Talking Simpsons - Talking Simpsons - A Tale of Two Springfields With Dave Schilling

Episode Date: February 17, 2021

We welcome back podcaster/journalist Dave Schilling--check out his podcast Full Court Chat--for the proper start of season 12! In the landmark 250th episode, the town is divided between slobs and snobs, Homer becomes The Mayor, and somehow it all turns into a concert by The Who. All that plus an open-ended badger fight in this week's podcast! Support this podcast and get hundreds of bonus episodes by visiting Patreon.com/TalkingSimpsons and becoming a patron! Check out our new shirts on TeePublic! And please follow the new official Twitter, @TalkSimpsonsPod!

Good news everyone Talking Futurama is coming back for Talking Futurama season 2 part 2. Fresher than a summer ham this podcast comes every Friday and if you sign up at the five dollar level at patreon.com slash talking simpsons you can hear each episode as it goes live. That's right sign up today at patreon.com slash talking simpsons for five dollars to hear Talking Futurama every Friday throughout the rest of 2020 and also all the previous episodes we've done so far. So head over to patreon.com slash Talking Simpsons now or we're gonna clamp you! Shut up and take my money! I heartily endorse this event or product. Ahoy, ahoy everybody and welcome to Talking Simpsons, home of the Joan Collins special. I am your host, Area Code Camp Counselor Bob Mackie, and this is our chronological exploration of The Simpsons. Who else is here with me today?

Hey, it's Henry Gilbert coming to you from Yahoo! Search Engine Arena. And who do we have on the line? Dave Schilling. And today's episode have on the line? Dave Schilling. And today's episode is A Tale of Two Springfields. Great idea. Then we should call a doctor about this. How did the badger do that without ripping your shirt? What am I, a tailor? Today's episode aired on November 5th, 2000.

And as always, Henry will tell us what happened on this mythical day in real world history. Oh my God! 2000 and as always Henry will tell us what happened on this mythical day in real world history oh boy Bobby the Simpsons airs its 250th episode Charlie's Angels beats the legend of Bagger Vance at the box office and this is the final Sunday before the Bush- gore election and that explains the uh the chalkboard gag that's right yeah subliminal messagores yeah we're recording this uh not too long after the 20 the election 20 years after that well i hear it's still being decided yes yeah it's allegedly uh it's interesting to me that there's this this chalkboard gag a pro-gore one because this is written by John Swartzwelder, who everyone now is like, oh, I don't like him because he's a libertarian. Well, I'm sure he just dropped the script off in his giant Cadillac. I think Matt Selman is the one who wrote the opening gag. And he said on the commentary, we were all very smug about that chalkboard gag.

I mean, in 2000, yeah, it was. We all thought. We all thought we all thought i've listeners have heard me say many a time how my first election i voted in was in florida in that election so uh and i the subliminal messagore worked on me i did vote for al gore found a lot of good that did but and you mentioned charlie's angels that's the first one right right? Yes. The McG-directed, Drew Barrymore, Lucy Liu, Charlie's Throne. Yeah. No.

Not her. No. It was... Cameron Diaz. Cameron Diaz. Thank you. Yes. It starts with a C.

There you go. It's basically the same lady. But can you believe that one of the final movies ever to exist was the reboot that no one really cared about? Oh, right. Yeah. With Kristen Stewart and Mumbly Joe and What's-Her-Face. It kind of just really cared about. Oh, right. With Kristen Stewart and Mumbly Joe and What's-Her-Face. It kind of just came and went. That's right. The final

movie. Can you imagine if that was the final movie? I think Onward was the final movie actually. Yeah, well that was the last movie I saw. I saw Sonic the Hedgehog. It was great. I mean, I did see Sonic the Hedgehog, but then I saw Onward and seeing that at the start of March, I was like, yeah, boy, it sounds crazy in those other countries.

But I guess I'll still be able to see movies. And, of course, the legend of Bagger Vance, the real Robert Redford classic there. His legend lives on. Yeah. It's been mocked many times. I think Chappelle had a pretty good joke about it, as I recall. But, I mean, if you're Will Smith and who's constantly in search of an oscar like his best actor oscar which he still hasn't gotten you'd say yes to a movie with robert redford like that kind of sheen you'll you'll get that oscar

right but he uh will smith still still didn't get it did you realize and i had no idea until we're talking about this now that bagger vance is based on on the Bhagavad Gita. Sorry if I said that incorrectly. The sacred text of the Hindu religion. No, what? Bagger Vance, Bhagavad Gita is the sacred text. It's hard for me to say, but I apologize for stumbling over that. So yeah, it's a retelling via golf,

via a story of golfing. Boy, so it's like double cultural appropriation. It's like, wow. Apologies to our Hindu friends out there for stumbling over that sacred text name. But yes. But yeah, hey, welcome back to Dave Schilling onto the show. Thank you for coming on. Hey, guys.

Thank you again for having me. You know, I love talking about The Simpsons, especially John Swartzwelder episodes. I still think he's my favorite Simpsons writer writer not including any of the simpsons writers that i know personally and you are the host of a full court chat of course yes i still am i haven't fired myself yet uh and also uh i might be over by the time this uh podcast came out but you also just did a a mandal Mandalorian podcast as well. Yeah. So I'm hosting a Mandalorian recap podcast for Starburns Audio.

It's me and the CEO of Starburns Audio, which is funny to be hosting a podcast with someone who is ostensibly your boss. But he likes my work. So I think you'll all like my work too. You should tune in if you watch that show. Subscribe and all those things that people tell you to do about a podcast yeah this is uh your your first one was a john swartzwelder episode and this one too and this is this is quite a fun wacky john swartzweldery episode for sure and yeah there there are moments where i truly am taken out of the reality of the episode and nothing makes sense

and we'll get to that i'm sure you guys probably have in mind what i'm talking about yeah yeah it is it is one of my favorite ones of this era despite the the who which i have no connection to there's just so many good gags and a lot of things i was quoting a lot with my friends around this time i do recall when this episode first aired they were promoting it as the 250th and i think it was a time where it didn't hit as good as like the 200th felt like a celebration again but 250 i was like i'm getting older things feel different now i think i think it was when the 300th one came out that's when i was like this is i was getting more cynical about the anniversary it's like god it's 2003 already

how much longer will i live yeah it's so weird that this this came out in 2000 the show had already been on for 12 years and it's been on again in another 20 years it just keeps going as it stands currently i did the math on So they, at the time of this recording, they only are renewed for the current season. So they are only assured the episodes that will be full for season 32. That is 22 episodes. The math brings it to if the show has no more episodes after season 32, which I highly doubt, but that's 713 episodes so it is close to being this as the one third mark of simpsons episodes not half anymore one third we made it yeah al jean uh he beat gun smoke he

still needs to be one piece i think that should be his new goal one piece is never gonna stop though and uh they they as long as that manga is going, and that's going to be another, like, I bet they get to 1,000 to 1,200 episodes. I think so. The manga creator says it's almost over. He's said that before, hasn't he? It's true. But we have a new director to talk about really briefly here. He only directed one episode, so the director is Sean Cashman.

He's actually on the commentary for this so he was a character layout artist on the show from 1993's the last temptation of homer to 1998 simpson tide and was also an assistant director on the show off and on between seasons 8 and 10 and he left to work on king of the hills third season and he would end up directing nine episodes of that so it seems like uh he wasn't busy on king of the hill and they needed a director he was in the film roman machinery and they and he did work on the simpsons so they just dropped him in for this one he did a great job i think yeah you know it's a weird it's a weird choice for what ended up being like a landmark episode and functionally the season premiere treehouse aired on a wednesday

this is the second episode of 12 but this was promoted like it was a season premiere in the sunday slot so to give that to like a first-time director who it's his only sole directing credit on the simpsons but i think it is that it's late in the production of season 11 and this was a holdover so like we have an open slot we need a director and and when he's been like an ad to pete michaels and neil affleck like it's he's he's pretty well established i could tell from uh stalking his linkedin that he was he did a whole decade in advertising before before going to film roman so he was a very established artist already at that point and then after king of the hill he did a lot of uh episodes

of the grim adventures of billy and mandy and chowder for cartoon network and his most recent thing that he's done so far was 2020's Happy Halloween Scooby-Doo doing animation timing on that. Oh, okay. Oh, I love that one. I haven't seen that one. I haven't either. I was just kidding. Oh, alright. I was going to say, how did it take

50 years of Scooby-Doo before there was something called Happy Halloween Scooby-Doo? It took 50 years before something was named that? I'm sure there were episodes set during Halloween for Scooby-Doo, but yeah, never an official just Scooby-Doo Halloween special. It is strange that it took 50 whole years. Yeah, I don't understand why there's a Scooby-Doo for Israeli Independence Day, but not for Halloween.

Yeah, Charlie Brown never got to that. Yeah. Happy Israeli Independence Day, Charlie Brown, is my favorite special. It's Armistice Day, Charlie Brown never got to that. Yeah. Happy Israeli Independence Day, Charlie Brown, is my favorite special. It's Armistice Day, Charlie Brown. Anyway. And apparently this is partially inspired by the Los Angeles area code change that happened around the time of writing. Actually, this was breaking news hot off the presses in my neck of the woods because in northeast ohio on october 30th 2000 a week before this episode aired we got the area code

split too so uh 216 was cleveland and below that was 330 and my phone is still 330 try every number you'll get me eventually 330 this also happened in my hometown i grew up in merced california and most of the central valley was 209 and then they created the 559 area code for fresno and that was a big deal i uh in in my uh area of northern florida it also happened growing up but i was on the opposite end we got to keep our area code but i still had to dial the area code for all the old for all the new numbers that were there like a lot of the people in this episode i did feel like my world had changed we were a year before 9-11 so i wouldn't even know what would happen next but just like i gotta dial three more numbers before i call

somebody that's so much extra work well wait so the thing in youngstown is it that there actually were more people in Youngstown now? I thought they were losing people. Well, the 216 area code was like Cleveland and then like towns like Youngstown and Warren and things around it. But they're like, Cleveland can just get its own area code now. I see. And now that area is like a third less populated since I left there 10 years ago. See, it also sounds drawn along class lines just like just

like in this episode oh speaking of class lines so uh when they were getting into this episode mike scully liked the idea but he was like all right we're not gonna do snobs versus slobs and that's literally what they do to the point where characters even say slobs versus snobs in the episode so yeah he admits that was a failure on his part i i mean it's the natural direction of the story like why why fight it like especially like what else are you going to do with the story so just forget it just go and go with slobs versus snobs it's a tried and true uh storyline you can do it in pretty much all american comedy does it at one point or another i do appreciate that the slobs are completely incompetent though because it's homer running the show it's not like animal house or stripes

or something where they figure it out at the end homer is it's a horrible mayor he doesn't know how to run his town and everybody leaves like that's perfect that's exactly how it should go within what is seemingly less than a month he starves them all and is telling them to eat their pets so yeah i don't forget about the sewer oh yes the sewage that will wipe most of them out uh and you know i i will say i was a casual enjoyer of the who i'd never say i was a super fan of them but i i liked him as much like not just hearing him on an oldie station but also like once napster came around and around with this i think partially thanks to this episode and also i i believe there was an episode of freaks and geeks that was like all who songs that's that's when i was like you know what i'll burn him to some cds i'll listen to a few a few who songs and they are fun they're fun rock and

dad band yeah it definitely reminds me of my dad dad fixing the engine in our car or something. Like him wearing a tank top around the house and starting to remind himself of how happy he used to be. That's what I'm reminded of with The Who. I guess those are fun memories. I don't know. Not for for him but they are for me it reminds me of my stepdad and i was subjected to just the classic rock station every time we got went on a car ride so uh i've had enough uh i've had my fill that's fine i like my own kind of music but i can respect this i guess i guess now our songs from the year 2000 are the dad rock of uh or like death cab for cutie is dad rock now that's true based on the time frames people would consider the strokes or something like that a thing for dads or a thing for old people oh for sure yeah that said most of the people i know who are my age are not fathers yet or mothers yet so uh it's probably fine you know it's probably still cool i guess if you're childless it's not dad rock then if you try yeah there's so many people in my generation don't have

kids yet at least you know in los angeles where i live um you know people that i know are still bachelors and whatnot i was just thinking that uh we'll get we'll talk more about it later but the who in this episode is drawn as if they are living in 1976 which is weird and i still don't get it it's kind of strange but like it just made me think like Weezer was just on the show. That's the same thing as if they drew Weezer as if they were just releasing Pinkerton in 1996.

What a weird choice that is. But no, they drew Weezer as if they're all 53-year-old men as they are now. I'm sure that The Who asked for their characters to look cool. Are you telling me

rock stars have egos? Is that what this is all about? Sadly, yes. I think back to the Homer Palooza episode and Smashing Pumpkins. They don't look like they actually look in real life, even though they're young at that point still. They're idealized versions

of what they're supposed to look like or what they actually look like. It's true, but they turn back the clock to the point where Keith Moon exists. I'm sure he would have loved to have been on The Simpsons. It was his dream. And all of them have different, well, I mean, Roger Daltrey is drawn to be like a superhero. He has the body of captain america enjoying the strokes made me feel old when i saw them do an appearance at a bernie rally because

i thought like wow that's so cool they're there at the bernie sanders rally i can cheer on the strokes and they're so cool and i was like wait they're in their late 30s just like me like this isn't cool or that we're the old people at the we're like the bands from the 70s who showed up at like anti-Iraq war things and in 2002 and all the dads are like see son that's the strokes yeah daddy loves them I was gonna say it's more like when Fleetwood Mac played uh at the democratic uh or at Bill Clinton's inauguration for sure yeah it's it's the same sort of time frame of like oh this was cool 20 years ago. But now we're all sort of part of the generation

that's in control. Though it was pretty cool to see the Strokes sing New York City Cops while ignoring cops on stage in New York City. That was fun. So yeah, on the DVD, I did want to mention too, they have a hidden thing, but it's just a promotional poster they drew for the episode.

And it's a parody of the cover for Who's album, The Kids Are Alright, which is all of them using the Union Jack as a blanket laying together. And Homer replaces Keith Moon in the picture. Respectful. Yeah, that's how it should be. And they do have roger daltrey on the commentary i will say uh but he's like uh he is pre-recorded that he just did like here's two minutes of what i remember from this there's though there's a sad moment right at the start where he's like oh it's sad to hear john entwistle talking again because he had like

he'd been dead like six years at the time he recorded it i also i so we do a chalkboard gag about the election, but then the couch gag's just a fart. And I totally forgot they just did one like Homer farts. Well, it's a whoopee cushion, right? Oh, right. Yeah, but it's still kind of like, you know, not really interesting. Not their most clever one.

For $250, just wheel out the circus opening again. You need some time that way, right? They just didn't care. That's fine. I mean, I get it. This is an episode that I believe you guys said was a holdover from season 11. opening again you need some time that way right they just didn't care i that's fine i mean i get it this is this is an episode that i believe you guys said was a holdover from season 11 yes yeah i mean they just were like who's gonna watch this the election you know who's gonna watch this uh and so then we get a very wild first act with a badger appearing right when i think of

crazy first acts on the simpsons i often do think of the badger that. When I think of crazy first acts on The Simpsons, I often do think of the badger that attacks the family for five minutes. I like when it is just shoot away, like we're done with you now. This Act One story is over. Get out of here. Yeah, the way that he moves on from that

is funny to me because it's self-referential and kind of self-mocking because The Simpsons hadn't quite been doing that kind of like, first act, here's a thing, and then we're going to go another direction quite as much at that point. But now it really is a thing where people are like, oh, God, they're just killing time. This episode isn't about this. We know that.

So it's funny that they were already making fun of it 20 years ago. And I think this one is like posed almost like it's a tex avery short that precedes the actual episode especially like in the beginning where bart offers up the dog food dish and it just gets bitten like that that just is a gag from like a droopy cartoon you know and uh and same with like poor poor santa's little helper just getting shoved into there like bart wants to bart tries to kill a lot of animals in this opening it's it's uh it's sociopathic behavior at certain points it's disturbing i don't like to see it uh well i know there's one you're especially not a fan of bob but homer getting his stomach ripped open is a joke that I just don't think is funny.

I can't stand it. But first, let me, first Bart has to learn what badgers eat in our first clip. Come on, Lee, there's got to be a way to lure that badger out. Well, according to whatbadgerseat.com, badgers subsist primarily on a diet of stoats, voles, and marmots. Hmm, stoats, stoats. Stoats. Stoats are weasels, Bart. They don't come in cans. Then what's this? That says corn, Bart.

Must you embarrass me? Here we are. In a pinch, badgers have even been known to eat woodpeckers. Perfect. Hey, Todd. Can we borrow your woodpecker? I guess so. But we need him back by six. It's his birthday. Okay.

Ow! Choose to believe that woodpecker was fine afterwards. Yeah, he does fly away. We didn't see him die on screen, but too adorable for adorable for me it is time for the everybody hates birds jingle though everybody hates birds it's true as everyone knows when there's bird violence on here we have to mark it with the everybody hates birds jingle that woodpecker is adorable oh man the way he draws them with the phone they draws them with the party hat on, it's so sweet. He's going to enjoy his birthday.

Bart's going to kill this bird on his birthday. Take, Todd. I swear the original script must have had the bird die in that thing, and they changed their mind. I feel so bad for Todd. I mean, his bird, even if not dead, it needs to get to the vet right now. Yeah, this birthday party is not going on as planned it's better to die than to suffer don't you think sure yeah and we all do suffer even birds i also uh feel like this marks the year 2000 for the show

too that like they can write a scene now where lisa has a laptop that goes on the internet and has an answer to a problem like there's there's a reference to yahoo uh the arena at which the the who are playing is the yahoo search engine arena and and like the idea that there could be a website called what badgers eat.com like that that is a very 2000s idea too i went to the actual website back in the day because it was real uh fox made a mock-up of one i think matt selman and tim long wrote the copy for it but it was like a very simple website it's no longer up you just get redirected to fox.com but i the second they said that on the show i went to the computer and typed it in and it wasn't a redirect to a porn site or whatever it was real well that's

smart on on five i mean we've heard many conan o'brien did a whole bit uh about was it manatee sex or it was he had they made up a joke website but they had to own it because you can't just say a website name in an American comedy show and not have it go to a thing you own. You're just asking for trouble. So are we saying that Fox continues to renew the domain name for WhatBgers eat.com 20 years later that's insane wow i mean if you check like dedication if you check like the what is or whatever on that you can probably find out like when it's renewed too and you can squat on it you gotta you gotta poach it i might have to that would be really sneaky and then they have to pay me for it because i'm gonna redirect it to you know something crazy like 4chan i uh i did see

that some somebody web archived the what badgers eat but the version i went to it's like half broken it's uh they they did i i could see they wrote a page that said exactly what lisa says like it says here and then on the web page it says in a pinch they'll eat a woodpecker or whatever the exact line is. And I wanted to take a – there was also an Adobe Flash-powered quiz on that site, but it wasn't working in the web archive. If I recall correctly, it was a very flashy website. Yeah, yeah. Well, that was – I mean, what could be cooler in the year 2000 than a website covered in Flash stuff? Every time I turn on my computer now, it's like, listen, you've got to uninstall Flash.

Yeah, you're not getting shit. This has got to go. The Simpsons will be right back. The Who, one night only. How you doing out there? It's a little chilly. Get ready to rock. Yes, he does. Daddy's in The Who. Bam, bam, bam. Ow, ow, ow.

The Shelson season premiere with The Who, Sunday, November 5th on Fox. When you really care about someone, you shout it from the mountaintops. So on behalf of Desjardins Insurance, I'm standing 20,000 feet above sea level to tell our clients that we really care about you. Home and auto insurance personalized to your needs. Weird. I don't remember saying that part. Visit Desjardins.com slash care and get insurance. That's really big on care.

Did I mention that we care whether you're a slob or a snob we hope you enjoyed this week's podcast and a big thank you to our guest dave schilling please follow him on twitter and check out all his cool podcasts great guest as always thank you very much dave and if you're a fan of this podcast, let me suggest please signing up at our Patreon to help me and Bob do this as our full-time jobs. It's thanks to supporters on Patreon that me and Bob are able to do Talking Simpsons full-time as our real jobs. And the same for our sister podcast, which we publish weekly, What a Cartoon Podcast, which if you haven't listened yet, you should definitely check out. And for that $5 a month of support, you haven't listened yet, you should definitely check out. And for that $5 a month of support,

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Dexter's Lab, Ego Trip, and so so many more. You should sign up at the $10 level to get over 100 hours of exclusive What a Cartoon movie podcast for your enjoyment. So please check out the $10 level at patreon.com slash talking simpsons. and we all learned what a stoke was from this too like oh not me i was reading the red wall series of fantasy novels starring animals and there were plenty of stoats and badgers so you know it's funny that's this is one of these ones where you did a nerdier thing than i did the bird doesn't die on screen at least then homer thinks that they're looking at a dog house just because the tv is broken and uh homer i think it's a new level of stupidness here he's like badger my ass it's probably millhouse millhouse like very stupid before i say how

much i hate the joke that comes after this i do like the animation of just homer's suffering is his legs and arm wiggle as he's being mauled i did like that very good but dave you're right a very i'd say it's a very family guy joke the homer pulling up his shirt to reveal an incredibly accurate drawing of his internal organs well my problem with this is it's not a joke it doesn't really surprise you in any way it's just like oh look that here's this gross thing that we drew you know it's i think it's like you said very funny when he's inside of the dog house and he's getting mauled and like the way his little legs twitch and stuff and homer's reaction to being physically assaulted is always amusing to me but then the visual aspect of it just leaves me cold because it doesn't really there's nothing

it's not saying anything it's just a visual for the sake of a visual and i agree that's very very family guy-esque yeah i think i mean so like barth the daredevil was uh 10 years before this i think it's a heightening of that gag where instead of it instead of cartoon violence it's very realistic and shocking violence but it is it is like not as funny because that's not really the point and homer homer kind of waves it away it's so far outside of reality and granted this is the simpsons and the simpsons often especially in swartz welder episodes veers towards the outrageous uh even though it is the simpsons it's there's still a certain amount of grounded comedy that you expect from the show and so when it goes into this direction where it's

truly just you know physically bizarre and there's no aftermath to what's happened you could see it and it just we moved past it then it's so unmoored from reality that you can't laugh at it to me yeah you're right like in barth the daredevil it's real to the point where homer needs to be hospitalized and carried away they really commit to that gag well even presentationally like say okay in one of the uh best bits opening cartoon bits of homer that i think of is his tremapoline that does have him do a wily coyote scene but that is it's its own scene it's just like and now the wily coyote scene is over it's but it's not homer in his backyard with all of his organs exposed and i think too like they make such a distinction usually between this is a treehouse and this isn't a treehouse and like next year in a treehouse they'll do basically the same joke except a little better

of homer homer saying oh i'm fine after defeating the house like right and he then it shows part of his brain is exposed i think that one worked a little better a little bit yeah but uh yes so homer homer walks away and he's seemingly fine too it's that kind of joke too and then there's one other joke in here that i'm like in a treehouse this is good and this it's it's a little too crazy uh but yes homer is gonna call animal control your call cannot be completed as dialed please make sure you have the correct area code area code but it's a local call the phone company ran out of numbers, so they split the city into two area codes. Half the town keeps the old 636 area code, and our half gets 939.

939?! What the hell is that?! Oh, my life is ruined. Geez, you just have to remember three extra numbers. Oh, if only it were that easy, Mark. No way, we got bigger problems now. I'm not gonna stand for this i'm gonna call the newspapers the tv stations the gas stations everybody i i think in the skull years homer falls into a ball curls up into a ball more often than any other era of the

simpsons i i love when he's uh not just stupid but stressed out and anxious and excitable like this it's it's very funny to me when when they put him through the ringer emotionally his his stupidity is what's causing him to be more upset because he can't his brain cannot fathom learning new numbers and so it just leaves him like broken and desperate instantly and uh this is some interesting news here folks 636 is east central missouri and 939 is puerto rico oh wow so there you have it springfield could be in puerto rico it's true. That would explain a lot of things, but then it wouldn't explain some other things. Yeah, I guess, you know, there is,

yeah, there's a lot of ocean in that tree house we just did with the dolphins. That makes more sense if you're on an island. But, well, I also, this was a gag I just got that 636 is basically 939 upside down. So they flipped him over i did just got that right now i i'm not very smart i guess yeah that's what makes the change not significant at all yeah and yes uh homer homer dumping the badger is pretty great just literally waves him away uh i i do think it's funny that the badger the badger comes back actually twice i thought it

was just at the end but there's one other moment with the badger right uh the badger escapes when everybody else leaves old springfield i believe yes yeah i did a smidge of research before recording on the simpsons wiki for this episode and it says that in ire Sky One, all of the badger scenes, save for the first one, are cut out when it airs in syndication. What? That's crazy. Why is the badger the national animal of Ireland? Is it insulting to badgers? They don't like badger on badger violence.

No, they don't. They don't appreciate human beings being mauled. They don't like any of that stuff. Ireland is a peaceful nation full of kind, sweet, reasonable people who don't have a drinking problem. And love badgers. Love badgers. So let's just respect them and their differences from us. Then in the next scene, I think comes maybe the most enduring joke

from this episode. Oh, yeah. comes uh maybe the most enduring joke from this episode oh yeah homer homer writing on his hand that he does not know who lenny and carl is unless he writes on his hand lenny white carl black it is maybe too much but i love the adr joke is that right like just him uh muttering to himself and once homer has that sorted out he he asks Lenny and Carl their opinion. I hate this new area code. Like I don't have enough to remember already. Is that right? Don't you miss the old 636?

Carl? I'm not sure which one's better. The 6 is closer to the 3, so you got convenience there. But the 9 has less to do with Satan, which is a plus in this religious world of ours. What really burns me up is they didn't give us one word of warning. What do you mean? They ran those TV commercials about it and that big radio campaign. Don't forget the leaflets they dropped from the space

shuttle and the two weeks we all spent at area code camp. Not a single word of warning. Oh man, I just love the idea of area code camp. Did Homer skip it or do you think he just didn't remember anything? I think he just forgot't remember anything i think he just forgot he was probably drunk he's probably at moe's just getting hammered on on lukewarm beer this is like

the most successful government rollout of a program ever it's like the best funded god i yeah can we get mayor quimby to run our covet 19 response sounds pretty good yeah he's uh he's he's way better than that Cuomo guy. I also, I love the idea of like, they dropped leaflets from a space shuttle, not from even a balloon or a plane of space shuttle. That almost feels like an anti-Swarzwelder joke that's put in there.

Because it's about, you know, Schwarzwelder, not a fan of big government and doing all these things. So that joke about Homer basically being the Schwarzwelder not a fan of uh big government and doing all these things so that a joke about homer basically being the schwarzwelder type was like they didn't do anything for us what about all this stuff nothing no there's sometimes definitely in schwarzwelder scripts that i feel like they put in a joke at schwarzwelder's expense into his script uh and then we get a return of bill and marty i uh i think this is the most bill and marty have looked like me and you bob in the show although like bill they gave him uh black hair in this scene

it feels like a mistake to me his hair color and sometimes even skin color are all over the place that is true yeah he changes races often yeah what i like too is that they are enjoying being disc jockeys when they play a sound effect they are happy to do it like when he plays the jingle bill is like dancing to it like yeah all right are they usually depressed i i don't remember these guys well enough i know that they exist but are they usually miserable being disc jockeys well definitely like in the uh in the valentine's day one where they keep playing monster mash marty is getting pretty tired of bill so i think uh that tension now is in their past maybe they went on

like a club med vacation and they have reconnected uh you know maybe it was the stress of the elephant incident with bart's elephant that made them go like we're we're united together like let's not turn on each other anymore we've been through so much why would we uh break up now uh and uh but yes they announced that uh they've got a contest and homer just might win it time to give away free concert tickets what you talking about what we're talking about gary is the who we're giving away tickets to next week's concert at Springfield's historic Yahoo! Search Engine Arena! The Who? I love bands! And now, we'll dial our big winner at random! Dialing at random!

Okay, let's start with five, five, five! Zero, one, one, and three! That's my number. Ahoy, hoy. Hey, that's not me. Dad, we're not in their area code anymore. Congratulations, you're going to rendezvous with the Who. It's not fair.

I've been a fan of the Who since the very beginning, when they were the Hillbilly Bugger Boys. You should call that radio station and let him have it. Good idea. I will say, it is really extreme when Homer uses a weapon to strangle Bart. I was like, this might be too much. There's two too much moments. Actually, I think there's like five too much uh there's two too much moment actually there's i think there's like five

too much moments for homer here but yeah it's it's so realistic it's like out of a mob movie strangling bart with the cord of a phone and it doesn't bother me for some reason i because i'm so like desensitized to homer strangling his his only son uh that i don't mind but there's something later this the the i won't spoil it but that moment that ends the episode where i'm like okay homer simpson is a bad person yes yeah i uh i do like them passing out together as bart bashes his head in with the phone like flipping it behind him it's uh I I also love one that they got Gary Coleman back again and they I don't think they got him back I think they just paid him to use that from the episode and uh but I also love uh right before that they

do play Dan doing an Austin Powers impersonation which really really marks the time there uh well and also so Joanan collins she had been married four times when this episode came out she would be married a fifth time after i think she is still with the same uh fifth husband she's 87 years young and she's a dame and also a thatcherite who thinks that england is going downhill from certain types of people so uh you know you guys disagree that the winner of the concert tickets is the person who would enjoy it the least that explains why he's there though later i guess i wondered why he was there at same there's actually a couple good lines that set up a thing that seems random like one that burns is

at the who concert it's like well he did win and then homer having dynamite in a couple scenes it's because bart said he had dynamite to kill the badger you're right you're so right about that damn i love homer's reactions to like the who i love bands i i think i would have had um mole man win the Who tickets instead because I just want to put Mole Man in everything and he's conspicuous in his absence in this episode

you know I have to celebrate their restraint though that they never did a joke about the Who yeah I'm asking you anything like that I mean come on this is the simpsons we're talking about these men went to harvard well animaniacs beat them to the punch with that very good sketch they did the best version of that sketch you could ever do okay dave you're

a sports person you like sports uh yes i do what's the deal with arenas getting renamed with terrible names like yahoo search engine arena it is a means to generate revenue if you sell the naming rights to your arena let's say your arena used to be called chicago stadium and you could you know continue to call it that and make zero dollars from the name of the arena that's fine you can that. Or you can sell the naming rights of your arena to a company like Yahoo or something, and they will pay you X number of millions of dollars every year to put their corporate branding on your arena, force broadcast partners for the leagues

to say the name over and over and over again, putting the logo on the arena floor or on the football field or whatever the sport is. That's just advertising. That's just getting people to think about your brand. And now it's gotten so absurd that it's not just like Staples Center or the store Staples.

Now it's obscure, strange services you might never use, like Vivint Smart Home Arena in salt lake city have you ever heard of vivint smart homes i have never heard of that no exactly exactly i just like insurance companies and you know companies that make or stained glass windows like all kinds of silly things like that i was just thinking that uh i lived in northeast ohio and the the big arena there was called a gunned arena which sounds like a disease but it was named after the owner of the calves and then it was changed to which i think is a funnier joke than yahoo search engine arena

quicken loans arena and now i can loans arena because the owner of the cleveland cavaliers dan gilbert owns quicken loan that bastard and now it's called the rocket mortgage field house at quicken loans arena yeah and they've got two sponsorships uh when when i got home uh when i would visit back home in jacksonville i would go like oh and you're going to the field and they're like no no it's not that name anymore like it's not the telecom company that used to own it uh which man i can't even remember it was like i only hear of these things because i i am not much of a sports watcher but i am a pro wrestling watcher and so i never had heard of the smoothie king center until uh raw orleans louisiana yeah i've been there we need classy names sorry we

need classy names like the Cow Palace. Yeah. That's much better. They actually did sell cows there. My favorite is the Giants, the San Francisco Giants Stadium. And when it opened, it was Pacific Bell Park. Then it became SBC Park when SBC bought Pacific Bell. Then SBC was purchased by AT&T and it became AT&t park now folks it is oracle park oh god it

has been four different things in the last 20 years that fits the spirit of san francisco to sell out that often sam any anyone who does yes absolutely remove all traces of culture uh i i also saw the another one i was was looking up of ridiculous names I had forgotten was the KFC Yum Center. It's not just KFC. It has to pull into Yum Brands. You can't forget all the delicious Yum Brands. Yeah, I've never heard of an arena being named after the parent company. That's weird.

Yeah. Because nobody thinks about, oh, you know what? I love all my favorite yum brand restaurants like taco bell pizza hut kfc i'm a huge yum brands fan let's get pepsi in there aren't they part of yum oh yeah they absolutely are part of yum that's why they are served exclusively at taco bells kfcs and pizza hunts uh and then now a quick history on simpsons phone numbers uh so here we have five five five zero one one three which that's a good joke where homer here's just five five five first he's like oh boy everyone in the springfield has five five

five is their number uh but a few other ones the simpsons have had there's in dog of death on their lost dog sign they have 555-3457 in canine mutiny bart writes down the number 555-3126 and of course we can't forget the phone number for mr plow which does call the simpsons house klondike 5-3 2 6 so that's that's just a few of the simpsons phone numbers not not consistent even though i know simpsons writers i don't know whether or not they have a continuity department do they have someone who's sitting around in the in the office on the fox lot saying um i in this episode uh bart says that the phone number is this but we have established that the phone number for the house is this like does anybody do that the phone number is this but we have established that the phone number for the house is this like does anybody do that i think the internet is the continuity

department i want to say like and i think they hate that continuity department so i want to believe like internally within the past five years simpsons writers are using frankie act like google a word like did did we say bart was allergic to butterscotch type in oh yeah he is let's not say he can eat butterscotch i bet they do oh yeah, he is. Let's not say he can eat butterscotch. I bet you. I bet they do that. Yeah, I guess it's crowdsourced continuity. And obviously the Hillbilly Bugger Boys was not the first name for The Who,

but they did have two previous band names, The Detours and The High Numbers. So just to be fully accurate here. And so time for the town meeting homer is uh pretty pissed off about it he came there wearing dynamite i love that when lindsey nagel recognizes him as wearing dynamite he just does like a cute little nod that's great we uh last year you could do suicide vest joke is the year 2000 right yeah oh god what kind of man wears armor hot dogs uh and and also if you once you know the turn of slobs versus snobs if you do look in the even from the first shot the 636 section does have a bunch of characters you would think are as rich either celebrities or professionals i think they are creatively interpreting who is a snob and who is a slob in many cases like why is edna

krabappel on the rich side of town you know what yeah she's a teacher she lives in a sad apartment yeah well i think they wanted to pair her with principal skinner because at this point they were dating correct yes yeah that's true they they do go later to the concert and she is wearing one of the more revealing costumes i've seen on the simpsons. And of course, principal Skinner is dressed like Austin Powers. That's a real, it's a real season three throwback to get that horny with Edna designs. They haven't, they haven't drawn Edna that sexy in a while.

Yeah. I was like, good Lord. I said to my girlfriend, I think I want to have sex with Mrs. Krabappel. And she said, too bad.

And she's dead now. okay canonically she is dead yeah but this whole character the character this whole like uh phone movie set piece i love it so many quotable lines and uh amazing gags one of my lines coming up is like one of my favorites lines in the show period oh for sure here i'll play our our time with phony McRing Ring. Hi, I'm Phony McRing Ring, mascot and president of the telephone company. And I'm here to explain why the convenience of one area code in your town has been replaced by the convenience of two area codes. I have a question, Phony. It's a movie, Dad. Quiet, honey. Daddy's asking the man a question.

You're probably thinking, sure, more area codes are great, and I don't mind paying the extra hidden fees. How will I remember all those numbers? Whoa! Well, scientists have discovered that even monkeys can memorize ten numbers. Are you stupider than a monkey? I'm bigger than a monkey. Of course you're not.

Well, I'm convinced a professional-looking film like that is going to be right. Okay, so how big of a monkey? I love it so much. Not what kind of a monkey. How big of a monkey? Bigness, the size is scalable to the intelligence. And Wiggum is skeptical as if he is not as smart as a monkey. I'm going to judge this now.

He does doubt himself. He's like, I don't know. In great delivery by his area, I'm just like, I'm big of a monkey. I do like Phony McRing Ring, though every time there's a short like this in the show, I do think like, this would be Troy McClure. Like every time, I'm just like, eh. Oh, well. You can't help it. do think like this would be troy mcclure like every time i'm just like oh well it's just you

can't you can't help it phony mcring ring is a fun character to make up to be the host of these things that troy mcclure would have done yeah i also i noticed that lionel hutz is one of the characters fleeing at the end of the episode yeah that toward the episode that feels like it was a mistake yeah because they they normally would feels like it was a mistake yeah because they they normally would honor like he will never show up again but it's just weird to see him in the background yeah i think it was probably just like yeah an animator didn't get the memo yet um i do love these institutional short films when they aren't lionel hutz not because i don't are not lionel hutz but troy mcclure not that I don't love Troy McClure, but there's something almost national lampoon about the

way that they're kind of teasing the idea of the institutional films that were so prevalent in America in the 60s and 70s. Yeah, that's not something people have anymore. We don't really have that frame of reference anymore. So the baby boomer humor aspect of it is amusing to me because I do love those references to how America kind of used to be. He's definitely, he's a cousin of Springy the Elf for sure. Yes, absolutely.

Oh man. And then Homer's line after that is, I accuse the phone company of making that film on purpose. Yeah. I think, I wish I could quote that more often or find a way to like reference that line after that is i accused the phone company of making that film on purpose yeah i think i wish i could quote that more often or find a way to like reference that because like as someone used to work in like media and someone who does stuff on patreon now i i would always get the uh the comment like you wrote that so someone would click on it well it's like yeah that's my job or like you put

that behind a paywall so someone would pay for it i'm like yes give me your money give me your please give me your money one of my favorite jokes in the episode not my favorite i'll tell you what my favorite is when we get to there but yeah it's just so funny and it's such a perfectly in character gag uh that homer thinks it's the perfect tone of like you made that on purpose and they're like yes of course we did and that upsets the whole audience like uh i also i like uh the the director doesn't get much space on the commentary because i mean this is the episode where they can brag about flying to london and recording with the who which it's like no one cares about what a cartoonist did in that kind of episode but uh he he has a few good points like wow they actually drew extra jokes in there that i don't think that was in the

script like when homer stands up to speak it is framed exactly like the norman rockwell painting the classic one the four freedoms except it's a crazy person in dynamite dynamite yeah uh and in this speech here i do love to like i think it's the i could see it being in swartz welder's script as well but the idea of like him putting his thumbs through the tape on it like a big city lawyer would i love that kind of prescience to it to to where we are today in terms of our political discourse homer simpson at a at a town hall meeting with dynamite strapped to his chest uh giving this rousing speech about splitting up this town is sort of um where we are today with that we talk to each other

about politics oh man well i'm thinking later the jokes about like uh trying to heal division and homer answering that with violence that was uh they reported those covet stats on purpose but uh but yes homer realizes what this is really. It seems to me that everyone who got to keep the old or classic 636 area code lives on the rich side of town. Dude, puppy cook. I never did. And as usual, we Joe 12-packs get the royal screw job. Homer's right. We're getting the Joan Collins special.

We're getting it for good. Well, I've had it. You rich snobs aren't pushing us around anymore. And what are you pathetic slobs going to do about it? Well, I... Oh, nice wiring part.

Worked on the test corpse. Okay nine three niners i say we break off and form our own city now i i think i i love i love that joke for how shocking it is but i i think like if you're shocked by the exposed organs you should be more shocked by homer not only willing to kill himself at the drop of a hat but kill the entire town and his children yes every person in there happily just doing it and mad that it didn't work like when it didn't work he isn't like trying again and again yeah oh god yeah it really it really does go back to my my previous point draw a line under the satire of the show when it's just unmoored from these characters being appealing or sympathetic and it's just

about making fun of america and how we talk to each other and behave with each other. Homer Simpson today would be a Republican congressman from Montana. It was someone on Twitter. I think it was maybe a Missouri congressman or a Texas congressman or someone who said, you know, they're stealing the election from Trump and we should succeed from the union, which made me laugh so much because one, you know, you're committing an act of treason

and two, you can't even spell it right. This is Homer Simpson to a T. This is Homer in this episode. And it's so funny that this aired around the 2000 election, which really was that dividing point between, you know, how politics had been

before and now it's slobs versus snobs our politics is slobs versus snobs and the republicans see themselves as the slobs the the heroic underdog idiot versus the snobby latte drinking liberal it's uh i think that the body slamming congressman just got elected to governor recently. I believe you're right. I also like that Bart was happy to let Homer blow them all up. Or maybe at least in Bart's idea, it would only explode Homer. But also it shows that Bart somewhere did blow up that much dynamite elsewhere. And the original line was test goat.

So I'm happy that they just created a body and didn't kill an innocent goat. It's also funnier. I think the word corpse is just funnier than the word goat. Yeah, it's got the cuss out. Corpse. Yeah, that's corpse. Yeah, I was just thinking eight episodes earlier

in Missionary Impossible, Homer tries to stab someone to death with a pen. This is a marked increase of that joke. It is also funny that after trying to kill everyone, the slobs just go along with Homer. They're like, you know what? Yeah, we are going to leave. We're the new town with a guy who just tried to blow me up.

And we also get to see the monocle couple last scene of the horse race in saddle sore galactica he drops that monocle into his glass just again uh and so in the next scene the town is being established and uh dave we as nerds will first have to ask you what football is and then second what's the deal with this arizona cardinals joke the arizona cardinals originally played in st louis and moved to arizona in the 80s and they were historically very bad nobody really cared about them in arizona nobody really does now uh so just the idea of picking kind of the saddest least interesting football team when you really care about someone you shouted from the mountaintops. So on behalf of

Desjardins Insurance, I'm standing 20,000 feet above sea level to tell our clients that we really care about you. Home and auto insurance personalized to your needs. Weird, I don't remember saying that part. Visit Desjardins.com slash care and get insurance that's really big on care. Did I mention that we care? They are always, you can always tell that there are sports fans in the Simpsons writers room because going back to the classic episode,

you only move twice and Homer wants to buy the Dallas Cowboys and instead he gets the denver broncos which is he's so upset that he ends up getting the broncos the broncos famously lost i believe three or four super bowls in the span of a decade or something before they finally won in um i think the early 2000s or late 90s yeah i think they won not too long after the simpsons made fun of them i think i've heard people joke that like after the simpsons made fun of them i think i've heard people joke that like oh the simpsons mocking the denver broncos was would finally push them

over the edge to get that winning spirit but the so wait the there was a time when saint louis had a had a football and baseball team called the cardinals correct it still blows my mind but that also is true of the city of New York. Because the city of New York had a baseball team called the Giants. And they had a football team called the Giants. And the baseball Giants moved to San Francisco in the 50s, late 50s. Man, I always forget our team is a transfer team here. I know Ohio State bird is the Cardinals.

So I don't know what they're doing all the way out there. Man, Missouri is still- Ain't no Cardinals in Missouri. There's certainly no Cardinals in arizona yeah better point i think also the cardinal stadium is university of phoenix stadium so they're another of those terrible names yeah uh though yes as they point out on the commentary they did win the super bowl in 2008 so they uh it their joke about the Cardinals was no longer true then. Yep. See, the Simpsons, if they mention your sports team for being terrible, then chances are they're going to win not long after.

Oh, yeah. Season two, they did the joke that the Braves were never going to win the World Series. That's right. And within four years, they did it. Yep. But yes, Homer decides he wants to be mayor presenting our new plaque i say the time for bitterness has passed let us extend to our brothers in new springfield the olive brand new springfield rocks go ahead and laugh we have a better town bird. Oh, yeah? What is it? The bluebird.

Damn it. More wheat cakes, Mr. Mayor? Read my lips. Yes. Dad, you got syrup on your sash. No problem. If you ask me... Stop right there. It's stupid to divide the city over something as silly as an area code.

It would be like you and Mom splitting up every time you have a fight. Do either you know your mother and I only stay together for the sake of my political career that's not true big grins that'll play great in the sticks that's uh really that's two cruel homer jokes in a row one him shoving his hand in lisa's face to shut her up from being the annoying uh liberal lady who has any opinions and then just telling March's face like oh I'd divorce you right now if it wasn't for my political career and uh I also can you believe that this Joe guy's reaching across the aisle with his political rival and he thinks he's gonna get anything that's silly old Joe I diamond joe quimby what does he know nothing i do want to rewind real quick to the the classic rifleman parody where homer simpson is the mayor so i i

sent you a clip there henry i dm'd it to you so yeah it's a it's a parody of uh this had to be in john swartz world or script by the way because only he could write it but it's a parody of the opening of the classic series the rifleman starring chuck connor so if you could play that up until the chuck connor thing that'd be uh delightful the rifleman starring chuck connor's there you go so yeah he really just fires a gun a ton at nothing in that opening it's the exact same thing it's posed exactly the same as in the episode i i do have to say you know it's cool when arnold schwarzenegger does it as a terminator it's cool when he does it a one-handed reload of a shotgun it looks cool i don't like guns but it's uh i i have to admit

it's a cool thing yeah homer is very cool i agree yeah also the dent uh it feels like presaging the uh the season 13 episode he'll do uh swartzwater will write the lastest gun in the west with the gun smoke guy and head to who starred in a show about shooting hippies bailey just driving down the street and shooting hippies isn't there a gun smoke gag in the episode that i did the last time i was on here where they uh they have like oh no a bonanza it was a bonanza thing where that at the 50s cafe they have someone from the from the show bonanza who's appearing oh and um take my wife's sleaze right i. I think, uh, the Dennis the Menace was there. I think I remember that. Okay.

Then maybe I'm mixing up with another reference to an old sixties television show. Uh, the Homer, they fall. There's like the Bonanza mall show. Oh yeah, that's right. We're there.

That's the one. Okay. Yes. That was the one. Mentioning all the people they wish could be there, but they're dead. They're all dead. Yeah,

that's it. Okay. Thank you. And didn't there used to be three Native Americans? Oh, right. Uh, also seeing the rifleman parody rifleman parody it it also reminds me of the bounty law stuff from the once upon a time in hollywood movie which is just shows that john swartz welder and uh quinn tarantino both watch the same like 8,000 episodes of black and white cowboy shows. Also, Homer saying big grins. That's a reference to on the 200th episode when they had U2 directing them to sing.

The sound guy, Chris Ledesma, was telling him like big grins, big grins when you sing. And Bono sounded like did not like being told big grin while he was singing and he's been the music editor on the show from the first episode until now it's amazing yeah he's on my list of like I'd really like to interview that guy but uh so far no answers on Twitter yet maybe in the future but yeah I also and I do like that they're that mayor sash roll only has 50 mayor sashes on it that's pretty time toorder. They finally did more jokes with the mayor sash. They thought they were all sashed out. They did every sash joke they could do with Quimby's sash.

But they found a new one with Homer. And then there's a little bit of Bart being bullied by, I guess, Jimbo and his friends are the rich kids. I never thought of them as rich kids. I mean, rich bullies make sense for sure. I do like the twist uh about how they have to do his homework and dolph's like what does freedom mean to me that's that's a great line to cut the scene on there there are a lot of not a lot but there are a couple characters where as we've talked about before they don't seem like they belong on the

side that they're on for instance sheriff uh not sheriff uh what's his face? Oh, Wiggum. No, Chief Wiggum. Sorry, I totally blanked. Chief Wiggum is on the rich side. And I would think based on his sort of attitude about the law and about work and those kinds of things that he would be on the slob side. But I suppose Homer can't really pay him a salary. It wouldn't make a ton of sense for him to stay in new springfield i think that's why eventually actually fairly quickly everyone leaves homer's

side of town so they don't have to worry about that split anymore homer's mistake was not investing in you know a security force like there's a reason it's the reason you go with malicious first and then everything has to follow in your new independent state also it was i think this was the first time i feel like i've seen in lots of other stuff but i think it's the first time i've seen a joke about how frisbee is a copywritten phrase and you can't and shows don't want to say frisbee so they novelty flying disc to say novelty flying disc here is pretty great that's why it's miss brisbee in secret of nim that's right miss frisbee well then it cuts to marge shopping i it's it's a sad joke about apu now being hateful and bigoted towards the people who have been othered that's it's it makes me feel bad seeing that i do like the the fake product placement for henderson's

toilet paper yes sorry dave i did like i did like this joke i know how it can maybe rub people the wrong way considering where we are today in society and, of course, the controversy around Apu as a character in general. But I do like the twist in putting Apu in a situation where you would think he would be sympathetic, but because this old Springfield versus new Springfield divide runs so deep and is's so arbitrary and ridiculous.

He can't help but take a crap on Marge and hate her. It's very, very funny to me because it does point out how absurd and arbitrary our prejudices are. Well, to be fair, the toilet paper is worth the money to the point where marge wants to use the bathroom immediately just to try it out and he will i mean no you can't not for you marge can't even wipe her ass in his store like yeah it makes me laugh it makes me laugh and i also like when marge comes back she's her speech is good that lisa is like that marge is starting to give into the prejudice as well but i i it's such a great extra dramatic pause marge has as on they were looking at me with their eyes just feeling very unsettled by that and i didn't catch until this viewing that bart did not put new didn't put pants on again after losing his pants two scenes earlier it's

a funny establishing shot of just him in underwear in front of the TV. Well, unfortunately, the department store is in Old Springfield. You can't get me. He's only got the one pair. You guys know that. And Homer is seeing that the media

has turned on him too. I don't know why, but I just didn't feel comfortable until I was back here in New Springfield with my own kind. Mom! They were looking at me with their eyes.

As expected, New Springfield's bold experiment and slob rule is a disaster. Hey, the TV man is talking about us. A study shows their crumbling economy is due to their lazy attitude and shoddy work. How the hell did they find that out? Scientists say they're also less attractive physically.

And while we speak in a well-educated manner, they tend to use lowbrow expressions like, oh yeah, and come here a minute. Oh yeah? They think they're better than us, huh? Bart, come here a minute. You come here a minute. Oh yeah. Oh, God.

My friends and I would do that whole routine with each other constantly. The come here a minute. You come here a minute. Oh, yeah. Oh, God. My friends and I would do that whole routine with each other constantly. The come here a minute thing. I just love how perfectly lowbrow come here a minute is. It gets the job done. You say, come here. Come here. It makes sense. I like that.

I take that as a parody of how, say, American News reports on any official enemy of America. They're just like, well of america that they're just like well we know that they're uglier and no less than us like also the the shot of homer lenny and carl sitting on the stoop that is posed like the cover to the who album meaty beady big and bouncy suggestive it's the name of the album i i'm just reporting it here everybody knows that reference it's a very well drawn parody like it's funny even without knowing the cover i love that mo pose oh yeah i know it's i mean it's a funny drawing but it is like uh i think the animators honestly were more into who references than the writers who got the who to do the show like i i guess i'll just say what my theory is

here that the who's appearance in this to me feels very much like the al gene and mike reese era of season three and four like all the baseball players or everybody in the crusty comeback special these you know funny but um glowing portrayals of a guest star and just like doing bending over backwards to have the characters say like we love you you're great and the and the way that they do self-mockery that's up to a certain line and you don't go farther kind of thing it it feels and it definitely feels like how in many gene and reese episodes it's like well how do you end an episode well the big celebrity shows up and then you're just so glow in in the glow of the celebrity you're not thinking about the ending yeah it's very reverent there's not really a lot of story ultimately with this episode

homer's experiment just kind of peters out and then who uses the power of rock and roll to destroy the wall? It's so silly. But I think probably the best example of this really working and being both kind of teasing the guest, but being referential, and then the ending not being a complete wet fart is New Kids on the Black, the NSYNC episode, which does use NSYNC well. It is a full meaty story and you get the great reveal of what the song is. And of course, that was written by my good friend Tim Long. And

Tim has been a Simpsons writer forever. And I think he really nailed that episode. Yeah. And I don't think that Who was there to promote anything. Their last album was 1982 before this. Their next one would be 2006. I don't know what they were doing. They probably were playing. I mean, they're endlessly on tour. They're on tour. Constantly. But it wasn't like, oh, The Who is having like a compilation out or there's like a new anniversary thing or anything. It's just like, well, The Who's always famous. So let's have them on. It's a safe bet of a guest star, you know? Hey. Well well then in the next scene homer is gonna get his revenge he's gonna turn off the power for half the town uh it feels very of this

era when bart says i don't think we should do this and homer's like yeah okay marge like it's just this anger towards marge is this the nag who ruins all fun in the show well that does feel like a swartz welder line because he hates marginally so really yeah that again goes back to um take my wife's sleeves where you think they're gonna hate marge the the bikers are but then marge teaches them how to be proper and kind of tweaks that oh i hate marge marge is annoying kind of vibe that swartz welder as you said is constantly putting into his episodes at least in that case they take marge as a killjoy and put it in the good direction of rehab of rehabilitating a bunch of uh murdering bikers exactly like yeah her her particular skills as an annoying presence is is very beneficial in

that episode and uh crusty the lights go out while he's getting another heart bypass. So I wonder if they cut open the same area as his heart bypass guard. They just have a zipper on there at this point. And then comes another joke that's like insanely treehouse of horror to me, which is that Frank was going to successfully teleport and time travel Sir Isaac Newton to him, but it only teleports half of him and then he starts getting kicked by the legs which i'm like this is so wacky in a normal episode it's it's the matter transporter from fly versus fly you're right it's the same one yeah yeah wow that's uh and again works in treehouse very silly here And we were talking about it earlier. Onward ripped this off.

Like, this is the exact half teleport. Damn, Onward. How dare you? Not only were you the last movie ever, you also ripped off The Simpsons. All right. So in this next scene, Homer, in response, shuts off the water because he sees they did a tea party bit with the simpsons beer which like very different to tea party joke in the year 2000 than it would be eight years later yeah when you were saying tea party just kept thinking of like 2010 yeah totally uh and now we just live like the tea

i gotta say uh in the year at the end of the year 2000 the tea party feels like more normal now like that's hyper normalization for you i guess like uh that that they were they used to be like oh as far right as the tea party like uh i wish i wish homer gets his revenge by shutting off the water with him and his friends and this is another line i really like too me too oh that's nothing like revenge for getting back at people i don't know vengeance is pretty good. Woo-hoo! Blood for water! Ain't got us now. Without water, we're doomed.

Wait a minute. What's that gold-colored substance in the riverbed? Why, that's gold. We're slightly richer. Get me some gold. You're wicked! With the money made from the gold, old Springfield was able to buy the Evian Water Factory

and fly it over here from France. Oh! Thanks, Mayor Simpson. Because of you, we're all taking golden showers. Plus, we can't go on fighting with Old Springfield. These people are our neighbors. We see them every day. You're right.

We've got to block them from our site with a giant wall like the one in berlin good idea we should call the guys they used homer it's ringing still doesn't know just a cascading wave of jokes it just keeps coming really one of the best sequences nothing like so nothing like revenge for getting back at people that's a great one and i don't know vengeance is pretty good like and uh i remember being on all tv simpsons the news group people were reacting in horror to two episodes in a row so the first episode was halloween one of course and there was like references to sugar walls and glory holes

and this one golden showers online people were like is the simpsons getting too filthy but we we just did an episode of south park for our sister show what a cartoon from this era and we're like wow even this early in south park they were the filthiest show on tv yeah there's no catching up for simpsons to their filth level yeah but the uh i mean getting away with the golden showers joke on the simpsons at eight o'clock that was like an extra line i mean that was that also defines the year 2000 which is learning about sex act names and go like oh you know donkey punch like yeah shut the fuck up the rusty trombone all the funny names the funniest names if you think i didn't laugh at that joke boy are you wrong that is a

great joke yes now i i like it in the especially that the clearly kent's writers made him say a thing that he doesn't know he said i like that part of it yeah yeah isn't there snickering you can hear in the background it's probably their his producers so good uh i i know i also i love the statement of what's that gold colored substance there's a lemon behind that rock uh yeah it's actually the same joke the and also i i do think about uh when rich people get more rich i think of burns is like we're slightly richer they're as rich as nazis uh and another first time i noticed like for 10 frames maybe half a second you see old-timey prospectors come in to get the gold as well you can hear them too right yeah uh it's just like one shot and uh right around here is one of the first deleted

scenes on the dvd as he's reporting on them getting a golden shower it then cuts to them saying that uh kent talks about refugees leaving new springfield to move into old springfield and it's ned ron and todd going like and they're just shaking like they're war orphans. And yeah, I do also like the sometimes, you know, in a relationship, when you're hearing the ringtone, you just have to lie and be like, it's ringing. I'm not wrong. I do wonder why Flanders stayed. Is Flanders, you know, just too lazy to move to Old Springfield? You know, I think it's just his Christian duty, he feels.

He has to stay next to Homer and do his best. I think that's it. Yeah, maybe the church is in New Springfield. Who knows? You know, and also this turn on a border wall joke. I have to think. I'd hate to know John Swartzwalder's feelings on border walls. Well, that's big government yeah i think so yeah big government baby he could be right about that i don't know i've as much as i met libertarians who complain about big government

they sure do like it when it uh leaves alone white people i don't know if if john swartzwelder is a trump person i i think that's probably unlikely i think he's a crank uh who doesn't like people bothering him but you know trump seems like the kind of nuisance governmental nuisance that he would be bothered by yeah yeah i i i could i could see that i mean also like i would i could imagine john schwartzwelder hasn't voted in like 40 years that's another good bet. And yes, and then there's another great line too in the deleted scene. This whole section here from like the Kent Brockman report to the presentation of the wall.

It's like they cut out like every other joke because there's a bit homer announcing how the wall has changed he says a lot of love went into this wall love for a hatred of old springfield which is a really great joke yeah and also he says that the when carl says the roads are blocked and then homer corrects him he's like blocked and mined so homer has a lot of explosives in this i think i think the reason that scene got cut there is a small mistake with mo like crying there's like a tear and you know how much matt graning hates a bad tear he burned that footage it is weird to see fat tony not even get like a grunt from him yeah he did montaigne would do it too if you asked ask. If Fat Tony stayed in New Springfield, I mean, he'd basically be running the joint.

Yeah. He would be running booze and various illicit narcotics and things across the border. That is an episode I want to see. He's running this construction company front, though, it seems. I got to bring the garbage trucks in. And of course, the garbage trucks in and of course the garbage trucks are just filled with cocaine maybe that's why a loud guitar chord destroys the wall because

it was built as shoddily as their ramps for uh the springfield school a few episodes earlier 90 percent recycled materials you can see like the angel i love that angel skeletons there and uh and i spotted the olmec head too you'll see that a little later in it i that was great i and i also love that lisa lisa is ambivalent about she doesn't know how to be approving of using recycled materials while bart is not paying attention and uh and homer makes the mistake of being too honest with his constituents and telling them you will definitely starve to death and we are doomed the sewage nightmare yes which he calls it uh which you know what we talk about this as well the 200th episode is kind of the same thing of homer gets political power and

then the town all turns on him and he destroys the town it is true yeah and there's a lot of garbage involved yeah i guess this is less garbage less filth more chloroform less garbage water in this one at this point in the episode i'm kind of thinking like this easily could have been the simpsons movie yeah it is a big a big idea for a 22 minute episode yeah that and that's why i was like my mind immediately goes to all the other things that could have happened in this scenario, like fat Tony running drugs across the border. This would have been exactly the kind of thing that would work similar to putting a dome over Springfield where it's a big,

you can have big set pieces and stuff, but it's really just about Homer and Homer's hubris. And then him kind of fixing it he doesn't fix anything at the end of this episode he doesn't learn anything but you can see the version of this story where he does learn something and he does become a better person and things do calm down because he's able to have an epiphany about how much of an idiot he is yeah the who does take away the ability to have a third act in this one yeah i totally agree like this would be like i i've come to terms with my hatred of the movie

i don't think it's awful but every time i think about it i think of all the missed opportunities and keeping the story in springfield was a huge missed opportunity they just fled the town i know you got to do that in a movie to you know do something new but man like it should have been more about the town yeah and they cut out scenes in the movie that had more of the town i mean they cut out so much of that movie that movie was like eight different movies before it was made i i agree that the movie as it is is maybe a little bit disappointing i like it i think it's kind of heartwarming and and and makes you feel good at the end um that it really does reconnect with the ideas of homer being a bad father who wants to be a good father versus the kind of anarchic attitude that the simpsons took on later uh that said yeah i think if they had just stayed

in the town and it'd been a story about a civil war essentially between uh one side of the town and the other you could have seen all the characters and there would have been more for everybody to do and it would have felt more like a simpsons episode and there are not i don't think that many episodes of the simpsons despite the fact there's now been almost 800 episodes over 30 years there aren't that many that you can say you know if they had given that an extra hour that would have been a movie yeah this one in my opinion is absolutely clear in its potential as a feature film one and we've said it before but the the film gets 10 better if you just replace the president with mcbain and russ cargill with the with hank scorpio it's the the every line would be the same they would just be characters

you recognize but they they they're definitely we're going into the films uh the overall idea was this can't alienate a person who's never watched the simpsons which i'm just like it's true those people yeah is that person who is that person out there who's never seen The Simpsons? That said, I don't think that part never bothered me. I mean, I guess the McBain reigning at Wolf Castle bothered me a little bit. But the Russ Cargill versus Hank Scorpio thing didn't bother me one bit. Check out our episode of Michael and Us. We talk all about the movie from a few months ago or maybe six months ago.

Who knows? I forget. So everyone abandons homer even a tumbleweed goes over and the badger you can spot the badger going over uh after everybody abandons homer it's um uh it's time for a new plan that's when they realize the who is in town uh but on the other side of town so they head over to uh to show how often they were doing using chloroform in the show they go to a store called just chloroform this is the joke that makes me laugh harder than anything in this episode just the visual gag i i had to pause the episode i was

laughing so much i i also love the very swartzwalder gag of of Homer punching a window to steal food very cartoony sausage links yes and then Lisa telling uh telling him you're bleeding he was like no problem punches another window gets bandages doesn't stop his stride like that that's very funny writers are really getting into chloroform leading to a bad joke at the end this episode I would say but first uh they break into a very fancy and very british hotel uh with the hubba hubba bellhop outside oh that is that guy wow i think it's just like the bellhop design they had on file so yeah i love that guy though that is that is a great uh character to bring back hubba hubba well you know at this point they can just go like why are

we drawing a new bellhop we made a great bellhop five years ago let's just put him in here or no seven years before this episode uh but yes homer and bart they have bart and homer go on a lot of adventures this episode it's a real homer and bart adventure episode uh but in this case the chloroform fails them oh can i help you dad the chloroform. Huh? All right. I'll give you this bottle of chloroform if you'll take us to the who. Oh, so you want to see the who, huh? Well, I'll take you to the who. Here's your who.

I thought we fired that guard. Oh, yeah, right. I got fired by the who. Whatever you say, pal. Whack-a-who. Oh yeah right I got fired by the Who whatever you say pal Wacko That's very Hagen Zaria like a wacko I'm not saying they ripped it off but it does remind me of that

Kids in the Hall sketch of the guy who Just talks like he's sarcastic but he's not actually sarcastic Oh yeah It's just a great sketch is what I'm saying That is a great sketch I'll give you this bottle of chloroform if you take me to the Who That's great sketch is what i'm saying that is a great i'll give you this bottle of chloroform if you take me to the who so makes me laugh that's he's using the chloroform i love this episode it was a bartering tool not like actual use of chloroform was involved in this plan uh yep and also the

great gag that homer kissing the bottle knocked him out right before this too uh so yes here we are it's the who yes yeah the it's uh pete townsend though not pete townsend roger daltrey and kent uh and john antwessel yes and uh they give away the secret of this episode so in the credits it just says the who because i think they're covering up the fact that uh pete townsend was not on the vocal track for this episode uh the writers tell one story and then roger daltrey tells the truth. The writers tell the story that Pete Townsend thought he was signing off

on having an impersonator do his voice like in like Beatles Yellow Submarine movie or the Beatles cartoon. What really happened was Pete initially agreed to it or he initially said he would do it. But when the time came and Roger Daltrey was trying to get him to come with him,

he was just like, you know what? I'm i'm not gonna do it so he was just being a dick rock star yeah and that's the story that roger daltrey tells in the commentary but uh his his story roger daltrey is like he was more impressed of meeting dan castellaneta than dan was of meeting the who it was like they were both starstruck at the same time oh that's uh because they because they flew to england mike scully and Dan Castellaneta flew to England to record with The Who. And so since Pete Townsend, yeah, it's also funny. They said that Daltrey was actually really punctual and good. He showed up early.

And they also told a joke that he warned them that John Entwistle was the palest man in the world. Yeah, and he would die two years later. Yes, yeah. Because he had a heart two years later yes yeah because he had heart condition and he still did coke and smoked 20 cigarettes a day apparently yep yeah hey a rock star to the end if he just smoked 19 a day he'd still be here with us folks so remember moderate your smoking maybe also he was that bad because he's he was in the same band as keith moon and he's like oh i'm not as bad as keith it it's like Homer with Barney as an alcoholic he's like well hey look I'm not as bad as Keith Moon so blame Pete Townsend for having his uh brother Paul come in to uh dub his voice and there's one line where Dan Castellaneta

does uh Pete Townsend's voice it's when uh they're talking about Radio Shack and he goes says you that's Dan Castellaneta I I do have that clip. So try to, you can easily tell it's him when you know. Though I never noticed until they said in the commentary. I was like, oh yeah, that's obviously Dan. But yeah, they paid Paul Townsend $1,000 to do it. Maybe Pete was too busy visiting certain websites. Hey, now I looked into that and he got set up. I think so. It was a setup. Look, I don't want to looked into that and uh he got set up i oh it was it was a setup look i i don't want to

get into that i yeah i think i believe pete townsend has been exonerated on that thing i do but uh google it if you want to know it's too it's too much okay but uh but yeah the the simpsons barn and homer start destroying the hotel room because famously Keith Moon was one of like the most thrashing of hotel room rock stars there ever was, including one in 1968 that sent him to the hospital. Like he's I sometimes, you know, as a kid, I thought those trashing hotel room stories sounded fun. And now I just think like, well, who's cleaning that up? You know, like I feel i feel bad for the poor people who have to clean up after these rock stars i agree you know they should they should make nearly as much as those people i think that the people who clean hotel rooms should make at least

a million dollars a year if not more than that they're the real rock stars man those people are heroes uh this episode just completely falls apart at this point can i say that can i just be very blunt and say that the episode completely unravels as soon as the who show up oh yeah it becomes the who focused show where they solve all the problems through rock and roll magic yeah well it you know it becomes like the the snl sketch where it's like and now our musical guest is in the scene and we just talk to them and it's like i i think the digital shorts could at least do better stuff with the uh guest star of like hey you can sing part of this song right nikki minaj or someone else i can't think of i do like the jokes about the who being like regular guys like they

don't want to lose their pool privileges. And also the walk will do us good. That's cute. Yeah. But yes, why don't we hear a little bit of the Who as they completely take over this episode and just make it about them. I'm Homer Simpson. The mayor of New Springfield. That's right.

When you really care about someone, you shout it from the mountaintops. So on behalf of Desjardins Insurance, I'm standing 20,000 feet above sea level to tell our clients that we really care about you. We care about you. Home and auto insurance personalized to your needs. Weird, I don't remember saying that part. Visit Desjardins.com slash care and get insurance that's really big on care. Did I mention that we care? The crazy mayor of New

Springfield? That's right. And I implore you to move your concert to our town. Don't play Old Springfield or, as it is sometimes known, Sun City. But we have a handshake agreement with a concert promoter. And that's a sacred bond.

Sacred bond. Come on. What happened to the angry, defiant who of my generation won't get fooled again and Mama's got a squeeze box? We know our songs, Homer. But those old Springfield Squares are just going to make you cut your hair, turn down your music, and wear frilly shirts like keith partridge keith partridge who huddle we'll do it just send a cat force what's something wrong with your legs you're right the walk will do us good and i didn't realize until this viewing but that sun city joke

is a joke about apartheid yes it is yeah i only know it because it was a song and i watched like uh vh1 behind the music on the writing of the song but it was so uh yes in the uh up to the 80s there was a big resorting casino in south africa called sun city that many famous people played, like, say, Frank Sinatra or even Elton John and the Beach Boys. But it, you know, South Africa was a country of apartheid and a disgusting racist system, awful stuff. And many musicians, but including Stephen Van Zandt, they refused to play Sun City.

Stephen Van Zandt they refused to play Sun City Stephen Van Zandt wrote a song called Sun City about not playing it and using his celebrity to shame other celebrities to not play it and not play in an apartheid state and that actually was part of many boycotts of South Africa that I think did have some political effect on it but so when homer says sun city he is lying that old springfield is an apartheid government but yeah so they do a who huddle they head off we cut to the uh the show crusty is telling his one old story about woodstock which i think is very much a lie didn't happen uh And a very weird joke about the creases on Burns' legs there. And he's happy that they're there.

He's like, excellent. He's just feeling them. It's a good sound effect on feeling the crease in a bony leg. Someone had to find that. And that's where we get the very sexy Edna Krabappel. Now, I think we said the Austin Powers up front. To me, he looks like Prince. But they're very similar costumes. All right, let's not split hairs here up front. To me, he looks like Prince, but they're very similar costumes.

All right, look, let's not split hairs here, okay? He looks how he looks, and it doesn't matter what the reference is. It's absurd. Why is he dressed like that? I guess that Austin Powers look comes from the same era as the Who's biggest, like in the late 60s. Oh, no, i understand that i don't understand why of all people the straight-laced conservative principal skinner is now wearing this frilly purple outfit i think i talked him into it had to be okay yeah i guess i think it's part of we can't look like squares

at the concert i i think it's part of a role play that will play off into the night for for skinner into the night with skinner and edna krabappel is a spinoff that we never got uh so but the who are late they can then hear off in the distance playing one of the two who songs you hear in the episode the seeker which i think is actually a pretty good song i like that song a lot but uh they didn't fine in in uh in a very sweaty line oh yeah yeah mo says that fat dumb and bald guy sure plays some real hard ball a parody of the tommy song that deaf dumb and blind kid sure plays a mean hardball. Pinball. Pinball. Yeah. Pinball.

Yeah. A pinball with a... Yeah, that is a real journey to get to that being a joke. I feel like they just want to pat on the back, and they're like, we made it work, right? We made it. It was needlessly complicated and distracting, but I like it. And I also really feel for the animators on this that once they realize the who aren't there everybody storms

out so it's just huge crowds they've had huge crowds this entire the the end of act one is half of the auditorium leaves like jesus and now this yeah so many people is this the point where um lionel hudson shows up i know that was lee that was the end act too when they were climbing over there yeah yeah got it but yeah so so many crowd shots and this is just i mean at this point i think the animators are just used to it like well yeah every second or third episode has five mob scenes and this was a held over episode so there's more times presumably to work on these big crowd scenes but uh marge gets horribly abused yes and then uh she gets cursed at in a deleted scene or an outtake rather yes so i couldn't believe that marge gets smacked in the face and is then uh barely conscious when she gets pulled up. In the regular version, it seems to be an accident.

The animation of Bart and Lisa helping her is very funny. But yes, Roger Daltrey gave them a different line read that I am shocked is on the DVD, but here's the clip. How you doing out there, New Springfield? To be honest, it's a little chilling. Shut the fuck up, Marge. Well, there you have it. Man, hearing that on an official Simpsons DVD,

even though it was hidden on the DVD, to hear shut the fuck up, Marge, put on the DVD, I can't, Disney would never, ever let that happen. Yeah, I am shocked that people are so mean to marge through this whole episode it's just it's a real anti-marge episode and of course the the coup de grace is the final scene yeah i mean so look the the year 2000 isn't famous for the feminist jokes on television like this is this is the same year as the man show i do believe so it's uh it's not it's not the best time for comedy um for at least

of a feminist style i do like the gag that homer is telling them to sing songs that aren't their songs including the novelty garbage like to hear roger daltrey say pac-man fever is funny to me i bet they look down on buckner and garcia i also like that homer puts on a mop wig as well and then dances around and saying look lisa daddy's in the who yes as homer is trying to celebrate with the who. The mob shows up. They have a rent-a-pult that they are using to shoot flaming garbage at Homer. That's a great name for a rental catapult company. Yeah. Very good.

And it's just a little visual gag. It goes by so fast, you got to look for it. It is more in the classic Simpsons style of like a joke packed into every frame kind of stuff. But yes, as the hood hears what the problem is they instantly have a solution please what's all this fighting about apparently they have two different area codes well i'll be chugged that's the sticky wicket why not just buy telephones with auto ringer or as you yanks call it speed dial radio shack has some great ones so it's you magic bus yeah magic bus okay we'll play magic bus if you tear down this wall pinball wizard oh hell i'll do it myself you know roger daltree is right now that all dialing is speed dialing we don't have to worry

about these area codes like i don't actually know anyone's number i know the name of a person i touch their name and my phone calls them yeah this is an anachronistic episode or not uh you know it's it's an episode that uh does not translate well to modern times if you are 13 and you watch this you're like who cares what my area code is no one gives a shit anymore i'm still very invested in the 510 area code and i will not let it go i love my 510 area code i think it's awesome that not only did the who and and various western rock and roll bands bring down the berlin wall with their cultural expansion they were able to destroy the wall that separated new and old springfield in this episode too makes you think doesn't it it was

really david hasselhoff that brought down the berlin wall touche and alf alf as well alf did yes yeah but uh you can tell the animators really did enjoy drawing a big Pete Townsend windmill guitar. That was fun. I will say they basically just do the turn it to 11 joke, but they turn it into whoa. Same deal. And I do like the Roger Daltrey having to say, I'll be chuggered. So that's the sticky wicket. Yeah.

That's cute. But though British listeners tell me, is auto dial what, or auto ringer, what you guys call speed dial? Is that, is that the phrase for it? He said all tone ring up or something like that. Okay. And I do like the zoom in on Daltrey scream though. It feels cheap to me that it's like, Oh, this isn't like a new recording. This is them from like four,

30 years before this episode aired. You're playing this. Sorry. You called it auto ring up. Ah, auto ring up. Got it. The song is just the recording,

right? They didn't re-record the time for the episode. Yeah. Lazy, lazy. Well, I mean, they are drawn like they are from 1976.

Just play the song from 1976. Yeah. why not? Also, they request Magic Bus, and then they play Won't Get Fooled Again. Like, they didn't even do what they said they'd do. Well, they also, Homer also asked for Pinball Wizard. They didn't get that either. What the heck? Me, me.

The Who just doesn't care. They don't care about Springfield. They're just there to collect the paycheck. Me not knowing about the Who. I thought Magic Bus was like a Pac-Man fever song. I'm like, Magic Bus? That sounds stupid. Oh, it is a Who song.

Okay. Like the Magic School Bus cartoon? That's what I thought. But yes, it's time for a happy ending that does involve spousal abuse in this last clip. I love the line though your insane experiment is over yes yeah that i do like that but i will say two production episodes ago marge was tranked at the end of an episode because she wanted to make homer do uh like housework scrubbing and mopping yeah you're right homer blew a dart gun into her which i guess which is more violent him putting chloroform to her face to knock her out or hitting her with the blow dart to knock her out i guess the blow dart because it's a projectile and it could hit a

an artery or something right too yeah or it could get infected i don't know i think the chloroform is more intimate yeah i mean i did feel extra grossed out by it now seeing him like dancing with marge's unconscious body that feels worse to me now too like it one and we heard like on the record when we had on dana gould for uh an interview james l brooks did not like that joke at all and i think he uh was was busy working on maybe the spanglish script but he could not he let this get through and he was not happy this is one of those uh matt graning is on futurama right now moments which is like he would not let homer Marjot out as a finale, but he's on the commentary. He doesn't say anything.

That's true, yeah. He's not going to sell out his writers. I think that's noble that he's not going to be like, I thought you guys really screwed up when you did that. It's water under the bridge. It's there now.

It did remind me, because I'm also re-watching Twin Peaks right now. It reminds me of the episode where leland palmer uh murders madeline ferguson uh laura palmer's cousin and he's dancing with her actor he's knocked her out with like a headbutt and uh it's just very creepy in the same way that this is incredibly creepy yeah it is very similar there so macarain doesn't say anything on the commentary but there is a great moment on the commentary where the episode ends with the badgers attacking the town and this

like really great animation of badgers just swarming over a hill and mike scully showrunner is like uh george talking to george meyer george where did this idea come from george meyer's response is desperation and they admit like it's a bad ending uh you know it's it is at least the they were doing a lot of that in season 11 too of just like hey you forgot about the opening joke but it's come back with a vengeance for the last scene of the episode but i think it also overstays its welcome because they wanted to have it last as long as the guitar solo yeah so they play the badgers running twice they they kind of loop it i just love in the scully era of commentaries the whole like you try writing an ending kind of jokes they will often do defensiveness yeah yeah it's sort of like the end of an snl sketch sometimes they just don't know

how to put a button on it and so it just kind of turns into a non-sequitur or a reference to something that happened earlier and that's fine i mean it's a simpsons this is an absurd episode that doesn't really have any kind of emotional resonance uh whatsoever it's just a fun romp and those are sometimes my favorite simpsons episodes i know everybody loves the the ones where there's there's some emotion to them um but i mean i just love when it gets silly like this yeah and we pointed out just so many like quotable lines and somebody just fun gags, even though the story doesn't really hold up. It's just like very,

very punchy. And I like that. I think the first two acts are full of great, great Schwarzwalder lines that are just like, oh, that's an amazing, that's an amazing line. How big a monkey,

like all that kind of stuff. Like it's there, there's tons of quotable stuff in it. The, the who thing, if you're not a, like a hardcore who fan, you probably just go like,

eh, that's nice. Like, and also it's just, uh, I think that this is a time in the Simpsons, but I think it's always been this way, but I do think it's a time in the Simpsons where,

uh, they are very into guest stars that kind of just take over the episode, which I, uh, but yeah, I think as a 250th landmark episode it's kind of a wild one but uh i guess it does i mean who's the bigger band the who or you two like i guess in the year 2000 you two was yeah definitely you too yeah i i just think that again this episode had so much promise and is for the first two acts so

funny but also such a great commentary on things and so satirical that it's just it's kind of a missed opportunity because it doesn't really give you any any take home or any any resolution that feels satisfying the the who stuff and the the raccoons coming back that's fine but it's it it is such a disappointment after the first two acts are so funny and so clever and are filled with so much possibility this really could have been and probably should have been the movie yeah the i i guess the movie basic it follows a similar uh trajectory as this one but yeah the the splitting the town is and putting a wall in between it is uh slightly less silly than the uh the the bubbling yeah the idea just feels like it is not explored well enough for being such a big idea for a tv episode

for sure yeah the the bubble in the in the movie is it doesn't really have anything to say about the premise of the show. Like, you know, when you're doing the Simpsons movie, you really only got one crack at it. Because the only novelty there is the first time doing a movie. This is the first Simpsons movie. And then if there's ever going to be a sequel, people will probably be like, well, why? What's the point? There's been 700 episodes or 800 episodes of this show why do we need another movie but the first one was such a novelty you really

had to like find a thing a story point and a plot element that would encapsulate 20 25 years or however long it's been that the simpsons has been on the air. And the idea of cutting the town in half and dividing the town by class is such a pure distillation of what the Simpsons is, which is a microcosm of America and art society and, you know, our values and what we think is funny or interesting. That's that idea of splitting it up is just so potent to me. And I feel like it's such a bummer that that that wasn't what they ended up doing well i think we'll get to the movie in maybe five or six years in our timeline so we'll definitely bring this up then yeah oh i can't wait hopefully

i'll still be uh available to do the podcast in five or six years uh but but thank you so much for coming on this weekend chilling of course yeah this is another one that i was really glad to revisit uh similarly to take my wife's sleaze uh i am fully pro sports welder and i will go to my grave supporting his work on the simpsons except for the joke where you see homer's insides sure oh and and him chloroforming, Mark. Aside from that. Yes. Oh, and in the motorcycle episode, the implied sexual assault. Other than that, he's pretty great.

But where can we find you online, Dave, and your podcast as well? I am at Dave underscore Schilling on Twitter. You can find my podcast, Full Court Chat, on iTunes, or not iTunes, itunes apple podcast spotify wherever you get your podcast similarly to my new podcast uh it's called must watch colon the mandalorian not the word colon an actual colon must watch colon the mandalorian and we drop every friday uh with a recap very quick 30 minute uh whiz bang recap of the Mandalorian that I think will teach you a little bit something about star Wars. If you are looking for a deeper dive into the themes and references in that

show. Awesome, man. Well, thank you so much, Dave. Thank you guys. May the force be with you live long and prosper I grabbed

ours hammer what a savings so thanks again to Dave Schilling for being on the show check out all of his stuff and as for us if you want to check out more of our stuff and get all these episodes one week ahead of time and ad free along with a bunch of other stuff please go to patreon.com slash talking simpsons and sign up there at the five dollar level at that level you will of course get the advanced episodes and also access to everything behind the five dollar paywall that is everything that we have made behind that paywall for nearly four years it'll be immediately available to you the second you sign up that includes all of our limited miniseries most recent one was talking futurama season two part two that was nine new episodes of talking

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of the were-rabbit scooby-doo on zombie island just to name some of our most recent ones over two years of podcasts will be available to you of the what a cartoon movie 120 hours i'd say by now if you are a ten dollar and up subscriber at patreon.com slash talking simpsons who gets that in addition to all of the five dollar stuff bob just mentioned as well so please consider signing up at the premium level at patreon.com slash talking simpsons as for me i have been one of your hosts bob mackie you can find me on twitter as bob servo and my other podcast of course is retronauts that's a classic gaming podcast about old video games you can find that wherever you find podcasts or

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A mattress? Uh-oh. Joan Collins must be in town. Oh, P.A. Joan Collins? That girl sleeps with everybody.