Talking Simpsons - Talking Simpsons - All Singing, All Dancing With Matthew Jay

Episode Date: April 3, 2019

It's a clip show but this week's podcast is all new, with tons of musical thoughts from our pal Matthew Jay, cohost of The Deep End podcast! We chat about Paint Your Wagon, renting videos, guns pointed at children, and even a few old episodes in this week's melodious season 9 episode! Listen now and start dancing like a big Broadway cast! Support this podcast and get dozens of bonus episodes by visiting Patreon.com/TalkingSimpsons and becoming a patron! This podcast is brought to you by the streaming network VRV: home to cartoons, anime, and so much more! Visit VRV.co/WAC to sign up for your FREE 30-day trial and kick a little money back to your friends at the Talking Simpsons Network!

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It's real easy, man. I heartily endorse this event or product. Ahoy, ahoy, everybody, and welcome to Talking Simpsons, where we paint your wagon with blood. I am your host, the always drunken, violent Bob Mackie, and this is our chronological exploration of The Simpsons. Who else is here with me today? Henry Gilbert, and this is really more of a Milhouse thing. And who do we have on the line? Damp trousered paw, Matthew J. Exactly. Today's episode is all singing, all dancing.

I knew I should have shut that window. Today's episode aired on January 4th, 1998. And as always, Henry will tell us what happened on this mythical day in real world history. Oh my God! Happy 1998, Bobby. The great ice storm of 1998 begins in northeastern U.S. and Canada, which will cause 36 deaths and widespread power outages for most of January. And for me, like a ton of school I missed.

Oh, okay. I think two weeks of school we missed. Jesus. Wow. It was fantastic. Matt, were you a victim of the Great Ice Storm as well? I was eight. I don't remember. But also, Sonny

Bono dies in a tragic skiing accident. But even more tragic, the final episode of Beakman's World airs. Every day I put a rose on Beakman's grave. Paul Zaloum? Is that him?

Has he come back like Bill Nye has come back? I found pictures of him. I mean, I don't think he's made new things, but I've seen pictures of him at a convention in his Beekman costume, and it looks sad. He's quite old. I appreciate it, though. He had a Wienerville-esque failed attempt to revive.

He was talking a few years ago about starting it again, and it just didn't take. You know, Beekman's World was the mad TV to Bill Nye's SNL. People didn't give it enough credit. It was a good show. It was a good show. I agree on both counts. I liked it as a kid.

I actually remember I did watch the last episode only because it stuck out to me that the third and final segments was explaining farts and i i think it was them going like if this is our final day we have to do farts like let's not we've avoided farts this long but now they can't stop us i actually think of beekman's world every day when i bathe because one thing he said uh blew my mind on the show was about learning how soap works and dear god i hope this is not bill nye but i think the line was, soap makes water wetter. And it tells you how soap breaks the surface tension of water and allows things to slide off your body better. So that could be how soap works.

I just remember the line, soap makes water wetter, every time I bathe. That's every day, folks. I just think of that wonderful rat costume. Oh, yeah, Lester the Rat. Now, that was a good character. Bill Nye didn't have anything like that on his show, man. I had a huge crush on the young woman on that show. Oh, yeah, Lester the Rat. Now, that was a good character. That's, yeah. Bill Nye didn't have anything like that on his show, man. I had a huge crush on the young woman on that show.

Oh, me too. Eliza? Eliza Schneider. Yeah. Wow. Yeah, and she's like a big voice actress, too. She pops up in stuff all the time. She was in Kingdom Hearts 3 as Elizabeth Swan.

Oh, wow. From Pirates of the Caribbean. Oh, really? Yes, I was looking her up recently because I played through Kingdom Hearts 3, and I was like, what was that voice? And I found out it was the woman I had a crush on from Beacon's World. That's amazing. She's still at it 25 years later.

That's pretty impressive. But yes, Sonny Bodo's death, it was tragic. It was sad. I kid. I remember being shocked at it. I was just like, when cartoon characters hit trees when they ski, they're fine. It's very comical. It's quite funny.

I mean, if you're rich, number one, stay at a plane. So stay at a flying plane. So don't fly your own plane, number one. Number two, get off the slopes. You're too rich for that shit. Go tubing or something. And it also was like, it wasn't just that Sonny Bono, the famous person, died, but it also was like a sitting congressman died.

Yeah. He was in Congress. It was a shock to the world i i felt uh also bad for his then current wife because everybody just wanted to talk to share like share aren't you sad about this and it's like you know he has a current wife well it's called sunny and share not sunny and some other lady nobody wanted the sunny show when share left in the last season no no that's why he became a congressman. Nobody wanted Sonny. But yes, that

brings us into the start of 1998. Can you believe we've been doing this so long? Oh my god. We started in 1989 and now we're in 1998. Nine years of Simpsons time we've done so far. Yes, yeah. In five years? Four. Almost four. It'll be four in June.

Yeah, this is episode 9 11 guys oh i don't know if you noticed that the 11th of the ninth season yeah i knew the simpsons predicted 9 11 but it's not a disaster so this is two uh one of two episodes that were ran by david merkin the showrunner of seasons five and six so he ran this and the episode the joy of sect and i don't know if he had access to all of the other writers. It feels like he did with The Joy of Sect, at least, because it does feel like a real episode, unlike the Springfield Files and Sherry Bobbins. Yes. Where they did not have a full writer's room.

Yeah, I think he did have access to the full writer's room, too, because the coding on this is 5F24. It is in the Season 9 official production. So he just really show ran the last two episodes of Mike Scully's 5F Season 9 production season as opposed to the 3G production code episodes that Al Jean and Mike Reese did with their very small satellite group of writers. Yeah, I did notice this was number 23.

So I guess they were trying to give Mike Scully a break. Like, you're new to this. We'll have Oakley and Weinstein jump in, and Al Jean and Mike Reese jump in. Oh, no. Joy of Sex is 23. This is 24. Oh, this is 24. Wow. This is technically the last one in production season 9 airing in the middle of season 9, which never,

ever, ever happens. Oh, because they only had to animate four scenes. Eight minutes, yes. Are you sure it's eight? It feels like six to me. I have clips of every line of dialogue from this episode and those clips amount to eight minutes. Oh, you know what? One minute of it

is the credit talking. So, okay, seven minutes. We're both half right, which means together we're right. I'm surprised they didn't go with the entire... They're all good. It's a very funny episode. I do. I think all the lines are funny.

I like the wraparound segments. And this feels like it had value at one point in which you can look all these songs up online now immediately. They're all on YouTube or wherever you want to find them. Previously in 1997, that Songs in the Key of Springfield released that had all of these songs on it. So this feels like a stealth commercial for Songs in the key of Springfield released in March of 97. So almost a year before this episode aired, I had that. Oh, I listened to it. It was a continual play in the car CD player when my mom

would drive me and my brother anywhere. It stayed there for months and months. I remember many a time leaving my local comic shop on new comic book day and mom driving us home and uh playing that music on it and and yes i was 15 but i was too i didn't my friend mocked me for buying this like why do you want a cd with songs and the simpsons on i'm like because they're fucking good what am i gonna just pull up my v vhs's to hear these in order? I can't do that. I just want to hear them. I got to hear them all right now.

He was the same friend that would make me come over and listen to him play guitar to a Metallica CD. I had two friends that did the same thing. One made me listen to him play drums. The other made me listen to him play guitar. What is up with weird white teenagers? I need to know. Were you friends with Marc Maron? That's what it sounds like, doesn't it? I mean, you got to emulate your heroes.

That's part of it. I didn't have those albums as a kid. So even though this is a clip show, I'm glad I'm on this episode because I loved this episode. Every time it would come up in any kind. I also was a little blooming musical nerd. So I loved the musical episodes of The Simpsons and this one packaging them all together, especially when it would

come up in reruns, I'd get excited and get to hear all the songs again that I loved. Yes, actually, Matt J., I'm glad you reminded me of that. That's why we, you're our buddy, you're our bro, we've had you on many podcasts, but having you on this Simpsons was important because you are a musical theater

fan. You've worked in musical theater, I believe, correct? On a community level? Not really. Musical improv a little bit, not musical. Well, you might be thinking, oh, no, wait. I'm forgetting my own professional history. I did co-direct a music school for a year.

So I was very involved in this. And I forgot it. Yeah, I ran a music school in South Jersey. And I'm still sort of involved. I'm still, I love those people. And I visit whenever I can. And we had a theater program, which was mostly for children, which was like amazing to get to work with all these kids,

like doing musicals. And sometimes you'd see kids come through there who were, you know, voice students or drums and guitar. We did everything. Or the theater students. And you'd be like, these are some of the most talented human beings I've ever seen.

And it was like one of the greatest experiences of my life and the best job I've ever had in my life. So was it like School of Rock in any way? Yeah. There was a lot of jokes about that and comparisons to that. And I think they did that musical at some point because that's a musical now.

Yeah, it's a Broadway musical or it was. I'm sure it still is somewhere. You'd find it somewhere. I think it's still playing. I think old Andrew Lloyd Webber was involved in it somehow. Yes, and they were big, all the kids were big Webber fans, because that's when you should be, when you're a little child, is when you should like Andrew Lloyd Webber.

If we're going to musical geek out here for a second, yes, Andrew Lloyd Webber is perfect for children. Sir Andrew Lloyd Webber. Sir Andrew Lloyd Webber. He is perfect for it because you they're simple enough and they are just like anthem just anthem after anthem and they're just easy to follow and remember for a kid i listened to the avida soundtrack a million times as a child i had no clue who ava perrone is or or any of these things like the politics of it or like also i listened to

les mis a million times. My favorite song was a song about the whorehouse, and I did not understand what that meant. Some of the wraparound songs in this feel... Actually, that was not my favorite song. Sorry, Master of the House is my favorite song. That's very important. Some of the wraparound songs feel like Weber-y to me.

Yes. Oh, yeah. Very Weber-y. I don't know much about Weber. Yeah. Yeah, like that just narrating through singing kind of thing and like using modern instrumentation like electric guitar or whatever yeah when the backbeat under some of the things like dear near near near near like that that

definitely feels a bit phantom to me sure which that it was a style at the time i i was very into them what were modern in the 80s musicals as As I got older, I got into other ones. My mom took me to a number of musicals. She knew I was gay, but like, no. I've seen Les Mis. This is not a joke. I've seen Les Mis live four times. Have you seen Hamiltown?

Absolutely not. I'm not going to see that. Is that still cool? Is that still cool? It's one of the it's it's it's become it used to be a interesting thing and now it's kind of like i think for most people especially leftists it's not cool anymore it's we've all learned too much about we didn't know much about alexander hamilton because he was the like undersung guy and you were like oh wait was he like against all this stuff and then you start to learn like oh no he wasn't this is just lies in a play well you

know it could be a good play but i think uh i think i turned on it because you'd hear stories about like well the we need to fix education is take every child to see hamilton i'm like that's not a fucking fix edge like it's such an like stupid rich liberal idea of fixing shit like i well it's one it will always be Tim Kaine and the membrane, for sure. To me, that just felt too much like schoolhouse rock. Like, why are you freaking out about this so much? Well, also... I do enjoy a lot of the songs,

even though the stock of Lin-Manuel himself has dropped greatly for me. I can listen to the soundtrack and enjoy it. Well, I like that Lin-Manuel has been just going on his like victory tour for the last like three years after doing it. I mean, like get a high move to Hollywood and get every deal and every high five. You can meet every person who you're a fan of because they want to meet you.

Like do all that shit. I mean, I'm also annoyed that he's like a fan of another podcast so i'm like why can't you be our podcast fan he's a disney guy he's in every single disney property now like mary poppins milana duck tales uh everything disney was right to make him an indentured servant like that was the smart move to do and i mean yeah so he's a fungineer now but i mean yeah i don't think lynnManuel is a particularly bad person or anything. I think, too, it's just this is what happens when corporations just eat this shit up.

Like, that also happens. I mean, I know it's not this, but I can't help but think of Mr. Show's Rap the Musical. I know it's ignorant for me to say that, but that's immediately because every super white liberal I knew loved it. Yes, yeah. It's rap without all that rap. Well, I'm an old gold tooth, and I tell you the truth. Just listen to his

Cantina song from Force Awakens. That's the ultimate Lin-Manuel song to me. But yeah, well, actually, you know, we make fun of Hamilton, but as Jeff Martin revealed in our interview with him. No, no, I forgot about that. That they are doing a Hamilton-inspired Simpsons in the next season.

Like, the gag is it's a hip-hop musical about Jebediah Springfield. But I want to talk about the writer for this episode, a real ringer, Steve O'Donnell, who wrote this and The Joy of Sect. And frankly, writing for The Simpsons even in 1998 was a huge deal. It was a big show. But I would say he might be too good to be writing just a clip show. It feels like they should have thrown this to a newer writer like Reed Harrison back in season eight. He was a newer writer. Give him a lesser episode.

Give an opportunity to a different white man at least. Yes. But Steve O'Donnell, number number one amazing comedy pedigree he was the first head writer on late night with david letterman from 1983 until he left uh when it moved to cbs in 1995 after meryl marco yes after after meryl marco broke up with david letterman and then uh she i i just say that because meryl marco gets uh really uh overlooked and hit you everybody talks about how women aren't funny it's like well everybody's favorite show david letterman uh for all comedy nerds the co basically co-founder of the show was his then you know romantic partner slash comedy writing partner mario marco like so but he was

on the show from the very beginning yes yeah a long time he pioneered things with his writing crew like the top 10 list and things like that so number one he's also a harvard goon and my theory with henry was that he was the guy who made harvard comedy tv writing a thing like everybody like so letterman was like a huge like comedy farm for harvard writers who would funnel out to snl and then the simpsons so i feel like this is just this is like ground zero he's patient one yeah patient zero yeah for uh harvard comedy and tv writing i could be wrong i'm sure this is before him but i feel like so many simpsons people came from letterman and they came from snl it's just a chain following letterman's first run yeah and when you well when you put the harvard thing into it this also feels like a gift to a guy who gave so many harvard

opportunities to people and like yeah it i mean a lot of simpsons writers they if they didn't work there they applied there and they wanted to work there or they worked on similar things or they got help from folks who worked at letterman like letterman's a major thing which is not in and of itself bad i mean cronyism like you can't get away from it everybody i would hire if i was put in charge of a tv show i would hire my friends because i like them and speaking of jeff martin he was on letterman too he came from a letterman too at the same time harvard yeah donald yeah i mean steve o'donnell hired him kind of right out of harvard as most people get a uh friends a friend of us and and and matt jay the jack alson he has

he has a lot of great points about how many Harvard guys just go straight. You don't even have to apply. You just leave straight from the lampoon to an assured job. Just get on the shuttle. It's your TV writing job. That's that classic joke about, oh, what's his name from The Office? BJ Novak, yeah. Yeah, BJ Novak.

He paid his dues all along that flight from Boston to LA. Yeah, which is not to say BJ Novak isn't a funny guy, like I think he is. But it's just when you look at who gets opportunities, there's probably lots of funny people who didn't write for the Harvard Lampoon. That's true. So down with Steve O'Donnell is what we're saying. No, I do like Steve O'Donnell. He's actually very funny.

Yes, but more about him. So after 12 years on David Letterman's show, two of those being the cbs run he was like i'll do other kinds of tv writing so he went on to write just like freelance episodes for things like space ghost coast to coast uh two episodes of seinfeld things like that but then he went back into the talk show experience with things like jimmy kimmel live uh the man show before that so he's got some ties to jimmy kimmel obviously and the bonnie hunt show and he frequently works with norm mcdonald and uh one thing i pulled... I have a lot of theories on all that there. Uh-oh. Are they good?

No, they're good. Do they reflect well upon him? I'm confused. Yeah, no, they're good. They're good. Well, okay, like, Bonnie Hunt and Norm MacDonald are both Letterman favorites. You're right, you're right. I forgot about that, yeah. Both those shows were produced by World Wide Pants, so, I mean, it was Steve O'Donnell made a lateral move away from Letterman to work on shows that Letterman wanted made, which that's what famous people do.

They produce shows, they make it. And why wouldn't you want the head writer to head up your show? And like Body Hunt's very funny. I think she she got a bad deal. I don't know. She could have been more famous. I think she's she was a very funny woman. But I also think that like the timing on Steve O o'donnell there is like bonnie hunt show got

canceled i think like twice she had like two different shows get canceled i forgot about it until doing research for this and so then steve o'donnell is freed up he's living in la just take on some freelance you're hanging out there and so your old buddies hand you well his space ghost ones one of them was just a straight late show parody the episode called late show space yeah i did notice that that's his one with spike ferriston who wrote uh sideshow bob's last gleaning and uh one thing i pulled out from his imdb credits is he has a few acting credits like three and one of them is in a strangers with candy episode called is my daddy crazy uh i love that episode i forgot i didn't have time to re-watch it i would have loved to, but he's in that episode. That is what derailed my day yesterday,

was watching that episode to see him in it. That's the one where Jerry Blank's second fake dead. Your stepmother's lover. Yeah, stepmother's lover. That's right. He's got a secret family. I love, yeah, he's stapling cheese to the roof. He has lost his mind.

But I love when they reveal that everybody's crazy in the town and that they all have problems. Is that Stu? Is that his name? Yes, Stu. Stu the Meatman. It has, that episode is one of my favorite moments ever in the show of just a full pizza thrown in Steve Colbert's face.

Just him screaming. He just walks in like, hey everybody ahhh! But Steve O'Donnell plays one of the two creepy librarians. Ah. Oh, yes. You're right. You're totally right.

Yeah. I was wondering which one. Okay. Yeah. That's right. He's the one closest to camera. So that was my excuse for re-watching an entire Strangers with Candy yesterday. I was like, oh, I need to see who Steve O'Donnell is in this.

So I better just watch the whole thing. Coming soon to What a Cartoon. We can do it. We can get away with it. And real quick. It counts. It counts. I mean, it's a live-action cartoon.

How do you know we're talking about this? Part of it is animation. And a brief bit about the director of the show, Mark Irvin. He didn't direct a lot of episodes. This is his first role as director on The Simpsons, but he had been with the show since the beginning of season two's Bark Gets an F.

And he's credited with a ton of episodes between then and i believe 2012 i think yeah season 24 was his last production season but he's credited on like every episode between those because he worked on the main title animation so he's listed on every episode so he's the guy behind a lot of what you see well like a lot of what you used to see, rather, before the Bad HD opening. So, yeah. So, he currently works on Disenchantment as a storyboard artist. So, he's still in the Simpsons world. Mark Irvin's career is really interesting, just how he's like this kind of jack-of-all-trades at Simpsons based on his credits. Like, sometimes he's a layout artist, sometimes he's a character layout artist or a boarder, a sheet timer.

Also, like like assistant director. He's assistant director on multiple major episodes of the show, starting with Homer's Triple Bypass. And those people are very important. They usually become directors like Susie Dieter. But I think he was more of like a pinch hitter director because he only did two other ones. Like he did Monty Can't Buy Me Love. That was his last one. And being given a clip show feels like practice also.

Yeah. And this is definitely an easier one to direct because. There's seven minutes of animation. Well, also there's a parody and then everything else takes place in the living room. That is true. They never leave. Not a lot of sets. Yeah, it's only the living room.

You're right. Yeah. Wow. And only up to six characters. Yeah, it's only the living room. You're right. And only up to six characters. That's all you have to animate. I also noticed he even drew a Bongo comic once. Oh, okay. It was an itchy and scratchy comic written by Patrick Verone, also a Lampooner as well. Yeah, we heard those people often would work on Bongo Comics between layoff periods on The Simpsons.

But when I hear Steve O'Donnell on this commentary, Mark Irvin could not be on the commentary, which was too bad, because he definitely was in the office then when they recorded it. He was probably too busy, I'm guessing. But I also, though, on the commentary, they identify that he's recording from Burbank near the airport. I'm like,

we were just there. We were just by that airport. And Steve O'Donnell feels way too humble on the spot commentary. He'm like, we were just there. We were just by that airport. And Steve O'Donnell feels like way too humble on the spot commentary. He's like, I barely did any work. All these songs are better than what I wrote. He'd actually, he wrote the songs for the wraparounds. He's the uncredited lyricist for the wraparound songs.

You can tell they're different. You can tell it's not, I mean, they're so good and I like them, but it's, I mean, well, A, it's definitely, it's dialogue more than it is a song, but it also doesn't, what's the usual song guy whose name I forget right now? Well, Ken Keeler in season nine. Well, actually, no, he quit in season eight.

For seasons two to four, it was Jeff Martin. With Merkin's era, they wrote songs in the room. Yes. I was trying to think of Jeff Martin. It sounds different than his work, but it's still good and fun. Like seven through nine, it was Keeler, I believe. Yes, yeah. Oh, yeah, I meant to say on the Kimmel thing too, a reason Kimmel hired him is because Kimmel, his work but it's still good and fun like seven through nine it was a keeler i believe yes yeah

oh yeah i meant to say on the kimmel thing too a reason kimmel hired him is because kimmel if you've read the books about the uh the conan leno thing kimmel what is the biggest letterman fan in the world like he's a huge nerd for letterman so when he's building he wanted his light show to be a letterman show so he just h hires Steve O'Donnell to build it for him, which totally makes sense. And by touching Conan O'Brien, we're part of that world now, Henry. It's true. People can know about that now. We met Conan O'Brien.

They've seen the photos. His arms were around us. He was forced to talk to us for seven minutes. And yeah, so this is the fourth clip show after 138. They identify it as such at the very end. Yes, and it would be the... So there's only been six total clip shows that, well, the wiki classifies the Behind the Laughter as a clip show,

which is like it is not. No, no, no. It has four clips in it, maybe. So I wouldn't call it that. But yeah, the other one is gump roast when i saw that air gump roast i'm like it's 2002 also number one no no more clip shows we're it's we're post 9-11 number two a forrest gump parody yeah 2002 who was keeping this in their pocket i mean aljean was yeah he'd have been sitting on it since when forrest gump came out he was no longer show

runner on simpsons season 13 he becomes showrunner on Simpsons again. Finally could use that Homer's Forrest Gump shit. It's funny that the Simpsons avoided a Forrest Gump joke about Homer. Because it's easy. Yeah, exactly. I would think if I was. I mean, Jay Sherman, he did a Forrest Gump joke. Yeah.

It's lame as fuck to do a Forrest Gump joke. That's why. Don't do it. We'll get to do a Forrest Gump joke. That's why you don't do it. We'll get to that. The war against Al Jean begins. Remember when, like, in, like, 2006, the Office and Community did them, or I guess it would have been later than that,

so, like, 2009 or something, the Office and Community did them, like, almost at exactly the same time, and the Office just did a straight-up regular-ass clip show. It was, like oh nine or ten or something i remember being like what the fuck this is so and then community did one where the joke was that it was a clip show kind of like morty's mind blowers uh rick and morty but i remember being like what is wrong with tell like this is an nbc mandate like what the hell we're beyond this

we have netflix these shows were on hulu at the time they're trying i guess they're trying to save money i don't know like i i am beyond now the too clever parody of a clip show i think that idea let's get let's get over that i mean no one even knows what a clip show is anymore we don't like this generation now has not had to suffer through actual clip shows on every tv show i think let's just yeah whenever kids are like discovering the office on netflix or friends or whatever i wonder if they get to a clip show and they're like what the what's going on yeah tv work was somebody sick this week yeah it's it was such an it's such an inverse of today which is just like oh just keep making original content just all the original content we can't like we have to keep everyone's attention with original content back then even in 1998 the

feeling was like we just gotta make something to beef up our syndication package so make a third of an episode and just put clips around the rest of it like that's and do it as cheaply as possible in that other third like that's that's how you do it so i get i get it i get that the reason for doing it like this from a cost if you're just looking at a spreadsheet uh or an excel document back in 1997 then you see that whether an episode costs two million dollars or five million dollars whatever the price is for an episode either way in a syndication package it is worth the same so why not get them to make less and and make something for cheaper and as they say on the commentary, they wanted four a year at one point, Fox asked for.

So I think they instead changed it like, fine, we'll commit to four ever. We'll commit to four in this five-year span, and that's all we'll do. And you'll get that. And they also, for a few years, gave Fox extra episodes, but they needed to bring in other showrunners like merkin and aljean and people like that well that's why merkin runs this one because like to get this season has 25 episodes in it and that's because they had either holdovers from before two gina reese ones and then two from merkin and next season just has holdovers from season nine no satellite teams wow we're spending half a year on season nine that's crazy and also that the next two the next seasons after this don't go to 25 i think fox didn't want 25 they're like 22 or 24

yeah 22 to 24 and i think it might have just been like once they hit 200 i mean you're at syndicate you're at big syndication money at that point anyway you're not really more episodes is good but you're not desperate to squeeze as many possible and also we are just entering the era of american idol and reality shows and you're thinking like why are we spending this much on cartoons it's also true yeah yeah it's interesting to see merkin's approach to this one because he straight up hates clip shows he made intentionally the worst clip show of simpsons ever the worst episode of simpsons ever in another simpsons clip show like intentionally as a fuck you to making him do a clip show they work harder on this one and they try harder like merkin on the commentary says i'm actually kind of proud of this

one i think we did a good job yeah it has some of the most screw you jokes per minute in the merkin episode yes and also one of the edgiest jokes i've seen on an episode, and we'll get to it, like, I can't believe they did that. You just don't even use blink and it's over. I know the joke. You blink and it's over, but then you think about, like, they did that. Wow. Also, in the idea of songs, just Simpsons as a musical show, it's an amazing show with so many songs,

and I think that's why, like, a million shows just to, it gave permission to so many shows like we can just do a musical let's do it I was gonna say the same thing I think the Simpsons made it cool to do musicals where before you could have a musical acts on a variety show or musical songs on like Tracy Allman or you know Carol Barnett or whatever but now you can do that within the context of a story I was just I'm catching up with Bob's Burgers now because it was new to me we did the what a cartoon about it and they. And they're basically Who Shot Mr. Burns-style two-parter songs in it. I'm like, this is so Simpsons-y, but I love it.

You can blame the Simpsons for the Drew Carey show. When you're watching the Drew Carey show again, you're like, what's happening right now? It's because of the Simpsons. That is a crime. They do it too much, even though I love that show dearly. Well, Mike Reese, in his book springfield confidential he gives a very interesting insight into the practical reasons writers love songs is because

when you write a song and everybody's cool with the song the song is rarely rewritten in the rewrites or cut and so when rewrites are just going line by line through a script for 12 hours, if you get to three pages that you will not change and will not cut, that is a sense of freedom. You're like, oh, thank God. We can just skip these so we can get faster. Thank Jesus Christ. Especially the way Simpsons, to their success, constantly rewrites a script. Like, no, a credited writer is not the writer of a Simpsons script, less so than any television show.

And you get money for writing songs, too. Yes, yeah. Sweet royalties. I'd put a song into every script if I was a Simpsons writer and just see if I'd get away with it. Or a new character. Oh, yes. Sweet character payments, baby.

This is a song sung by 18 new characters. All named. The Simpsons will be right back. We didn't get you Emma, but we did get you a really great podcast guest this week in Matthew J. Be sure to follow him on Twitter and also his podcast, The Deep End, where they go through the Adult Swim animated lineup. But if you'd like to support this podcast and hear every episode a week ahead of time and ad free, and the same for our sister podcast, you need to go to patreon.com slash talking simpsons if you sign up there you'll get access to every episode a week ahead of time and ad free and the same for what a cartoon our sister podcast where me and bob

with a guest go through a different animated series each week in a specific episode of it not to mention you'll get to hear all of our patreon exclusive mini series right now brand new each friday talking of the hill where we talk about a different episode of the first season of king of the hill in the talking simpson style and that's our third patreon exclusive mini series we already did talking critic where we went through every episode of the critic and talking futurama for the entire first season of futurama five dollars a month gets you access to hundreds of hours of exclusive patreon podcast so you can only hear if you sign up at patreon.com slash talking simpsons no it's even dreamier than lee mar, the What a Cartoon movie podcast,

only for our $10 and up patrons. If you enjoy me and Bob talking about Simpsons or animated series for this long, what if I told you we did it for up to three hours on a different podcast each month? We talk about movies like Batman, Mask of the Phantasm, Kiki's Delivery Service, Akira, A Goofy Movie, and The Secret of Nim. You'll hear all of those only if you're a $10 and up patron and you'll get a brand new one each month. And not only that, but you'll get access to all 18 months of our previous $10 Patreon rewards. You can hear all of that only if you're a $10 and up patron at patreon.com slash talking simpsons don't you

want to hear us talk for over three hours about akira or a goofy movie i know i did we did a ton of research a ton of work you'll learn so goddamn much from listening to that you gotta gotta sign up to hear the what a cartoon movie at patreon.com slash Talking Simpsons. This is a better clip show. The best clip show is 138, of course. Yeah, it's even more cynical. Yes. Though it's also cheaper because only voice actors in it doing original dialogue are Phil Hartman and Dan Castellaneta. That's it.

Nobody else does voices in that episode. And this one has the full family plus Hank Azaria. No Harry Shearer, which I then looked back at it. Harry Shearer is in April april fools but he's not the other two clip shows and i wonder if it was either harry shearer being a grump and saying he didn't want to do clip shows or them saying it's cheaper if we don't have harry shearer in this you know i think it was basically as few voice actors as possible yes and uh you need like what four for the simpsons family yeah four for the simpsons and then hank if we can not have either hank or harry come in that's saving us i don't know five figures probably at that point

well hank plays ball harry doesn't like hank hank's up for some hank does commentaries harry shearer would not uh be caught dead on a commentary i think because they're for free and he doesn't do free work for fox which honestly i i agree with him this is a fun commentary though hank gets to diss herman's head. That's really great. That's really great. Yeah, no, because it's Yardley and Hank. I think they've been on maybe two commentaries together.

So it's so great that Dave Merkin, they're talking about people walking up to them on the street and telling them the projects they worked on and that they're ashamed of even. And then they're like, but how was Herman's head, Dave Merkin asked and they just both just laugh like if you see yardley smith make sure you tell her i loved you i love you a maximum overdrive it's so great no but david murkin sorry we're doing a lot of preamble because this episode is so short david murkin has a really good point though on a commentary like if you meet a celebrity please ask them about the thing that nobody knows about that they've done uh like i i met brett gellman at an airport and i'm sure eagle heart was the biggest thing he'd done at that point but i think he was surprised that somebody

watched eagle heart and liked it i was like i fucking love eagle heart it's like oh thanks a lot man i just talked to uh i talked to james urbaniak about this exact thing he said the same thing he was like he was like character actors love if you find like the weirdest stupidest thing that you can pick out of their history well because they never want to hear about that they never want to hear about their most famous thing like if you i think it comes up on the commentary because they're talking about george harrison in the episode b sharps and they're just like george harrison didn't want to say shit about the beatles because he's talked about it every second of his life so if you But if you talk about him about a side project, he loves hearing that.

We never asked Bill Oakley or Josh Weinstein about the mullets, though Reed Harrison said it was a fun show that was smarter than you think it was. You know, when we get to our third Bill and Josh interviews, it's mullet time. All mullet talk. I watched every episode of that show. Wow, I did not watch that.

I think I have tried that in any like celebrity interview. I think when I interviewed Janet Varney, I tried to ask about something like much less famous than that. But yes, we are killing time because nothing happens in this episode. And we have very few clips. But okay, let's get into the episode proper. The Simpsons are having family video night, which this really sets us in, like, especially their video choices. This is exactly 1997.

Oh, yeah, yeah. Like, one movie is 95 and one is 96. They're on their waiting for waiting to exhale list. That feels like the joke with Man Without a Face that they had, where they're just like a writer was sitting on this. It's a very late show idea too like i could hear letterman say that in uh in a monologue like uh but you know people say about waiting is hell you shouldn't hold your breath for a sequel i i tend to confuse waiting to exhale with how stella got her groove back because i've seen neither movie and they

seem to have similar ideas sure sure yeah no this this ritual of the family coming home with videos from the video store is uh is doesn't exist anymore it made me reflect on how streaming has changed everything as the internet changed everything in every way like i would normally go to the video store with my stepdad and my mom would ask him like go get this get that and it'd be a problem if you know they didn't have it like he'd have to find the substitute movie and it often wouldn't be a good one yes yeah well the idea of like well you can't just watch what you want it might not be there and you have to negotiate and also just the idea of like i am paying four dollars for one thing and that's my one thing this weekend i'm just gonna watch that one movie instead of we all pay 12 to netflix or

whatever do you have to be paralyzed by choice like there's but you won't have what you i i have gone from watching netflix to knowing what i wanted to just letting it wash over me and be like i don't know what's what are you putting in front of me what's the most interesting thing right here i can't think for myself anymore and search for a movie to see if you have it because you usually don't have it. Yeah, that'll be like just one of five streaming services I have access to at any given time, plus YouTube. And there were no cell phones either,

so if you tell Dad one movie and they don't have it, you're right, he gets to pick the backup. You gotta make sure you tell him like three tiers of movie. You're like, okay, if they don't have Beetlejuice, then I want Batman Returns. If they don't have Batman Returns, then you gotta get Terminator 2. And yeah, you can't also it's their mistake

to leave it up to Homer. Honestly, Marge should have gone out and got the tape. That was different for my family. It was me honestly, I'd go with my mom and just pick the movies

but it should so to make this more like my childhood it should be Marge doing it and we should also come back from Pizza Hut picking up our two pizzas. And now this is a podcast and I do live in Los Angeles, which means I have to make a very specific reference to something local here that 99% of the people listening to this can never experience. But here in LA, video store culture

is alive and well. And I live biking distance away from one of the greatest video stores i've ever been to called videotech in south pasadena and it is the best like i feel like a child again because i just go in there and i stay i wander for two hours just looking at the covers of movies that i could just look up on wikipedia or just google a listicle of like the 10 best neo-noir films from the 70s and just get those but like it's i i had the experience again of like i pay them five dollars to take a dvd home that sometimes will skip over a whole scene and i'm like and i love it i'm like that's the texture of what i want i love that i watched la story and it just like kept skipping over scenes i've seen that movie tons of times i love that movie so i was just like this is better this is the experience that i want actually yeah i've been thinking about going to netflix's disc plan again just because that will get me to watch movies.

It will send a thing to my house that I will be like, here's an object. I must use this object. Because when I first got it back in, I don't know, 2006, I'm like, I've missed out on so many movies I'm going to catch up. And I did until streaming happened. And then I just stopped watching movies because there was too many. And also, they did not have any of the ones I wanted to see, especially classics. Oh yeah, no.

I mean, well, that's why Netflix is just a TV channel to me. I just watch television shows. Yeah, I'm still a fan of the physical media. I have tons of Blu-rays that I get up and I open from a case and I have to take another disc out and leave outside somewhere so I can put this disc in. And I actually just yesterday received uh as a gift i received the ingmar bergman criterion collection which has 39

films in it and that's quite a gift wow it is huge well i received a gift of money and i chose to waste my money on that i thought i was never going to touch it and i'm now two films into it already oh nice um but one of them is very tied to this episode oh i'll bring it up i want to hear my money on that. Ah, I see. I thought I was never going to touch it and I'm now two films into it already. Oh, nice. But one of them is very tied to this episode. Oh. I'll bring it up. I want to hear about it.

But Lisa, she wanted Emma, but Bart and Homer had other ideas. We got the popcorn. Did you get waiting to exhale? Well, they put us on the waiting to exhale waiting list,

but they said don't hold your breath. Did you get Emma? Did you get Emma? Did you? Did you? Did you? Huh? Whoa, whoa. Calm down, little lady. Take it easy. Take it easy. No. What did you get? Something very close exactly along those lines. Our Clint Eastwood, Lee Marvin, shoot him up western. So prepare yourself for the bloody mayhem and unholy carnage of Joshua Logan's Paint Your Wagon.

With blood, I bet. So before we get to the clips from the thing, I, well, first, I love how Homer acts like the good dad. He's like, take it easy, take it easy. No. how homer acts like the good dad he's like take it easy take it easy no no uh but also just they're funny their humor is selfishness though of picking the movie only they would want to watch but i feel like homer transforms into schwartzwelder here or something that like him and bart love violent westerns now for the first time ever does philly uh feel very schwartzwellian yes yeah but lee marvin uh actually never appeared in another film with Clint Eastwood, which that's like a movie where you see like Schwarzenegger team up with Sylvester Stallone or whatever.

Like that is that for Westerns. And I can't believe they never made it. So it was like the heat version. Yes. Yeah. It's totally heat, but for Westerns. Well, it would have been, but that's not what Paint Your Wagon is. I also do like how Bart introduces it like he's a film historian of like, it is this director's, it is Joshua Logan's Paint Your Wagon.

And I know when I was watching this episode as a 15-year-old, yeah, I was like, this is probably just a pastiche of Westerns. And wouldn't it be funny if this was an idea if this was a musical western with plenty with singing that's crazy go to the internet when this episode's over oh my god it's real yeah but in 1997 i could not hear clips of it but now we can yes yeah i yeah we will i think too the real humor in the first viewing is for like is the disconnect for the audience who knows the parts of the audience that knows what paint your wagon is who are old and then children like us who are like wait what's painting your wagon like you're you don't know what the joke is but somebody who lived

through the 60s when they hear paint your wagon they know they're talking about one of the biggest bombs in cinema history it feels like it's's obscure, though, even for 1997. Yeah. Well, because no one wants to find it. No one wants to watch it. It's like you knew Ishtar was a famously expensive bad movie, but not this. Ishtar is a funnier one to bring up as a failure.

Like, Paint Your Wagons is not even. It is a fun bomb to talk about, though. I do want to say I love Lee Marvin. I think he was an amazing drunken character like he also uh he was he was the voice of an angel he was a democrat back then he didn't support the war in vietnam he's a world war ii veteran uh when he made paint your wagon he was only 44 but it was a oh my god yes yes it's a hard... Oh my God! Yes, yes. It's a hard 44.

He was... A finger wagon is two hours and 44 minutes. So if you're curious about watching this thing that contributed to one joke on The Simpsons, I don't know if you want to make that jump. That is longer than a Marvel movie, correct? Most Marvel movies, yeah. Most of them.

Not Infinity War, probably. Also, if I were to say my favorite Lee Marvin movie, he is really good in Point Blank, that noir film. But my favorite is him playing Liberty Valance in the titular man who shot Liberty Valance. And also, though, if you want to see him and Toshiro Mifune glare at each other, you should check out Hell in the Pacific.

Oh, my God. It's just the two of them. They can't talk to each other because one doesn't speak English, the other doesn't speak Japanese, and so they're just two soldiers trapped on an island. They're not even named in the movie. They're the only actors. Spoilers, they never find other people in the movie.

I need to see this. That sounds fucking awesome. It is really cool. I haven't seen it in a long time, but it's really great. It's one of the few non-Japanese productions Mifune did also. One thing I just discovered upon looking up something about Paint Your Wagon is the adaptation. I guess it was a stage musical first? Oh, yes.

Okay, we'll get into that. But the adaptation is by Paddy Chayefsky, the fucking writer of Network. Yep, yeah. I mean, we can't blame him. He's adapting a bad musical, but still, Jesus Christ. Well, here, let's hear some of Paint Your Wagon, which, folks, none of this is from the musical Paint Your Wagon. They do not sing a song about painting your wagon. The songs aren't this good in Paint Your Wagon.

Hey! That's a pretty sorry-looking wagon you got there, mister. I reckon it could use a coat of paint. Well, what are we waiting for? I love their do-si-do-ing. So great. They're singing. They're singing, Marge. Why aren't they killing each other?

Yeah, their guns are right there. That song has been in my head for over 20 years. Also, they imagine that Lee Van Cleef was in Paint Your Wagon. That's the guy who's glaring at Clint Eastwood in it. That's Lee Van Cleef, the villain. He played Angel in Good, the Bad, and the Ugly. He was the co-star in A Few Dollars More. And Clint is dressed like he is in one of those movies. Yeah, he's the man with no name on costume.

Yeah, but that's what's extra funny about it. It's just what they imagined the movie to be. Yeah, in Paint Your Wagon, he's just wearing a nice cornflower blue shirt. Yeah, he's a wuss in the movie. All right, so Paint Your Wagon history time. Let's really get into it. Yeah, let's break it down.

So it debuted on Broadway in in 1951 written by broadway legends alan learner and frederick lowe learner and lowe they were quite a team of lyricist and composer they did tons of major shows that you've all heard of they're there to set the stage for this in 1964 while they had done paint your wagon and also camelot they also did my fair lady which in 1964 won the oscar for best picture right at the time of like that sound of music like expensive musicals presented on road shows seemed to be the future of a changing hollywood that was trying to deal with television. Everyone should just look up Lindsay Ellis

has an amazing video on this very topic. It's really interesting. And I feel like you might be asking, why is there a cowboy musical in 1969? That's the reason why. People are having colored TVs now. There's no reason to leave their house to see spectacles. So let's have a limited engagement,

pricier thing that you can see. It's like a rarity. It's like, oh, it's coming to town. We canicier thing that you can see like in it's like a rarity it's like oh it's coming to town we can see it now you can't just see it whenever you feel like it and also it's part of it is being in is being impressively expensive the opulence and ridiculousness of it is part of it yeah it which is a similar to i believe l lindsey ellis makes this point in her videos that they are the modern day marvel the movies they were the modern they were marvel movies for back then because Marvel movies are like, or so many tentpole things from Disney or other corporations. Look how much money we spent. Can you believe it? You got to see it.

We spent all this money. Look who's in it. Yeah. I feel like this is also paint your wagon. The real movie feels like part of the culture war where 1969, civil rights, drugs, hippies, Vietnam, so many things are happening in America. Let's have an old-fashioned sing-along. Yeah. Well, this is framed very well in the book Easy Riders, Raging Bulls. I think we mention every episode. It's one of the best books ever. But yeah, that Hollywood... Can you believe that Hollywood was risk-averse and didn't want to take chances in a changing social climate?

But they were. And even though films like Easy Rider and Bonnie and Clyde were giving people the sex and violence and counterculture stuff they wanted, that is scary. That is scary to people who make movies. And instead they'd rather, for the amount of money that they could make like 18 easy writers, they'd rather make one giant musical and just get every star you can to try to get it, to try to get as many people as possible to see it. What also sucks for this movie was for Paint Your Wagon, before it was camelot which that came out in 67 that already was a gigantic flop but they were committed they're like we're we're this far into making paint your wagon we gotta make it we can't not make it even after camelot failed times that change i think sound of music was the last actually successful uh one of those like big budget super long there's an intermission in the

middle uh of musicals from from major studios it was fun to hear in that video about all the flops i didn't know were flops like dr doolittle oh yeah boy that was a major waste of money one we only knew these movies as like things that filled like four hours of stuff on TCM as kids or whatever. Dr. Doolittle is still on. It started at noon. It's like 7.30. He's talking to that giant snail for so long. God.

I mean, again, watch the Lindsay Ellis video. One very fascinating thing that came out of that was all the merchandising that came out of these musicals, just like Marvel movies. Guess what, folks? They're going away. Your precious Marvel movies that I've got to hear about before every fucking recording. Sorry.

I'm sorry. We just talked about Captain Marvel for like two minutes. No, I'm sorry, Bob. I'll tell you what. I'm not. Okay, I love you guys. But every Marvel movie, now Star Wars movie, just like, I guess it was a movie. It was okay.

It was fine. Like, just stop going to them. Stop going to the movies. You're right. We know that, though. You can't just tell us that i waste my time in so many ways i am no guiltier than you but i just i i want to help well bob i i know you're saying that marvel movies could end but as homer said everything lasts forever

that's true i believe he's right about that he's right about that uh the difference between like wasting that much money back then and wasting it now is CGI ages so poorly, even amazing CGI in its day. But when I watch one of those big musicals from back then, I'm still like, wow, there are like 70 extras doing a choreographed dance right now. That will always be incredible to me and blow my mind because it just doesn't happen anymore. And they're full of animals dancing around and stuff. No, yeah.

Yeah. Those animals that got whipped and thrown to the ground and stuff. I'm just'm just like man but they got a good performance out of them yeah i know i i will give it to paint your wagon over say infinity war because when i'm watching infinity war which i actually really enjoyed i know i'm watching people on a green screen everywhere like these actors weren't in the same room this person wasn't there like this is all i'm watching an expensive tv show this doesn't feel like a movie you know and when i'm seeing i didn't watch the no fucking way was i watching two hours and 40 minutes of paint your wagon for to prepare for this but i did watch a bunch of clips from it and yeah and when i watched it i was like this looks expensive and and impressively expensive in how many extras and they built a whole town

they built a whole fucking town in oregon just for the movie but the real money on the screen was the star power because they had clint eastwood lee marvin and also gene seberg who doesn't come up as much uh she's beautiful if you're uh if you're a film nerd in a total like fucking snob like me, you know she's from Godard's Breathless. Gene Seberg, actually, she's awesome. She was a big-time lefty in Hollywood. I'll get to more of that in a little bit.

But the problem with all of those Hollywood musicals back then is you cast for star power, not for singing ability. Ah, like a Regular Russell Crowe. Oh, I love this movie. That's why- Oh, yuck. Broadway actors rarely got to transcend to film. Like, even with as famous as we know Julie Andrews to be,

they didn't want her in My Fair Lady. They wanted Audrey Hepburn because she's more famous, and they could just dub over on her. And speaking of Audrey's, the woman who played Audrey in Little Shop of Horrors actually made it to the movie that's and that was like one of the rare times because no one else could do what she was doing yeah that's true that you had to have her right but but in this case they're like no we need movie stars who can't sing clint eastwood a crappy singer jean seberg she gets dubbed over Only one of the major songs sung in the movie is sung by a professional

singer, and that is The Wind Called Mariah, which is how they got the name for Mariah Carey. She's named after that song. After her Paint Your Wagon song? Dear God. But, I mean, the greatest singer of the film.

Wait, wait, okay. So when I was watching this, I watched the clip, and my reaction was like, in Deep Space Homer, is this a joke? No, okay. So when I was watching this, I watched the clip, and my reaction was like in Deep Space Homer, is this a joke? No, Toby. It's not a joke. This is real. Why don't we play the Lee Marvin clip

before we hear the real Lee Marvin? Wait, wait. Here comes Lee Marvin. Thank God. He's always drunk and violent. What the hell is going on in my town? We're just painting this wagon. You got a problem with that?

As a matter of fact, I do. You missed a spot. Well, grab a brush and join in. Gonna paint your wagon. Gonna paint it fine. Gonna use oil-based paint, cause the wood is pine. Ponderosa Pine.

Who knew that Lee Marvin could do such marvelous splits? He's dreamy. Okay, so Dan Castellana, that's an amazing Lee Marvin. More range than the real Lee Marvin. I also love the premise that this episode, sorry, this movie, this fake version of Paint Your Wagon is just about painting a wagon. They're going to sing about painting a wagon for two hours and 45 minutes.

That's actually, according to two sources I found that's that's harry shearer in his only role in this episode i believe uh sounds a lot like i think it's dan i i was confused and i was like who and i thought it was dan too but i looked it up but maybe maybe he's miscredited but i i like that he does the droopy like he pulls his mouth to the side to put an echo into it but uh the real leave marvin is actually a much worse singer than that so here he is in he the actually the biggest like chart topping hit from the movie this was on the charts move over This is Wandering Star. Do I know where hell is? Hell is in hello. Heaven is goodbye forever. It's time for me to go.

I was born under a wandering star. I can sing two notes. They got the guy who played Lurch to dub his voice. Well, it's also hilarious that Marge says that he's a marvelous dancer. He doesn't dance in the movie. He just fucking walks across the screen. He moseys. He does not dance.

Oh, God. It's hilarious. I mean, that Wandering Star, it comes back around to being a good song to me because it's just so bad. Like, uh. Uh. Uh. Uh.

Uh. Uh. Uh. Uh. Uh. Uh. Uh. Uh.

Uh. Uh. Uh. Uh. Uh. Uh. Uh. Uh.

Uh. Uh. Uh. Uh. Uh. Uh. Uh. Uh.

Uh. Uh. Uh. Uh. Uh. Uh. Uh. Uh.

Uh. Uh. Uh. Uh. Uh. Uh. Uh. Uh.

Uh. Uh. Uh. Uh. Uh. Uh. Uh. Uh.

Uh. Uh. Uh. Uh. Uh. Uh. Uh. Uh. Uh. Uh. Uh. Uh. Uh. Uh. Uh. Uh. Uh. Uh. Uh. Uh. Uh. Uh. Uh. Uh. Uh. Uh. Uh. Uh. Uh. Uh. Uh. Uh. Uh. Uh. Uh. Uh. Uh. Uh. Uh. Uh. Uh.. Uh. I of Ben is a drunk. Only 44 years old. Yep. Jesus Christ. Well, he'd seen some shit. Well, also again, World War II vet. So I think he's drinking away some things.

That's like eight years older than me. But he was only six years older than Clint Eastwood in this film. He's playing him like he's 15 years older. But if you want to know how that song sounds when sung by a better singer uh here's robert gulay previous singing wandering star that's how a cowboy is supposed to sing i can't believe his manager told him to shut up. Vera? But yeah, so Paint Your Wagon, two hours and 40 minutes long. What's it about?

Well, it's a tale of a gold rush town in California full of vice, and that's eventually swallowed up by the earth as punishment from God. But it also features a happy poly relationship between Lee, Clint, and Gene Seberg. There's a bit where... There's a devil's threesome in the movie? Well, oh my God. Lee and Clint. I think they make it clear that they don't engage in anything. So the plot is that Gene Seberg's character, she was married to Ben, but Ben, as he says,

he's a wanderer. He leaves. I was born a wandering cuck. So he leaves, and she gets together with a character named Partner. Everybody just refers to him as Partner the entire movie. That sucks. You have to watch the film itself to find out his true name. I won't spoil it here, but that's Clint Eastwood.

So she ends up with this young guy, Clint Eastwood, who doesn't drink. And in the middle of the movie, they're like, okay, you got to pick between us. And Jean's like, I love both of you. Who says a woman can't have two wives? And they kind of talk, sing about like, well, you know, a Mormon man came with multiple wives. I guess a wife could have two husbands. Sure. And then the intermission comes and then that's the intermission. And so they they are happy in their uh trio relationship until until about the middle of the movie when more bad things happen and then lee lee marvin ultimately well so in the play in the stage production his character dies but they let him live and he just leaves town and clint clint ends up with with gene seberg at the end of it yes the film is garbage

you don't want to see it. The gossip behind the scenes though, is some great stuff though. I don't want to hear this. Uh, well, so first off, yes, Lee Marvin,

total drunk. There was a story that Joshua Logan had like was peed on by Lee Marvin. Like Marvin didn't like his direction and pissed on his booze, but, uh, but Josh, well, but though then Joshua Logan refuted it by saying hey i'm

friends with lee marvin and he was a drunk but also on the days he was that drunk he would not have had that could have aimed to piss on my boots he couldn't do it damn meanwhile the clean clint eastwood also says that lee marvin taught him to drink on this movie like that he was not much of a drinker beforehand and uh and yeah that like in multiple scenes you'll see it lee marvin they say that's real whiskey he's drinking everybody drinks like tea or whatever in movies but he was drinking it meanwhile clint eastwood was being a real piece of shit uh because he was having an affair on the set with gene seberg uh i mean who wouldn't she leaves but she thought it was not just an on-set fling.

She divorces her husband and assumes she's going to be with Clint Eastwood. According to her, when they went back to Hollywood, he didn't talk to her at all. He just ghosted her, as the kids would say. And not only that, but Clint was dating another woman on the set at the same time. He was two-timing her on top of the woman who wasn't on the set two-timing her. And Gene Seberg, if you know her sad life, like this Clint Eastwood breaking her heart in 1968 and 9 when the film came out, that didn't help her mental health.

Though she was also being stalked by the FBI at the time. Yeah, listen to the You Must Remember This podcast series, Jean and Jane, about Jane Fonda and Gene Seabrook. It's very good. It's very good. In short, I mean, she was openly supporting the Black Panthers, which, even a famous Hollywood liberal like Peter Fondo would not support the Black Panthers.

That was a wild thing to do back then and that's also kind of why this is one of the last times she starred in a major motion picture also that though i i think too it feels slightly sexist that they could be like oh you're box office poison lee marvin and clint eastwood can keep starring and stuff it's not their fault another behind the scenes thing lee marvin was given a million dollars to do this movie which is why he did this movie instead of the wild bunch a boy he him look william holden's great in the wild bunch he's amazing lee marvin would be 10 times better in that role and making it even more the perfect western five times drunker oh yes i mean oh you think william

holden wasn't drunk i mean i feel like every celebrity was an alcoholic by today's standards they had racists like all of them 50 years ago but uh and yes they part of the huge the film was double what it was supposed to be in cost ended up being over 20 million dollars which uh by today's standards is like 150 million but still a lot of money. And they built a full town set. They exploded the town at the end of production to just be like, fuck this.

Good. And also when Robert Evans took over Paramount, this was one of his most hated films because he's like, I'm stuck with this. He took over in 69 and he was just stuck with releasing this piece of shit movie. Would I have made the movie? No.

In his book, he calls it a movie for no one. That's what I think is correct. And from then on, Robert Evans at Paramount would work much on smaller budget, hipper films like Love Story. Or if he was going to do something big budget, it would be a prestige film like The Godfather. Well, we will do Kid Notorious for What a Cartoon if you pay us enough money.

If you pay us enough money. That's another show I watched every episode of. I also did that. I don't know why. I mean, it was a cartoon on television. Tony Foote loves Three Ways. Have you guys seen The Mule? He has two Three Ways in that movie.

What? Wow, no, I have not seen that. The movie from last year when he is 104 years old he also uh i don't know if you guys ever been to the town carmel uh in southern california no no i know he was the mayor of it though yeah he was the mayor i learned that after i got after we got there we like showed up in the town and we're like there all day and then looked i was just like why are there so many pictures of clint eastwood here And then I Googled it and was like, oh, he was the mayor for like four years in the 80s. I think Clint Eastwood is like a very, he's an incredible filmmaker.

He makes great movies. He also likes songs. Well, I love Unforgiven. I really love Letters to Miwa Jima. Let's see. And he's a great actor. But also, like, he sucks. sucks i mean he doesn't have to make a movie every year that's for fucking sure is he singing better in this or in gran torino

i think he at least leans into his badness he's all serena sounds like cookie monster singing a ballad uh some clint eastwood memories i have too of hearing his singing is that he he sings uh he sings a song on the soundtrack for midnight in the garden of good and evil which is a good movie i like that movie he sucks at singing in it though it feels like a very uh ego driven mood uh to be like no i'm i'm on this soundtrack i'm singing and i remember as a kid thinking like oh man clint eastwood he can't sing but man that kevin spacey a voice of an angel going places hopefully prison hopefully directly to jail yeah i uh i guess last thing i'll say about paint your wagon is if you want

an expensive western that came out in 1969 that's also two hours and 40 minutes long watch once upon a time in the west yeah that's a way better, overlong, mega indulgent Western. You know what? This movie's not on Blu-ray. I'm going to say McCabe and Mrs. Miller. That's the one. Oh, that too. That's 71.

Yeah. That movie was amazing. But Paint Your Wagon, not on Blu-ray. Get petition signed now. We need 4K release. Yeah. Actually, if I were to, yes, if I were to put up my genius at work shirt here, I would also say that Paint Your Wagon was not on the shelf at my Blockbuster

when I worked there. Oh, never in any video store I saw. You couldn't rent it. It wasn't one Paramount wanted to put on VHS. It was pretty rare to see any movies released before 1981 at most major Blockbuster rental places. It is on DVD. Okay. okay i mean just for collectors that's it's for okay but yeah them singing a song about painter wagon it feels like a funny precursor to

guys and dolls or just a bunch of crazy just they make up the title song for a musical that doesn't exist and it's hacky to have it's i i love that gag and though i do think that uh that lee marvin is dreamy in some of his photos like it's a weathered not in paint your wagon he has grown quite a mustache that i'm not selling to but a silver fox but if you've seen him in uh in point blank uh he's he's he is a handsome man he's a handsome man. He has a bullying charisma to him. Also, the line about the right paint to use on pine, Bob Vila agrees. Oil-based paint is the better one to use on pine,

though Bob Vila also suggests that you should always put on a primer first regardless of paint type. He's a Bob I trust. Wait until the day i die i'm never giving it up so once uh once they they and us are done with paint your wagon uh homer violently ejects the video into the garbage can which is not theirs like he that's the blockbuster top dollar for that they're gonna charge you a lot of money for losing that tape but uh that's such a funny i can't believe i haven't seen that gift everywhere i'm gonna gift that and start using it

i wrote on my note that's such a funny thing of it just flying out of the vcr into the trash can like if someone posts a video you don't like that'd be a great reply oh my god yeah we're inventing memes right there children wouldn't understand that but as homer violently rejects this musical, he actually rejects all musicals. Why did they have to screw up a perfectly serviceable wagon story with all that fruity singing? I thought it was toe-tapping fun. Singing is the lowest form of communication. Homer, you sing all the time. No, I don't. I hate to rhyme. You like musicals,

don't you, Dad? No, I don't. I think they're bad. They're fake and phony and totally wrong. Wake up, Dad. You're singing a song. I wouldn't. I couldn't. I hate that stuff. Now, Homer, listen. I've had enough in our family videos. We have plainly seen you're a singing, Homer, listen. I've had enough in our family videos. We have plainly seen you're a singing, dancing, entertainment machine. So this episode is not canon, but if you think of the conceit for it that Marge has videos of all of these things, like, where were the cameras, Marge? You were shooting coverage? What's happening? They tape the show show just like me they had their they have their simpsons family vhs is just like me but uh the first two songs we have our baby on board and we put the spring in springfield

because i guess they're both led by homer yeah the songs are kind of categorized yeah they do an interesting job of categorizing and also i I do appreciate that the scripts and songs were written knowing what clips they were going to play. At least I had forethought. It makes it feel like they worked a little harder on it than just shoving together clips. Just in general, I think the wraparounds are amazing. The Pay Your Wagon part is beautiful. It is new backgrounds and sets and all new character designs. They definitely put some work into this.

Bart saying, I hate to dance and prance and sing. His choreography in that little shot is one of my favorite little pieces of animation acting, I think, ever. He's Bob Fosse-ing. Is that what that little maneuver is? It's a little frosty, yeah. Yeah. So in my first viewing as a child of 15, I didn't know what this episode was. And so. Same here, yeah. When they say, you always sing and Marge reaches for the tapes.

No. That was when I like to be like, this is a clip show. Fuck. Fuck. We thought we were safe. I was sure it was over. Because there was no clip show in season eight. Yeah.

They kind of were doing it every other season. Four, six. No, yeah, it was four, six, seven, nine. Those were the clip shows. So the concept, they worked harder on this than they had to. Like, they could have just, I mean, I'm shocked Merkin didn't just, maybe he was told, like, you can as uh as cynically lazy as you were in the last one on this i wanted to know songs that weren't in this that they didn't use i feel

like they definitely could have but i mean there's only so much time in it but like no camp crusty uh no senior burns no sherry bobbins no sending our love down the well no dr zeus happily no happy birthday lisa um thank god or mediocre presidents i would like to have heard mediocre president i think the thing was like a lot of those songs were not sung by simpsons family members or led by them or the more popular characters on the show there's also no capital city song either yes yeah so like like camp crusty just all the kids uh senior burns is uh some guy that's in tito puente's band um i mean phil hartman is the one guest who gets to sing in this no other guest star songs are used like same with flaming mose they didn't use the flaming mose

theme which that's sung by kip lennon too right also we didn't say no streetcar songs they could have done a streetcar montage in this too i think streetcar is the real one missing because they really stick to like show tunesy kind of songs but i also think they're kind of going for like spontaneously singing into song and when it's like that's because the one i was like where's dr zeus i'm like i guess they're watching a musical that's not the same yeah as the other songs i guess yes if the point is that everyone in town burst into song for no reason seeing a musical that's the reason they're singing. So you're right.

It does lose that. Oh, and another favorite I wish I'd heard in this was Lisa's Union song. I think that's a lot of fun, too. Now play classical gas. But yes, we start. Our first clip is Baby on Board. My only new thoughts on this are that uh since we've done this one disney now owns the simpsons so the dapper dance have to sing the song on main street

they better uh and also with some of the stuff that exact conversation two days ago i swear to god i brought that up like at a hangout with my friends though jeff we we mentioned it to jeff martin and jeff martin is like it's not as famous now the dapper dance probably won't sing it but uh i i hold out hope also with some of the stuff they cut in other songs that i'll note when we get to them i'm shocked they kept in human fly yeah that's so unneeded and unnecessary but i mean uh it was during the song so it'd be hard to chop that out because you're chopping out part of the song. Yeah, that's true. I love human fly here.

A classic. But it's funny that these contain plot elements that don't make any sense if you haven't seen the episode. Like, why is Wiggum going to arrest them if you have not seen that episode? The joke is just the extremeness of it, I guess. Then we go to Spring in Springfield, another amazing

high watermark for the show an emmy winning song i believe i believe so yeah and the only cut in here is one of the funniest gags and while we're saying like we could tear it down yeah yeah no no we could but so they cut that for for time purposes just start with you close down those yeah yeah it just goes right to the song. I, again, just visited Universal Studios. The instrumental version of this from the credits is one of my favorite songs to hear walking around Universal. It's a real favorite of mine. But yeah, so we get those two songs, which that fills out the act.

And we get to hear, well, actually, we get Bart commenting on it then. And Lisa calling Bart gay. Mom was right. Your singing's a sin. You're as lame as a rob lay as Lee Marvin. Sure, your dad singing could make your hair curl. But you too, Bart, have sung and danced like a girl eep Marge is a little homophobic there I gotta say

I mean the next one is Lisa calling him a basically a gay man with a purse they're all saying you're a sissy though I will say it is a rather gay clever turn of phrase to call somebody as Les Miserables as Lee Marvin that's too clever for Bart.

You need to know popular musicals of 1997. I mean, Bart is like... He's into musicals, the way he dances and sings and everything. He's just trying to cover it up. Well, Bart also knows all the rules of beauty pageants, too. And ballet, or is that after this?

No, this was before this. Ballet, too. Oh, ballet, okay. He plays a fairy or a queen in ballet. or is that after this? No, this was before this. Ballet series. Oh, ballet, okay. He plays a fairy or a queen in ballet. This is what kept me out of musical theater as a kid, is my dad saying, no, that is a woman's and a gay man's business. You are not allowed to do that. I feel bad for all these poor straight men

who just want to enjoy musicals and then they're told you're gay for doing so. That's sad. I mean, don't say poor straight man okay yeah actually yes what am i saying what about me actually bob you didn't talk much about your love of musicals they're fine okay i think i was uh i think i was probably you know enforced to not liking them just by like the rules of society i do like i do like musicals i i'm not

like uh running out to see them but uh i love little shot before is a lot i have the soundtrack to that that's a great i love that i know all the songs by heart i've sung in a karaoke oh we got to do that next karaoke well did you do uh what i mean you do love a disney animated film oh for sure yeah yeah which that was the argument i had with my dad is he would be like i don't like musicals and i'd be like we watch we see every disney movie and have all the soundtracks and he's like that's different and i'm like no it's not and i would be like howard ashman it's like and i would like try and explain and he would just shut me down well yeah actually howard ashman there's a great i think it's he it's on either beauty and the beast or aladdin they have a

documentary about just him the uh the the lyric the lyricist for multiple of the hit Disney films who died of AIDS after Aladdin was released. When they hired him to start working on Little Mermaid, they talk about how he gave a presentation of like, you're not making cartoons, you're making musicals. I'm going to give you all a crash course in musical big budget musical history and tell you how to make these and they all talk about how incredibly informative that was and how that reframed them creatively to be like oh that's what we're making we're not we're not making an animated talking animal film these he is uh one of my favorite people in history uh i will i do have to correct you i'm'm sorry. He died before Aladdin came out.

Although Aladdin, Aladdin was his baby. He pitched Aladdin. He was the one who was like, you should make Aladdin. Here are most of the songs. He didn't get to finish it. And then Alan Menken took over and gets all the credit for it. You know, I, I'm a little bitter about Alan Menken. No good, no, he's a genius.

But he basically, yeah, he, he did exactly what you said. He showed up. He basically like, I think he should have a co-director credit on Beauty and the Beast. Like, if the stories about him were true. And also the documentary Waking Sleeping Beauty, which is about the fall and rise of Disney from the mid-80s to the mid-90s, is, like, mostly about how he saved Disney. Like, he is the guy that, he's the reason that they became what they were in the 90s, I think. I remember one other musical soundtrack I like. that's the hunchback of notre dame it's the best disney soundtrack of the 90s period best musical of the 90s that movie kicks ass not that one so underrated

what's that that movie is so underrated and kicks ass and it's mostly because of the music and i bought the soundtrack on cd when i was 14 and i was like, am I going to be beaten up in the store? Gender roles suck, everybody. Oh yeah. One last Howard Ashman story I remember too. They talk in Aladdin. One of the most important songs to him was Proud of Your Boy. But when they're changing the movie after he's left it, they're like, Aladdin has to be an orphan. He can't have a mom that he sings a song to, even though that was such an important song to howard ashman so they have to cut it they cut the song because he can't sing that song to a mom that's not there didn't they animate that at a certain point it's definitely boarded okay yeah you can you can see a board watch like parts of it world part of your world and jeffrey katzenberg tried to cut it and he was like he was like the angriest you can ever imagine a man for obvious reasons i

gotta say every story i hear i thought it was eisner i'm supposed to hate but every story i hear of jeffrey katzenberg i'm like you sound like the real villain it sounds much worse yeah yeah he's the real bad one eisner eisner is just he's just a dumb guy who was like eisner i don't think is evil i think he was just too full of himself. And like, he deserves a lot more credit than I think modern Disney fans give him. Like if you like, you know,

splash mountain, like a lot of things, like he, he facilitated a lot of that coming out. Your eighties love of Disney is you can thank Michael Eisner for kids. I miss seeing his bullying personality on TV. Bob, Bob Iger doesn't even try to do that.

He's just like, I'm Bob Iger. I maintain a Goliath. That's all I do. Anyway, after Marge calls Bart a sissy, we get Bart and Milhouse going crazy Broadway style. They even have them drinking the squishy, which I was surprised they kept all that in. They could just go straight to them saying,

let's go crazy Broadway style, and they do the whole song. It's a good visual gag, though. Yeah. Oh, I love that joke. What's it like, Bart, Bart, Bart? And yes, when we come back from that song, that is when Lisa further smears Bart. Man, Lisa should be more progressive than this.

And then we get our first commercial break. That was pretty bad, Bart, but it could have been worse. You could have been carrying a sequined purse. I hate to dance and prance and sing. That's really more of a Milhouse thing. I think you move like a young Baryshnikov. Nobody move or I'll blow your heads off. Bart even does the whole limp wrist thing when he says Milhouse.

More furthering the fact that Milhouse could be gay but in the future he's married to Lisa so I mean sexuality is a spectrum right? don't put labels on Milhouse for him if you want he can identify however he wants that's the power of gender

so Merkin brings it up on the commentary this is a classic Merkin so merkin brings it up on the commentary this is a classic merkin fuck you yeah he knows it but the it is now that i know more about sitcom writing you have to have stakes at a commercial break so people come back to watch it it's so funny now that i realize what he's doing so every time it's a commercial break snake will appear for 10 20 seconds threaten everybody and then once you're back from commercial like actually i have to leave and he leaves and that's it and then he'll come back for the next commercial that's all they do it's so it's so hilariously cynical sorry it's also funny that uh this kind of light-hearted story about a

family like sharing memories is interrupted every five minutes with a home invader that will shoot them all in the head including the baby with a shotgun yeah like yeah it's uh yeah they kind of forgive that uh snake tries to murder them again this is non-continuity so it doesn't count but is that the joke you were talking about earlier because that's's the one I was. Oh, well, that's after the second commercial break. But it's also funny to hear Azaria says on the commentary, it's really hard to sing in Snake's voice, but he does his best here. And yes, this backing track on them

and also this kind of talk singing very much reminds me of Les Mis and Phantom here as Marge talks. Oh, yeah. It's a desperate criminal. I'm the run from the law. Please spare my children. And their damp trousered paw. A singing family.

It's worse than I feared. For hostage purposes. You're just too weird. Bye. Thanks, God. See, all this singing scared him away. If we just talk like normal, he'd probably stay. Many people in this town sing like we do.

There's Mr. Burns, there's Krusty, and even Apu. This is one of two times that Homer's disappointed when Snake leaves. He's so sad. He misses him. So we get Who Needs the Quickie Mart, which is great. Send in the Clowns by Krusty, which is, I think they could have replaced that with something else. There's some good Brad Bird-y poses in there. Schmaltz.

Schmaltz filled by the bowl full yeah i uh i'm surprised they used crusty in this like this could be in mediocre presidents i think that really lifted it up more but i guess the theme they were going for with this clip package is they have to be sung by one it can't be the whole town singing it's sung by one person and it can't be a member of the family like I like that. That was their choice. And See My Vest is the last in this one, which is my favorite. And I found out from the commentary that Mike Scully wrote that all on his own.

He just went off and wrote it, and it was so perfect. So if you don't like Mike Scully, he wrote See My Vest. Also, get over it if you don't like Mike Scully. Seriously. See My Vest also has another one of my favorite little acting flourishes when he goes, I really like the vest. The little motion he does when he flips the vest and like he gets up on his so good i gathered yeah also sending the clowns is a sondheim song from his musical a little night

music which is based on the igmar bergman film smiles of a summer night which i watched last night without knowing that well wow that's the one song in this compilation that is actually an existing song it's all new lyrics it's all new oh really their own yes okay it's new lyrics but it's not a it's he's trying it's at least he's singing the song there are a couple direct parodies of course in like but that's the most like you you're supposed to believe he's singing that song he just sings it wrong i feel like Sondheim must have been paid, though, for that. Like, there's also something interesting on the commentary, too, that Merkin brings up about how lawyers don't let them have fun anymore.

He's like, they're the fun police. Well, because his point is that it's all perfectly legal to do a parodic song. Like, you can do, there's a great Nathan for you where he's like, I can sing any song as long as I change the lyrics. But yeah, technically that's true, but no lawyer for a corporation wants to test that in court. They're like, it's legal, but, uh, change it more. So just in case we, we might get sued anyway. Like, so that's why he says on here, like, see my vest and send in the clowns are too close he's like lawyers wouldn't let us do this more now they're too close to the real song

i love what a fun troll david merkin is yes on commentaries and on the show yeah he's he's a funny guy someday someday i want to talk to that merkin i love how he uh explains every single joke as it happens yes yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, another great troll. He's always like, yeah, and here what's happening is Homer hit the eject button and the tape flies out. Tapes don't really do that, but it's cartoons and we did it anyway. There's another great commentary troll he does, which is in Bart's comment. He says, you know, I've never seen anybody say this on the internet, but there's Waldo in here.

A lot of people never notice it. And it's like, he knows everyone say this on the internet, but there's Waldo in here. A lot of people never notice it. And it's like, he knows everyone said that on the internet, but he's like teasing. There's also like a dark joke about Phil Hartman on this commentary that I thought was funny. I did like that, yeah. But, oh, and speaking of things I noticed for the first time, this is the first time I caught the lyric that Homer says, their damp trousered paw. Okay. Which meaning he pissed himself.

He'll have two peeing himself jokes in this show. I could never understand what he was saying. And that's why I used it as my intro line of this episode. Because I Googled it finally. I looked it up. Freaky. I was like, because I just assumed depth trousered meant like deep trousered. Like he's fat.

Like he has a big butt. So he has deep trousers. I guess it's hard to hit the P. But no, it's damp trousered. It's hard to hit the aspirated P when you're singing, like damp trousered. You have to pause to aspirate that. Don't aspirate your Ps, everybody.

You're going to just spit everywhere. Oh, and also new information we have since we did the Homer and Apu episode. Dan McGrath, in our interview with him, he told us how they wrote that Who Needs a Quickie Mark song in the writers room And that he contributed to that And I'm glad in this clip package

They kept the I do They could have just ended with The not me Yeah well in the syndicated version they cut the I do Oh that's bullshit I'm pretty sure they do But who cares about that nobody watches those And yeah the Krusty song

I just love the posing on schmaltz by the Bullful move. It's just so great. Oh, so no one corrects me. They cut the He Lied to Us Through song. I hate when people do that part. Oh, okay. They fade away on I Do. That's even worse.

Yeah. I hate that. Yeah, See My Vest is in my top five songs. If I were to, my current favorite songs on the show, I think actually Plan of the Apes is my favorite song. I put Monorail behind that, right behind that. But it's in my top five, See My Vest is. Burns has never been more animated,

and the direction on that song is so cool. Yeah. All the different outfits he's trying on, it's so great. Well, speaking of cut gags, they cut the very famous joke of bart humming the musical after hearing it like i love that joke i like when they come back from see my best like lisa has to explain how the rest of the episode went because like let's give the viewer some context as to why mr birds is doing this if you've never seen this before and you're especially

worried about dogs you need to know these dogs are fine uh yardardley Smith is a great singer in this show. She's underappreciated for her singing. She doesn't get to sing enough. Lisa does. I always think that. I think it might have something to do with her using her voice and not doing as much of a voice as everyone else, but she is a genuinely good singer.

Yeah. And I'm sure when Julie Kavner signed on to be Marge, she did not realize she'd be singing this much for the next 30 years. And she does a great job in that voice, which must be very difficult. We said it when she sings the All of the Family song, that she sings intentionally poorly in the Marge voice. So after that clip package, it's time for another commercial break. So Snake knows it's time to return. Because he was singing, we overheard his plan It's time for another commercial break, so Snake knows it's time to return.

Because he was singing, we overheard his plan and could save those dogs from that mean old man. It still wasn't worth Burns' song and dance. I'm back to resume wedding your pounds. Okay. Because of you all, I got a tune in my head. And the only way to stop it is to make you all dead. I knew I should have shut that window. That's great.

I like that app, right? I like the false stakes. It also reminds me of other clip shows that were from the past where the characters would be locked into something or like in some sort of danger and like let's talk about the past that you're so oh yes yeah so the stakes were there to surround the boring clips like let's make this exciting in some way like oh no we're locked in this cabin together or this freezer or whatever yeah trapped in an elevator there's a great episode of that's my bush about that about uh he's watching tv and he's upset that it's it's a bottle episode and then someone explains bottle episodes to him.

And they're like, yeah, when people have problems on TV, it's an easy way to get them to work it out without having to go anywhere else. And then every pair of characters have a problem with each other. And they all get trapped in a different part of the White House and have to work it out throughout the rest of the episode. That's good. You know, I only watched the first episode of that show. Really? That was enough for me. It was of that show. Really? That was enough for me. It was a funny show.

It seemed that way. You don't see a lot of those two and their love of parodying sitcoms a lot in South Park. It doesn't really come through a lot in South Park. Those are the best episodes of South Park when it's them making fun of comedy instead of trying to play both sides of a political issue. Now they're like, we're not doing that anymore.

We're done with that. We're done with that. We're done being funny. Hilariously, I wish that My Bush never happened because it would have been a better show with gore. The gore family and making fun of Tipper Gore. The comedy doesn't work

the same with George Bush, I think, obviously. Especially post-9-11. Yes. They also wrote a great musical, Cannibal the Musical. They've written many great musicals. the same with george bush i think obviously especially post 9-11 uh yes yeah they also wrote a great musical cannibal the musical they've written many and the south park yeah of course no actually i was thinking when i saw the paint your wagon thing in the beginning it did remind me of cannibal the musical oh yeah and book of mormon was the cool young people musical before hamilton was oh yeah it is a fun musical i like it a lot uh it's good it's a better actual musical than hamilton i think

yeah when it's not as dated as uh avenue q i'd say oh yeah that's right yeah though i like to avenue q even though like we get it puppets swear can you believe it like i made a movie about that recently how how uh quit reminding me of happy time Murders. It's just like my brain can't wrap my head around it. It's just crazy that happened. It's bad. So we come back from commercial break. And yes, I believe this is the dark gag you were talking about, right, Bob? Yes, yes.

More so than I can talk about it now, right? I mean, well, Snake is about to execute all the family members. It's like fucking funny games over here. But he points the gun in all their faces, and he pulls the trigger in all their faces once, and they all flinch, except for Maggie. So number one, he's going to kill a baby with a gun to the head. And Maggie is like, fucking do it.

Yeah, do it. Fucking do it, asshole. So I like that, number one, he's willing to kill a baby on the screen in 1998 yep number two maggie's like i don't care i do not fear death i'm maggie and she knows what she knows what the gun is yeah yeah maggie probably is like no there's no bullets in that gun i fired a gun before good sir uh yeah it's uh to come back for commercial break and pulling the trigger on them uh though as a viewer when you hear him use the word blamo

before pulling the trigger you know he's gonna say he's out of ammo like you know you know what the next line is uh but here's snake back after the commercial break say your prayers and then it's couple i know uh-oh i'll be back when I get some ammo Bye Even the criminals are beginning to croon Homie, this whole town runs on a tune Our churches, our clubs, our government too

Springfield swings like a pendulum do. And Bart just dances. Yeah, Bart is vamping. We can't even get any local laws passed without everyone singing. Like a big Broadway cast. Wow. Nice job, Lisa. Yardley goes for that.

And the animation matches it too. Like her slide is like such a classic musical, just slide. It's great. The music there is amazing too. That like, that's genuine, just great musical music. The filling time, like there's, this time I had just a chuckle of how Marge says, well, everybody sings, and then she pauses for like four notes

because they have to get to the next stanza. She knows she can't talk yet. And then also, yeah, Bart knows like, well, it's time for me to continue dancing. It's not Elise's turn yet. So these are songs by the whole town. The monorail song, of course, is in there. The greatest.

I think they could have replaced In the Garden of Eden. Yeah, yeah. In the Garden of Eden. I mean, this is, again, it's a real song that they're doing a different arrangement of, but that's the one real song in this, I guess. Real meaning existing. I mean, it's the whole town singing,

but again, yeah, I'd have done Mediocre Presidents. I mean, we don't even get the setup where Bard is handing out the hymns, right? I think you see him handing them out. I totally forgot if we did get that or not. They don't cut anything from that. And also when watching it, I missed it when we did it the first time,

but there's a big fuck-up in there of Jasper's beard is painted flesh tone. That always bothers me. That always bothers me. It's too many people moving, though. That's an expensive retake, you know? Yeah, and is Lou the black cop, or is it Eddie? It's Lou, right? Yeah.

He's standing with Louis, implying that he's his father in that scene. They were following up on that. Yeah. Maybe he was just dating his mom at the time. Could be. Yeah, also, from Monorail, the greatest song in the show's history. Yeah, yeah. Bill Hartman getting the shine.

They cut out from, after How Silly of Me, they cut out two minutes of, I counted it on Frankie Hackett's, two minutes of content from there of them talking about, you know, Maude says what she'd want to do. He said, Homer says boring. Abe's big speech. Marge talking about, you know, Maude says what she'd want to do. Homer says boring. Abe's big speech. Marge talking about Main Street. All these things just get cut out. And it begins with, like, a town with money is like a mule with a spinning wheel. Yes, yeah. It goes straight from How Silly of Me to Town with Money.

Yeah, Bob, you were saying there were some dark jokes about Phil Hartman on the commentary of this bit, too. I forget what the actual joke was. Something about Hank taking Phil Hartman's rolls now that he's gone or something like that yeah then merkin's like good that's hank azaria for you just waiting in the wings no matter what happens i think though they just try to lighten it because murky and i i've heard in other commentaries when he's on there and they talk about phil and they're just all depressed. He's like, God damn it, guys. It doesn't have to be this sad all the time. He hates getting sad about it.

Also, what they cut is one of the greatest moments in Simpsons history, too. Snrub. Oh, right. I like the way Snrub thinks. And also, Jeff Martin talked about this in his... This song got him back on The simpsons in a way he uh conan performs it at the hollywood bowl concert they did about seven years ago and that jeff martin he gets a specific shout out from conan on stage that he wrote it with jeff martin jeff martin's there in

the audience and at the show apparently james l brooks just asked aljean you think jeff would write another script for us? And it turned out Jeff would. That's how Jeff Martin went back and wrote new musicals for the show, all because Conan O'Brien gave a shout out to him on the stage. We then end that with Stonecutters. If they're going to go with one song to end it, I think Stonecutters is a very good choice.

It's great. I wish it was longer, though. Yeah, yeah. It's still a great song. Another top five song for me. It's great. I wish it was longer, though. Yeah. It's still a great song. Another top five song for me. I love that. We Do is my favorite song that isn't sung by Phil Hartman. If you take out

Monorail and Zaius. You also got a Steve Guttenberg joke in 1998. So fresh. They weren't afraid of offending him. They did not cut that. Yes, so the songs are over, and now it's time for the Simpsons to dunk on themselves. Alright

March, you've convinced me there are more terrible things than musical comedies where everyone sings. There is something worse and it really does blow

when a long-running series does a cheesy clip show. Wow. I love that the banner comes down and tells you it's the fourth clip show. Yep. I think David Merkin wanted everyone to know, like, we had to do four of these. And it even has the fucking production code. Yep. I love that.

That's in quotes like just this is dead to really get the behind the scenes shit on this like they i mean they he knew too he right merkin rightly guessed the audience is mad they had to watch a clip show they even if they watched all the way through they know they wanted a real new episode of the simpsons so they may as well mock it and also yeah this is a start in 1998 it was old hat then though friends did like four fucking clip shows like everybody did clip shows boy those friends were expensive though yes yeah and uh yeah so the songs are over i i also do like the kick line that the kids do as they come in to say that it really does blow.

And so as they finish singing, Snake returns finally to murder them. I'm back to commit felonious assault because your infernal singing just would not halt. Actually, we're done. Done, done. Another moment too soon. Actually, we're done. Done, done. And not a moment too soon. Oh, okay then. Well, then I got no beef with you. Okay, who wants dinner?

Me! I do! I do! Well, let's get eating. All right, all right. Sorry. That's great. I love it undercuts the fake conflict even more

where they could have just said the entire time, no, we're done. Yes. We're done. They could have stopped singing at any point, but they know the episode's over and the snake doesn't. He's like, oh, the episode's done? Okay, I'm gone.

See ya. Especially the way Bart says, done, done. Episode's over. We got to go home. You're so done with this idea. And also, Snake, based on how the window is blown out, he was aiming for her head. Yeah, yeah. There were inches from hitting Marge's face.

I like how she's mildly annoyed with being shot at. Yeah, all right, all right. And then Snake fires over the credits, and I think kills the Gracie Music lady. I think so, yes. The Gracie Music dude, as he refers to her. You too. You'll be able to, you'll hear all that

over the credits for this episode. Or I guess, well, I wouldn't say credits. It takes us out. You'll hear. Yeah, you know what it is. You know. You've heard enough of these. You get it, folks.

So I guess the, I would say the 138th episode, Spectacular, is my favorite. It's a lot cheaper than this, I will say. The animation is episode spectacular is my favorite. It's a lot cheaper than this. I will say the animation is not as good. The wraparound segments are not as good looking, but I like how much more cynical it is, even more than David Merkin. And I love Phil Hartman in that segment, but in that episode, but this is probably the second best clip show. And I love all the original songs in it, especially your wagon like if this if this made paint your wagon a song that i think of like once a week it was worth existing so that's my final thoughts on all singing all dancing yeah 138 is the best clip show this is second it uh

you know 138 was done digitally so yeah this definitely looks way better because it is a normally animated episode and with ink and paint so i do like that i you know knowing that our hartman days are numbered i do kind of wish they just made it a sequel to 138 and we've gotten more heartland you know actually it would be really hard to repeat what they did because they had 138 used up so many of their deleted scenes they could they call back to more of them could they do more and and also though that's not dave murkin dave murkin isn't a nerd for the simpsons you know he's uh oakley and weinstein were and that's what made it such a great fan service thing this this was more just

like a greatest hits album done done a lot more cynically at least in clip collections so uh but yeah also the work the work involved in doing musical numbers and writing original songs for it like that that is a lot of effort and i i appreciate that too so as as a send off to clip shows proper this is not a bad one yeah i i think this is one you shouldn't skip when you're going through the dvds just because i think the wraparound segments are so good and the songs are so good. And it's just, you know, I know there's not as much of a purpose to collect these songs these days,

but it's still, it's an interesting curio more so than I think the rest of the clip shows. But, uh, I, I am a, I'm a purist. So I only listened to the picking on series,

uh, bluegrass covers of these songs. Matthew, I can't believe you said that because when I was getting coffee today from my local place, they were playing a bluegrass version of Stairway to Heaven. I could not flee the area faster. Oh, God.

I have not heard any of these things. That's worse than the Simpsons. That's bad. Yeah, that's really bad. I do like that Simpsons album, though. It's pretty good. You know, but it's you can just go on Spotify if you want to listen to these songs, I guess, but I like the wraparound segments. They're good enough.

Okay. Well, we laughed, we lived, we learned about Paint Your Wagon on this episode. Oh, so much Paint Your Wagon. This was a Paint Your Wagon podcast. I knew we'd get close to two hours with that. Prove us wrong, everybody. But Matthew, we'll do our own plugs once we're off the line with you. Can you tell us where we can find you?

You've got Patreons. You've got Twitters. You're really doing it out there in LA. I do. My whole life is content and it stinks, but it's the gig economy. You can check out patreon.com. It's Carchins101 where I do a podcast every week. Currently going through all the works with Satoshi Kon with a bunch of guests, including

you guys. Paranoia agent now and went through all of Genesis Evangelion as well with a bunch of guests, including you guys paranoia agent now and uh went through all of neon genesis evangelion as well with a bunch of guests including you guys and i also interview animation creators like bill oakley who was mentioned all the time in this podcast uh scott gerner creator of moonbeam city uh jeff trammell head writer of craig of the creek uh brian newton director of rick and morty uh all kinds of awesome awesome guests and also i host uh the deep end with my friend steve yurko uh which is a show all about every show ever aired on adult swim we're doing all of them including uh by the time you hear this uh we have an episode up with nick weiger where we talked about the john k

hannah barbara yogi bear and jetson shorts half of one of those is watchable that's basically where we come down we're like part of this was good, but we mostly just make fun of John Kay in the episode. And we also just had James Urbaniak on and we interviewed him. Nice. All kinds of good stuff there. And if you go to patreon.com slash the deep end,

you get another weekly show all about the Venture Brothers, every single episode. That's our favorite show. So we're doing that. And we're expanding that Patreon a bit with, we're going to do some streams and stuff. Patrons actually unlocked a stream that we're going to do soon where Steve and I are going to watch a bunch of old Cartoon Network and Toonami and Adult Swim commercials and just talk over them.

And we'll do stuff like that. So check that out. Yeah, it's fun. And also Mitch Live. I produce Mitch Live, the talk show hosted by Mike Mitchell, which you can see at Mitch.Live or live in Los Angeles if you're here. Nice. You're a busy bee, man. So we appreciate you finding the time

to record with us today. Yeah, it sounds like I make a lot more money, doesn't it? Well, thanks again, Matthew, for being on the show. I'm sure you'll be back soon. Oh, of course. Anytime, you guys.

So thanks again to Matthew J. for being on the show. He's a good friend of ours and we can't wait to record with him again. I want to definitely do stuff with him in LA next time we're there. Yeah, I'm sure we'll be back in la soon enough and i i mean he's had multiple guests on though i man i want those guests i want to steal these guests share your guests

matthew that's that's why he actually has been very helpful with us getting a few guests he really has been thank you so much matthew yes thank you but as for us we are part of the talking simpsons network it's our full-time jobs and we bring you so many great podcasts if you want to support the show and get tons and tons and tons of bonus podcasts on top of that, please go to patreon.com slash Talking Simpsons, and for the incredibly low price of $5 a month, you will have access to so many things, including every episode of this podcast, and What a Cartoon, our sister podcast, one week ahead of time and ad-free. And on top of that, you'll get access to our Patreon-exclusive exclusive series like talking futurama talking critic and the currently

running talking of the hill and our second exclusive mini series in 2019 and so many more podcasts we've done in almost two years just for patreon that will never be released for free that's right for just five dollars a month you'll get access to dozens and dozens of podcasts also a ton of interviews that we've done with Simpsons veterans, many of which I reference here are Jeff Martin one, our Dan McGrath one, our most recent one with Josh Weinstein that we did in person in Los Angeles, California. You can listen to all of those only if you give it the low, low price of $5 a month, and you can even bump it up to the premium level for some really amazing content.

That's right. We have a newer $10 premium tier called the what a cartoon movie podcast where each month we do a very very long podcast about the movie our patrons choose for that month previously we've done things like batman mask of the phantasm kiki's delivery service akira and a goofy movie and this month we are doing the secret of nim so check it out it's a ten dollar tier but we make all of those podcasts definitely worth it they're super long a ton of research goes into them and if you sign up at the ten dollar level you'll also get access to the many many videos we made over the past 18 months at that level before we replace that tier with a podcast here because you just want podcasts from us and we love making them all of that's available to you at patreon.com slash talking simpsons you get an rss feed that's easy to plug into your podcast device of choice

or you can just use the patreon app which is actually good and useful wasn't that way a couple of years ago but it's really good now so that's the patreon so last time patreon.com slash talking simpsons yes as for me i have been one of your hosts, Bob Mackey. You can find me on Twitter as Bob Servo. My other podcast is Retronauts. It's a classic gaming podcast every Monday and occasionally Friday. Please go to retronauts.com or just look for Retronauts wherever you listen to podcasts. Find a topic that interests you if you like video games.

Download that corresponding podcast and subscribe to the podcast. I think you'll like it, Henry. What about you? Hey, I'm Henry Gilbert. You can follow me on Twitter at H-E-n-e-r-e-y-g i tweet out whatever new stuff goes live on the patreon or else we're doing polls for our audience to pick what our next patreon exclusive content's gonna be and so much more you'll stay very informed if you follow me on twitter h-e-n-e-r-e-y-g thanks for listening folks we'll see you next week with Bart Carney.

We'll see you then. Yo, I told you to stop the music, dudes. I'm serious. Oh, oh, oh, you're so not listening. Okay, I hear that. I hear that, dudes. You too, Gracie Music Dude! Gah!