've forgotten about that on December 18th right after the Simpsons episode that night was the debut of the Life with Louis holiday pilot a Christmas surprise for Mrs. Stillman. That's when Louis learns about Judaism. That's right. They kind of do a hate crime to the Jewish woman in their neighborhood. They forcibly put, they're like, oh, she doesn't have Christmas lights on. We'll pull Christmas lights on her house, and then he learns that she's Jewish.

And that's the premise of, like, the pilot? That's the Christmas special, yes. All right. Look, Life with Louis is, you know, we talk about the council of the, like, the nine dugs, right? But also, it's worth noting Life with Louis is of a category of kids show that were, like, Simpsonses. Like, there were a lot of kids that were kind of doing, like, a Simpsonsie type of flavor, but for kids. And I think Life with Louis is definitely one of them. And unfortunately, I saw Life with Louie before Akira.

So now whenever I watch Akira, when that little kid is on the screen in his big chair, I'm like, oh, it's Louis Anderson. It's baby Louis Anderson. Oh, and hey, this also ties into something we're doing right now. A week later on Christmas, the big Christmas night show on Sunday on Fox, was the television premiere of Fern Gully The Last Rain for us. Which, we're doing that. That's this month's what a cartoon movie. Give a listen.

You'll learn some Simpsons facts too. And so in the new year, the Simpsons before this debuts is sandwiched between at 730, the Get Smart Legacy sequel that starred Andy Dick. I don't even know about that. Sorry, that is the TV show, right? Yes, yeah. Is that Get Smart again? Man, is it called Get Smart?

Yeah, I think it is called Get Smart again. It's not just Get Smart, yeah. Listen, a lot of things start Andy Dick. We can't do anything about it now. I say Legacy sequel because the original actors, or at the very least, like Don Adams and 99's his wife in it, I forget that actress's name. They are his parents in it.

So it is like how you do. a legacy sequel now, they were doing that in 1995 with a Get Smart TV show. I'm sure they had a great time shooting that. And I'm sorry, everybody. Get Smart again was, I believe Made for TV movie reboot in 1989 with Don Adams in Old What's Your Face. Oh, sorry, Barbara Feldon.

Okay. And then at 830 was the critic's worst enemy. John Leguizamo's house a buggin. Yes. Yeah. One of the best show titles ever. If you just whip that out as a reference, people are going to just walk away. They won't know what to do with it. And hey, we could ahead of a John LeQuazamo Renaissance

of him like he could win an Oscar in the coming year like his Odyssey he fucking rules in the Odyssey He does rule in the Odyssey and you can't deny that he rules in the opening song sequence from the pest either Yeah Okay so

Yeah they order 10 episodes But they also want Gene and Reese on the hook To do more Simpsons and not just the episodes are contracted for for this That air in season 6 But they also are going to sort of do the advertorial stuff. These ones I actually didn't see when they were new. I only saw them in like the

internet era. A baseball moment with the Simpsons, which aired during Major League Baseball. Oh, I watched that recently. It's called Homer and Bart visiting the NFL on Fox. That aired in September 1995. Al Jean recently said on his Twitter, he wrote that and his payment was tickets to the Super Bowl.

Not bad. Not money either, but go ahead. This was all James L. Brooks's idea because, and I pull this a little from Mike Reese's book, which is that if you started James L. Brooks's career with, like, The Simpsons, if that's where you started, like, I did as a kid anyway. And then later you watch the reruns of his Mary Tyler Moore shows. Then you see, oh, Mary Tyler Moore, like,

when it created an expanded universe of spinoffs, like the first episodes of Phyllis and Rhoda have Mary Tyler Moore on it, and she would appear for major moments. They did crossovers like this a lot. And so here it is, like, 15, 16 years later, you know of course James L. Brooks is going to go like, hey, that worked really good on Rota. That got a big rating for Rota. Why don't we have Jay Sherman be on the Simpsons?

Why not? Yeah. So if you think it's more the Flintstones meet the Jetsons, it's really Phyllis has a phone call with Mary Tyler Moore in her first episode of her short run. That's true. So they're going to bring him Jay Sherman to Springfield. They start working on it and as only the critic writers. And then it was that,

according to Mike Reese, I'm going to bounce between some accounts here. Mike Reese and Springfield Confidential says, Merkin was on board with it, but the rest of the staff said, we will not allow this. To continue, he says, what was especially hurtful was that our most vocal opponents were also our friends. People Al and I had hired onto the Simpsons were fighting against us.

But the loudest mouth in the room belonged to a writer who had just been hired at the show. He'd been there only a few weeks and decided, he knew best what was appropriate for the Simpsons, he didn't last long at the show. Hmm. I wonder who that could have been. I mean, it's got to be Bob Cuchel, right? It could have been, yeah, yeah. I mean, he had a real attitude issue, especially with Merkin.

But, I mean, there were a lot of folks in season six who were only there for season six. Yeah. Or, like, season five people who are only there for season five. So, yeah, I wonder who it could be. But Bob Cuchel sounds likely. I mean, it is an interesting perspective to be, like, joining onto a famous show and deciding to stick your finger in, like, this, like, business. that's going on.

I've been of an odd choice, but I think if it's Bob Cushel, he had like a fairly storied career up until that point, right? And so he probably just thought that he could do whatever. There's a speculation, of course. Yeah, I think so.

And, yeah, you know, we can't blame them for not having the hindsight that we do because it's right to assume this could ruin the Simpsons, make the Simpsons look cheaper. But, you know, 30 plus years later, this episode is just like a pleasant diversion from the normally rock solid season six,

the season with a real point of view compared to some other stuff around it. So I feel like it was completely harmless, but they couldn't have known that. Yeah, I think that like, and I'm sure that there's much more to get into on the history of this, but like my kind of perspective is that taken in a vacuum, if this was the only ever proposed crossover on the Simpsons, and the idea is that the Simpsons just doesn't do crossovers because, you know,

because the sanctity of the Simpsons is to be kept pure. In a vacuum, that makes perfect sense to me. But even setting aside like plus aversory and stuff like that, you know, what happens way, way, way later, correct me if I'm wrong. Isn't the X-Files crossover, like within the... this very same season? It's season eight, but I believe it's written much earlier. I will get to it, of course, in this re-exploration of these earlier seasons. But yes, and then there's a Futurama crossover. And now essentially, I mean, this is my take. Your take may differ. But I feel like Disney does use the

Simpsons as a cameo account. Like, are you Belenziaga? Are you Bad Bunny? They're available. Yeah. Two voice actors are available, but the Simpsons as a whole are available. Well, in skipping it, too, Reese in his book makes the note of like, he couldn't believe that then less than 20 years later, when they do the family guy crossover, the Simpsons just goes like, hey, family guy, you make two episodes. Like, we'll check your notes, but do whatever. It's like, Mike Reese couldn't believe that he went through what he feels was a real trial to get this crossover done. And then when Family Guy does it, they're like, you can just do whatever Family Guy. I mean, I can't not be left feeling like this thing with the critic and the Simpsons. There was like maybe

something else going on. Like there was some other interpersonal aspect that caused there to be such hostility toward it. Maybe I'm wrong about that. That's just like a feeling I get based on everything else I'm seeing. Well, I definitely think Bill Oakley and Josh Weinstein, like, we've asked them both about it, too, in the past. And Bill said, I remember in one of our many Bill Oakley interviews, like, as I recall, he said that he looked back on it, like, you know, we were very strident in our opinions. And maybe we were too strident. He seemed to have a little bit of regret.

This is me assuming things. And, you know, him and Reese, like, they've done each other's podcasts and interviews. Like, they're friends now. So if there was ever bad blood, it all seems to be good. And this is going to sound crazy, but this is an era in which most of the Simpsons writers were in their 20s. No, no, I couldn't be significantly older than the people who wrote foundational things to my, well, that's ridiculous. That is a decade of your life in which you might act irrationally because you do not have the wisdom of age. And maybe you're also like a bunch of poorly socialized nerds who are all working on the Simpsons.

And get no sleep and eat poorly. Yeah. And it's worth noting also that this would have been the first time this type of thing would have come along. So they're reacting in a certain way the first time and then maybe even a little bit later when even X-Files comes along. There's a bit of a different feeling in the room. Now to hear the on the record opposite side of this, I went back to the unauthorized Simpsons oral history book, which has several unnamed sources but also named sources. There's a big chunk of this in the book too. That's why it led me to believe Bob Cushel is the one Reese is talking about because

They basically go from the story of arguing about this to the story of, and then Bob Guchel spoke up, and that caused him and Merkin to have a big fight. So in it, the big quotes they got are from Brent Forrester, who has a great YouTube channel now, doesn't he guys? I do dig that. I also, in fact, Brent Forrester, I really like his online presence to the point where several years ago, this was like mid-pandemic, he was doing like a writing series of classes online where he was like doing a bunch of video things.

It was great. I really enjoy listening to his perspective on stuff. Yeah, he's professor BF. foe on YouTube, a lot of new information comes out of those. I wouldn't call them interviews. More like talking to the camera kind of stuff. Brent Forrester in Unauthorized talks about how like, whenever they saw like

the outline or the script or something that they did not like the current crop of Simpsons writers see that script and did not like it. Forster in Unauthorized particularly brings up that rapping rabbis

seemed mathematically hacky and to meet the Simpsons. You know what? Here's what I'll say about this. And I do like this episode of The Simpsons. I think it's very funny. A lot of classic bits come from it. When you're used to the tone of season six in the writing, the rigorous joke writing of season six, when you drop into this one, it feels a little tacky. It feels a little broad.

And it feels a little cheap. But that is in line with the critic's sense of humor. Yeah. The pop culture references in this one are so much more ephemeral than usual, I noticed, too. Just based on how the different mentalities of the writing staffs vary, this episode is a mark change from the normal season six, Merkin point of view, stay up till 3am to write a sign joke kind of gag. And I think that's also true of the other Gene and Reese episodes that are happening at this time. And I think that, but one thing that these episodes have in common, because like when I was a kid watching these, I didn't know any of what was going on.

But one thing that a normal season six episode and these Gene and Reese episodes have in common is that they're both like maximum joke factory, you know? And so it's like that's what both of them are like, this is the highest density like joke factory era of the Simpsons. And then also we have Gene and Reese who, what do they do? They're total joke factory. And so it's just like, the tone is definitely different, but actually the end goal of basically like putting as many of these jokes in one episode as you can is there. And what they both have in common to me as well is like the jokes have such a like strong rhythmic musicality to them. And it's all about the way that they're structured and paste that they stick in your brain forever.

And that's true of all these episodes. And so it's like even in the case of this episode, it's like it doesn't really have a very good like story. But the fact is that like the jokes, they're so perfect. It's almost like a songwriter who writes a song that doesn't have that much substance, but he can't help but write an amazing chorus that sticks in your head forever. That analogy makes any sense? No, it does. Yeah.

And I mean, it was validating to learn that these were written by a satellite staff of, you know, very talented people. But whenever as a kid I watched this or around Springfield or Simpson Tide or the Sherry Bobbins one or the X-Files one, I thought, something feels different and I can't explain it. And I'm still having fun, but what's the different vibe here? And yes, different people involved entirely. You're 100% true to the point where, you know, I was in, I think, fourth grade when this season was airing, right? And around the school yard, everybody was like, what are the best episodes this season?

Sherry Bobbins and X-Files. Like, those are the ones that we as like fourth graders loved the most from that whole season. And only later do you go back and revisit the season and you're like, oh, these other episodes are maybe like a little bit more sophisticated, you know. As you become more of a film cricket in life. Yes. You view it more cricketyly. Yeah, but my God, if you watch these episodes, like, I was laughing out loud to this.

I've watched this episode 100 times. I was laughing out loud constantly. I think, too, Toby, to the unspoken politics in this, there were a couple people in the unauthorized that were guessing at it that, they felt that Merkin was being very heavily pressured by Brooks to agree to this and that Merkin probably didn't like it conceptually either, but knew it was an important thing for Brooks

and he was picking his battles. Yeah. And meanwhile, on the opposite side, for Gene and Reese, and especially, they wanted the support of the Simpson's staff. They're like, we're all friends, and we're trying to make our show successful. And here we come to you with a script,

and you're like, this sucks and we hate it and we don't want you to succeed. Like, I totally understand why there are hurt feelings. You know, I agree. This is a funny episode, but starting with the Rap and Rabbis is not your strongest foot. Yes. It was such a critic joke that I had to actually Googled.

I was like, did they just do this exact joke on the critic? Because it's like such a critic joke. Also, the way it starts with like 15 different TV jokes in a row, you know, it's not only critic, but it's also Gene and Reese Simpsons, you know. Toby, let me spoil you. They use this joke on the critic that same night in Sherman, woman, and child because they had the Benedicting Monk variety hour in which they sing a sort of doo-wop song. And again, a femoral reference, like many Simpsons references, this is based on the Benedictic

monk phenomenon of the mid-90s in which an album was re-released of their chance. And for whatever reason, it really took off. and it was baffling. And so, you know, Reese says that that kind of inspired the critic staff to work extra hard, as he put it, to make it a great show. I think a little bit of spite,

which is always, hey, that's been a critical driver in my career at times. And so he tells a funny story of a famous response that James L. Brooks gave when it was taken up to him by Merkin that the staff was rebelling. The writer, insurrection is that Reese calls it, that James L. Brooks said,

when did this become a democracy? I wonder what Matt Grading would say about that. Well, okay, that's the other part of this too, is that. Oh, who's that? His name isn't on this episode. I've never heard this guy. Yeah, there was, I think, separate from the writers because Grating is not, he wasn't a day-to-day writer on the show at that time. He didn't like this being a crossover.

And I'll quote from the L.A. Times article that piece that was published the day this aired when it really went public, Matt Grading said, I don't want any credit. or blame for the critic, and I feel this violates the Simpsons universe. The critic has nothing to do with The Simpsons World, and the fans would accuse us of making the crossover episode just to advertise the critic. That's why I've had my name removed from this episode. It's amazing, like, to be in a situation where, like,

you're publicly speaking in real time in the present day about your job, the show that you work on in that way. And it's like, and again, take it in a vacuum, like, that's a fairly reasonable statement, right? I should also say Reese did make a kind of still angry point about it, which I understand why, that he says like, you know, all the writers, Matt Graney's the only guy who took his name off of the episode. All the writers who said this episode sucks still had their names as producers on the episode and got episode payments. It's like, yeah, kind of a good point there, Reese. I can also see that from Graney's perspective, I would bet in 1994, when the critic was coming out,

being advertised as from the producers of the Simpsons, that was leading to, strangers coming up to him and going like, oh, that critic's show. You created that too, right? That's pretty good. The critic, like, that might have been bothering him. I can see that. These things do occur. Yeah. And you know, it was 1994. I'm sure the ads were from the people who brought you the Simpsons. Yeah. Yes. I doubt they were using producer. I feel like they wanted you to think, oh, it's a Simpsons guy. It's his new show. But I will say it's like the statement from the people who brought you the Simpsons, it's like kind of like genuinely accurate when you consider, it's like, oh, the people who just ran The Simpsons for two full years and were also on the Simpsons

before that writing many famous episodes. It's like it's fairly, it's an accurate statement. Like they ran the show. And in that LA Times piece, James L. Brooks is taking very pointed public shots at Matt Grading. Like he's saying like, this is a bad look for a man as rich as you to do these things. And like that it's, it apparently caused like some professional strife between them for a little while. Like here's a big one from Brooks here that I do think he has a good point that the point is

Matt's name has been on Mike and Al's scripts and he has taken. plenty of credit for a lot of their great work. He is the direct beneficiary of their work. The critic is their shot, and he should be giving them his support. Yeah. I heard that afterwards, he said, and this episode is as good as it gets. Wait a minute. As good as it gets.

They got to do that crossover. And also, it's funny in the L.A. Times article, this is a whole other thing, but they actually do even say, John Matoian, the president of Fox Entertainment, declined to comment on this piece. And they even mention in the piece that he did not green light the critic in the first place. The thing that kills the critic. He's the guy they talk about the guy on the commentary. Yeah, he's the guy. I mean, just to briefly go over this, this is a big critic preamble, but I mean, the critic apparently did very well because it was a great lead

out from The Simpsons. It had the same sense of humor, same focus on zany gags, same great animation. Sensibilities were almost like identical in terms of what they were trying to do. The president hated the show. He did not buy the show, and he was the critic's greatest enemy, and the critic would have lasted probably like four or five more years if he had simply not been an enemy of the critic. And I believe they talk about this on the critic commentaries, but at some points in the show's run on Fox, I believe John Mottoyan

would call Gene and Reese up to his office. He would play an episode of the critic and he says, now you tell me why you think this is funny. He was like talking to them like he was their principal. And then I believe at a certain point during the screening, his secretary laughed and his John Mitoin snapped at his secretary. Like, what's so funny about this? Someone tell me what's funny about this show. Look, this is like a really truthful thing, though.

It's like you've heard like me say versions of this where it's just like anytime a show gets canceled, there's some feeling that it has something to do with some sort of mathematical measurement or whatever, but a lot of the time it's just some guy's opinion, you know, and it's like, it's still people making like emotionally driven decisions at the end of day. And if it's the previous administration that did it, then if the critic succeeded,

then it would prove your predecessor was right, not you. So it makes you as a boss look bad. And Reese and other places has given the argument to have like, oh, he used the critic as a testing ground to show that Fox should buy a different cartoon show that isn't co-owned by Sony and then have get all the profits from it, which is the operation that King of the Hill and every following animated series is. They're all Fox owned properties as opposed to this, which is a Columbia series. I mean, yeah, and you could even say that, like, the death of the critic was kind of the death

of the first wave of, like, Post-Simpsons cash-in shows. Not to say that's just what the critic was, but, you know, there was a wave of Post-Simpson's adult animated shows. And I feel like there was quite a lull, right, after the critic ended before that was like really coming back. And, you know, a lot of it was like around the time of, you know, to go back to like animation domination and stuff. Yeah.

Yeah, we get the end of the critic. And then a few years later, we get the beginning of things like King of the Hill, South Park, Darya, and then the second wave begins. Yep. And listeners heard it in the break, but guys,

I pulled up one of the ads, vintage ads that people have saved from the night that this aired to promote it. And it goes like, the Hollywood is coming to Springfield for a film festival. No mention of it being a critic crossover episode. And then it goes, and then after that, it's the critic. Oh, is that true? Yes, it advertises both of the episodes together as an hour block,

but don't say they don't promote the fact that you'll see the critic on the Simpsons before his episode debut. So that implies that they were actually afraid that if they mentioned the critic as a part of the Simpsons episode, it will draw people away from the Simpsons episode, prevent them from watching it. Oh, it's that awful show that was on after Home Improve Turn the channel. I mean, if I'm being honest, it reminds me of some of the early promos for the OKCCO crossover

Nexus episode where they tried to hide the fact that it was an OKCO episode. I think there might have been an early crossover Nexus promo that didn't even mention KO and just was like, tune in and watch Garnett and Raven, you know, interact on this cartoon. So yeah, Grading takes his name off it. It's why you don't see it created by credit and you just see developed by Brooks and Simon. I believe it remains the only episode Graney took his name off of. And it's funny that Rees said this in his memoir. are the reason everybody is so friendly on the commentary is that he said that they recorded it originally

and it was too negative. All of the negativity just kept spelling out and when it was over, James O'Brooks said, we cannot use this. We're doing this again. And he said it's the only commentary they ever did over. Oh, wow. So we're hearing the second take. Wow. So they were like airing dirty laundry on the first one and they were like, maybe we shouldn't, man, we've got to get the lost media hounds on that. You know, we've got to get our hands on that. I wonder if that too is why Keeler and Dieter, especially. Keeler has to, but especially Deeter. Hey, Ken Keeler wrote that line, I just quoted there. But yeah, that Ken Keeler has to be prompted to talk because maybe he was like really feeling

uncomfortable at this point of like, oh, we're doing part two of this. I don't know what we're doing here. Makes sense to me. I mean, let me imagine there's a version of this commentary that's similar to Principal in the Popper commentary, you know. It's like, I would love to listen to that. Other funny thing about this is, I think they must have, or initially given critic a 13 episode order because after it gets canceled at 10, and one is a clip show, which shouldn't even count as a full production, I think they needed to do a make-good to film Roman

because that's why the TV show Clutter exists. Ah. It was comboed with Eke the Cat, co-created by Savage Steve Holland and David Silverman. If you watch it, it looks like it's animated by the critic team because it is. Holland back in 1996 said, when the critic was canceled, we hired it every single crew member for clutter.

And they made eight, 11 minutes of clutter, which would equal to four 22-minute episodes. So, and film Roman was the production company for The Critic. So I do think it was a make-a-good for lost work to film Roman on The Critic. At this point, I have to admit on the record that I was probably the world's biggest clutter fan back when it was airing. I was a clutter lover. Yeah, yeah. Something about the show. I was ripping off the character designs in, like, the comics I was drawing at school.

Like, I was king clutter. But it was impossible to find because it was, you know, it was intermittently spread amongst these Eke the Cat episodes. Also, I wasn't a huge Eke the Cat fan. I just had stumbled upon clutter and I was like, this is my thing. So now you've met a clutter fan. Well, Toby, did you work with Brian Sheesley, one of the top clutter directors who did a lot of work on regular show? I have to say, I work alongside Brian Sheesley right now. Oh, wow. He's on the same floor as me working on the same production.

So, yeah, yeah, I should knock on his door and ask him some clutter questions. because yeah, I was a huge fan. Also, the thing about the make good is really interesting because it really does say something, it was such a better time back then that staffs would move from one thing to the other instead of being exploded and shot to the four winds between every production,

which is something they do by design so that when they bring you back, they can be like, yeah, we can't pay you more money, you know, that kind of thing. Where it's like, yeah, there's like an effort being made to like move these people around and give them work. Like, it's kind of crazy.

Whereas now between seasons of one show that will blow you up and send you to four wins and make you wait for a year or whatever. It is funny to think of a time when they're like, oh, we canceled your animated series prematurely. Here, we'll give you the four episodes, we promised, yeah, that amount of work. And, you know, despite grating distaste for this episode, it's very funny how Futurama is borrowing so much of the critic talent,

like same supervising directors, same directors, for the most part, for a lot of the episodes, a lot of the same writers, and it's not even a film Roman production, Futurama. But so much of the same people have gathered together to make Futurama just four years after this. I think MacRaining probably regrets this a little bit, just a little bit, I think. Meanwhile right now, the most recent quote on this I found was from June. Al Jean says, like, it's never been closer to happening, a critic reboot.

So we will see. Oh, please, please. I want that to exist. And my God, I would kill to be involved. I mean, my God. Hey, now we're in here. Look, it's a juicy episode. Monks?

So after we see the blurry Sam Simon that, you know, what? Here's another thing I'll say I like about this. On Disney Plus, it's still there. They could easily fix it or have it just be the normal credits, but it stayed as the broadcast version. I hope they never changed that retroactively on Disney Plus. Even if everybody's friends now, they need to keep that history of like, hey, Macrating and James O. Brooks were not that happy when this aired. 100%. It's the start of Gene Reese are back. The time fillers are back. Full eye on Springfield. It's a gene and re-staple reusing animation, although this does include two new Ion Springfield clips just to extend the run of this. And because of that, they have to redo the theme. So it's not,

I mean, it's the same kind of instrumentation, but they have to extend it a bit. And I believe this is from Flaming Moes, most of this bit. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. They add some new ones. And so it's like, you start and you're just like watching like 12ion Springfield blackout gags in a row right at the very beginning. To see even in season six, season three animation looks so out of place even then. I mean, it's claskey chupo style too, but especially, well, they looked weird then, but the bikini babes in this are like the closest to rotoscope the Simpsons kind of gets, I think. And the other thing about like the length of this opening section, I remember I was watching this with Maddie and then she was just like, 22 minutes can be so much time. I would say this episode really only has two acts. The act break is

weird act break, two to three. And yes, it starts with the Rap and Rabbis, Brent Forrester's mathematically hacky idea. I mean, doing a can't touch this riff with Rapid Rabbis, that does seem a bit hacky. Yeah. It was a way to acknowledge the weird phenomenon I mentioned earlier, the chant album, which was recorded probably between the 70s and the early 80s, but it was re-released in the early 90s and became a hit. And yes, the follow-up album was a Christmas album. They were really doing all of the novelty album stuff. Nice. Also, in a very very very cartoonish season four kind of way. Homer just pulls a roast pig

out of camera to eat too, which that's the type of thing Matt Graney hates in like Futurama in 2012. Like he's complaining about that kind of thing. And then we hear, we all stink, which we learn that the town is pretty bad. They burn skin are alive, for instance. Two of the greatest line readings in this episode

are just from background characters. I love Hank going, we all, hey. And then later, it's the Dan Castle another guy in the audience who says, oh, Mar just going to say something. And it cuts off, like, before he could even finish the line we move on. Like the timing of that is like so funny. I do have the clip of that one in our first clip.

But yeah, the way they show how bad the town is, it is also funny how we cover things a decade apart right now. I said it when we did it, but in the Springfield legalized the same-sex marriage episode, it is the same structure of a person on TV tells them that Springfield is bad. We need to improve our reputation. What do we do? And they then have a town hall meeting,

like very similarly patterned in another Al Jean-produced episode. And this is where we also see we get another cutaway. Cutaways are coming hot and heavy in this opening here. As Bart says, his business will be ruined at no more tourists. This is where, like, Bart says bad Japanese. Well, I mean, it sounds like Nancy Cartwright was given phonetic Japanese when it says, like, Tapustano Chizu Map, which like Chisu and Mapu are like, they're both map. It's like you say Map, yeah.

Or he's saying cheese map. Yeah, that scene goes a little long for being a simple cutaway. And I don't know if that one got cut for syndication, but it seems like a pretty easy candidate for that. It's very mean to Drew Barrymore also, too. It's like they think that Moe looks like Drew Barrymore, apparently. Yeah. And, I mean, again, a femoral reference.

Like, this is what Drew Barrymore was doing at the time. She was a real party girl. She's rehabilitated. Now she's a lifestyle brand with a very popular talk show. She's kind of like the Ellen of this modern era, the nicer Ellen. And I do find it odd. This might be a nitpick, but it's weird that Mo is hungover. Because I don't think Mo was ever to.

picked it as drunk or drinking. That's true. It's not really his thing. That's a good point. Yeah. Maybe they knew they were hitting Barney so hard in the next act. They're like, it can't be Barney. It can't be a hungover Barney for this joke. Well, it could have been Chekhov's Barney, you know, set up a Barney in Act 1 and then do Barney and Act 3. But, you know. By being him, but I'm hungover. Like, sorry, Miss Barrymore.

Like, Drew Barrymore would be on the show multiple times since then, too. It's kind of mean she, though this was the year, she was Justin Boisza on the side. We talked about that a few episodes back. a film I saw with my mother in theaters. And this was also the same year she did Playboy and as well danced on David Letterman's table. This all happened within like three months of this episode. She flashed him, correct? Away from the camera.

Oh, you've not seen this, Toby? It's TV classic that she's, I pulled it up the other last night in research. Like, wait, when was that? It's like two months after this that she's just doing an interview and, you know, she's having good time. Letterman is flirty and all that as he was. and he's like, I hear you do a show where you like strip on stage. And she's like, no, no. It's with this comedian friend of mine.

And I play Lolita. And I was like, well, but anyway, and she's like, oh, here, I'll show you the dance. And she gets up on his table and just does some of the motions and then ends it with a very quick, her back is to the audience. And she ends up of her shirt and then pull back down. There's so much Drew Barrymore history, I didn't know. I think for me growing up, she was kind of like came to my awareness, like when scream came out, you know.

Also, she was in the film Poison Ivy, which was a Lolita for the 90s. Right. That's what she meant. Henry, did you see Poison Ivy with your mother? Yes or no? I have never seen Poison Ivy or it's direct-to-video sequels. Disappointed in you. I got to say.

I needed a woman's road travel angle on it to see a Drew Barrymore movie, like, boys on the side. Well, I also didn't see her other movie that, your mad love, which also came out in 95. And hey, if you want to see her and David Letterman, 30 years later, reflecting on that in 2025, he appeared on her talk show and they talked about it. And I'll say, Barrymore does not express any, like, shame or she's like, oh, I'm so embarrassed. Like, she's like, yeah, it was a crazy kid. And, hey, if my daughter does that, you know, she's having fun. That's nice. Yeah. Gene and Reese are following their monorail format here. Hey, a great format, going straight to the town hall meeting to figure out what they're going to do. And the first joke about it being like they want to change the name of

the town to Seinfeld, like, you think that's him feeling a little of the heat of Seinfeld being the new cool show? I would say, probably. Yeah. I do like the royalty-free version of the Seinfeld theme they play. It's like a homemade-sounding version. No, I noticed that they were very hands-off about Seinfeld. I think they disrespected the show a lot. And, yeah, Seinfeld became a hit maybe in its third season. The Simpsons had a hit right out of the gate.

But they start around the same time. And it does feel that they just had a lot of respect for the show. The critic made fun of Seinfeld, I think, in its first episode. Right, yes. Because Jay's depressed. There's a parody of Seinfeld on television. And then Marty, his son says, Why aren't you laughing, Dad?

this is the way people actually talk. Right. Which is a very mean joke about Seinfeld. You know what? And in the next episode, Lisa's wedding, they really take it to Jim Carrey, which also the critic hated Jim Carrey quite a lot, too. Except for Duke love Jim Carrey.

Oh, yes. Not talking, but. Then we see Bart has his own plan. Find the Lost Dutchman's Mind. And Bart at Millhouse being rolled up in the screen together. Very funny drawing. I like to draw a lot. Then in a very strange unsimsony transition,

they do like a wipe upwards. They never do that, right? It's what they call the perpendicular reverse Star Wars wipe. This is where in our first clip, Marge finally gets to make her pitch. I'm Marge Simpson, and I have an idea. March is going to say something. Now, I know you haven't liked some of my past suggestions, like switching to the metric system. The metric system is the tool of the...

The old person's remarks will be stricken from... from the record. Who said that? But my new idea is different. I think we should hold a film festival and give out prizes. Could we make our own movies and enter them? Yes. At last, an excuse to wear makeup.

All in favor of Maud Simpson's film festival idea? Film festival! Film festival! I like my idea? Actually, I have several others. Don't push your lock. Don't push your lock. You guys are right.

Dan say like, more's going to say something. I love that guy. He was in the running for the next Just Amta Ticket guy. So I do want to go over a math here. Forty Rock's the Hog's Head. That's actually 0.125 miles per gallon.

That's not very efficient. It's a very old car, I guess. Bob, do you still think of all this anti-metric system map or even miles? Like, you're still holding on to the Fahrenheit living up in BC, right? Unfortunately, I'm now learning Celsius and it's terrifying me.

Oh, no. You've changed. This bit here of Marge makes the pitch and everybody actually likes it. I wonder if Gene and Reese knew that this kind of did follow. This is the Monorail setup, but then they did the follow-up to it in the casino episode that was kind of similar to it. Oh, people actually like Marge's idea. And now this is kind of also the joke that follows up the Monorail one without maybe knowing that the casino episode already did the follow-up to it.

They both work, but it feels like they didn't know that they did it on the casino episode. Yeah. And I respect, like, what's funny about it is, like, the physical story about the film festival, you know, we're four minutes in and it's already pretty much like launching forward. And it's like the character story will wander in much more lackadaisically as the episode goes on. But I appreciate that it just very quickly gets to it, even with all the like stuff at the beginning, we like very quickly are into the film festival. We don't have a moment of like Marge like, I suddenly, oh, what about a film festival? We don't know why she wants to do a film festival. It doesn't matter. Like, let's just get going, you know? It comes preloaded in her brain to the meeting. And by having a film festival, like this lets Gene and Reese do their favorite thing. Characters will either watch TV or go to a movie or now everybody gets to just make their own movies. It's a series of sketches. It is a series of sketches that you can fill out an episode with. Although I feel like Wiggum's movie was cut at the script stage because he seems to be the most excited.

We don't see his movie. True. Yeah. He cameos in Apu's movie and yet can make his own. I will say, listeners, this episode would have been even an hour longer if I could have found a script for it. it online, but there's no vintage script for this out there, unfortunately. Not yet that I can find. Not yet. We'll have to do a follow-up. So yes, this is where we start with Bartz, which is the eternal struggle, which I really liked hearing Gene and Susie Deeter and King Keeler all kind of

agree like, hey, the Incredibles teaser did kind of rip this off a little bit. Like, I think I joke about a fat guy trying to squeeze into pants is timeless. Yeah, yeah. I mean, Bird is credited on this episode in his usual position. Nobody, Susie Deeter never said. as like Brad Bird suggested this or whatever, but he was around, so it could just be like, you know, stealing from himself perhaps or I don't know. But like he said,

Simpsons was hardly the first ones to do a joke about struggling to put on jeans. Yeah, there was a fourth. And I don't know if relaxed fit dockers were new, but it seems like a very specific call-out. Yeah. So these are slacks.

At the time. Yeah. Well, you know, as Reese talks to a lot about it in his book, too. It's like you gain a lot of weight on the Simpsons. You're battling your pants quite a lot when you're working on the Simpsons. Look, When I heard, I read recently, I heard, I think it was one of the Conan O'Brien podcasts, where he mentioned, like, yeah, we ordered burgers from islands every single day.

And I'm like, if you've been to islands and had their burgers, that is a very dangerous proposition to get that every day. You guys were more of, like, what, ordering a subway sandwich or a... We would vary it up. I think they were locked in the writers room because they're, like, on this enclave within, you know, the unit of the Fox Studio, where stuff had to get delivered to them. Otherwise, they have to, like, leave campus. So, like, I guess they would get islands brought to them. At Cartoon Network, we would walk across the street and go to one of any 20 restaurants that were over there, which meant, you know, if we got islands one day, we could get a healthy bowl the next day or whatever. But usually we were actually eating unhealthy crap, so that's actually quite relatable.

You know, you're trying to get through the day and you're like, what'll make me happy right now? So I can actually relate to it. And yes, Bart is dressed as Criswell from Plan 9 from Outer Space for no reason. It doesn't fit the vibe of the movie, the genre of the movie. It's just funny to see Bart. That's why he's wearing gloves in his fancy outfit, right? to look extra Chris well. And that's the one thing Ken Keeler says on the commentary.

Yeah. And this episode is so devoted to being the joke machine that the plotting is not exactly tight because it's strange that we see the filming of movies that are not part of the festival. Yeah. So Bart's movie and then next Ned Flanders movie, we just watched the filming,

but apparently not entered into the show. And in the case of both of them, it's like, well, I guess watching the filming is the same as watching them the final version with what we're seeing. So I guess I can see why they did that. In Flanders is filming, see that God is canonically exists and visible to Ned in world.

Like that also is quite a big move. Matt Raining was very insistent on like Homer can only see God in a dream. He can't literally show up to him. The audio gag of the manger falling behind the various like sets of trees and the audio cutting out is like so brilliant. Yes. I forgot about that aspect of this joke. And it's also very funny that they really have to cheat to make Todd fit into this

floating reed bassinet or whatever it is. He like shrinks down to baby size. Todd had to really contort himself to get into that basket, didn't he? This is where we get our first deleted scene that's on the DVD that I need to explain who the actors are in it because one of them is a temp voice. But Abe is filming what appears to be either a porno or a sex comedy with Jasper and Mrs. Glick. But Nancy Cartwright is subbing in for Mrs. Glick here. So let's give a listen to the film they were making. What the pool boy saw! Take one!

boy, how'd you like to scrub the algae off my bottom? Oh, I'm hip to your bitch, hot mama. Now what do we do? And Abe fell asleep at the camera. So that was Nancy Cartwright as Mrs. Glick, right? Yes, yes. The sound is them ripping off their clothes to reveal that they are wearing Victorian era

like sunbathing suits as well. So they're heavily dressed. This far into the episode is when we finally get the idea of like, what if a film critic came to town? Like, now they finally are getting to it. And this was a different time for film crickets on TV when it was a very well-paying job for a lot of people. Yeah, I mean, I think it's part of the joke that March says there are over 600 critics on TV

because there weren't that many, but it seemed like there were so many noble critics, Siskel Ebert's still alive, Leonard Malton, still a healthy middle-aged man. And then, I mean, he is the last one holding on from this era. And he was a whippersnapper in this era compared to some of his older contemporaries. This year saw the death of both Rex Reed and Gene Shalid, who passed away, within a month of each other. And I believe Gene Shalett was like 101 years old. They're happy in heaven now where they belong.

It's incredible. The thing with these shows, you know, all these film critics shows from the 90s, they're great television. I wish they were more high production. Like the budget of just the intro to Siskel and Ebert is like, like, that's a very well-produced intro. It's like, I want more stuff like this. It was such a different time of like compared to now,

just to get an opinion on a movie, like there was some level of respect or like, well, this critic says, this and there's only, you know, I'll have to turn to them or a quote. I mean, you just watch any trailer for a movie now and the quotes on them are from anybody, like literally letterbox accounts, like none of it matters anymore, it feels like. Yeah, and there's no like voice of God critic at the moment. And instead, finding a critic with whom your taste aligns, who you consider someone you can like trust and follow is almost the same as finding the effort you have to put in finding like movies you like. It's like you got to like put forth real effort to find like oh these are the

critics that I know will make interesting recommendations to me and that I agree with and will help guide my taste, you know. And also for me with film critics now, I more just want to hear them. I have turned away from the structure of reading a film review compared to like as in published on a website as opposed to oh, they were on a podcast talking about this. I'd rather hear their extemporaneous thoughts with another person about the movie. Maybe that's my fault for not reading the word is much anymore. You're part of the problem. No, it kind of goes both ways

because it's like I heard like Adam Neiman on a podcast, right? And I was like, oh, I really like this guy. And then I started reading his written reviews as a result of hearing him on a podcast. So I think it can go both ways. Plugging for Adam Neiman, the critic here. In our next clip,

we get to see finally the big guest of the episode. What's you doing, Ma? I'm looking for a film critic to help judge our festival. Did you know there are over 600 critics on TV? And Leonard Malton is the best looking of the mall? Ew. Welcome to Coming Attractions. I'm your host, Jay Sherman.

Thank you. Tonight, we review an aging Charles Bronson in Death Wish Nine. I wish I was dead. Oie. But first, we have a special guest, Rainier Wolf Castle, star of the reprehensible McBain movies. Jay, my new film is a mix of action and comedy. It's called McBain.

Let's Get Silly. Did you ever notice how men always leave the toilet seat up? That's the joke. You suck, McBain! Yeah, the critic was really hard on Schwarzenegger. I think around the time the Simpsons backed off just a little bit because they couldn't use the McBain name for a bit. And I guess they're bringing it back here. But I feel like this is a bit unfair, and we didn't know what we had when we had it,

because I missed the era of compelling mutants being cast in movies. Like Stallone, Schwarzenegger, Weirdos. who are just fun to look at and watch act. Yeah, and also, like, there's a series of movies, like Schwarzenegger movies in particular, where it's like, the joke is that he's playing a normal guy, but it's like not really even commented on in a movie like Jingle All the Way or whatever,

where it's just like, and it's just like a built-in thing where it's like, you like this guy, and he's playing a normal guy, but he's absolutely wild to look at. And it's kind of cool. I don't know, I do like that stuff. This is also interesting because, like, the critic just called out Schwarzenegger, right?

And then The Simpsons has its own. own Schwarzenegger, which is McBain. And then the Simpsons would later in the movie, of course, go back to Schwarzenegger and get rid of McBain. So it's like a weird loop. We heard Henry's groan of agony. I hate it so much. No, thank you for saying that, Toby. Because, yeah, in my notes, too, like, this Charles Bronson joke into Rainier showing up, like, it reminded me of, like, this is a philosophical

issue I have that I prefer that it feels like more of the McReyney idea of the Springfield is its own world. You can't buy frosted flakes from Kellogg's in the Simpsons, you buy frosted crusty flakes. And there shouldn't be a Charles Bronson in the Simpsonson world. In Springfield, there should be a Charles Bronson type. But I can see from the Al Jean-Gene School of Telling Jokes that the Geneerese style is, well, we want to parody Charles Bronson, it's much faster to just say Charles Bronson. But I would say if they did the joke that they first do in the first appearance of Troy McClure, and it was just Troy Donahue or Doug McClure, that would suck and you would lose out on one of the best characters

in the series. I mean, I understand why you would parody Schwarzenegger with this character. And I think the McBain jokes are funny. The voice is funny. But then when you actually watch Schwarzenegger in movies, you're like, no, he's not this monotone guy who can barely speak. He is just a very charismatic man in general. So it does feel a bit unfair.

And I'm just, I'm throwing shaded jokes that are 30 years old. But I feel like, again, we didn't treasure Schwarzenegger enough. Ain't that just the way? We never treasure things while we have them. You know, now I'm watching a bunch of old Dark Castle movies from the 2000s that I took for granted back then. You never know it when you have it. Another thing I want to mention is, of course, that's the joke is like a major line in comedy history. But it's funny to think that that line has actually been lightly divorced from its original context, where it's like in the original joke, he's saying that's the joke instead of a punchline,

where now that's the joke is something you say when someone doesn't get a joke, you know. Yeah, thank you, Toby. I see this being misused, I guess. I've done it. I've done it for a purpose. In this case, he's just announcing, like, in case you weren't aware, I told a joke.

Yeah, yeah. Now, if people are like, oh, I don't get it, and you reply with that, like, hey, stupid, that was the joke. Well, I mean, to exist on social media, especially, I think I've seen Bob, out of all three of us,

I think Bob has had to suffer from this the most of telling a funny joke on social media and then a reply explains your joke back to you poorly without catching a key element. Look. You kind of do have to reply, that's the joke to those people. Unfortunately, you know, being online, every day becomes a less joke-friendly atmosphere.

It's true. You honestly just have to power through and beast through and just be like, that joke was for me. If you weren't getting it, that's not my business, you know. Yeah, I mean, you have to have confidence because unless you do, your joke is going to be like Homer's Turkey Sandwich Wish in that Trias of Horror episode, where you have all of these clauses built in. And it's like, before you say anything, I know about this and I know about that. Here's three follow-up tweets and let you know I'm aware of the. things I'm not mentioning in the first tweet. You just have to power through it and then mute

anyone who tries to correct you. And that's it. That's all there is to it. I mean, my Twitter account was that a lot of like, I would try to make a joke and then say, obviously, I know that historically this happened and I'm aware of this thing. And nobody reads that. The person who will try to out pet it to you with a reply isn't going to catch that anyway. And so, yeah, I think I've stuck pretty well on my resolution since joining Blue Sky of, I do not reply to those people. And I just instantly mute the account and I'm done with it. Well, it's just funny. It's a different in lifestyle philosophy. If I see a joke I don't get or I don't like, I then don't do anything.

And I just continue to move on with my day as opposed to like popping in. Yeah, it's a different lifestyle. Yeah, I agree, Toby. Moving on with your day is great. Yeah, I tend to do that in most circumstances because I like my day and I don't like commenting online. And all of our days are numbered, folks. Oh, yeah, that's for sure.

Also, man, Wolfcastle, his standup is so bad. he could host Saturday Night Live soon. Oh, that is a topical reference there to current events. I will say out of the many jokes that they did on the critic that some felt too mean, I think they were the right level of mean to Woody Allen then. I think they did a lot of Woody Allen as a creep jokes back then and they were right to do so. I vindicated on that. I mean, they were much harder Woody Allen than The Simpsons was back in the day. And look, the thing with these critic jokes is they're well structured a lot of the time. And so I found that like when I watch a critic episode, even if, like, on paper, the joke isn't even like that good,

I will laugh because it's just, and it's like music. It's like really, really great. That's not necessarily the case with the specific Woody Allen thing, but yeah. Yeah, it would take the Simpsons a while to be this mean to Woody Allen. I believe there's a joke later where he's writing Chinese Fortune cookie inserts. And I think the joke is him asking, what did I do to deserve this? Oh, right. It's in the Japan one because he's doing a commercial there.

He's like, this will make your interiors go bananas. Yes, thank you. He's writing Chinese Fortune cookie fortunes on another episode. Did I just imagine this? That's in the Simpsons go to Chinatown one later. He's also doing it there, yes. Got it. But that would be like five years later.

I do love that line. What did I do to deserve this? Oh, right. And by the way, I don't mock Woody Allen from a place I've never seen his movies. I watched like a dozen of them like 20 years ago. There's too many. And I did think some were good and some of them do have quality to them. But in this last year, I've watched like now a dozen Ingmar Bergman movies.

I'm like, oh, he ripped off like so many of the like good filmmaking stuff from Bergman. He was such a Bergman fanboy that when you watch like say smiles of a summer night from Bergman, it's like, oh, okay, this is the good version. Like, this is the great version of this thing Woody Allen made. Yeah, pretty much anytime Woody Allen was going for a very serious tone, it's like a pretty direct lift of usually Bergman specifically. That's just what he was doing. And yeah, I agree. I was at the time, I was getting into like Bergman and Woody Allen, like, Woody Allen's like deeper cuts around the same time. Long time ago, he's lifting pretty directly from that stuff. Sorry guys. The only Bergman I'm into is Spielberg.

Here you're just talking about it. That was me talking like a tweet thread of just like, no, I've seen Woody Al movies, except I watched him at a good time. Here's the thing. No matter what you say, everyone will always be mad at you. Go ahead. Bees mad at me. Yeah. So this is where Margin, Lisa, decide that he's the one to go for. Dear Mr. Sherman, on behalf of the people of Springfield, I would like to invite you to judge our film festival. You can stay with us and enjoy the sights and sounds of the country.

Marge, is this a pimple or a boil? Just a minute, Homer. Look what you made me right. Anyway, we think you'll really enjoy our quiet little town. Sincerely, Marge Simpson. You are really want to leave Manhattan? Sherman, I just realized you insulted me. Now you will die.

Hey, Nudnik, your shoes untied. From here, they appear to be tied, but I will go in for a clue. Those are look. Taxi. Those are inspection. These are loafers. You know what?

I forgot to clip out the great, my ears are burning joke too. That's also. Oh, that's a good. Yeah. You wanted to see inside so he lit a cute tip. Now, I love the joke construction of that, look what you made me right. Oh, my God. Whenever this joke happens, I always like turn it around in my head so many times.

It doesn't make any sense, but then it also makes perfect sense. I laughed out loud so hard at that joke. Because, again, the thing with these episodes are, they're so joking. dense. You watch them a million times and there'll still be one or two jokes you don't actually remember from the last time you watch it. And that was one of them for me. I absolutely love it. And the fact that it pays off more later. We see that he did read that exact line. That's great. Oh, and another line, just like that's the joke that has lived on in my brain too much. It's a social media concept, too, of like, on top of a pile of money with many beautiful ladies. Whenever I

mentally try to go like, why does this rich person do this? How can they live with themselves? It's just like, yes, I have to remind myself. He really deflected that shame. And then it turns out the act break joke was adlib by Dan Castlenetta, who was tempting for Harry at the time, and they thought it was so funny, they left it in. I guess the original act break was just McBain looking at his shoes, and then it fades the night, and then we fade to black. That's great. I mean, look, that's also just like, again, the way that Wolfcastle's line, this phrase is incredibly funny. I have to note, you know, Jay Sherman mentions, he's like, I'm going to leave Manhattan. He says Manhattan. So I was just in Manhattan. I was just in New York for a friend's wedding, and I looked everywhere for Jay Sherman,

and I could not find him, which is really frustrating. He's very short. Yeah, I'll keep an eye next time. I really love the drawing of to get the joke to physically work on Wolfcastle. He has to be in like a yoga level like deep bend. It's such a funny drawing of him too. And we were talking about how the critic borrowed the monk joke in the episode that aired that night. They borrow this plot line in a season two episode. The episode is from chunk to hunk. In that episode, I believe Jay Sherman gives the actor Jean-Paul Le Pope,

a very funny parody of Jean-Claude Van Dam. He gives this movie a bad review. That guy threatens to kill him. but it's all a ruse to prove to Jay he can be a good actor. Right. It says, like all tough guy actors in real life, I'm as dainty as a doily. Yes. Yeah. It's good. Also, Dieter and her team, they did a great Simpsons recreation of the New York City skyline that opens a critic episode. That's a really great. And you said it before, but Claussen is doing very good work on this episode of like he has the Hans Zimmer, you know, opening of the critic. And he is, now writing, you know, the score for this episode off of that with a lot more of the jazzy

style in it than he normally would do on the Simpsons episode. Yeah, I couldn't not get excited seeing the setting of the critic as interpreted by the art team of The Simpsons. It's like I couldn't not be thrilled as a fan of the shows seeing that. They'll take about three more years before Homer goes back to himself to New York City. So this is where Jay arrives at the Springfield Airport. And, you know, my husband was even asking me to, he's like, Okay, so this Jay Sherman is not the Jay Sherman that is on the critic show

because the critic Jay Sherman can watch The Simpsons on TV. So this has to be the Jay Sherman of the Simpsons universe, who just happens to be very similar to the Jay Sherman of the critic universe. Sure, whatever makes you sleep at night. This is where he arrives in Springfield. It's supposed to say Jay's name, not yours. Oh, you're right. There you.

Don't! Just a second. Oh, that's you... Don't! Hello, I'm Marge Simpson, and this is my husband, Homer. Oh, nice to meet you, Marge. I saw your hair from the plane. And you must be the man who didn't know if he had a pimple or a boil.

It was a gummy bear. Coming up next, the Flintstones meet the Jetsons. Uh-oh, I smell another cheap cartoon crossover. Bart Simpson, Miss Jay Sherman, the critic. Hello. Hey, man, I really love your show. I think all kids should watch you. I suddenly feel so dirty. Yeah, they credit Al Jean for writing that joke as a way to deflate the tension during the writing process, I think.

Look, The Simpsons, the show is hedging a bit being like, yeah, we know what we're doing here. I especially love hearing Bart say, all kids should watch it. Like, that's such a great extra level to it. It's funny because the Simpsons at this point, they were developing mostly a child audience, too. Right, yes, which as Bill Oakley has told us in other in separate situations, it's what was driving them crazy when they would see they would get beat in the ratings because the ratings that mattered were not the children, the people under 17 who were watching The Simpsons.

Yeah. John Lovett's saying, you know, you must be the man who didn't know if he had a pimple or a boil. It's a classic example of the whole thing that he brags about where he's like, I can make any line funny. I'm sure you've seen like this like a clip online where he's like, literally I can make any line funny. And he like brags and then demonstrates it. It's like the specific little pause on boil.

It's like really damn funny. Yeah, he really has one-of-a-kind line reading, John Lovitz. Yeah, something they should have argued where they were having this internal battle, though they do bring it up on the commentary a little bit, is that even though Jay Sherman had never met them before, this is like the fourth time in the show. One of his characters has shared a scene with,

especially Julie Kabbner, like Marge and Homer share all these scenes with John Lovett's characters in the first four years of the show. Yeah, I wonder if they had those, these discussions about like, do we do a joke about how he sounds like Artie Ziff or whatever. That takes another 12 years, I think. Yeah. Going back to the airport scene, though, I rarely see anyone holding up a sign when someone's name on it because I think this is a relic of when you can meet people at the gate

era of the airport. Now there's only one place to meet people at the airport and they will see you when they come out. But whenever I see someone holding up a sign, I think of this and many other airport sign jokes. Well, yeah. Some sitcoms over the years. There's that clone high episode that's all about running to the gate over and over and over again. It's like, well, you can't do that now. Also, I will say Homer writing his own name several times. We talk about, you know, I think Homer Simpson gets dumber every year. And this episode has many key examples of that. When I write the same typo at least twice in my notes, I do feel like Homer in those moments as well. Yeah. And Flintstones

meet the Jetsons. A fairly recent as of 1995. Only 1987. That was the release date. And not good. as a kid really disappointed in this and also Mel Blank and George O'Hanlon audibly dying during the production of this. Look, and again, because of my age at the time, I was not aware of when any of that stuff happened. So I didn't know, like, oh, there are X number episodes

of the Jetsons, right? And the Jetsons had like a revival or that this movie came way later. I thought it was all part of the same soup. Only now is a total nerd who does this for a living. Do I know how this all played out? Well, you've gotten to play around on Jellystone. You know, the Flintstones and the Jetsons

they're like special appearances in the Jellystoneiverse because while they are all owned in the same Hannah Barbera like thing, they were usually treated even on like Laughal Olympics. I watched one episode of Laughallympics recently and they make it a big deal of like, and who's here? Wow, it's Fred Flintstone.

They interview him like, it's an event that Fred Flintstone is there to be interviewed. Yes. And actually before I even started on my first episode of Jellystone, I started a little bit early and I helped out and I did a few revisions on the Jellystone Jetson's episode, which was boarded by Julia Kay and Chavon Fitzpatrick, and it's a very, very funny episode. And then, of course, the big episode about Flintstones is there's an episode of Jellystone.

The premise is that Captain Caveman discovers that he's actually Barney Rubble. And that one was boarded by Dodge Greenlee. I think it was directed by Caitlin Grasiano. And that's another really funny one that was fun to see that one, like in pitches and stuff. So, yeah, I didn't work much with those characters, just at a little bit of the Jetsons when I popped in, but it's really, really fun to play with these characters and just kind of like go wild with them. And I only wrote one strongly worded letter about the changing of the canon of Flintstones. Yeah, I think in order for that episode to work, one must consider

that these, again, this version of the Flintstones that's in this universe is not the same Flintstones that we see in all the other ones. Maybe that's the only way to sleep at night. Though also, to complain about crossovers some more for myself here, is that we have now crossed another line or at least one for me which was like, okay, Star Wars has crossed over merchandise-wise with many things, but they have never had

a like fictional Star Wars story where the characters in a story meet other characters. And now they are doing that in a Marvel comic book of the regular regular universe Spider-Man and all those guys are going to meet the Star Wars

characters and cross over in the like basically right after episode four timeline. And I'm just like, Luke Skywalker shouldn't meet Spider-Man. And I say that as somebody who loves all of this garbage. Well, I'm not liking it.

It's over. That's all I'm going to say. Are you going to buy that book and see how they did it? No, no. There's ways to read it online. This is Disney pulling the copper wiring out of the Star Wars building. Well, also, it's a test run, right? They're going to see how this plays out and then see, like,

can we try and pull this, you know? Well, I mean, there was leaked news this week of, like, seemingly a AI first development of a Marvel and Star Wars shooter from Epic Games being made too. So I think that's probably the next step. Look, the stuff that I'm seeing from, not to get into just like random current events here, the stuff that I'm seeing from Epic this week is some of the most unconscionable, disgusting shit I've ever seen in my life. So, yeah, Jesus Christ.

Good time. I recommend you get an Epic account and then don't buy anything, just log in and get your free games every week and take money from them. Let me just say about Epic and feel free to cut this because it's completely irrelevant to everything we're talking about. Oh, we're leaving it in. My friend Cody, recently, I was on Discord, we're hanging out. He's like, could you please launch Open Up Fortnite and show me all the Five Nights of Freddy stuff in Fortnite?

And I was like, I haven't opened Fortnite a while, but for you, buddy, sure I'll do it. I cracked open Epic Games store. I cracked open Fortnite. I had to update my Invidia drivers. And updating my Nvidia drivers fucked up my whole thing. And now all my games run poorly just so that I could play Fortnite for a half hour. So Epic Games, you're on my shit list for multiple reasons. Well, luckily, it's the only game.

you'll ever need to play. That was the thing is like I hadn't played it in a while and I was like streaming it for my friends. And everyone was like kind of staring in awe at the fact that it's like, oh, you're playing as Sabrina Carpenter, but you have the baby ducks from regular show on your back and you're flying in on the Planet Express. And then you're about to fight, you know, Freddie Fasbear. And it's just like, it's pretty mind-numbing at a certain point. I mean, it is just like Ready Player 1, right? Oh, yeah, yeah. No, my husband showed me an overload of this information after the, And now it's been a year since then, so it's actually much heavier. But every now and then he'll just load it up to show me like, hey, here's the new dance. Look, I can load up.

Here's Bebop of Bebop and Rock Steady, dancing with Homer to the new hot TikTok trend. Yes. Yeah, we're living at Ready Player 1. Unfortunately, we are all Gunters now. And I don't know, you know, one could say, like, what is really the distinction between that stuff and the crossovers we were doing on K.O. And, you know, I don't know if any jury in the world would believe me when I say that we really come from a place of love, you know, and all of that.

But, you know, I guess I'll have to answer to St. Peter about it all. I would say you do get the spirit of some crossovers, like not just feel like I'm juicing up all of your work, Toby, but it's like I don't say there are crossovers that feel like the people who make the show and draw it think this would be cool. And then they're the ones that feel like executives had a meeting and then eventually told somebody creative what was going to happen. Yeah. And I suppose the Simpsons episode is like a weird middle ground, right?

But the final product is like, you know, very, very enjoyable. Then after the critic moves in for a week, we then see that Gina Reese do correctly understand still. Burns is the villain of the Simpsons and that you need to make him the focal point here. And for the longest time, I thought they just used the Imperial Death March. No, it is a Klossin sound alike. And I think this is the first time I picked up on that. I mean, I think Fox owns the rights to this or they did at the time. Why not use it?

But maybe there's more of a licensing fee for that too. Oh, yeah. I mean, you probably still have to pay, you got to at least pay John Williams or the ASCAP stuff, right? I would imagine. It's funny that this episode's called A Star is Burns, right? And Burns shows up eight minutes in, and he remains a fairly minor part of the episode. If you see it on a list, you have to always tell yourself like, oh, wait, yeah, the critic crossover. You always control F like critic.

Oh, no, that's not the title of the episode. But let's hear what Burns thinks about being hated as a billionaire. It seems that profits have dropped 37%. I'm afraid we have a bad image, sir. Market research shows people see you as something of an ogre. You ought to club them and eat their bones. Well, maybe this film festival could help us. A film biography might let them get to know the real, you, virtuous, heroic, nubile.

You left out pleasant! But I like that film biography idea. A slick Hollywood picture to gloss over my evil rise to power like Bugsy or Working Girl. Get me, Stephen Spielberg. He's unavailable. Then get me his not. Union Mexican equivalent. Listen, senior Spielberg,

I want you to do for me what Spielberg did for Oscar Schindler. Schindler is well, Senor Warnes, sell diablo. Listen, Spilbergo, Schindler and I are like peas in a pod. We're both factory owners. We both made shells for the Nazis,

but mine worked, damn it. Now go out there and win me that festival. This has a lot more meaning to me now that I've watched Schindler's list in the past year for the first time. Yes, now you can see how Burns might have watched it for a minute and all he took away from is like, yes, a fellow guy who worked for the Nazis.

Yeah. This is the only way to make a tasteful Schindler's List joke, and I think they found it. Yeah, they did. It's a very clever way of like, and that Burns is old enough to have worked for the Nazis. I mean, they've done other jokes with this too, but mine worked, damn it. I cracked up at that. It's just like a complete misunderstanding of what Shinless List was about. Yeah, it's great.

It's very rich. And one thing I notice that's very 1995 is they keep saying film biography instead of biopic. Oh, yeah. Because I think biopic was probably variety speak until it trickled down to us normies. And now we say biopic all the time. We know what a biopic is. But they keep saying film biography. And now everybody speaks in variety speak all the time.

And whenever someone talks about a movie, the only thing they can talk about is whether it made money at the box office. Yep. We all care about that bafo or not. I'm always saying Hicks, Nicks, sex flicks. This is some insidery stuff here, which is so funny. and also talk about things that feel equivalent now. Like, a billionaire is hated,

so they produce a phageography about how they're actually great. Like, well, I mean, now they don't even bother making a movie. They tell a prompt to make a shitty picture about how they're great. Or Brian Singer. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. They do that.

But then his name won't be on it for reasons. Wait, is that true? Brian Singer's name is not on that documentary? Yeah. And the Queen movie, I think his name is contractually on it. It's the director's name is taken off of it. The guy who filled in for him. is accredited as co-director after he left.

I thought we were talking about Melania. I was talking about Melania. Oh, no, sorry, yes. No, that's not Brian Singer. It's the other X-Men criminal. Ratner. It's Bradner. I mixed up Singer and Ratner.

That's my mistake. Yeah, well, I mean, they're both X-Men directors who seem to be terrible people. Yeah. But yes, no, the Melania doc. That's what happens. It's also, I mean, I've heard about this before that, like the director of the OJ Simpson 10-hour documentary.

He apparently had made one just as good about Prince. and was working with the Prince estate. And the stories go that apparently it was not entirely beloved and celebratory of Prince and had some warts in it. And they then took away access and he cannot release the documentary. That's why every documentary now is just like working entirely with the people who it's about and you end up with little truth in them, I think. Yeah.

The Prince story was horrifying just because, yeah, the O.J. Simpson documentary is so great that it's just like, yeah, I want to see whatever. you know, that team makes. So it's like hearing that there's this whole other thing that I don't get to see is like it does suck quite a lot. You know, it is funny that we've come along way since 1995. The joke is what if the billionaire made his own puff piece about himself, this biopic? And now we just talked about Melania. That's not like Donald Trump or the White House saying let's make a movie to gloss over all the many problems in the White House to puff up Melania Trump. No, that is a public bribe from Amazon to the Trump administration saying, we'll make this movie. And in exchange, maybe it gets a little, treatment on the side. That's exactly what that is. Yeah, it's a very different set of priorities. It makes that stuff seem quaint in comparison. We learned it's technically not bribery if you just give it to the president's wife, apparently. Also, non-union Mexican equivalent, that is another, like, so much of this episode, like, has just, our words we all just say all of the time.

Although I think I might have mentioned this on the last recording we did of this episode about a decade ago, but I would incorporate that phrase into my speech in language until I realized that it might make me seem racist. Yes, without the context, yeah. Now I noticed that like, oh, I'm not seeing this as much as a joke. Like if someone's referring to a cheaper product or like form of something, they don't really say that anymore. Yeah. The seniorist Bill Berggo, he does seem to be a great director though. He has to do what Burns tells him to do, though. So then we cut to the dinner table and we're getting retro again, pork chop jokes. Pork chop jokes on The Simps. This feels like it's been years since we've had Homer talking about pork chops. And this is where, as far,

far as cross-services go, and Toby, I want to know your thoughts on this. They are positioning the guest character as better than Homer. He gets to eat more of the food. He can belch louder. Like, it's really weird of like, oh, he and Homer is similar, except the guest character is better. Yeah, that's a fascinating thing because, of course, in the world of the critic, you know, Jay Sherman's the biggest loser in that world.

And then he goes to the Simpsons world where he's treated like royalty. And I think that, you know, I can't say for sure. To me, it feels like it's less for like a promotional reason. and more for a story reason because Homer needs to feel inferior in order for like the story to work. Yeah, also I think that ABC really had an issue with how much of a loser Jay was in the first season.

So that's why in the second season they make him cuter. They make Alice someone who can love him and not really have our own life outside of that and just make him a more presentable character, although he still is a big loser. So I think this episode is meant to relaunch him as a funny, charismatic weirdo, not like this put upon a balding 35-year-old

who can't get his life. life in order, despite being paid so much for this job he has. Yeah, I wonder to what degree, you know, this episode is meant to hold hands with that first episode of season two as the way of relaunching the character. Because if you watch that first episode of season two, it's very clear what's going on, even though they still do plenty of jokes about him being a loser. If you imagine that these are maybe intended to be coming out at the same time, yeah, it's kind of interesting to consider. I just kind of scared myself by remembering that Jay is 35. Yeah, I had that realization recently. I think he's maybe, yeah, however old he is, we're all older than Jay Sherman now. Oh, much

shoulder. I mean, Homer's got a few years on him, so Jay's this young Dynamo entering the scene like Pucci. Yeah, that's true. And look, we can take a little bit of comfort in the fact that we age slower than people did back then, but still, it's a little bit crushing. And you know what? They also stuck with the critic canon. He won his second Pulitzer in first season of the critic. That's when he writes, like, Just Don't Go! If it's a bad movie, Just Don't Go. That one of a Pulitzer. That's where we get that joke for the only reason I would ever know the name, Udora Welty. I should read The Optimist Daughter, her Pulitzer Prize winning novel from 1973. I think you should just podcast more.

What's with this whole reading crap? You know, it's a classic thing where it's like, that is a name, it sounds funny, it rhythmically works in this joke context. It's like a mystery science theater joke. They pull some reference that goes completely over your head, but you still laugh. Thanks to the relaunch of the Rift Tracks experiments of MST3K, I have been putting on a lot of old MSD3Ks lately for the first time in a while. And yes, every time I check in on the episodes, you know, I'll watch an episode. I'm like, oh, wait, now I know the name. Like, it still keeps me like, I've learned this name since the last time I watched it.

I know this reference. Yeah, those episodes are so rewarding to go back to, like, every five years as you accrue more knowledge. Or you'll hear some. But then you start losing the knowledge, and then it's probably, like, painful to watch those. Yeah. Or you hear something in your daily life, and you're like, wait, that was a mystery science theater joke. And, like, it unlocks in that way. This is also where beginning Maurice Lamarge for one of his two, well,

this I guess counts as a line. He does the super belch that he had already done on the critics, so they write it into this for it. And Animaniacs, it was a recurring wacko sketch in which they reused TMS animation, but then they had Maurice burp

an entire new song. And it's not really a burp because no one could actually do it for that long, but it's something only he can do. You're right. The quality of that belch is very familiar to animaniac. That's fascinating.

And this is also where, after the belching and the award homers award to Jay Sherman. He even does better than him in that way. They then have visitors over for dinner. I invited my sisters over. Ooh, sisters.

La me. So then I said to Woody Allen, well, Camus can do. But Sartre is smartra. So original. How dro. Yeah, well, Scooby-Doo can do-do. But Jimmy Carter is.

You're a movie expert. So tell us. Who's gay? Oh, I don't know. Avi Fiesti. No. Who else? McGiver's gay.

I heard, didn't you? I kept in the good love it's noises there. Yeah, it's a fun choice to just end on him stammering, confused. Yeah, and despite his reaction to seeing Patty and Salma off screen, they are putty in his hands. He's really into it. Yes. He becomes Artie Ziff for this scene with him. Yeah, I mean, this bit about, you know what, I'll probably do it again.

The next time I visit. Los Angeles and I hang out with our gayest episode ever pals. I usually do still ask them like, okay, who's gay? Come on. Who's the famous person? Who's another famous person? They've given me a couple names that I, much like on this show, I will not make a legally actionable mention of those names. But I've heard some names, folks. It's fun. It's fun to hear. I'll look at those from you off pod. I think it's none of my business. This is a great scene for a couple of reasons. One is that I just love how long the couch in that room has to get to fit all the characters in that gag. And look, I just love watching how, like, yeah, the fact is the physical space transforms to serve the story and the joke.

And so in this scene, this couch is like 15 feet long. It's great. And I never even know. That's a great point. Also, if he's having dinner with Woody Allen, I hope it's not the same ones that Dick Cabot also went to with him with a certain New York City based investor in the 2000. That would be a great episode of the reboot, this to look into that. In the reboot, J.E. should cut back to like, some dinner with Jeffrey Epstein. They can do that now in a cutback.

It feels like ripe territory. And then, of course, this is a great Paddy and Selma scene. And I was thinking about Patty and Selma recently because, of course, the real Jims did a great video about Patty and Selma very recently where he talked about just how cool they are. It's like, yeah, they're cool. I like that they are just ready for all of them. Also, though, they don't know that Harvey Firestein is gay. Like, that's his main thing. No.

And yet, also, they have this all over the critic, but this bit here of like, so I said to Woody Allen, like, this is a lot of directors were friends with famous, you know, critics back then. Like Roger Ebert and Martin Scorsese's long friendship is one of the things come up a lot lately on the blank check about Scorsese. Also, Robert Altman was apparently very good friends with Pauline K.L. Like, and Francois, Truffaut, Truffaut was a huge Hitchcock fan and interviewed him professionally as a critic before Truffaut became, you know, a full-time filmmaker himself. Yeah, that Truffo Hitchcock book is amazing. Yep. And, you know, that Richard Dean Anderson, he's never been married, you know? It's according to his Wikipedia page, He's had some female partners apparently.

And Bob, he apparently lives in Vancouver. So you need to investigate for us in his personal. Well, he's too busy for women. He's working on those gadgets. No, here's what he's doing. He is sleeping on a pile of money with many beautiful ladies because of 80 years of Stargate. Yes, yeah. That's probably how he owns a lot of property in Vancouver.

Because I have to assume Stargate was where Vancouver was filmed in Vancouver. Yeah. Only McGivers and podcasters can own property here. And look, what I'll say about McGiver, very watchable. That is a watchable show. And again, I have so much love for these shows where they just, it's like, yeah, we're going to churn out 20 hour long episodes a year. And it's a volume business, 25 Simpsons in a year. Like, that's what this is supposed to be like.

Yes. As I love to do, posting updates on my rewatch of Next Generation that I just have been doing it. I complained about a couple of late season five episodes being kind of corny. And a friend of yours, Toby Parker Simmons, he replied with like, look, it's like 24 episodes of season. They're not all going to be winners. And I think that, like, it's kind of part of the deal. where it's like you get that many episodes, and that means you're going to get some weird misfires, but also they're going to have to try stuff they wouldn't have had to try otherwise that often

leads to some of the most interesting stuff. And that's why, yeah, TV needs to be about, oh, shit, we have to fill a ton of space and get a bunch of shows out. And like, it's just not the same when you're getting eight or ten episodes a year and you have to stuff everything in. You don't get to take diversions or digressions or do experimental stuff in the same way. Yeah, I think when we asked Bill Oakley, one of her first interviews, what episodes did you not make? What ideas could you not use. He's like, we use them all. We had to make 50 episodes. Again, on NextGen, I just watched an early season six episode that is a terrible, like, somebody takes over Deanna Troyes body and has like kind of sexually assaults her. And I'm like,

oh, this sucks. I hate these episodes. And I read about why it happened. I'm like, well, they had to write it very quickly as a group effort because the next episode's big guest star had to reschedule. So they had to film something that week. And so it just came together fast. It's all part of the contract, and part of the deal is you as the viewer, every week you get to catch up with your good friends on TV. You know, every week, they're your buddies and they've got something new to show to you. Unless it's the summer, you've always got new stuff to look forward to from your buddies. It's like part of the deal, in my opinion. And it should be more like that.

Yeah, reading that, making it so autobiography by Patrick Stewart made me realize what a breakneck pace that show was made at. He's like, oh, I would get my script on Sunday. And we'd just saw filming on Wednesday. And it would be like a three or four day shooting period. And that's it. Then you have like Saturday off and then you get your script on Sunday. Sunday again. And that machine, and again, when the case of Star Trek, it took a while for that machine to really, really start working. But when it starts really, really working, and because

they got to do two seasons of like figuring the show out, and then finally it all clicks and you end up with, you know, a hundred of these amazing sci-fi episodes that were cherishing decades later. And that's just like, it's because they got to like work it for so long. It's like, in the current era, the new Star Trek shows, they're doing maximum, you know, 10 episodes a year. They can't do all this stuff. And so it's a whole different thing. If they don't have it figured out by the middle of the first episode, then you fail. Exactly. And by the way, I hate to do another, while we're on the Star Trek digression, I do want to do my due diligence and recommend

Babylon 5 as one of the greatest TV shows of all time, just while we're here. I need to watch it. I only watched a handful episodes back in the day. I'll have to set aside my issues with Jay Michael Strzinski's Ron Spider-Man. You must, you must. And also, you mentioned that makes me realize I've definitely recommended Babylon 5 to you before. It's very important to me. So yeah. So we then, in typical classic Simpsons form, we cut to the bed as Homer and Marge are arguing over what to do.

And this thing in the Keeler, this feels like a proto-Fry and Lila scene, right? Of him asking if she respects him. This is like maybe the funniest scene in the episode. The way the pauses play out, like it's so funny. Yeah, I forgot how repetitive this is because there's a cycle that happens six times or maybe five times. Homer goes, okay, wait a minute, that's bad. He wakes up again, confronts March. She gives a very delay response, goes back to bed.

It just keeps happening over and over and I forget about the scene because I'm only thinking of the parodies and the Jay Sherman stuff. I love when on the third beat. You know what, I'll just play the clip. I'll play the clip. What's you doing, Marge? Making out the jury list for the film festival. Mayor Quimby, Krusty, Jay. Marge, do you respect my intelligence?

Yes. Okay. Wait a minute. Why did it take you so long to say yes? No reason. Okay. Wait a minute. Are you humoring me?

Okay. Wait a minute. That's bad. A great delivery by Kavner there on the like, yes. And he's like, wait a minute, that's bad. I feel like that's also coming to my, wait a minute, that's bad. Yeah. I also have to note that this is for all intents and purposes.

is launching the central character conflict of the episode. And it's occurring 12 minutes into the episode. And to that, I say, no harm, no foul. This episode's hilarious. You can do whatever you want. Yeah, and these bedroom scenes are really where Al Jena Mike Reese would stake out the plot. Like, okay, here's what's happening. Here's who's invested.

Here's what's at stake. And I feel like it's a reliable device. We get funny bits like this out of it. Yep. And they're having fun with the singing of the Oscar Meyer Weiner's song, and John Lovitz is funny to hear singing. I think their problem is, though, they got outdone on obscurity by the singing of the armor hot dog song in the previous season.

Yes. And by the way, this is the Oscar Meyer Weiner song from the early 60s, not to be confused with the Bologna song from the early 70s, which is parodied later on the Sherry Bobbins episode with Rainier Wolfcastle. Right. It's also just funny you say that it's a fellow slogan parody with Rainier Wolfcastle, which is one of the other Gene and Reese Simpson's episodes from that same year. These guys, they watched too much television, but they only had.

four channels when they were growing up, or three, so they all saw the same commercials and could reference them. And it's funny because they probably had no idea that by making these jokes, they were functionally extending the life of these things for a whole other generation of people who had no idea what the hell they were. You know, that also reminds me that I want to say that I think this helped the critic so much, not just in the first night, but that it also did let people around the world see as part of their Simpsons reruns,

the critic in a place they'd never see him anywhere else because they probably didn't get the critic on their TV. Yep. And then March marks out Martin Scorsese who was going to be one of the judges to replace with Homer. Another good joke. Another real good joke. Then we get another

kind of filler thing of like an audition scene is easy filler in an episode. You know, it just lets you get wacky characters to come up in audition and you got to say Hannibal Lecter little hacky, little hacky. It's up there with the Benedict Team Monks. But they loved Science of the Lambs on the critic.

And Shatner showing up just in his Star Trek uniform. That also is like, does he have to be in his uniform, too? They just used the so very tired design. Yeah, you're right. It was the artist saving time. You're right. Yeah. But I guess the joke is everyone says excellent in a different way, except for Homer, who says exactly.

Yeah. I do love Homer's exactly. But in the deleted scenes, there was one other person who auditioned. Sir, if we do have one more candidate. Excellent. Yes, he can be my understudy. And it was like a devil character. That was Lamarche's devil voice that he did on the critic too.

We could have had another Lamarche appearance on The Simpsons. He gets listed as a special guest star. I hope he got above the minimum for these lines on the Simpsons. Yeah, I don't know. I'm not counting on it, but let's dream. Maybe. Hey, it's possible. So we cut to the opening night of the festival,

though Dr. Hibbert thought it was the Rocky Horror Picture Show, which is why he's at first I thought it was like oh he's a Frankenfurter but actually I think he's dressed in the general floor show costumes that the characters wear for the big production of Roasted My World and all that I think this joke taught me about what those

screenings were like you know I as a youth first saw it on Comedy Central because they made it a big event it's like wow the broadcast premiere of Rocky Horror Picture show and then I bought the soundtrack that like writer records released on CD around the same time

and I listen to the soundtrack all of the time, but I did not go to actually see it in a movie theater with the live performers and everything on stage type deal until last year for a 50th anniversary tour of it that they did. Oh, man. I've heard from a friend that the quality of the screening varies a lot on the quality of the shadow performers. Would you say that's accurate?

That was my sense, too, yes. You do need to have good shadow performers. You need to have people who are actually funny shouting things from the audience instead of not funny. Though at mine, it was a special tour where Barry Bostwick was there introducing it, and the co-host who was like a super, like the head of the fan club or whatever of Rocky Air Picture Show, a very important guy in the fan community. He asked him a question of like, do anybody sleep with anybody in the thing?

And he joked of like, oh, yes, me and Tim Curry, ha, ha, ha. And then the guy's like, yes, yes, very funny. But you and Susan Sarandon definitely hooked up, right? And then Barry Bostwick kind of demur is, he's like, oh, yeah, what's the next question? Don't push your luck, buddy. This is where we get to see the first of these shorts, which starts with an Indian director's work. Our first film is by Indian director Apu Nahasa Pima Pedalon.

Bright Lights, beef jerky. Help, help, police. Hey, I got problems of my own right now. Oh, boy, this is going to get worse before it gets better. Next, we have Mo the Bartender in Mo Better Boos. Money gets you one more round. Drink it down, you stupid clown. Money gets you one more round.

You're out on your ass. Whoa. Ah, man's Productions Presents Man getting hit by football. Just is over. This isn't America's funniest home videos. But the bull! What's really funny about all these movies?

They're each like 10 seconds long. And I find that, again, this, like you said, Toby, this is a joke machine episode. Sorry, every movie has a title that indicates a different joke. Yeah. So the title of Apu's movie is, sorry, it's Bright Lights Beef Jerky.

It's a parody of the 88 film Bright Lights Big City, but then the movie itself feels kind of like clerks, almost. I'm so clerk's brain that I was like, is this a clerk's reference? Maybe it's just the general like black and white aesthetic, or the joke just is he filmed it with the security cameras that are in the Quicky part. And that's how I filmed it.

By the way, I just watched for the first time, the Roger Ebert's first movie, The Who's That Knocking at My Door? It's his clerks. It's crazy. It's like him and his friends having like conversations about how their stupid young guys who are obsessed with sex and need to get over their like dumb sexist beliefs. And it's like it's crazy how it's his clerk. And also a ton of Catholic guilt too.

Yeah. I think you said Roger Ebert. You meant Martin Scorsese. Yeah. Look, everybody's got a clerks in them. Everybody's got to do it. It's clerks except, you know. But then don't make clerks two or three afterwards.

Stop at clerks one. It's okay. But do make the animated series. Do make who's that knock on my door at the animated series. Yeah. I'll be the last person to compare Harvey Kytel to Brian O'Hallor. Yeah. I have to mention here that, like, one thing I neglected to bring up at the beginning is that, of course, there's an OK-K-O episode called Plaza Film Festival, where we very much did it as an excuse to do these exact type of gags. Because it's just like, I love seeing art made by fictional characters and seeing how they see the world. And so this section is like exactly what we took to do Plaza Film Festival. That episode is a very different, like, plot. But it's very much like, oh, we saw that the Simpsons did it pretty well.

I wonder if we could do a version of that thing where we see movies made by the characters. We didn't do Man getting hit by football, but maybe we should have. And of course, Mo Better Booze is a reference to Mo Better Blues, a Spike Lee movie, but the actual parody is of the film Cabaret. Yes. It's the Money song, which you can tell they had to like, if you were to sing where the lyrics Mo says, they fit exactly to the song in Cabaret is, Money makes the world go around, world go around. But they had to, it's changed just a little bit from how it's performed by the MC, Joel Gray and Sally Bowles in the movie version at least.

What's funny about Hans Mullman's great film is that, you know, it's meant to be a representation of like lowest common denominator cinema. But again, I was in, I think, fourth grade when this episode came out. And it's really funny. And specifically the sound effect is what makes it so funny. Yes. And it's like they're looking down on America's funniest one videos, but I as a fourth or fifth grader, it's like, oh, I'm going to turn. right to America's Funniest Stone videos after I watched this, or maybe it would be before. So it's like the statements about like quality levels were maybe lost on me a little bit at the time

because it was all good stuff as far as I was concerned. When they did the dog on fire joke earlier in The Simpsons is just like, as a kid, I was like, wait, you guys don't like America's Funny So video? That's a good. I thought it's good. It was really like a prelude to all the succumbed writers being mad about reality TV. Yeah. This kind of stuff.

Yeah. Also, Hank Azaria is killing it this whole episode. Like, he screams of hurting his back. are so good. As is, I have also taken into my life the like, is it going to get worse before it gets better. Now, the editor can just drop it in because it's over a minute long, but this is now where Barney premieres, don't cry for me, or I should say, Pukahannis.

Thank you. The universe's name, yes. The yet to be released, Pocahontas, that's what they're referencing here. Let's hear the entirety of Pukahontas here. Next, they're going to show my movie. You made a movie? I made a movie? No wonder I was on a,

cover of Entertainment Weekly. My name is Barney Gumble. I'm 40. I'm single, and I drink. There's a line of O'Fellow about a drinker. Now a sensible man. Bying by a fool. Presently a beast.

That pretty well covers it. It's brilliant. Savagely honest, tender. He has the soul of a poet. You're very kind. Excuse me. Did something crawl down your throat and die? It didn't die. My name is Barney, and I'm an alcohol.

Mr. Gumbull, this is a Girl Scout meeting. Is it? Or is it that you girls can't admit you have a problem? Don't cry for me. I'm already dead. Yeah, they should have asked Barney, this is such a moving story. Why did you give it a Mad Magazine title? Yes. Also, why does he, I wish they didn't have the one non-traumatic scene in it of him going to the Girl Scouts meeting. Like, that's a joke scene. I feel like his movie should have only had serious scenes in it. you then make jokes about outside of the reality of the movie. Yeah.

It's beautiful. Susie Dieter is rightfully proud of all the hard work she did in it. She is trying to talk technical aspects of it, and that is when John Lovett rudely interrupts her with shitty stuff and kind of is hitting on her in a gross way. Yeah. Look, it's actually, like, if the goal was to make Barney's movie, like, actually kind of genuinely, emotionally, emotionally compelling,

it kind of succeeds. Yeah, I guess it's a parody of, like, Cinema Verite, but it's also a parody of how that was filtered into modern, in like pop culture because Al Jean calls out, well, it's kind of made to look like a Calvin Klein commercial of the era. Yeah, it is funny. He does say Kwanisquasi as well, which is for the time lapse stuff in it that I'm sure was fun to animate.

But yeah, then when he's like, oh, what's the other thing? Well, it's a commercial that's emulating. We're emulating a commercial that emulates a type of prestige in a film, but not an actual film. I mean, I loved hearing Deere talk about how like things I wouldn't think about on watching it is how there is a level of transparency to the blowing curtains, which had to be done with airbrush on cell. They couldn't just change the transparency

level in a computer back then. It's crazy to think about, yeah, the amount of work that must have been. And for full context of the line from Othello, it is said by Cassio to Iago. Oh, love us keyboards, by the way. They're great.

Is that why they're named that? They've got to be right. So Iago in Othello has a very intricate plan for destroying Othello's life. And Cassio is part of it. And as he's trying to talk Cassio into something, Cassio's getting drunk. And here's the line.

I will ask him for my place again. He shall tell me I am a drunkard. Had I as many mouths as Hydra, such an answer would stop them all. To be now a sensible man, by and by a fool and presently a beast. Oh, strange, every inordinate cup is unblessed. And the ingredient is a devil. Hey, that Shakespeare is pretty good at lines. That's legit.

And by the way, Cassio named after the founder, whose last name was Cassio. Oh, okay. Have we been mispronouncing it then? We should be saying Kachio. I think so. It has to be referenced to the line of don't cry for me. I'm already dead. Rebecca Sugar's short comic

on titled That has stuck with me ever since. It's such a beautiful, beautiful comic. It's worth mentioning it. In my mind, if I hear that phrase, I go just as much to the comic as I do to this episode. Oh, yeah. Yeah, Barney is so, it's just also sad, though, that they have this moments of like,

Barney doesn't even remember he made a movie when Bart asked him, as he is saying, I made a movie. You made a movie? I made a movie. And I guess we get a definitive age on Barney here, 40. Right, man. So, well, I guess he was held back then. He should be a classmate of Homer's, and Homer isn't 40 yet in the show. Is he still 36? I think 36, yeah. Okay. Maybe that's step one toward turning Homer 40. And yeah, just seeing that Homer actually left to get a beer, and miss the entire thing is also pretty funny.

And I think this is a joke that's lost on us now because I guess in 1995 it was funny to come back with a bottle of beer at the movies. Oh, yes, because you couldn't do that then. No, now I always get like a beer in a popcorn or whatever. Like every movie theater serves beer and it's just a very commonplace thing. But back then, no, you had to sneak in your little flask or whatever. It deservedly gets an applause break.

And then Homer missed it all. And then it's time for the start of Burns for All Seasons, which Reese says the opening is a parody of the agony and the ecstasy, but it's Ben Her, right? I pulled up Ben Her on Tobey just to double check. The creation of Adam is the opening of Ben Her. It's the overture. Now, here's the thing.

This really is a parody of every great man biopic and every biblical epic of the time because the title is a parody of a man for all seasons about Sir Thomas More. That's from the mid-60s. And the opening, I believe, is referring to the agony and the ecstasy from 65. It's a biopic about Michelangelo, the artist, and that's why we have, is it, birth of man or whatever?

The creation of Adam. The creation of Adam. Thank you. That's why we see that, but that is not the title sequence of Agony and the Ecstasy. Right, yeah. That's the overture scene for Ben Hur. It's always confused me. So it's, yeah, they're just mixing together all of the prestige road show films of the 60s and 50s.

These movies that are between three to four hours long that, I'm sure, tortured boomer kids who were all around this age when they were writing. Sorry, they're all from that generation. when they're writing this episode. Other references, just to get him out of the way because they're not that interesting. The line, truly you are the King of Kings, that's actually from the greatest story ever told. It's delivered by John Wayne,

not Charlton Heston, although they do depict a scene from Ben Hur. With Burns as Jesus giving Ben Hur the water. In the scene for Ben Hur, in it, Ben Hur is so parched that he couldn't say anything to the man from Nazareth who had offered up a big cup of water.

And then in the scene, too, they always film it from behind. You don't see Jesus's face in it. But the Roman guard who would like, he's like, hey, I said no water for it. Then simply looking at the face of Jesus, he can't do anything. He walks away.

You know, because of this, I learned a lot about Ben Hur. I never looked into it. I never saw either movie that they made. But apparently Ben Hur is a fictional character and it was a very, very popular late 19th century novel. Where essentially they created a character called Ben Hur to give you like a boots on the ground perspective of Jesus' life

from just a regular guy who was a slave. Yeah, Ben Hur, it's just him bouncing from moment to moment around Christ's birth and crucifixion. It's kind of like how the Johnny Tremaine book is like they make up a kid who like just happens to run into Thomas Jefferson and Paul Reveyor. I mean, I went to Catholic school and until now, like I'm 44, I thought Ben Hur, a real guy, right? Yeah, he just had to assume. Yeah. His adventure is kind of a Count of Monte Cristo adventure too. He gets revealed to be a Jewish person, which then made.

makes him a slave, and then he is assumed dead, but then he returns to get revenge on the people who impressed him into slavery. It's a fun story. I don't want to watch it ever again at four hours long, but no. And I can't not, when I watch sequences like this, think about the fact that in this era, if they wanted to directly reference the visuals from a movie, they would need to pull it up presumably on a VHS tape and just like take it from that, which is like, it was much, much, much harder to pull reference for this type of thing back then. I want to linger on the crest. credits really quick because there's a list of names that scrolls up. Once we see directed by Senior Spielbergo starring Mr. Burns, all that stuff,

these names are not anything. They just feel like random names to me. I looked a lot of them up. They're not related to the show. And there seem to be a few what I would call jokes in big quotes because one of the people credited is Babelieu Smithers. Yes. Yeah, I don't know what that.

I'm like, all right. I guess you wanted like a funny word in there somewhere and there's very long list of names that scrolls very quickly, but they're not anyone. I didn't look up every single one. I looked up maybe five of them before I realize, okay, they just needed names to fill the screen very quickly and they just found some. Babaloo Smithers. I love the pride of Susie Deeter sharing that she had that opening frame on her wall for years at her office.

That sounds so awesome. Yep. So, yes, we see that Burns in his story that can go at any time and does anything. First, they show that he went to Mexico to promise them jobs. And so it's showing that his idea of giving people in Mexico, American jobs for much less pay, is a noble endeavor. And they all love him in Mexico. for doing this is a very post-nafta joke and you know that's another one too the him being dragged around and saying we did 20 takes and that was the best one like i feel like i've said that that's

coming to the lexicon too yeah yeah that's a frequent thing i will say when there's a very bad line reading or a very bad cut in a movie right yes that joke made probably for the first time made me think about like well wait if this is the one that's in the movie that has to be the best one right It's like something this bad is in the movie. Then we also see Burns puts himself into E.T., which honestly, I love his little alien walk up the steps. It's like he actually does seem very extraterrestrial in that moment. Yeah, it's a very funny jump from one thing to the other.

And also it's like, now we're going into just overt Steven Spielberg movie references. And then comes the capper on it, the Ben Hurst scene, which leads to another line we all love to repeat. Drink up. Judea been her. You truly are the king of kings. Excellent. Smith this, are they booing me? No, they're saying boo-earns, bo-erns.

Are you saying boo-or? Bo-erns. I was saying bo-erns. Almost as good as the Bork joke from Mitchie and Scratchy Land. The levels, the logic, the different phases of the joke is so perfect. Yeah. Like the Smithers just making up a bad cover of just like, no, they're saying boo-warns. Good.

Then Burns standing up to question the entire audience. If they are saying that, then keep booing him. And then we see that, yes, that he actually was one person, Hans Mulman, was saying boo-warns. I mean, the thing with that joke that's amazing, that joke is so good that it becomes part of our day-to-day vernacular. even though there's no actual use case for it in our gated and vernacular because it's so specific to one character in one show. That's how good it is. That's why my name in the Suncaster chat room is Boo-Obb.

Didn't notice that. That's great. Also, my only real part I like Lovitz on the commentary is when he is like joking about his dead friend Phil Hartman of saying, though I do think Lovitz really does believe that Phil Hartman took his impression of Charlton Heston. And then when he says that, he's like, oh, well, let him walk in the room and deny it. I was like, man, that's funny. It's funny to say it.

And, hey, it was like seven years after he died when they were recording this. So pretty fresh. Although I want to go back to the E.T thing really quick. I think there's a Mandela effect going on here because Mr. Burns says, I'll be right here and touches Elliot's chest. When I watched the movie again somewhat recently, I realized like, no, no, he touches Elliot's head. I'll be right here. You'll have your memories of me. Oh, wow.

Yeah. Hey, I forgot that too. I rewatched it to do a retronauts podcast with you. And still in my brain, I was thinking like, yep, finger on the chest. Just like in the Burns episode. Nope, nope. E.T. is living in Elliott's head rent free. We go to the act break there.

That's your act break. It's a hilarious line to go out on. But it is not a speaking dramatically. It does not change stakes or up problems for anybody. Like they actually could have had the next scene be the act break of like, Oh, who's going to win that, well, Mr. Burns win the festival? Like, that's the drama you would cut on acts too, right? Just like another case where it's like, yeah, this is an episode where like, that stuff is there and it's like doing its job.

It's holding things up, but it's like that is not really the reason for the season here, you know. Here we go from Boorne's to another line. I feel like we live in all day in our lives, but let's play the clip here. All right, it's time to vote for the grand prize. I vote for Barney Gumbull, sensitive, yet unfortunate. titled film, Pukahontas. Second? Well, I vote for Burns' movie.

Me too. Now let's get going. I got a date with Yudora Welty. Coming, Yudora. Bribing those two judges has paid off, just as it did during the Miss Teen America pageant. How can you vote for Burns' movie? Let's just say it moved me. To a bigger house! Oops, I said the quiet part loud and the loud part quiet. Oh, dear.

Two to two. Well, Homer, it all comes down to you. Football in the grind. Football in the grind. Well, we're not going to resolve this deadlock anytime soon. Why don't we all take a five-minute break? It'll clear our heads. Good idea, March.

My mind is going a mile a minute. That's the sound of monkeys eating bugs there. We live in the world of the loud part quiet for a good while now, I think. Yep, that's just daily life, yeah. You can use either half of that joke independently, though. I think with many celebrities who are phoning in a role or obviously just taking a role for money, I've definitely used just the first part of that joke.

Though Burns screwed up by, he just should have bribed Homer too. Then you got the majority. It's just burns his big mistake there. Yeah. Again, it's another reminder that like, the joke writing in this episode is so good. It's not just that like we watched this when we were young

and it was like a formative thing. It's like, no, these are just like some of the best jokes ever written by some of the best joke writers ever. And though the ADR obviousness of Pukahontas, that always hurts this scene for me. I'm like, I bet you had a funnier name for it before. Yeah, it feels like the first five or six lines in this act are ADR. Because you don't have the script, you can't check to see what originally was going on there. Oh, it tortures me, Toby.

It tortures me. And hey, if listeners want to learn all about Pocahontas, Bob did a very well-produced and researched history on it when we covered it for what a cartoon movie, I believe, last year was two years. I think it was like two or three years ago. Well, you did. Bob read multiple books on Pocahontas, the real person as well. Oh my God. You know what? The movie, it's not as crazy or problematic as you think it is.

It really holds up. It has a message I think that's very important today. So you think that for the Pukahontas joke, it was something else, and then they saw in the newspaper or whatever that a big movie was coming out called Pocahontas and they decided to update it. Yeah, I think at this point the Pocahontas marketing machine had begun because I remember when my family bought the Lion King VHS. the previous November of 94,

it begins with a coming soon to theaters, the next Disney masterpiece. And it showed you, I think, like, a couple minutes of Pocahontas. Yeah, and doesn't it like, maybe I'm imagining things. I feel like it ended with, like, Pocahontas turns to the screen, and it's like, boom, Pocahontas. Yeah, it ends with full frontal, and those tapes were called. And look, for what it's worth, you know,

unlike the Rap and Rabbis joke or some of those other ones, people do remember Pocahontas. Like, that's a movie that people still will watch and talk about. So at the very least, Gamble paid off as far as like the timeliness of the reference, I suppose. Incontinent Old Man wins Miss Teen America is a pretty great headline too, which Brins doesn't seem bothered by. He's just happy he won. Yeah. And so Jay also, I feel like she just go like, okay, everybody heard what Krusty just said, right?

He's bribed. Okay, here's vote doesn't count. It's two to one and Homer's doesn't matter either. So there. But yes, this is where Marge then takes it to Homer of telling him like, I knew you do this. This is actually feels like a good dramatic scene of saying like, this is why you shouldn't have been on here. You have no taste and you pick the worst one.

I have to assume like most of the Rex rejokes, they were about how he was gay, I feel like, right? I guess we should point out that this act begins with about four minutes left in the episode. Yes. Yeah. It reminds me of how like, wasn't it a thing where it's like, James L. Brooks would like take a wacky episode and just be like, let's just tag an emotional tag at the very, very end.

And it works. And similar thing here, it's like this is almost like the bare minimum, like emotional character story. to keep these jokes afloat and it does actually. So after first making fun of Rex Reed for sleeping his way on to film with Jries, that we then, you know, Jay drops the making fun of Homer situation.

He gets honest of like, please give this movie a chance, you know, actually watch Barney's movie. And then he gets hit in the growing, which is funny enough, also how Jay overpronounce is growing. But it makes it even better that you hear the ha-ha off screen

to know that Nelson threw it. It was specifically Nellon. and who threw it. Yeah. And then they do the brain monkey follow-up that is pretty great, that they're doing math together as the monkeys cleaning each other, not the funniest what's inside Homer's brain joke, but to follow it up makes it worth it.

They have caps and gowns on, and I believe the equation on the blackboard is differential calculus, which I credit to Keeler. Oh, that got to be, got to be. Yeah, that's a good catch there, Bob. I had someone else tell me that. I don't know what calculus looks like. I caught it by reading like an FAQ or like,

a list of references. Now, dramatically speaking, is there much tension to Will Homer watch Barney's movie? And then it just goes, oh, wait, he does and he likes it. Okay. I guess the tension's more and will he make the right decision because he still does sincerely love man getting hit in the growing by football. I feel like too, paraphrasing something like, but football in the growing had a football in the groin. Like just saying, but blank had blank and just restating it as as a form of criticism of like it's about liking a simple thing for being what it is it is a great turn of phrase too and so i guess yes you're right you know what dramatically it's in question will homer vote for barney or not what will the answer be but first they also need like a whole minute for itchy and itchy

scratchy cartoon of all things in the world to appear in what is a film festival of like homemade movies by local talent i guess hey i guess itching scratch is technically local talent as well but the idea that a fully produced animated short which as we know takes like a good number of months to do would also appear in the film festival. I mean, didn't they say in the commentary? They're like, oh, yeah, we figured this out later. We had like, and I forget how they put it in the commentary, but it's like, I think it came in very late. They had space to fill. And it's so funny. This is a great itching and scratchy, by the way, but it's also four times longer than any other entry.

It is one of the best itching and scratchies because it isn't just about horrible violence done to Scratchy. It is a like long comedic premise of the dynamite lasts an entire lifetime that he shares with his dynamite wife. He has a very fulfilling life and children with his dynamite and bomb wife. It's a good one. It is an interesting choice that they elected to put an Ichin-Scrati there instead of another movie by a Springfield resident. But, you know, we all laughed. And very loosely, they work in a four weddings and a funeral joke. Yes. Right. I also love that the way the children are walking on their dynamite stick feet is just like such a funny bit of animation.

Conceptually, it could be my favorite to Sheen Scratchy. This is where there's the final deleted scene. They had one other joke about a winner, which I do kind of wish they'd have kept because it would have let Lisa have another joke in the episode. Let's give a listen here.

And the winner for Best Swedish Film Made by an 8-year-old, Lisa Simpson. Homer Eaton, Mindhagen Das. And as I mentioned before, since I've just watched a bunch of Bergman films, I could now see what they were parroting was it was Lisa in the visual was

when they say those lines Lisa and Maggie are just in you know front facing and then their heads kind of move around and it was like oh it's persona they're doing the persona thing yes yeah there you go and when they cut to Lisa and Maggie in the audience Maggie is dressed as death just to make it even more

oh I gotta dig that up as a Bergman fan look I'm always trying to squeeze Bergman stuff into episodes I once tried to put a seventh seal thing into regular show and unfortunately got cut for time but I'm always going for it. Wow, now I'm ready to get those because I've gone from having seen one Bergman film

in 43 years of my life to 12 Bergman films in the last year. We'll have to have a sidebar all about those. Unfortunately, I think popular media stopped making Bergman references at this point. Yes, and in fact, Bergman in general has seemingly, like, him as part of the wider conversation

about, like, historically significant and great international cinema. It's kind of faded for whatever reason a little bit over the years, even though I think he's still amazing. I mean, you know, Criterion has kept it in print and everything, but it doesn't, in the letterbox circles, I feel like when I log it, a Bergman one in there,

I'm like, not many people have watched the, or not many people have logged him. You know, Henry, I felt the same way when I recently logged the Blair Thumb. Nobody's talking about the Thumbiverse. Nobody's talking about Steve Odecirk anymore. He's up there with Bergman in terms of influential filmmakers. I greatly agree.

And, you know, the thing with Bergman is, it's like, it's not vegetables. These movies are really entertaining. And the thing with Steve Odeker, that I'll mention is that friends and I get together every Sunday and we watch through franchises. We watch through like, oh, we're going to watch through every Hellraiser movie or every Scanners movie or every S&L movie.

And we've talked a little bit like, should we do every Steve OdeK movie? And I'll keep you updated on if we do that. Oh, please do. This is where, after all the jokes about other winners, it's time to find out who the winner of the Springfield Film Festival is. The winner of the Grand Prize, Bernie Gumbull. Oh, only you voted for the right movie. I'm glad you were on the jury.

You know something, Marge? It's not that tough being a film, cricket. I've learned I have a gift to share with the world. From now on, there'll be a new Barnard Gumble. I'm working clean and sober. Congratulations, Barney. And enjoy your grand prize, a lifetime supply of tough beer. Oh, just hook it to my van.

It's that the man obliges. They walk up with it to hook it to his vein. They're willing and ready for this command. Yep, yep, yep. And again, that's another very, I mean, maybe even of all the lines in this episode that you hear in daily life, that might actually be one of the ones you hear the most.

It's up there with shut up and take my money from Futurama. Yeah. As a please give me this. Right, man. Hey, I wonder if Keeler wrote that one too. I wonder that lie in the iPhone one. Yeah, no, just hook it to my veins as such. And it's the way he screams it,

the way he is out. stretching his arm as he says it like right now do it and yes calling a critic a cricket Homer has thought the entire time that jay sherman's job is a film cricket he thinks it's a cricket so and burns is terribly disappointed also you can see in the audience when barney is excited to hear his name said the late larry the barfly is seated right next to him he was his plus one i guess in the event. You get to see Larry the Barfly drawn from an overhead angle.

You rarely see him drawn in. That's good. Look, I have a special interest in him due to his presence in various Simpsons comics where I think that was the first time I saw him named. And I was like, now I know who these guys are. And this now is time for everybody to say their goodbyes. And as well as, Bart doesn't have a ton of lines in this episode,

but his are some of the most cutting about this exchange between properties here. Goodbye, Mr. Sherman. If I ever played Carnegie Hall, I'll give you a call. And if you ever want to visit my show... Nah, we're not going to be doing that. Well, Jay, I hope you tell your New York friends that people in small towns aren't quite as dumb as they think. March, look, this has spring snakes inside,

but the suckers will think it's beer nuts. Beer nuts. Ah! So! Well, it was a lovely festival. The best movie won, and Mr. Burns found there are some awards that can't be bought. And the Oscar goes to

I've got to win this one I bribed everyone in Hollywood George Z Scott in man getting hit by football That was Maurice Lamar skating He's one real line in the episode As George C. Scott Yes, yeah

Pretty funny Pretty good And in a way the Simpsons did visit the critic Because I think it could have been the first episode Or maybe very early on There's a good nature of slam against the Simpsons because I believe Jay turns it on. It is just Homer saying Doe and Bart saying I Carumba.

And that's all that raised to the clip. And I think it was Al Jean and Mike Reese saying this is what our show is going to be like because everybody left, including us. What are they going to do? Yes, I pulled it up. I glad you bring it up. It's in the Geraldo episode, Dial In for Mother, where somebody changes the channel from Jay Sherman to something else.

They look this on TV. They change the channel. And when that scene of nothing, Simpsons happens, the stupid viewer at home goes like, ah, this I understand. Okay, I forget like what the response was to that, but it did feel like them kind of being a little catty because they were so tired of working on that show and they realized that what could The Simpsons be without everyone who built it?

Yeah. I mean, it is, it cannot be denied just how, like, miraculous it is that the show survived two major, like, crew turnovers while still remaining as good as it does during this era. Yeah, I think maybe that's also where some of the hurt feelings came from that the people who thought the Simpsons would die when they left are now seeing the young upstarts there are telling them they actually suck now and that when Gene and Reese probably dusted their hands off like, well, that goes for

like one more year and then they're canceled. Meanwhile, the critics are going to go up to season eight, you know? And meanwhile, people stay on The Simpsons for like 25 or 30 years to the point where I think Disney eventually changes the locks just to give them a sign, all right, time to go home. I mean, yeah, that's one of those jobs that's, yeah, it's considered one of those, it's like, you know, one of the only, like, secure jobs. jobs in the industry.

Nice work if you can get it. Yes. And you know what? This Oscars reference, this is three weeks before the Oscars. It is the Letterman one. It's the only Letterman hosted one. A major event for Entertainment Weekly Reading Mirrors like us back then. Yes.

I would guess Burns must be nominated in the short film category too then, I would think. Unless it's a feature. I don't know. Maybe it's a feature. It bothers me that Wes Anderson, a director I love, his one Oscar win is in the shorts category, which feels like he is like kind of cheating to go in there on his like eighth movie. That doesn't surprise me at all. You know, generally only certain types of movies are rewarded there and, you know, not his

types of movies. I'm going to be alone on this one, but with the way his movies are lately, I say Lifetime Achievement Award is going to be his first Oscar. I like his recent movies and that's probably true. Yes. You know, Asteroid City, thumbs up, Phoenician scheme, thumb in the middle. I'll say. I'm Mr. French Dispatch.

I think that one's great. Oh, yes. That was a great one. that was. But anywho, what a wild episode of The Simpsons that was, I think, made for a craven reason to promote another TV show and make it more popular. And yet is crazy, funny, full of lines we all say all of the time. Yes, made to be a commercial. Like I said earlier, it's a different flavor. Some not great jokes sneak through that otherwise wouldn't make the cut, but then some very powerful, life-changing jokes make it in. So I have to say, this did not disrupt the show. It is a fun little oddity, a fun little time capsule of the critic. And I love returning to it. Toby. Yeah, and like, would you rather, if you're watching, you know, your favorite show, would you rather get three episodes extra that are like slightly different just so you have more opportunities to see your friends every week? If the result is something like this, I think it's a good argument for doing that. Obviously, I think the quality of this episode is pretty unique to

its circumstances and the fact that they had multiple pools of talent they could pull from to make consistently funny episodes. But it does stand as like a really great Simpsons episode. I mean, you know, simply on the strength of how damn funny it is. Well, thanks once again to Toby for being on the show, Toby, what do you want to promote? Where can we find you online? Let us know what's up with Toby Jones. Yeah, you can find me online as Toby Toby Jones. And top thing to mention is going to be AJ Goes the Dog Park. You can buy that on Blu-ray and watch it on 2B and Amazon and rent it however you want to watch it. If you're into micro-budget gag, absurd comedies shot in North Dakota for no money, that's your movie. Otherwise, you can check out

OK-KO, however you might be able to find it. And the new thing right now is regular show The Lost tapes, which is airing on television in linear cable as well as streaming. Check that out and support one of the sadly few new cartoons that are coming out. We're making it as good and funny as we can. Yeah, Toby, I think I read somewhere recently that is one of three remaining cartoons that are currently Cartoon Network cartoons. Am I getting the terminology right? Yeah, because it's a distinction that is made because we're producing it in the Warner Brothers building. And there are more than three shows being made in that building, but a lot of those are like DC branded shows or movies or various types of things like that. So as far as things that hold the Cartoon Network branding,

there aren't that many. It's us. It's Adventure Time stuff. It's Gumball stuff. You know, Teen Titans Go, you know, that's in production and that's like a thing where it's a Cartoon Network show, but it is a DC Warner Brothers show. So it's like a distinction. Yeah, regular show the lost tapes is is one of the few. I hope that there are many, many more. You know, I hope new renaissance of, the talent is always there, you know, so, but we're making the funniest episodes we can on that show. And it's weird to find, because it's like, the show is like a co-production between various entities. And so, like, it airs internationally first. And then it airs on linear cable here in Cartoon Network. I think right now on Saturday mornings, but they also rerun them a decent amount.

Most people are going to find them, are going to watch when they land on HBO Max. I think they, maybe it's HBO Max and Hulu. I actually don't even know. But I think that they just started putting out the episodes on streaming weekly. So the first episode of the new batch just came out weekly. And so every week you should be able to tune in and check out these episodes on streaming. Pay no mind to if you've seen clips of them released by people who watched them on like UK linear cable, you know, a month ago. Like it is what it is.

I said it many times, but your AJ goes to the dog park, a very fun film. But also the Blu-ray is an amazing number of extras on that Blu-ray. Thank you. We put a lot of time and effort into that Blu-ray. And not to put my thumb on the scale, but there are currently less than 150 copies left on the Vinegar Syndrome site. And I don't think that particular version is going to go out of print. So, you know, snag them all you can. Yeah, we're one week out from this posting, so I assume they're still available. Yes. Go for it, folks. Unless we sell 150 copies in the next week, which I suppose is possible. The two. But thank you so much again, Toby. Thank you. Always a pleasure. Thanks again to Toby Jones for being on the show. Please check out everything he's doing.

But as for us, if you want to check out what we're doing and also get a bunch of great bonus episodes, head on over to patreon.com slash Talking Simpson, sign up there for five bucks a month and you will get all of our episodes ad free. That's right. If you hate ads, that's a way to get the episodes ad free. And also over 200 mini-series episodes. They're all full length. They're all very, very long. And we cover shows like Futurama, King of the Hill, Mission Hill, Batman, the animated series, and The Critic. And for that five bucks, you also get a new episode of both Talking Futurama and Talk King of the Hill every month. It's a lot of bang for your buck. Just five bucks. You get, I believe, almost 10 years worth of content now at patreon.com slash Talking Simpsons Henry. What's happening for $10 a month at that same website? Bob is talking about our What a Cartoon movie podcast where we cover an animated feature film as in depth as we do an episode of The Simpsons. It's like three extra podcasts you get a month when you listen to it. Last month you heard us cover for the Halloween season,

The Adams Family from 1991, which we had a ton of fun talking about that live action adaptation of the comic, and especially our love for Raul Julia's work. And this month we're covering Fern Gully, the Last Rainforest, which we talked a little about in this episode. It's a very interesting film that is somehow crazily connected to Crocodile Dundee. And those are just the most recent ones. We've covered tons of Disney Renaissance. We've covered tons of Batman movies, tons of Pixar and Studio Ghibli.

It's all there in the back catalogs. And you can hear all of it plus all the $5 a month stuff that's ad-free that Bob was talking about before. and if you sign up for an annual rate, you also get 10% off. So sign up today at patreon.com slash talking Simpsons. And I've been one of your host, Bob Mackey. You can find me on Blue Sky and Letterbox as Bob Servo. And my other podcast, of course, is Retronauts, now going 20 years strong. You can find that wherever you find podcasts or go to patreon.com slash retronauts.

And get some bonus stuff there as well. And Henry, how about you? You can find me on Blue Sky and Instagram as Talking Henry. I'm always posting a lot of fun stuff there. Hey, I also mentioned Letterbox on this too. I'm H-E-N-E-R-E-Y-G on Letterbox. Follow me there. And if you want to keep up to date with all the cool stuff that's happening on this podcast,

follow at Talk SimpsonsPod in Blue Sky and Instagram. You'll know whenever new episodes come out on the Patreon or the free feed or other cool stuff that we're doing. And all of our previously released free podcasts are available at Talking Simpsons.com. Thanks so much for listening, folks. 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. I think we should call a town meeting. If we don't do something soon, we won't get any tourists at all.

No tourists? I'll be ruined. Me, are you, Drew Barrymore? I'm hungover. Sorry, Miss Barrymore. What?