Talking Simpsons - Talking Simpsons - Alone Again, Natura-diddily With Matt Christman And Virgil Texas

Episode Date: October 14, 2020

We've reached a landmark episode for Simpsons, which means it's time for our pals from Chapo Trap House, Matt Christman and Virgil Texas, to discuss Maude Flanders! How did the character get written off the show? Why was it done in such extreme fashion? And what was the fallout for decades to come from this major episode? We explore all of that in this week's momentous episode, so listen now!! Support this podcast and get dozens of bonus episodes by visiting Patreon.com/TalkingSimpsons and becoming a patron! Check out our new shirts on TeePublic! And please follow the new official Twitter, @TalkSimpsonsPod!

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with a new podcast covering each episode of the cult series from Simpsons Legends Bill Oakley and Josh Weinstein $5 subscribers at patreon.com

slash talking simpsons can hear every episode plus all of our previous miniseries about Futurama, King of the Hill, and The Critic. So don't be a beardsley, sign up for Talking Mission Hill today! Oh, really? I heartily endorse this event or product. Ahoy, everybody, and welcome to Talking Simpsons, where all your prayers are flancered. I'm your host, head roadie for Satanica, Bob Mackey, and this is our chronological exploration of The Simpsons. Who is here with me today in the same room hey it's star wife appreciator henry gilbert and who do we have on the line oh oh well it's matt

christman chapel trap house hello uh virtual texas podcast we've had in chapel trap house who ranks are involved now and today's episode is alone again natra diddly and now here's something for their eyes finally today's episode aired on february 13th 2000 and as always henry will tell us what happened on this mythical day in real world history oh my god oh boy bobby leonardo dicaprio heads to the beach in theaters this week the final episode of superman the animated series airs and the final peanut strip is published one day after Charles Schultz passes away. A big day there. He died doing what he loved, drawing a depressed child.

I mean, he'd been saying he was going to retire for a while, and then once he finished, then it, I mean, the timing was eerie, actually. Charles Schultz is passing yeah it's like when uh one old person dies and their spouse dies like immediately after but he had the the common sense to let the strip die with him instead of being like and now jimmy schultz will draw this for all eternity i think like every uh comic strip in the paper now is like on their grandson drawing the strip i guess I don't know what you're complaining about you guys clearly have not checked out Brian Herbert's Peanuts it's fantastic

did Schultz have a kid? I believe he had children Schultz's wife was in a memorable episode of Learn to Draw with Tom Gamble or How to Draw I think it's called oh i should check that out simpsons writer tom gamill i have not seen that one uh one uh the leonardo caprio

film the beach i i did not see that i remember there were tons of ads for it it was like is that really history look sometimes boring movies come out there's not this was before 9-11 this was the end of history no history was happening back then we're happy right before we started having history again yeah we're happy for the lack of history in the year 2000 at this point but yeah the beach uh famous i think for that weird uh first person video game scene in it it's kind of laughable yeah i don't remember that uh well it's about a beach not not much else happened back in february other than i guess this episode is history as well yes but yeah i guess let's welcome back our buddies virgil and matt hello hey hey yes of the chapo

trap house podcast making their i believe fourth appearance man i think so and they last joined us right before the curtain fell on society yeah i like how you can track society's decline now as we track the decline of the Simpsons. Feels like 800 years ago since you guys were here on the Monday before Super Tuesday. It was. But yeah, this is the 9-11 of the Simpsons. On 2-13. So remember 2-13, everybody. But yeah, this is the end of talking simpsons thanks for joining us for these past five years we're gonna just you know throw it in the hole right now and

bury it because no and of course we're gonna keep going into the future this will not destroy us i'm sure that's what matt graining said when they responded to hey, one of our cast members died instead of going, wow, maybe we should stop making this show. Instead, they were like, let's kill her. Well, it was more of a case of she's not dead, but her career is. Oh, that's right. She didn't die. She just left. Just wanted more money.

Can't have that. And she came back to the show, right? Oh, yeah, yeah. uh can't have that and she came back to the show right oh yeah yeah well uh i mean the history of this is uh is an interesting one of the yeah so maggie roswell uh she had been an actress on the series you know from season two i think she's not no she's helen lovejoy in season one she was right in season one and she was kind of one of their utility women but not on the level of the like core cast of the family plus hank and harry she's uh miss hoover as well i think that's the only other notable uh female character she plays dan houghton's mom oh right no that's uh pamela hayden

oh right no wait that is maggie roswell i apologize yeah and so maggie roswell had been playing the character for a decade and then in season 10 right around when the actors got their big raise she moved to colorado and she was working from colorado and uh just always so she got the big raise and then she's like i'm just gonna phone in for my ranch oh well no actually she didn't get a raise she moved to colorado but she didn't get a rage yeah so she was flying in to los angeles to record her bits but she was not she was still getting paid by her reporting was 2 000 an episode while the main actors were getting paid 125 000 an episode after their big raise wait 2 000 episodes yeah that is that is peanuts yeah i and

and she said it also would barely cover her travel to los angeles they weren't paying for they weren't paying for the flight yeah yeah that was the the bone of contention i guess for i mean and the low pay but yeah not even playing not even paying for a flight out it's good to know though that when they came to this question of you know slightly raise the pay of someone who's been there on the show from the very beginning with fucking kill her yeah yeah we will drop her ass off of the top of a fucking grandstand because we care about art here at the simpsons i just can't picture the fox company treating its employees in such a fashion it's highly improbable It's uncharacteristic of

them. Yeah, I feel like Miss Hoover and Luanne Van Houten and Mott should all have just been in a group getting knocked off the stadium. Yeah, they only killed one of them. The others just stopped talking. Then throw them in a mass grave. Yeah. She could have fallen from the top of the grandstand onto

the rest of us that were walking down below. The Simpsons are going to bosnia it's funny because uh when when ma dies later in the episode uh luann van houten oh sorry or miss hoover is there right no it's luann oh luann is there yeah yeah so she does witness her uh fellow voice characters death but yeah so maggie roswell was actually pretty public i think honestly that's where the so we interviewed mike scully about uh and mike scully's uh telling of it and scully's a cool guy who unionized the uh writer's room i want to say that but he uh he was felt it was you know the actor in the studio negotiating he kind of doesn't uh he was like he wanted her to stay but seemed to be unable to get her a pay

raise and i think it sounds like it was just a bone of contention from fox to just not pay her more she was they were just like nah can't pay her more the the end she's she apparently only wanted like you know a few thousand more per episode just to cover the flight what are you at that point what are you doing your show's been out for 10 fucking years and you're killing off like classic characters to save two grand an episode you really think you're doing this to do anything other than just fork out dog shit for morons i i mean i think they were just uh they were upset fox that they're having to give the other actors a raise so they're just showing like

you don't get anything like this is just a punishment because you don't have the leverage that Castellaneta these people are aware that they're going to die at some point right what's the plan they're having Castellaneta record

pre-record all of his lines they're having him pre-record every word in the English language so that they can easily create any line of dialogue. How do you think theory works? I think like in a secret bunker somewhere, Disney has the next three homers picked out. That's just how their casting works. The next Goofy's ready.

The next Mickey's ready. They're just waiting. But I think, too, another reason Fox was being shitty to roswell is she did take it public like i couldn't i if i had nexus lexus maybe i could actually have found the things but there's like a dozen articles mainly out of denver newspapers where she's like being very public about how pissed off she is at the low pay and how she's like i still want to be maude let me just do it and so maybe that's also where the uh the death with extreme prejudice came from uh so scully tells the story as they were pitching stuff in the writer's room it was george meyer longtime writer of the series funny

guy who just said let's kill maude and they just ran with it and to be fair i mean i don't like this episode and i don't think anyone really does but no nobody likes mod she's she's the lesser religious wife of the series yeah she's totally redundant nobody that's true not no real differentiation between her and helen lovejoy i guess her most famous line is no sugar helen i guess the distinction is helen has a um a shitty side that maude doesn't really helen has more cruelty to her she i mean she is uh a mean how the pastor's wife she is that the gossipy minister's wife self-identified gossipy as she calls herself she is one of the many intentional stereotypes that people the simpsons and uh and also i think though this came george meyer a lot in those seasons he would pitch things that i think in the earlier seasons they would

have just been like very funny george anyway let's think of something else but in the scully years they really were just like you know what let's do that could be a story yeah so they decide they're gonna kill her off and work backwards from that i also feel bad now after doing the research i blamed ian max stone graham for so long because as well you should no who is it you're one of those beetle brad simpsons fans he talks about yes yeah he's the writer of the episode who also at this era he gave interviews where he was just very clear like i don't give a shit about the online fans which which did piss off the online fans i think that that is a relevant argument i think that one of the reasons that graining is so we've talked about this one of the reasons graining is so delusional about the show for so long is because people were telling him that the

classic show was shitty on the internet yeah and he just believes he's like well everybody always said that so it's it's all don del grande's fault yeah the name don del grande popped into my head like giving uh mr plow and f on all tv simpsons in 1993 philistine and so scully also he was a big believer in his version of the Homer Ned relationship is that Homer hates Ned because Ned is the guy that he could never be. And so he wanted to plumb more of the depths of that. And he felt like if you get rid of Maude, it actually gets Ned and Homer to spend even more time together because he doesn't have a wife to hang out with anymore. More zany adventures for Captain Wacky and friend. And yeah, I think they all say they regret it now. Like, I think they would un-kill her.

Ian Maxstone Graham definitely said he would bring her back if he could, but they kind of can't now. It's gone too far. I mean, like I was talking about, they really should have stopped and considered what they were doing when they decided to fucking kill a character over a small amount of money because a show like the simpsons there is this sort of fantasy suspended in time element you know nobody gets older nothing changes having a main character die creates a bcad situation in a world that is functionally

timeless it does violence to the Simpsonian world. Yeah, and Henry was just telling me before the record that there's an episode 20 years later in which one of the children is processing their grief over Maude. It's been 20 years. Still as a 10-year-old. Yeah, well, actually, that episode is about how he's having nightmares where he can't remember his mom's face where it's like but you haven't aged a year you're the same age

you were when she died it just asked a lot of questions and i do want to bring up principal and the pauper because we covered it uh almost a few years ago at this point and uh you know people assume that's a bad episode but we looked at it were like, this has so much respect and love for Skinner. Despite the changes they make, it is very true to the character and respectful. This is very disrespectful to all the characters portrayed in this episode. This is also, if memory serves,

the start of when Flanders gets sexualized in a weird way. Oh, yeah. Well, he definitely had the gag where he takes off his shirt in the streetcar and it's like oh he's super buff but pretty much that's the only time they more did jokes about how his voice sounded like a woman when he screamed not uh this is before uh stupid sexy flanders yes actually this is the same season as stupid stupid sexy flanders so that's the season of hot flanders that's when we start being like hey this 60 year old man is really hot remember how he's supposed

to be 60 yes i guess i guess we passed the vegas wives episode too so he's having a lot of party fun with the party animal and uh i i think too but i'm gonna play a first clip in a sec but i think too another issue they have in this episode is that they don't know if they want it to be a very special episode of The Simpsons or not. They're like, so is this is this really about, you know, death and grief and all this stuff? Or is this a crazy episode where they go to NASCAR and then it's jokes about dating? You know? Yeah, the vibe's really confused on this episode and i wrote this out of my notes but i feel like the death of susan on seinfeld gave everyone permission to do these

kinds of stories and that was a much better uh version of this because the characters are responsible for her death or at least george's but the ultimate lesson from that is they're just terrible at being human beings and there's not that kind of commentary in this episode also that show has linear time that too yeah yes yeah and i think that also was slightly about an actor dispute i think they didn't like that actress and yeah killer we don't want if george gets married she's on the show more like get rid of her i think too that i if they had just maude would have lived i mean the show's decline would have happened either way but if they had just maude would have lived i mean the show's decline would have happened either way but if they had just paid her like four thousand dollars more an episode this episode

wouldn't have happened like there just would have been a different episode at this time in february not such a clear line of like oh before and after maude and then she comes back in 2002 you were saying yeah they they make up with her by season 14 uh maggie roswell they do what they could have done in the fucking first place which is why are you even flying her into los angeles there are recording studios in denver record in denver and put in the audio that's all you got to do and now like carrie sheer almost exclusively records remotely right oh and julie does a lot too well now they're all recording that really adds another layer of weirdness and just uncanniness to this episode the fact that maude's voice is is noticeably different and you think it would you think a smart play would be to

kind of wink at the audience about that but i didn't really pick up on anything no they just have someone else do the voice and then you you're like, why does she sound different? And then before you can even try to figure it out, she's dead. Yeah. It's a very weird experience. Yeah. They do reference that in one of the episodes before this, the actors dispute and Ned walks by the window. He has Mike Scully's voice.

They can replace the actors and no one can tell the deadly difference. So there's a wink at that far before this but yeah it makes it feel even less legitimate or death when it doesn't sound like her and it's uh an entirely different actress it's uh i mean what they think it's like watching the a pirated version of the simpsons that you bought in shanghai i've always said they could what is this they could have just gone with saying like that was a woman who replaced Maude. And they discover, oh, Maude's been alive this whole time. It was her doppelganger that died.

Just do a crazy episode like that and bring her back. I mean, yeah. At that point, who gives a shit? Listen to you. You were all linear time. The timeless quality. No, it's broken it's broken at that point it's it's a broken doll kick it out the window who gives a shit i mean we'll get

started soon uh slam dunk is just throw it as hard as you can against the the wall of your house and see what happens i don't do that to my broken dogs i repair them very responsible you can't you can't repair it because the show might have this timeless thing but the in real life it has a real legacy and after you kill maude it's too late i mean we say they can't change this history but we see the grave of dr marvin monroe and he comes back with a fun screw you joke where he says i was very sick yes that's true but yeah i guess also this episode the title alone again natural diddly a a reference to the one hit wonder Gilbert O'Sullivan song Alone Again, Naturally, which is just like one of the mopiest songs I've ever heard. I can't believe it was a hit in the 70s, but people were sad in the 70s.

I guess it was all the stagflation. Yeah, it made it made people really want to listen to Juan's singer-songwriters. They referred to this song in another title. Yes, yeah. I feel like every song title they use, they only have like 13 they know. They did Old Man in the Sea like five times. They've got to get Spotify Premium. You access a lot more music instead of the 13 dad songs

that you all listen to in the writer's room over and over again. They would if Fox paid them more. There you go. But yeah, to mark this as the year 2000, we start with some NASCAR parodies, which I guess they were noticing, you know, it's the NASCAR dad voters we're about to start be talking about in 2000. And according to the comments...

I thought that was 2004. Yeah. Okay. So this is just like, Oh, there was no real culture war, even though in, in the election,

even though it was, it played out in the, in the voting, they didn't, didn't become a, like a conscious thing until 2006, 2004. This,

the, the, the whole first act of this episode feels patronizing to me. I don't know. Was Fox airing NASCAR at the time and this was some kind of tie-in? They were actually and they thought Fox would help them

get a NASCAR guy like Jeff Gordon but NASCAR wanted nothing to do with this episode knowing it was about a death at a NASCAR event. NASCAR president Don Del Grande this episode knowing it was about like a death at a nascar event yes nascar president don del grande refused to work at the simpsons so they instead have to make a fast car the simpsons will be right back. On the most shocking new Simpsons ever. Oh my lord! One of Springfield's most beloved will die.

Who will it be? Don't beat yourself up. I'm the one who parked in the ambulance zone preventing any possible resuscitation. But there's no point in playing the blame game. How we use electricity can be smarter, cleaner and greener. At Electric Ireland, we can help guide you there. You see, our new Net Zero Hub has all you need to know about smart meter plans, EV tariffs, solar panels and much more.

Making your usage clearer, your trips greener, your home cozier and your world brighter. Find our net zero hub at electricireland.ie. We hope you're watching out for loose bobby pins this week. And we have a big, big thank you to our guestsgil texas and matt chrisman we really appreciate any time they're on they're such super cool guys you should definitely be listening to their podcast chapo trap house and you know since we recorded this virgil couldn't promote it then but he also has another new podcast you should listen to called bad faith it's a really great

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Please consider going up to the $10 premium level to get everything that's super cool at patreon.com slash TalkingSimpsons. I've been to one NASCAR race at like a friend and this was 98 before NASCAR really was big but I just found it very boring and loud

I was the nerd dragged to the NASCAR event basically. Do any of the riders actually like NASCAR? I don't think so. I think they're all coming and loud i i was the nerd dragged to the nascar event basically do any of the writers actually like nascar i don't think i don't think so i think they're all coming at it from the you know hollywood writer position yeah yeah it's not like when they do a they do a thing about baseball or football where there's obvious you know it's obviously something that they have an attachment to and that they know about this is just yeah it's that distance of being a hollywood writer a sicko coastal elite you know uh so that this episode premiered in february of 2000 right yeah exactly a year later like one year later almost to the day a few days later dale earnhardt

died at the daytona 500 on the last lap it's crazy yeah i for some reason i remembered it is happening the same day but i was all wrong in my memory maybe the rerun happened soon after i was like oh this feels different now these jokes about cars crashing everyone rooting for the that's another thing that mask car might not been too happy with validating the the hurtful stereotype that mask our fans just want to see crashes don't they? I don't think the real fans do. There honestly aren't that many crashes, is the thing. If you wanted to see that, you would be an idiot because you've got to watch for three hours, and then maybe

you see two cars trade some paint, and then they have to go into it. What's better, watching for three hours not anticipating a crash? If you appreciate the cars going on the track. If you appreciate the strategy and endurance hey i'm not claiming to understand or like that car i'm just giving a benefit of the doubt to those who do that there is some sort of athletic element to it that they appreciate

this they're not just holding their breath for a crash that usually doesn't happen the strategy i've got a winning strategy for you. Don't don't hit the brake. Now, the strategy is driving while peeing in a bottle or your racing diaper. That racing diaper adds a lot of weight. You got it. Sometimes you got this piss in your pants. They have to change you at the pit stop.

That's all preceded by just some general hiking jokes i do like marge being scared of africanized killer bees specifically that they sound loud and africanized there's a quick joke about uh how a big credit on the screen like written by ian maxton graham which i think really tied to for me really made me hate that writer in particular because you see his name right up front to know he's the writer of the episode i hated but uh but as again he it was george myers idea he just got assigned it apparently yeah and it's such a highfalutin name it's very memorable and of course he's he's a very tall man he's the very tall man it's the largest name he could afford uh though also he's like a fancy man who went to

brown who wrote for the saturday night live for years like he's uh a well-established dude yeah but you know i i remember his name just appearing more as the show was getting worse i think that's probably what he's most infamous for oh for sure yeah he was like an executive producer for a while like kind of like almost a showrunner. No, I will never as obnoxious as that guy seems. I will never blame him for the Simpsons decline just because I blame the second law of thermodynamics. It's it's got to slow down at some point. I mean, there's also a real standard Simpsons joke of like a chameleon like evolution happens for a chameleon to be able to blend into an stp bottle but he has to be killed instantly like no animal

can be happy on the simpsons it has to be murdered if it if it succeeds in any way and uh so another thing that like is distracting in this opening to me with the rest of the episode when they know this is about maude's death they do all these jokes though about like near death like the simpsons like whoa we were almost run over like yeah and it should be said that like this was not a surprise maude's death because uh at this point everyone was online and at this point you could look up all the episode titles ahead of time so you knew this was the premise you were just waiting for it to happen everyone online knew this was going to happen like weeks in advance. Well, and plus Maggie Roswell, I looked at the dates.

Like she was public that her character was dying before the episode aired. So people knew about it. And I tried to find it on YouTube. Nobody's uploaded. But I swear they had those commercials too of like, somebody dies on The Simpsons tonight. Those ones that make you think a major character is going to die but it's actually maude or crusty's dad will pass away not charlie

has there ever been a teaser like that where they killed a main character instead of some ancillary character or it's a joke thing no i mean not on the simpsons i can't even remember other shows where yeah i mean other shows or any show. I recall an announcer saying, Tonight someone will die. Like the serious Fox announcer voice. But on a show like Grey's Anatomy or whatever, when a major character dies,

you know the actor has been leaving the show for a while. You've heard for a long time on ER that Anthony, what's his face is leaving. And so when his last episode, you know, his character is going to die or like Jimmy Smith is leaving the show on NYPD blue. So,

you know, he's going to die. They can't really, in those cases, they can't really tease it, you know? Yeah. But I mean,

I also think, okay, the, you know, we know the actor's leaving the show, so we're not going to market this in a lurid way yeah it's more respectful i guess to the this this was more of like well let's try to squeeze a little ratings juice out of this but uh may you know in some of those cases too with

the big name actor in live action maybe it's like yeah let's not uh let's be as respectful as possible because we might need to work with them in the future. And yeah, so then they meet the fast car driver, which was obviously like his scenes are so weird because he's clearly written to be a celebrity who didn't show up because they're like so nice and respectful to this character. They really wanted Jeff Gordon. Yes. Yeah. Who would appear in a 2012 episode. Mo's a big fan of Jeff Gordon, apparently.

Jesus. I can just hear mo saying jeff gordon i can't wait to meet him yeah and so instead they just do a bunch of jokes about the family meeting a fast car driver and i guess uh i kind of like the jokes about the roomy interior of a race car because obviously that's that's not reality there's no space for anybody but the driver's seat that's why you build race cars that way we've we've all seen death proof we know we know what the inside of race cars look like i have not seen death proof so don't don't spoil me by letting me know that uh race car information will be revealed i i want those tidbits about race cars to be pure for me. Sorry, you see the inside of a race car in Death Proof. I'm sorry.

I can't put the genie back in the bottle. Again, when they have jokes about how Marge is letting Bart do something incredibly dangerous, if you want us to care about the realistic death of somebody that's going to happen in like six minutes, it's really weird to do all these death-defying jokes in same episode including the simpsons crossing the the nascar streets yeah which only only homer should be that stupid to do it like the entire family should not be uh you know on board with this but yeah lots of near death in this first act before the actual death and they get free tickets to stay for the rest of the fast car race that is my biggest complaint about this first act outside of the horrible thing that happens

is that they get free tickets to an event they're already at and then there's a time cut and then they're there again. Like that was completely, they should have just been like, oh yeah, just have a seat you guys and make yourselves at home. Like why do you need free tickets to come back later when you're already there in this act?

I think it's because they need to get, they need there to be the time trial so that they could get across the street without being run over and also so that they could get across the street without being run over and also so that they could meet the mass car guy and have a ride around in a circle, which wouldn't have been realistic during the actual

race. So they did the very confusing double move there. I gotta say, this is just a brutal and aimless first act. Very bad. We do get, I think, the last hee-haw joke on record in media. Yeah, that's true. Well, you know, in a few years,

the Wander Shows will do that great Horse Apples episode. Oh, that's true, that's true. But yes, in our first clip, the Flanders arrive for what at first seems like a normal day. Hi, Diddley-ho, pedal to the metalophiles. Flanders? Since when do you like anything cool? Well, I don't care for the speed, but I can't get enough of that safety gear. Helmets, roll bars, caution flags.

I like the fresh air and looking at the poor people in the infield. Who the fuck are you? Who is that woman? Dang, Cletus, why'd you have to park by my parents? Now, honey, it's my parents too. Gentlemen, start your engines. Daddy, can we move closer? Absolutely, Hot Roddy.

We're up here out of range of the crashes and the driver's cussing. Move your damn butt. Fight me. I did like Ned's playful take on pedophiles. Pedal to the metalophiles? Oh, I didn't realize that was a pedophile. I only realized it upon hearing this clip isolated. Okay, I like that.

Why didn't he just say pedophiles? Might have been misheard in the audio. I mean, driving, you use a pedal, but you only use a pedal to the metal when you're racing. Another thing that struck me in this watch was I think it's much worse that rod and todd have to be there i i would change it that rod and todd don't need to be at this event because then i just think about like oh they watched their mother die they didn't just hear that she died they were witnesses to her death they saw her twitching corpse on the ground yeah there's a there's a

real unpleasantness to this whole bit while homer simpson just officially yucks over the entire proceeding and uh so this joke about brandine being cletus's sister uh this is the farthest they've gone in the incest direction with that joke though i did chart that so season 17 they do a joke that says that brandine is actually cletus's mother she so but but then in season 27 they go back to a joke that she their brother and sister he should have married diabetes oh diabetes so this is this is the expected uh nascar fans are poor hicks yes yeah that's the there's the good fans in the stadium who pay the real money and then there's the the loser inbred hicks who uh stand around by the cars and also like they they seem to make the connection that ned is sort of responsible for her death in not wanting to be

closer that he's he's being punished for wanting to be safer by being so far away that's that's also why they're there there is also a deleted scene joke in here that i'm really glad they cut because it makes maude's last moments even darker yeah that's true uh there's a joke of homer mooning the drivers and you see like his gigantic ass and then the joke is that that maude is seeing his front while mooning so one of maude's final visions in this deleted scene is homer's genitals i mean homer needs to realize you don't need to pull off all of your pants to moon someone it's like the kid who pulls down his pants at the urinal. He just never learned.

I think Homer intentionally wanted Maude to see that. His reaction made it seem not an accident, I think. But yeah, so then they just have jokes about wanting to see stuff crash. Homer's really sad that he misses a car crash. Then there's like a really long joke about homer getting three tires from a cartoon up which the only part of it that really strikes me is like it's a joke about homer being ambivalent to causing like a five car pile up like this he he killed a lot of people this way yeah he briefly leaves the stance to just interfere with this uh event and then goes back

but isn't that just him uh driving onto the course of truckasaurus really yeah pretty similar actually yeah that was more uh negligence though in this he is uh he's being written a lot recently as like a john belushi style party animal and a real like a mischief maker and uh this is evident of that but looking behind him to see a five-car pile up and go like my bad like that yeah that's just a man who doesn't care about the deaths he caused well remember he caused a massive crash every time he looks at the billboards on new billboard day that's right we have established homer as a mass uh vehicular manslaughterer he's got a lot of deaths in his wake for sure i don't i don't think it's homer's

fault necessarily i think that the sport of driving is uh it's rather unsafe it seems uh you're blaming them for participating the drivers i i blame the owners of nascar for profiting off the the immiseration of these drivers they're just getting mangled maimed and killed then comes the t-shirt cannons with... I wouldn't do it, is what I'm saying. I wouldn't do it, but I'd be good at it. You'd be great. Yeah, because I would just drive real fast.

It seems pretty easy, doesn't it? And I wouldn't stop. I wouldn't do a pit stop to take a leak and get a burger or whatever. No, I would just keep going. Those fools who take all those pit stops. No, that's stupid. Oh, you need air take all those pit stops. No, that's stupid. Oh, you need air? No, you don't.

That's stupid. It seems like stopping the car is a real missed opportunity to keep driving. Just take your car to the AutoZone, Pep Boys or whatever, right before the race so you don't have to stop there.

Some people say, actually, you run out of gas because of how long the race is. Bigger gas tank much? Anybody think of this? Just 10 times the size of the gas tank, you'll win every race. You need a speedometer with more numbers on it so you can go faster. Or you could get an electric car and just have a battery in there. I would assume NASascar doesn't allow electric cars i would i would guess why not it's a car uh that that feels like a culture

war point for them i would assume what is it not a car it can't go fast enough it's the thing so then we get the t-shirt cannons they show up uh t-shirt guns felt pretty new at the time in 2000 i i recall going to a hockey game in jacksonville and being impressed with like wow they can shoot got t-shirts at people now so cool now the police have them and also they come out with y'all ready for this like they pay they paid for a couple of real songs for uh for this they had a lot more song money back then they they licensed every jock jam for this event he really did and there's a good there's a fun little gag of marge realizing she

gets up thinking she wants a t-shirt then realizes no i don't want a t-shirt and i also like hibbert denying you his catchphrase like that he he won't laugh at it he just refuses to and just like me in the last 20 seasons of the simpsons you is also a reference to how lowbrow nascar fans are i think they this is their culture is a calvin urinating on something uh involving something involving trucks what is that promoting though i would feel like that it gets somebody in trouble with chevrolet at the fast car company that's too political for me isn't that the big argument between ford and chevy uh i get i they're just two brands i respect i'd say them equally for a that's the red states and the blue states of nascar ah okay i would say a ford truck urinating on uh saddam hussein at this point would be everyone could get on board

with that i'm sure that existed in the post 9-11 era some kind of like you know a ford and a chevy urinating on saddam or osama or something together that's uh that was the unity we needed in those times uh that's the nascar version of uh all the congressmen singing god bless america then there's a again if in a minute you're gonna kill maude they have a joke where lenny gets smashed by a tire and goes like i'm okay folks like it's just a weird level to play in a scene that you're supposed to take a death seriously right after you know uh but but that scene actually got them in trouble with a fox affiliate in north carolina uh because the year before at a raceway event not a nascar one but at a racing event a tire did fly off of a car and kill three

people jesus christ hachi machi so in the north carolina area there the fox affiliate didn't promote the episode but i believe they still aired the episode but there there's a a news story from a week before the episode aired of of uh the fox boss they're going like i don't know it's it seems insensitive see that's why you get your car tuned up before you do the nascar race you gotta you need to get all your fluids checked that's it every every wheel needs to be attached not just one of them i also like how disappointed the whole audience is to find out that lenny isn't dead when he says okay they're like no but uh but yes we have come to the moment

now this is a clip it's a minute long but this is the death of maude flanders Flanders. I need a shirt! Give me a shirt! Mommy has bosoms like that. Yeah, I wish. Nettie, I've had about all I can take of Homer Simpson's torso. I'll get some hot dogs. No hot longs. I know. They make you uncomfortable. Shut up! That's not you. I guess no one else wants a t-shirt.

That's a damn lie and you know it! Give me a shirt! You heard him, girls! Hey! T-shirt, t-shirt, t-shirt! Fire! Ooh, a bobby pin! Oh! Maude?

Oh my lord, she's dead she sounds like mini mouse when she screams it's like someone just kidnapped olive oil or something yeah that's i i think that distracting sound she makes it's uh i i don't know i feel like this could have been handled in so many different ways and and one of them would be to not see her get hit i don't know the yeah visually it's not pleasant yeah and it's just it's unsettling in a way that's not either funny or you know has an emotional valence it's just like what why am I watching this yeah the shot after of like basically corpse cam you're looking up from her

dead body at people looking down at her also gross it's like watching a video of a centipede you know I'm not sad I'm not laughing I'm not angry and they work so hard to make it clear it's Homer's fault like that also is just

such a dark bit to it yeah he got her kill he uh absolutely ned could have sued him for sure i mean we know that he got a settlement from the t-shirt gun company but i mean at the least he could have killed him and probably gotten a light set oh yeah the the no judge would convict him was it schwartzwelder who pitched that uh maude would die by a t-shirt cannon no he wasn't well i don't know who they they don't say who pitched the exact way of death but uh schwarzwelder was not really in the room then it uh i mean the level of cruelty does feel like a george meyer thing as well but it's not really i mean it's unexpected maybe they set this all at a nascar event because you kept thinking oh a car would crash into her like something something

involving a car would happen so then it's the expectation is undercut by a t-shirt cannon of all things killing i can see that being the mislead yeah i mean suffice to say that like none of this holds up without the marketing. This is for a show that's where most of the profits are based in syndication, and that's mostly viewed in syndication. This is not an easy episode to syndicate. Because again, if you don't know that, if you hadn't seen the teaser saying character going to die,

most of these jokes will not land. Oh, and the first act, yeah, where you're just waiting for maude to die yeah or you're waiting for supposedly waiting for someone to die yeah i i recall watching this as it i had seen news stories that had said well she might be dying but i didn't want to believe it and i think like scully or some representative of the show did an interview where they're like, well, you never know. You wouldn't spoil it. So I recall just watching it first time, seeing the clear walk towards her death and just feeling this kind of just, you know, powerlessness of like, no, please don't do this. Utter dread.

Turn around, guys. You don't have to. Well, you were a big mod head. After this episode aired aired you angrily resigned from the simpsons web ring and discussed i tendered my resignation to don del grande uh if if they don't respect maude they don't respect me that's what i said well then homer homer uh bending over for a bobby pin is also just a weird extra joke to give to that moment and in the same frame you see her body just falling backward you also just see the top of homer's ass crack that it's just

another just weird choice for the tableau though at least rod and todd are not visible in the shot when maude gets hit i feel like that would be even darker if you saw that. Yeah. Also, though, Jim Reardon on the commentary, the director, he says that whole shot is a screw up. Like the camera motion when she gets hit, it's supposed to pan with her to the right. But the camera actually moves away from her towards the other characters. Maybe it's better that you don't see more of the falling. Maybe. Maybe it would have been worse. It is distracting when you know it's better that you don't see more of the falling maybe maybe it would have been worse yeah it is distracting when you know it's there i just i guess i'm just trying to think

you know what what was the logic in the writer's room about this like how did they think this would be perceived because i mean it's it's dark but not twisted i don't know i mean we're talking a lot about this this season it's like uh they are now writing these episodes in the world with both family guy and south park and they're feeling the pressure like we need to get darker and meaner at this point in time. So we feel like that is informing a lot of the choices in these seasons, just the culture of comedy at the time. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense thinking about it, because of course, you know, it can't be a different show.

So it's just like still has the elements of the old Simpsons, but with like an artificial edginess tacked onto it that just kind of makes a mess they i think they definitely didn't like i think they had a sense of being like we're not hip anymore and they want they want to be hip again but also like in our interviews with scully too he definitely had the sense of like he didn't expect to stay on for four seasons he kept thinking every season would be the last and they wouldn't get renewed so i think too they're just going like look the show's almost over guys let's just take some wild swings and and also i i do think it partially was just i'm going like kill off a character like

this we're having trouble getting the actor back nobody cares about mod anyway so just let's just do it we're we're gonna be done in a year anyway i mean this also feels like we're just clocked out of the show you know or we're just checked out like we've got senioritis so we're just screwing around which is kind of disrespectful to your craft isn't it i mean and also i mean also hadn't they been operating on this logic uh since the the oakley weinstein seasons well in their seasons i think they i i think bill and josh were more respectful of the fans though they still had a little i mean the poochie episode ends with them basically saying and his show's probably over soon anyway like that yeah they had that spirit but i think they were more playful but not as like

tired of fan interaction though yeah but they thought they thought the show was ending they thought like like the only one season might have been the last ones. Oh, for sure. But acting like this for, what, several years? Being like, ah, the show's about to end. The show's about to end. Let's just make it worse. Yeah, I think that the Oakley and Weinstein changes, they are almost as big as this.

But they do feel more in touch with who the characters are and more in touch with what the fans will be accepting. Except, of course, for the principal and the popper one but their seasons had like a lot of big changes a lot of big shake-ups to like the lore of the show like you know especially in terms of like itchy and scratchy and jebediah springfield and big like uh important keystones of simpsons history like that millhouse's parents getting divorced yeah i also think too they just were uh yeah senior writers they're just feeling like let's shake things up i mean uh as well ian maxton graham one of the things he felt weirdest one of the things that got him in trouble was saying like uh oh we don't have any women in the writer's room but you know it's just a guy show it's just guy humor it's just just how it goes uh killing

women just guy things yeah just but yeah all this could have been saved by a modest raise but yeah so they go to commercial break they originally thought they'd have the be like a cliffhanger like you don't know if they're gonna leave uh her dead but then they decided no we we need her pronounced dead before the we go to commercial uh and so when they come back we need that we need the insurance money uh they come back they're preparing for the funeral homer has a single tear just sad that he can't be a jerk like they didn't enjoy that i think that's the writers going like oh we can't write mean homer scenes for this whole act which uh they they barely even hold off on that for like the next five minutes.

But then we get to the funeral sequence, which there's a lot of stuff. I mean, this whole thing is Lovejoy being the writers of the show, addressing the reality of the show, kind of. Yeah, the most clever stuff comes out of these scenes, I think, where they're just addressing the changes. And so there's a meta commentary about if the viewers will accept this or not. In many ways, Maude Flanders was a supporting player in our lives. She didn't grab our attention with memorable catchphrases or comical accents. I, yar.

I, glaven, lie, glaven. But whether you noticed her or not, Maud was always there. And we thought she always would be. My friend's life is about to change. Just yesterday, Apu was a lonely bachelor. Yes, thank God those days are over. And the Van Houtens were enjoying a storybook marriage. Yeah, lots of storybooks have witches.

Shut up, Kirk. Sorry. storybook marriage yeah lots of storybooks have witches shut up kirk sorry and now the good people at fandemonium as part of a generous settlement will fire a 21 t-shirt salute and they do fire 21 t-shirts it is a uh an accurate joke numerically the best kind of joke but you've talked about before bob giving him apu those kids like destroyed the character that joke there is exactly why it's like well what do you do when you cut to apu for a joke now what's about how he's an unhappy father yeah he's the very tired beaten down father that's it and uh and also on the way to the funeral they pan over all of the graves of characters who died on screen before this i i like that the b simmons one has to say parenthetically grandpa's girlfriend and in the decaying headstone of frank rhymes it's that's a

good little uh gag including the grimy in there good old grimy and i also do like the storybooks have witches joke that's not a bad they should have had more divorced dad jokes on the show not not less pyro absolutely pyro is still on the scene here right uh yeah so yeah he's he well because again maggie roswell's gone he has to say the line not luann sorry and also it just feels weird that they want to play this as a very special episode scene but then they're like and then the woman the women who killed his wife show up in black bikinis to shoot a t-shirt came the letter r.i.p rip uh t-shirts yeah i guess it's just these tonal shifts like what do you i it i think it makes it just a messier episode because of that

i mean what they're trying to do like it is just sort of a less thought out, less committed version of the Frank Grimes episode where you are injecting real human stakes to tease out the comic absurdity and grotesqueness of Springfield and Homer and everything. But instead of it being, with Frank Grimes, part of an artistic decision, it's literally a bottom line decision so you're joking about crudeness and capitalism destroying everything and and defiling all human values but then that's also why that episode exists in the first place that's true yeah this one instead they wanted to they they want you to actually feel for ned there you're like, isn't it sad how Ned feels here?

This is hard. He's a single father now. They want you to actually feel real things in these moments. They want you to, but it's all totally unearned. We're just going to have a shot of Ned looking sad, and I'm supposed to feel all those emotions about it instead of illustrating it in some way. Especially when they just kind of dump her corpse just off- yeah like just off screen like that i mean we'll get to it there's

there's too many ideas in this episode i really wish this would have been a more respectful treatment of ned and him dealing with his grief it wouldn't have been like the fun captain lucky dating adventure he goes on later but i think they should have just stuck with that had the confidence to be like let's let's talk about Ned and what he's doing and going through. Yeah, the tone is completely off. And the only thing I buy is like the kids are sad. Okay, I can relate to that. You know, they are children, so I don't need like a greater complexity of emotion from them.

But, you know, Ned is an adult and an interesting adult. There's also very little about his religiousness in this episode, which is very strange. How we use electricity can be smarter, cleaner, and greener. At Electric Ireland, we can help guide you there. You see, our new Net Zero hub has all you need to know about smart meter plans, EV tariffs, solar panels, and much more. Making your usage clearer, your trips trips greener your home cozier and your world brighter find our net zero hub at electricireland.ie yeah the this could have just

been a crisis of faith episode much more than which they they give you a tiny taste of that at the end but it could have been the whole episode yeah they already did that with hurricane netty so maybe they're like yeah that's a repeat there too yeah it's also there's a little left orium episode in that too so we've already seen ned down but i mean the left orium bit you know as stupid and zany as as his store was you know like i bought that more well that was you know that's a season well they're in season, but it's really even a season two episode. And it's just that one is a more human time where you could imagine a character could go bankrupt in season two of The Simpsons. Not so much now. The stakes are bigger.

Right. And also, though, you actually can track Ned's devolution in that episode. You know, as he's progressively, uh you know has a yard sale and then he's living on his car you know it's basically a seth mcfarland pace oh yeah yeah yeah well i mean it's aired next to a family guy episode so just how it was uh so it cuts to the ned the wake being at the simpsons house there's a joke about apu offering stuff to ned which that that joke's not too funny but it's funny that just mo shoves into that conversation uh and that's i mean i think they should have just veered more towards darkness instead of trying to get any emotion out of this

like the jokes of mo wanting to be beaten to death by ned so he can see maude in heaven like i don't know that that's i think totally more what they should have just leaned in towards i think yeah yeah this is just splitting the difference since it doesn't work and uh mo's design is weird here too but i think it's because they just pulled out his the dressed up look they designed for him when he tries to date maude in the uh secrets of successful marriage episode oh right. So he just has this weird hair part on the side. It's distracting. It's formal, though.

Yes, yeah, formal. I have that action figure. But it is also a moment where you're like, well, wait, am I supposed to take this realistically? Because Ned getting in a fist fight at the wake for his wife, that feels much darker then instead. Then comes the scene of Bart being told to hang out with Rod and Todd,

which I will say personally in 2000 actually did hit me differently because I did go through a situation like that where a family member passed away and I'm in my teens, my cousins are in their teens and we're kind of awkwardly like not talking about things and playing a video game while we do it and so uh that there's at least a

personal so that happened in 99 and so i'm watching it in 2000 this scene had more of an effect on me than i think any emotionally than any other scene in the episode well i'm sure you had a better video game we played wrestlemania 2000 there you go we're not playing there's no god there yeah yeah i mean this was uh this was uh genuine and relatable you know children will will displace their emotions uh and play video games you know like that makes that all that scans and feels you know human and real to me, unlike all the stuff with Ned. And it's well observed that when you go over to a friend's place as a kid, they play different video games and you're like, oh, you have weird video games.

Just that reaction is good. Yeah, it's a surprisingly good observation from these adult writers. But yes, Bart plays some games with Rod and Todd in this next clip. Honey, I think you should go play with Rod and Todd. Oh man, why does everything bad have to happen to me? When I'm feeling low, you know what always cheers me up? Is it love? Kindness?

Ooh, tough room. Video games. What do you got? Billy Graham's Bible Blaster? Keep firing! Convert the heathens! Got him! No, you just winged him and made him a Unitarian. Look out, Bert!

The gentle Baha'i! Alright! Full conversion! Thanks, guys. This really cheered me up. Second coming! Reload! Reload! Can we play now? like Bart's selfishness is funnier than Homer's selfishness in this episode it actually works because it's not literally uh homicidal yeah. Yeah, it's also a child, too, who has a lot to learn about empathy. What I like, too, it's a great scam as a kid when you're like, no, we're all playing the game together.

We're a team. You could be tails. Yeah. Not enough jokes about Unitarians or the Baha'i faith on television these days. Somebody talked to Rainn Wilson. Was he Baha'i? He's Baha'i. Yeah, Baha'i. That's the one thing I know about him. He wrote a book about it. Oh, wow. these days let me talk to rain wilson was he behind he's behind i did have a high yeah one

thing i know about him he wrote a book about it oh wow i i missed out on all that he's uh i would prefer that to office jim working for the cia he also owns a bunch of exotic animals that makes sense these things are all fitting together yeah he's an animal weirdo i wondered if this joke about billy graham's vital blaster was like intentionally uh a reference to like super noah's ark 3d i would i mean there were stories going around of like the christian equivalents of popular games but uh super noah's ark 3d if you've never heard of it it's basically they took return to castle wolfenstein that classic you know r-rated shooter, and

turned it into collecting animals for Noah's Ark. You can buy that on Steam now, and it's just like Wolfenstein, but everything is a different thing. Like, you're firing like, I don't know, God's lighted animals and putting them to sleep? What? Actually, you're firing fruited animals and once you fire enough fruit at them, they fall

asleep. Oh, nice. So you're not killing anything. Um, okay. Wait, does. So you're not killing anything. Okay. Wait, does it take place on the Ark? I think so. I think it's a pretty big Ark. Quite a few levels in that Ark. Well, it would have to be big. Oh, and so then we cut to Homer trying to comfort Ned.

And this is like, I do like that at least the best joke about Homer and Ned relationship is them talking about him stealing his sprinkler. Because it at least does play into their history together of Homer borrowing his stuff and never returning it. I think it at least works on that level of continuity. And then Homer tucks him into bed and gives him a kiss on the forehead. Which I'm like, that is again into very special episode territory for me in this like uh more of the tonal issues they have yeah and then the next scene i would have appreciated if they did keep it uh a little more emotional instead of just underlining no homer is

a murderer yes uh maude might have even been saved if he did not block the ambulance uh spot that moment they kind of just rub it in your face like Like, yo, Homer killed her. If you had questions, here's Homer telling you he killed her. That, I think, was a bridge too far there, too. And though I did like that Homer has a bucket of War Rocks ready, at the ready, with a big

one for Ned. I like that. That's a good gag. This is the first season, I think, like you can just count on one hand the number of good jokes in each episode and like you know you'd watch a you'd watch something like an episode from season five or something it's just every joke is landing and it's like they're they're also it's also complexly layered and difficult to disentangle uh and this is just like uh you could review and just say okay i kind of chuckled at that and i

kind of chuckled that and that's about it but yeah the uh here's homer coming up with his idea of how to help ned just keep replaying the whole thing in my head i can't believe my last words to mod were no footlongs yep it would have been a lot better if you'd said i love you or you're special you know something sweet instead of that hot dog crack. If I'd only been a gentleman and got the hot dogs myself, she'd still be here. Now, now, now, don't beat yourself up. I'm the one who drove her out of her seat. I'm the one who provoked the lethal barrage of T-shirts.

I'm the one who parked in the ambulance zone, preventing any possible resuscitation. But there's no point in playing the blame game. Ah, you're right. I just gotta work through the grief. There's not gonna be an easy answer. Easy answer, eh? Oh, that's it, baby. That's the money shot.

Yeah, the camera loved you. Oh, you tease you. Why are you taping Flanders, Dad? You'll see. Do you even have a job anymore? I think it's pretty obvious that I don't. I do like that line. Yeah, just like, he doesn't need to be at the power plant ever, really.

But this is when the jokes about how they don't give a shit that he about anything at least it's funny it made me laugh in its brutalness of the of the writers going like we don't care that homer's not at his job yeah we don't give a shit that you know we we don't care about the original premise of the show anymore at least i i think homer it it is at least funny to me how much homer doesn't care but it's them shitting on their own like why do you care you stupid like part who cares you shouldn't care and then it also leads to like so homer stalks him i they they wanted to do jokes about ned getting back into the dating pool even though it is way too soon and there's about like six minutes left to tell this part of the

story so instead they just decide like uh well homer has to push him into it homer's bad so he can be the one to do it but i i do like this run about bad editing practices this uh this little clip here okay i finished the gardening sequence okay from here we star wipe to a glamour shot of flanders paying paying his bills. Then we star wipe to Flanders brushing his... Dad, there are other wipes besides star wipes. Why eat hamburger when you can have steak? I'm taking my name off this thing. That's great.

I do, whenever I see a star wipe, when they're always used comedically now because of this joke, I think of this episode. And Homer was not ready for Windows Movie Maker. Who was using star wipes non-comedically other than George Lucas? I think like your local production companies, if you ship them your old 60mm

home movies, they just have to use all the wipes. Oh. I thought you meant in professional cinema. When I see a Star Wipe, they're all jokes now, not like they used to be. Like those classy Star Wipes in Schindler's List. Feels pretty rare to see wipes of any kind in editing and stuff now, I think.

I would use wipes. They're fun. Before your anime music video starts, you throw in a classy wipe. I'd rather have the twinkling ones instead of just a full star. You need to like fade a little bit or the honestly when i made videos for our live shows i i i like the tiles that flip over that's my favorite kind of wipe but uh the lisa they just kind of assume like at least you could edit a video why not she's she's a smart kid and i and i like the gags of homer just being like a bad film

director who's just insisting on bad choices an editor has to go with and the the literal star wipe to the next scene got a laugh out of me yeah yeah but there is a time well i mean there's a time cut because we do find out it's months later so yeah it's not happening immediately but it's still happening in the same episode it happens immediately for the viewer yeah that you need a lot of it it is helpful that ned has to say out loud well it's been a couple months like it feels less brutal then it could almost be if he didn't say that it'd feel like oh this is the same week as as she was buried but yes homer has produced a video for ned there's a scene in this that I really hate. That I really, really hate. But here's the clip from Homer's video

of Ned. Ned does everything with class. Whether he's punching in his ATM code. Or keeping clean in the shower. Homer! But don't take my word for it. Listen to this testimonial. Oh, I would date Ned in a second if I was

a woman or gay. He looks like a cuddler, that Ned. I like that. I like to be held. I like to be pampered. So if you're tired of dating the same old losers... What are you doing, Elmo? Step up to the best.

Ned Flanders, the man with the chest. Ew. Now we'll just send this to the dating service. The chicks will fall for you, and bam, the healing begins. Homer, you obviously went to a lot of trouble, but dating, it just feels way too soon. Oh, that's great. Chicks really dig sensitivity. Did you get that part? Got beautiful and star wipe and we're out yeah i guess seeing uh ned's massive glistening dong in this episode yeah

another tonal inconsistency for this story they're trying to tell dr manhattan over here oh my god it's uh frankly frankly too big i mean this was the thing in the 2000 at this era the south park era the joke that a character who you wouldn't think has a giant penis has a giant penis it was just kind of going around like this wasn't new yeah yeah it's like hacky and puerile at the same time and also just not funny like that and this this kind of you know also off-tone footlongs joke. Yeah. It does feel like a cruder escalation

of the Ned is secretly buff thing we saw in Streetcar. But they just said that he has a penis hanging below his knee. I'm like, boy, I think I was shocked they even got away with it. I was impressed that they got that by a censor, but it did not make it laugh. It's censored. That's a checkmate.

I guess so. I feel like even the outline of a penis would be too much for 2000s TV. But, yeah, I also consider Lisa edited all this footage. So did Lisa see unblurred, like, footage of Ned nude? She saw his dick uh that's horrifying this episode contains a child abuse as well i just man in the episode where you want to feel they want you to feel these things for ned and then you're distracted by him having a gigantic cock for the rest of the series uh it's just so weird it's a very odd choice also uh when you put in

your atm pin it does not show it unblurred on the screen like that's just wrong like that it for that joke they have to break reality and i don't appreciate that that needs a better are you telling me that no atm anywhere will show your pin i don't think why would it do that it's your pin. I don't think... Why would it do that? It's your pin. Why would you want it displayed on the screen? That's absurd. This is the year 2000. ATMs... I don't think they've been around for that long. Could you imagine an early model of an ATM,

a prototype even, where they didn't figure that out? First of all, they had ATMs in the 80s. It's not like they were brand new. That's not a long time. It's long enough for were brand new. That's not a long time. It's long enough for people to know you don't put the goddamn number on the screen because there's somebody standing behind you. So you're telling me every ATM ever made. Ever made.

Yes. Ever made. Okay. Then I invite the listeners of this program to prove that wrong. I don't care if they do. I won't care. I want to know who in our audience shows your pin uncensored,

take a video of yourself using that ATM, send us your pin number, and also the last three digits on your credit card. I want to know who in our audience is an ATM geek. You probably got a few ATM heads. There's a community of people who are fans of atms

i think like writing wise the joke wouldn't read as well if you just saw ned's like finger pushing the buttons in animation so i think that is the cheat there i know but it's like we're done a weird rabbit hole now though i just think it's a mistake i i mean yeah and it's 5316, which is like the number five for Jay for John 316. Okay. That's the reference. Interesting. Also, discontinuity did not. We saw in Maggie Makes Three that Homer did not film Maggie's birth.

So this footage of Marge giving birth to Maggie, that didn't exist before. There was a videographer just off screen out of the frame sure okay well look the the best defense I have for that is Maggie makes three was a story being told by Homer so if there's an inconsistency with reality then let's say Homer forgot to tell that that part of the story just like when he fought the ninjas. Yeah. Or the terrorists. Or his head exploded. Then they do a quick scrabble joke of Ned thinking about it. Again, I don't like that Ned

put horny on his scrabble board. Ned would not use that word. Yeah, that's a little much. I will say, what are you doing, Homer, is the best joke in this episode, in my opinion. Yeah, that is good.

When Carl's like, what are you doing oma yeah he's just opening the shot of the three of them looking like just a total schmucks yeah i do actually i do enjoy the carl money exchange in the church later that that was the biggest laugh for me in this episode they're getting some good lenny and carl stuff out of the show this time uh and so they then added on a joke of homer somehow being inside of a mailbox as he greets ned mailing away his stuff and and then we get some video dating jokes which also like in 2000 felt dated i gotta say i mean i'm sure people were still using video dating in 2000 but it just feels like

such a 1988 joke true well i have to assume that mad tv was still doing their lowered expectations sketches though oh right oh yeah yeah how does video dating work i believe it is you film a camera testimonial about how cool you are and then a interested party will see that video and be like okay i would like to date that person but how do do they see the video? Do they get like, do they get an arm, uh, an arm full of cassettes? I think you watch the videos there. I don't think they give you the video.

And a lot of like found footage. People are digging these up and putting them online. I mean, they're fun. If you could ignore the fact they're humiliating a stranger. Yes. But, uh,

they are still fun to watch. Wait, wait, so they would just, they'll broadcast or not broadcast, but they'll, they'll, they'll put on, you know, the, the dating tapes at the store just for anyone to come and watch and gawk i think

you just like go into a booth or something i think that's how it works i think so not like a jerk off well that's how that is how comic book guy is using it though yeah you need to have somebody ask him like well you're not gonna call any of those women. Like, no, of course not. He will go home and proudly masturbate. And then Homer just has a very random list of John Wayne, Tupac Sikor, and Sherlock Holmes as the people Maude would be dating in heaven. That's another thing. This episode, spinning out of it, they've done multiple jokes about, like, Maude watching from heaven and commenting on stuff, which, like, it really reminds me of how in Family

Circus when the grandpa died and he's like, oh, I'm watching everything. watching from heaven and commenting on stuff which like it really reminds me of how in family circus when the grandpa died and he's like oh i'm watching everything like a little too cute he's a real creep that guy everyone's grandpa is watching you at all times watching you bathe but he's cheering you on he's a positive they go under the bowl to watch you shit okay they want to see it coming out uh so ned goes on some dates we it's a series of like it feels very you know seinfeld or friends all these dating jokes it doesn't really feel like sexist to me yeah though i wonder like uh especially the lindsey nagel stuff i wonder if simpsons writers had gone on a date this is plumbed from going on a date with you know powerful hollywood executive ladies

and just how like forceful and highly sexual they are that's how i mean mike reese was probably in the room a day a week at this point and he that's how he met his wife video dating oh yeah that's right yeah really yep yeah that's when uh a lot there's a lot of video dating jokes like eight years ago on the show and that's why like seven or eight years ago. Wow. Do they still have the tapes? I bet not. I would love to see Mike Reese's video dating tape. I guess only one of them made a tape or would have had to. It would just be Mike holding up his sack of money.

It's like, I make all this on the Simpsons guy. No, we got Sim in 90. He's not making bank just yet. But we'll also like the Lindsay Nagle dating thing. At this time, I would guess Dana Gould was dating the real Lindsay Nagle, I think, too. So maybe they're getting this from reports back from Dana Gould of going on dates with her. And then we have a joke about Ned and Edna going on a date, which presages that they will date and even marry. The hashtag Nedna phenomenon. Oh, boy.

Yep. The summer of Nedna. We all remember that, right? No, I don't remember that at all. Thank God. I remember it, but I don't remember it sweeping the nation. I think you had to vote. Did you vote?

Yeah. It was a summer cliffhanger if ned would marry her or not they i think they expected they wouldn't get married and but the votes came in for marriage so uh he married her in season 23 and uh until season 25 when uh the voice actress marcia wallace passed away they just decided you know what edna's dead in the world too so ned has had to bury two wives in in the series honestly like i can see the novelty of doing a poll like that but also it's just like at this point i'm as apathetic about voting for that as i am for voting for any other office yeah like if you were gonna vote which Simpsons character will get pushed through a fine mesh screen on camera, I would not care.

No. You know, vote now to see if Bumblebee guy and Sea Captain will get married. I like that. I like that. You want that poll? I'm up for it. Do you want a comic book guy to be diagnosed with hodgkins or non-hodgkins it's the future of television it is uh i mean that's gonna be they can even integrate that

into disney plus like the vote can be on screen while you do it yeah you like a bandersnatch uh also in this scene there is a reference to season one with they are drinking chateau maison wine the uh the wine produced in crepes of wrath from the other worst episode yes reminding us of all the good ones uh yeah this this scene then the one after that when he's dating the third woman who is, you know, obsessed with commitment. Like, that 100% just feels like a date like Chandler Bing would have gone on. Yeah. It just doesn't feel right for Simpsons at all. No, because it's a show about a family.

It's not a show about single people. Though I do like him running away in the swan boat, then cuts to him with the swan boat parked in the Simpsons driveway. That's a fun gag. That's a nice little visual gag. Like, those are jokes that would fit in well with the critic oh yeah yeah which is the uh you know pitched as adult you know urban simpsons well yeah jay went on dates all the time like yeah so that these uh this wouldn't even be the worst date he'd been on that show no way i think uh what he was kidnapped and turned into a sex slave in yeah the miserable episode but yeah i i do also like the joke of marge celebrating ned's

boringness when he says i'm as boring as a baked potato and marge like you're darn right she thinks they're neat you're right it goes back to her positivity towards potatoes they are neat they got all your nutrients they're pretty great you can do anything with them they'll they'll grow if you like keep them under your sink and forget about them they went from non-known on europe to being a crucial keystone to the entire european diet in like 120 years on this podcast french fries we salute the potato we are pro potato here then homer randomly brings up those Las Vegas wives, which I kind of like that gag.

Homer just forgets that, that he was keeping it a secret from Marge. And those Las Vegas wives will return in an episode. No, of course they will. Will both of them die or one of them dies? So I looked into this. Season 13, Amber and Ginger. It's a murder-suicide. In season 13, Amber and Ginger both return and come to Springfield and say,

we are still married to you, and they move in. Ginger is married to Ned, and Ned actually wants her to stay. Oh, I think I saw this one. Right. Ned actually wants her to stay and chases her away with his christian lifestyle amber won't go away until they trick her to have sex with abe and then yep that's where abe says can i get another term in the oval oval office it's funny yeah i remember this god damn it vote now now i'm annoyed should homer and ned's vegas wives be president

and vice president in the simpsons world and then in season 28 they bring back only amber and they start an episode with them going to amber's funeral because she stood up on a roller coaster uh and got decapitated so so was that ned's wife or homer's wife homer's wife okay so that's vegas wife lived and she's not even at the funeral though she's not at her she and amber must have had a falling off falling out off screen the wives return more often than you would think in the show but then we come to ned losing faith which really could have been the whole episode yeah even though they did it before it'd be a a fun re-exploration of it for a different reason. Lord, I never question you,

but I've been wondering if your decision to take Maud was wrong. Unless this is part of your divine plan. Could you just give me some kind of sign? Anything. And after

all that church chocolate I bought, which, by the way, was gritty and had that white stuff on it. Well, I've had it. Daddy, get up. You'll be late for church. You boys can go with the Simpsons. I'm not going to church today. That's right. And I may not go to church tomorrow. No, I'm not kidding.

I'm going to sit right here and miss church. You just watch. Sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry. I feel like we've watched three different episodes so far. Oh, yeah. Yeah, every act has a different premise so far. I like that they at least speed it up so much. They're like, I'm not going to church.

Sorry, sorry, sorry. They just throw out the whole character arc. They're like, you know what? No, his crisis of faith is instantly over. He's going right back to church. And turning around a picture of God like an old lover or something. Oh, yes. Yeah.

Honestly, I think the problem comes from starting with the premise that we're gonna kill maude we're gonna do it and then not not really fully thinking through the realistic consequences of that and just kind of you know just tacking more shit on i at least like the joke that he goes to church every single day and he has to clarify like i'm not going to church on monday either like that yeah that's good but in chalky church chocolate who uh we all hate that then they head to the church uh lovejoy introduces a christian rock band which that doesn't feel right for lovejoy either like why would he host a christian rock band he hates he hates rock and or roll he was a cool like folk christian and back in the 70s right that's true maybe he's going back to his roots there covenant with a k good christian rock band name you know it's a christian band when every

time they use the word him it's uh capitalized oh yeah and uh also uh there's a gag of marge recognizing the basis from satanica that's uh that's not bad but uh i i do like nan's reaction to it saying dropouts must have overpowered the Reverend. That's a funny gag. And then we get the guest star of the episode, Sean Colvin of Sunny Came Home fame. Yeah, I didn't know what this song was. I'm like, what is this? Because it was Song of the Year in 97.

And the second it started playing, I'm like, oh, I know every lyric. She came home to her favorite chair. Am I right? She loves that chair. Days gone by. Yeah, it all came back to her favorite chair am I right she loves that chair days gone by yeah it all came back to me I don't think I've ever heard that song oh if you look up at YouTube

if you had a radio on between 1997 and 2000 you have heard it I don't know 83 times at least I swear I'll pull it up and play it if you want to hear it right now is it worth hearing? We're going to find out.

Will we squander precious seconds by listening to this song? I'm walking on a road. Oh, this song. Yeah. See, I knew you knew this song. Yeah, okay. I didn't know what it was called. Yeah, when I saw who she was and what she sang, I'm like, what is this?

And then the second it came on, I'm like, I could just write down every lyric of this because I was being driven around by my mom in 1997. Yeah, okay. Yeah, that's a banger. So she was kind of a star when they got, I mean, it's a one-hit wonder. That song was like 97, but she wasn't a nobody. And I think they had big plans for rachel jordan too yeah she makes one more appearance until ned scares her away yes yeah in the next season i

believe and uh she sings a song about a man which i'll just cut in the song here while our organist is on a much needed vacation we thought we'd try something new so get down and put your knees together for the christian rock stylings of... Covenant! Hey, isn't that the bass player from Satanica? I think it is. Electric guitars in church! Oh my gosh, some dropouts must have overpowered the reverend

this is a love song about a dude i met in a sleazy motel a dude named god oh in a motel room in delacroix i was was drinking like a Dartmouth boy and thinking about the wrong terms that I took. Well, I woke up on the pew green floor and opened up a dresser drawer looking for a bottle, but instead I found a book. She's talking about the Bible. So? She's good looking. Shut up.

You shut up. A book about a man. A book about the dude who lives above. A book about a man who drives a pickup full of sweet, sweet love. Now if you think he doesn't care, or maybe that he isn't there, it's not too late to see how wrong you are so when your soul is gone astray just let god be your triple a he'll tow you to salvation and he'll overhaul your heart

and apparently sean colvin she says she still sings that in concert from time to time. I would guess, what other songs than Sonny Came Home and that song would she play? If she played more than five songs, I don't know if I would stick around for it. Well, she really made me wait for Sonny Came Home. No, I'm hanging out at the bar waiting for that song. Like I said, I really enjoy the interchange between Lenny and Carl. It's like, so she's good looking. Shut up.

Yeah, that's fun. That's fun. I also like any joke where a character says about a man I met in a sleazy church or sleazy hotel. How we use electricity can be smarter, cleaner, and greener. At Electric Ireland, we can help guide you there. You see, our new Net Zero Hub has all you need to know about smart meter plans, EV tariffs, solar panels and much more. Making your usage clearer, your trips greener, your home cozier and your world brighter find our net zero hub at electric

island.ie god oh like any any gas spending performative gas they were doing that a lot in season 11 do we really have one hit wonders anymore it seems like there used to be way more one hit wonders oh yeah i've been thinking about this in the 90s i mean in the 60s they were used to be novelty songs sadly we don't get those at all anymore but in the 90s there were a ton of like inextricable uh inexplicable one-hit wonders load of them yeah your right said freds new radicals your crash test dummies your toad the wet sprockets oh you actually hear too sexy in this episode it's playing under homer's video for ned yeah that was i don't know maybe that's just the atomization of culture happening in real time in the 90s i think so consolidated you can't get

exposed to one song for too long unless you actively choose to do it yourself now i guess yeah i mean i would guess you know gangnam style that's a one hit wonder wouldn't you say that's like a prototypical one but at the same time i mean what was the hit there was it was a big youtube you know oh things are different so one hit wonders have been supplanted by viral videos basically yeah that's true also i object to the characterization of sai as a one hit wonder i mean fine internationally yeah that's the only thing he's known for. But he's had several hits in Korea. I stand corrected.

You are right. Including one about killing and torturing American troops stationed in South Korea. Whoa. Yeah, that was a bomb. That's a real fact. Yeah, like an anti-imperialist song. I believe one of the lines was, kill the fucking Yankees. Damn.

I thought the song that he's popular for in america is like social commentary too yeah yeah uh and yeah that whole song is like it's another one they don't know how they're gonna play it because it's just played as an earnest christian song like other i think other than the line drinking like a dartmouth boy yeah i don't think there's a joke in the lyrics there the jokes are mainly from the crowd uh a few things we get in the crowd yeah jasper playing the spoons the pan over to show homer sleeping too i'm like i've seen this joke like eight times in the show by now it's really it's it's not a new gag for homer either uh but there's at least a good animation on the camera turn from like in front of her to behind her as it faces ned but this is

the moment where it feels like a very special episode especially rod's reaction of like i knew you would like that's just a cute that's a tgif moment you know that's just played straight it's that they don't make a joke nothing cuts through the treacle at the end here we give uh ned hope for his future with uh with a woman almost like fanfic invention to be oh who's the perfect rebound for ned like yeah just like this invention to be the perfect rebound for ned which also makes it feel just like cheap it was like instantly uh wants to you know hang out with him and we'll come back and hang out with him it just like there's not there's like 43 seconds left in the episode for them to talk But yes, I have the quick clip here

That was a lovely song It really got to me Been through some rough times yourself? I recently lost my wife I'm real sorry to hear that We just lost our drummer To a Pentecostal ska band I know it's not the same, but

No, I hear what you're saying. It's always hard to replace someone. Yeah. My name's Rachel Jordan. If you feel like talking, maybe we could grab a coffee? Well, that sounds real nice, Rachel, but I'm not quite... I understand. Listen, we're heading out on tour with the Monsters of Christian Rock.

Maybe when we get back, you and I could get together. Maybe we can. My name's Ned Flanders, and I'm here every week. Rain or shine. I guess after the gauntlet of cruelty they send Ned down, you get a little levity at the end there but it is it does feel like unearned right yeah and also again very like tgif or just a different sitcom than a sitcom about that also includes a joke about the character having a gigantic dick you know

and then right after that they have a reprise of the song where she says, like, that's where there is a joke line about, like, she landed on her head, but now it's time to move on with his life. It's like, wow, that's harsh. That's a harsh last joke to give you on that. And in the song, she covered the whole credits. It's also really awkward because the song goes for, like, 10 seconds, and then you just have to bring back in the soundtrack. You get a comedic verse about the death of maude and that's it and uh yeah this episode like led to a bunch of sequel episodes in season 12 we've got the going to praise land where rachel jordan returns and is uh rightly creeped out by ned and so maude appears many times i think that was their way of trying to

make it up to to maggie Maggie Roswell and fans of like, well, look, hey, we got more Maude. Isn't that nice? But nobody, I think, misses jokes about Maude. I think they mainly just miss the innocence of youth when Maude was alive, perhaps. When the show wasn't murdering people to save $2,000 a week. This episode continues to haunt the simpsons canon i still think the lowest point for me lower than seeing maude killed on

screen is the um is panda love that's a lower moment for me but this is close yeah this is at least it's off screen part of it i thought when we'd get to this episode on the show i'd hate it more but i i just feel more wistful i'm like i wish they didn't do that but i don't feel as insulted i guess as i used to about it you're not mad you're disappointed right yeah yeah just like no bad writers don't don't just go along with a joke in the writer's room and just make it an episode you're're better than Family Guy in South Park. You don't need to stoop this low. Any final thoughts, guys?

The show should stop. They should have stopped after this or before this. Keep going. Just keep on going. Go on infinitely. Just with Alexa versions of all of the cast members. I'm sure there was... I hear a lot of good things about deepfake technology.

Just use that to make The Simpsons. At some point, the show will just be algorithmically generated from start to finish. It's just going to be those YouTube Simpsons wave videos. That's just going to be an episode. Procedurally generated GIFs of Simpsons wave videos, that's just going to be an episode. Procedurally generated gifs of Simpsons characters doing things, well, soft

trancy music pulses in the background. I think they've covered all of Homer's potential lines because there's like one of those GPS's with Homer's voice you can buy. Oh, that's true. I think they've got every word in the English language covered now for Homer. They already did do an automated Homer voice. After Dan dies,

uh, every episode we'll just have Homer, but all his dialogue is, uh, uh, well, uh, I,

I still don't feel like stopping yet on this podcast though, but we got a lot of, uh, yucks and laughs to talk about in that order. The funniest way that the Simpsons would end would be after Trump leaves office and they say, well, we just ran out of material. We've done our job. They say, yeah, our work is done. Our work is not done and we would love to have you guys back for a future one.

Oh, God. Maybe a Panda Love episode. Only for the darkest moments. That's a really terrible one. But yeah, Matt and Virgil, thanks so much for being on the show. Please talk about your amazing podcast, Chapo Trap House, and where to find it. Online. Yeah, it's online. It's called Chapo Trap House.

Just ask Siri, and she'll find it for you pretty quickly. So I can't go to the library and check this out, is what you're saying? Nah, no, sadly. But you could check out their... Wait, could wait yeah no we're in the library that's right oh oh my god yes yes your book but not the audio these are new york time best sellers we're talking that's right don't you forget it i apologize profusely and also uh i mean matt lately you two have been doing some really great uh streams on the choppa trap house twitch channel as well which i definitely tell folks to check out yeah i'm having a good time with that check those out if you feel like it you're like watching a man yell at you always uh thanks for uh thanks for

having us on again and uh yeah i would love to come back and uh just as a show of solidarity as you begin this slog past season 11. Thank you. We need all the help we can get. We appreciate you being supportive as the older boys in the podcasting industry. But thank you guys so much. So thanks again to Matt Christman and Virgil Texas. Be sure to check out Chapo Trap House, where refined podcasts are disseminated, I guess. And as for us, if you want to support our show and get all kinds of bonus stuff on top of that,

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if you follow at talk simpsons pod on twitter thanks so much for joining us folks we'll see you next time for missionary impossible and we will see you then I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm

I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm