Talking Simpsons - Talking Simpsons - Bart After Dark With Kate Leth

Episode Date: August 15, 2018

This week we're joined by writer/illustrator/Twitter badass Kate Leth, a perfect guest as we delve deep into the most sex-positive episode of The Simpsons ever. While Marge and Lisa wash rocks, Homer Simpson's 10-year-old son is working in a burlesque house. Bart loves giving the old greet and toss, but the morality police in town feel differently. So put some spring in your Springfield and listen to this week's episode now! Support this podcast at Patreon.com/TalkingSimpsons!

I heartily endorse this event or product. Ahoy hoy everybody, welcome to Talking Simpsons, home of the old greet and toss. I'm your host, sobriety and self-denial fan Bob Mackie, and this is our chronological exploration of every episode of The Simpsons ever. Who is here with me today? I'm Henry Gilbert and I'm rowing backwards. It's a bad idea. And who is on the line? I would like to say that you're about to learn that the two most dangerous words in the English language are Kate left. Oh my gosh. Now there's four most dangerous words. And today's episode is bart after dark are they talking about the bordello no the burlesque house so just keep your mouth shut today's episode aired on november 24th 1996

and as always henry will tell us what happened on this day in real world history oh my god oh boy bobby disneyland officially ends the Main Street Electrical Parade. Rocko's Modern Life and The Tick air their final episodes. And Star Trek First Contact debuts number one at the box office. Being a Rocko fan, I can tell you that the last episode was not the last in the production order. The last episode was a Thanksgiving special. That was part of the last season, but they held it for the Thanksgiving

time of the year. The last episode was the future episode, which is where the movie follows up from, the upcoming movie. I love that future episode. We just did the tick episode of What a Cartoon. You guys should listen to that. Star Trek First Contact had interesting timing

because Patrick Stewart is officially back as jean-luc picard in an upcoming show i mean i'm all for the idea but that just kind of reeks of desperation not on not on picard's part not on patrick stewart's part but on cbs's part like nobody cares about this new star trek well i've been dying for them to finally return to the next-gen universe. Like, they keep trying to sell me on things that are, like, still in the past. I'm like, I don't know. Star Trek's the future. Keep going forward in the future. Don't just show me more of the old stuff.

So our special guest today is Kate Leth. Kate, can you explain who you are in case some of our listeners don't know? Yeah, I'm sure lots don't. My name is Kate Leth. I am, strangely enough, most predominantly known on Twitter these days. I am a comics writer turned animation writer, although I still do both. You might know some of my books. I wrote Hellcat for Marvel.

I wrote Spell on Wheels for Dark Horse. I wrote Power Up and Edward Scissorhands and Fraggle Rock and a whole bunch of kid stuff, a bunch of books for Adventure Time. Then did about two years working at Hasbro, working on a bunch of kid stuff, like My Little Pony Equestria Girls. So if you have any nieces or nephews out there, I'm very cool. And now I'm working on a secret project that will be announced September 1st. So stay tuned for that. That's exciting.

Yeah, all great stuff. Can you describe your relationship with The Simpsons, though? I grew up watching it in syndication. So I didn't really keep it up past teenhood. So when you guys reached out to me about this, I was like, oh, no, I haven't seen any episodes that have aired in the last 10 years unless there was some huge particular controversy that I should check in for or Neil Gaiman was going to be on it because I was a teen goth. But yeah, these first seasons up until I guess 10 or so, I watched over and over and over and over.

And I'm also almost exactly as old as The Simpsons. Because I was born in September of 1988. And yeah, pretty close to when the show started. You were born in the period between the Ullman shorts and the first episode premiere. Exactly. My mom likes to point that out whenever people are like, oh, no, it was after the fact. She's like, oh, but Tracy U Allman. That means you were blessed. It is a strange relationship that I have with it because I know the beginning so intimately,

and I have seen those early episodes a thousand times, but not in years. And watching this one that we're going to talk about was, I think, the first time I watched a single episode of The Simpsons in maybe five years. Wow. I had reached out on Twitter. I'm a big fan of your Twitter account and all your stuff. But you had been drawing some comics recently that have really been a big hit on Twitter as well. Why do you do Simpo Friends? I don't know. So I work in this office with this incredible woman, Amalia, who worked on Over the Garden Wall. And she is amazing. And we were talking about The Simpsons or something one day, and we got all these legal pads because it was like our third day in the office. And we just

had so many supplies. So I just started drawing and I did these doodles of The Simpsons. And she was like, oh, that's so funny because the pad is yellow. So you don't have to do anything. It's already there. It just became the thing I would do during meetings or when I had time to fill. And then she got so into it that if I went two or three days without making one, she'd be like, I know you need to do like a next draft of this episode, but if I don't see another Simpo Friends,

there's going to be an issue. So she has been my greatest supporter. And I don't know, people seem to like them it's just been a fun very low stakes project to do because there's nothing involved i just draw on a piece of paper and take a picture of it so you were sort of forced into becoming a web comic artist but then you ended up enjoying it yeah it's great people keep responding to them and it's it's the only time i've ever done something ongoing like this that's not autobiographical or whatever. And it's great because almost everyone, somebody will be like, oh, this is the best one so far.

I'm like, oh, I see why people do this. Sweet praise. Yes. You're also a Canadian. I'm always curious. We've asked other canadian guests here before like what's what is do you think you have a different perspective on the simpsons as if you were from outside of america as as opposed to like the the americans who watch it i think so i think there's certain i mean when you're from canada and i'm sure if you've talked to other canadians you've heard this you're exposed to so much

american media and american culture that it feels like it's part of your culture i mean you, you're aware of what's going on in American politics and American holidays and all of these kinds of things that like Americans are not in any way aware of Canada in that regard. You know, it's very strange. It's like, I mean, you do have 100 times more people or whatever. So, you know, it makes sense. But there were, yeah, a lot of the very sort of patriotic americana aspects of the simpsons nuclear family thing didn't seem so strange because all of our media was like that even though it wasn't really you know it wasn't degrassi it wasn't very reflective of our exact experience but there's a lot of stuff that's universal it's a family you know also i was curious where a future guest on our show is uh matt burnett who

was a co who is co-creator of uh craig of the creek you you wrote for that show too didn't you i did i did it was early on in the planning stages and they ended up going with um it's like board driven they weren't sure if they were going to have writers or to have it be board driven like steven and it is uh board driven although although Jeff is the the sort of head writer there and he's amazing um but yeah they brought me in and and they were like if you were going to write an episode what would you do and I was like teen witches I just want to write teen witches and so I did the one episode and now they're recurring characters in the show so it was like my only contribution to the Craig of the Creekiverse but But I got to create these girl witches.

It was really fun. They were super, super nice and really cool to talk to. And we remain acquaintances, I think. That is one of my favorite episodes of that show, by the way. It's great. Yes. I love the show so much. It is so cool.

And I'm really glad it exists. It is such a sweet show. When I was watching the episode with my husband, and I knew ahead of time you tweeted out that your episode had aired, so I knew it was yours. And then when the two girls were on it when I was watching the episode with my husband, and I knew ahead of time, you tweeted out that your episode had aired. So I knew it was yours. And then when the two girls were on it, I was like, Oh, I bet they're a couple of the my husband's like, No, I don't think so. I was like, Hey, Kate wrote this. I think they are. Then when they held hands at the end, I was like, I see. Well, it was such an amazing confluence of events. Because Amber Craig, who's one of the

storyboard artists on that episode, is a very good friend of mine. Her wife used to work with my boyfriend and she also works on Steven Universe and they were on hiatus. So she was doing some work for Craig and she got my episode. And it was this strange thing where we were like, how is this world so small? Then I was like, okay, well, all I'm asking is just make it as gay as possible. She's like, already there. Don't worry about it. A Cartoon Network agenda. Well, okay, so this episode, why don't we get into it then? This one was written by Rich Appel, directed by Dominic Polcino,

who would both go on to be like heavyweights at Family Guy. So this is almost like a proto-Family Guy episode. What? Well, not really. Okay, I was confused by your description of it i'm just saying staff wise okay it is i think it's real funny that this is a a fun a sexy episode but because it's by oakley and weinstein it is very old-timey view on sexuality and the especially the the burlesque of it all yeah they have to give um bart a libido in this episode, strangely enough, and it's kind of off-putting to me now.

He's not really a horny kid in the rest of the series. It is interesting. It definitely is a tonal shift. I think they could have played Bart more horned up, I suppose. I think he seems to have more of a child interest like, oh, these are more exciting bras that I'm used to seeing as opposed to like, honk, honk, awooga. Which is kind of nice,

honestly. I think the other side would be very family guy. It's still kind of cute, and also he does lose that interest as he becomes more businesslike later in the episode when he starts taking on these jobs. This episode appeared as the neo-Burlesque movement was really picking up steam in America, too, though I don't know if they were aware of that

on the production side. But I have actually been to a Burlesque show. I actually, with my family on a trip to, by family, I mean my parents and my brother, on a trip to Las Vegas a few years ago, my mom was like, it'll be fun if we go to zombie burlesque. We talked about this.

I can't even sit through an R-rated movie with my family and not be just embarrassed beyond belief. Oh, my God. The first time I watched Rocky Horror was with my mom. It was very uncomfortable. My dad came downstairs, took one look at what was on TV, and just went back upstairs. Much like Grandpa Simpson. Yeah, he did the Grandpa. downstairs, took one look at what was on TV and just went back upstairs. Much like Grandpa Simpson. The zombie burlesque show was fun and all. It was a horror themed thing, but it was basically

what you expect from burlesque. There were sketches, there were dance performances. They also, and pasties were on. It was not like a full nude burlesque. They also did have it both ways in that they had female performers and male performers. And also a gay male performer, though his character was so camp that it verged on homophobic. They were really walking a tightrope with him. And I want to chalk that up to them just having to play it both ways for the tourist audience they could expect in Vegas. It was mostly a gay positive show, I will say, but it was fun. If you're looking for a fun burlesque show to see with your mom in Vegas, Zombie Burlesque, you could do worse. I bought my tickets already.

I have a pretty extensive history with burlesque, and not as a performer, but as a person who was very close to and adjacent to the world of it for a while. And I've seen a ton of burlesque in my life, whether intentionally or accidentally. So this was really fun and I was excited to talk about this episode in particular. Yeah, I kind of wish we got to see a little more of the interior lives of any of the other performers there. We barely get to know Belle's life, honestly. I think it's a sex positive portrayal of burlesque in this episode, though. Yeah, Marge is the...

It's not too bad, yeah. Marge is the bad guy in this episode. Burlesque is more fun. I mean, as a gay guy, I'm not in it for sexual reasons. So burlesque shows are fun for me in just a performance aspect. And also the very broad kind of silliness of it. I enjoy too. It's really fun. And I've been to a lot of different kinds of things. I've been to burlesque that definitely leans more towards like the stripping side of it. There is an amazing bar,

if you have ever been to it in LA called Jumbo's Clown Room, which sounds like a nightmare, but is actually a really amazing queer positive stripping slash burlesque bar. And I love it so much. The dancers are all really, really fun and they get very excited when there are queer women because we tip really well. And then I've also been to, you know, that sort of like high production, very, very vintage inspired, you know, big fan dancing kind of stuff, burlesque shows as well. It's just a fun time. Yeah, Matt Groening actually mentions Jumbo's Clown Room on the commentary for this episode. It's great.

I had some friends take me there last year. I think we were actually celebrating the end of Hellcat. I think Brittany and I went, and we had an amazing time. One of the dancers came over and talked to me about how we had the same necklace from Hot Topic on. It was a great night. I miss Hellcat. I love that book so much.

Me too. Me too. It was a very fun time. Well, so the opening gag on this, well, the couch gag was actually ripped off for the Yellow album that The Simpsons put out. I prefer this idea as a 10-second couch gag. Yes, yeah. And it was shocking when I looked at the yellow album next to the screen gag. I was like, you just redrew like 30% of this and called it different enough.

Hey, it's clever. Yeah. Homer even turns around. And we get a cute little V-chip opening, which this really takes me back to when the fear was like, if we put these V-chips in TVs, it'll censor things for people. That was the first moment where I really felt that the show was dated. And I mean, it's 30 seconds in. It's the first note that I took on my phone.

What's a V chip? Oh, yeah, I remember. Yeah, there was a lot of hysteria because I think people didn't understand what it did and what it was and who controlled it. Really, it's ultimately a parental lock that good old Slick Willie said, we have to put in all the TVs made after 1999, I believe. So any TV made after a certain date has a way to lock out content of your choosing, I guess, based on the TV rating scale. But there was the hysteria like this is going to be the government censoring shows, but it wasn't. And this is an entire plot point in the South Park movie.

The V-chip was what shocked the characters when they would swear. And that's how Cartman does like a Kamehameha at the end of the movie. So, yeah, everybody got it wrong. And the joke is Homer turns the show back on, even though he presumably is the one who locked out Itchy and Scratchy. And I mean, it's a great thematic setup for the episode. Oh, yeah. Homer lets Bart do whatever he wants. See whatever.

This V-chip also seems so quaint now because, like, I don't know, the internet will let children see so many horrible things before they are ready to see them. Oh, yes. And the Itchy and Scratchy cartoon is really one of the first send-ups of this era of trashy daytime TV. It was either Maury Povich or Jerry Springer they were really doing observational humor about in terms of people backstage coming out to fight unexpectedly. Unsurprisingly, Jerry Springer will be on The Simpsons in two years after this episode airs.

After all that Itchy and Scratchy fun, we've got some bad news. We interrupt this cartoon for a special report. Someone found my keys! Kent Brockman at the action news desk. A massive tanker has run aground on the central coastline spilling millions of gallons of oil on Baby Seal Beach. Oh no! It'll be okay,

honey. There's lots more oil where that came from. Preliminary reports indicated the ship's captain was drunk at the helm. Those reports were later confirmed. Gar, I'm in a lot of trouble now. Hey, I'll give you a hundred bucks to take the blame. A cleanup effort is already underway. And as always, the first to pitch in are those unsung heroes, Hollywood movie stars.

This isn't about publicity this is about cleaning off gunk as a golden globe nominee i just think it's our duty to make the real globe a little more golden so this is a big parody of the exxon valdez oil spill and henry actually dm me and he said don't do any research i did it all so henry you have to educate us on this i only know the bare facts because this happened in what 89 oil spill and henry actually dm me and he said don't do any research i did it all so henry you have to educate us on this i only know the bear facts because this happened in what 89 march of 89 and every kids cartoon and tv show and whatever mad magazine there were so many jokes about oil spills because of this and they've only gotten worse oh yeah by the way folks don't look up any information on uh exxon valdez unless you want to see lots of pictures of dead animals. It's a bit of a bummer.

The Exxon Valdez, it spilled in March of 1989 in Alaska, causing a ton of ecological damage, just impossible amounts of it it was the biggest oil spill in history until it was like dwarfed by the 2010 bp deep water horizon atrocity the history on it if you thought like oh man exxon was really fucked by this like no they were not they were sued in civil court and lost about a billion dollars and they say they spent two billion dollars in cleanup but it was 20 years before they finally were faced punitive damages from the government for what they did it went to the supreme court and justice alito had to actually recuse himself because he owned millions in stock in exxon wow and they eventually only had to pay 507 million and they even got a better deal than that because exxon very like evilly made a deal with

a bunch of the seafood companies that worked in alaska that they're like hey we'll pay you a lump sum of money now for damages if you agree to take on any punitive damages in the future to lawsuits so they and they got to collect insurance money exxon collected insurance money from the tanker wow so that's crazy they really exxon did not pay much of a price at all for this but the captain all of this information it's disgusting and the captain um i i was reading about the captain and reports are inconclusive as to whether or not he was drunk. Yes. In the eyes of the law, Joseph Hazelwood was not drunk in that he was also sued in civil court and in regular criminal court for it. The Alaskan DA said he was drunk.

By his own admission, he had, quote, two or three vodkas the afternoon that it happened, but that they couldn't, Alaska failed to prove that he was legally drunk because there were problems with like his blood samples or whatever. So they only charged him with a fine of $50,000 and 1,000 hours of community service. And he did appeals on that. So that happened in 89. He did appeals on that until 1999 before he finally had to do his community service, which he did over the course of 10 years and then paid his $50,000 in 2004. He ultimately apologized by saying, I'm sorry I did this to Alaska, but you guys are mad at the wrong guy.

It wasn't my fault. He was set up. He was set up. I mean, Exxon does seem more evil than him. They really do. But one thing that did I feel slightly bad for his, you know what, I don't feel bad for him. But though he was not found legally drunk, he became famously in all jokes as the drunk captain of the Exxon Valdez. So that's what he will always be known as.

There's even a joke on The Critic. Remember that? Yeah. Jay's oil cured his disease, so now he can crash ships. He's one of the many horrible people that Jay saves at the end. Thanks to Jay's oil, I'm spilling my oil. That's right. Oh, thank you, Henry.

God. Sorry, this was a lot of depressing information. No, it's okay. I mean, I was one year old when this happened and lived with jokes about it for my entire life and have, again, not really ever wanted to look it up because I don't like looking at dead animals. So now I know. So what you're saying is you have an alibi. I do. You were one.

I was a baby. You're out of the clear. You're in the clear. In the clear. References to Exxon Valdez included Waterworld using it as one of its main action set pieces where the villains live in the Exxon Valdez and they are drinking the secret liquor supply of the captain in it even. I wonder if that's part of the Waterworld stunt show that still exists. I can tell you, having seen it in person, because I live in LA, that I don't think it

is. I don't remember that. They might get sued by Exxon. Yeah, they might be afraid of Exxon. That show is a real wild ride, I tell you. You know, Bob and me just went to Universal Hollywood, but we didn't see that stunt show. We could hear it when we were walking around, but we should have taken it in. It's really strange. I watched it with a bunch of my friends, and we were, you know,

like eight queer women, and we were really enjoying it as strange as it was because the stunts are wild and it's so Hollywood because it opens with like, here are our actors today and here's like the bit parts they have on sitcoms and stuff like, you know, because it's everyone's part time job. And then like two thirds of the way through it, there's just this like really unnecessary rape joke. And we were all like, come on. We didn't come here for this. We came here to see the dumb explosions. It's a nice day at a theme park, man. I have to wonder if it starts with someone coming out and saying, now who remembers Waterworld? No hands go up. It has distanced itself, as far as I can tell, pretty far from the source material, but the explosions are very fun. That's good. That's good. What do you think of the Simpsons ride in the Springfield at Universal? You know, I think it's

been there for a long time and the screen has gotten dimmer because when I went to see it, it didn't, I mean, because I was comparing it with the Minions ride, which whatever you think of Minions is a very fun ride. It's a great ride. Yeah, it is. It's really fun. And the Simpsons one I enjoyed, but it seemed like the screen was really fun. And the Simpsons one I enjoyed, but it seemed like the screen was so dark. And maybe it was just the day I went. Maybe it's been fixed. But it's very similar.

It was fun. It usually has too long of a line for what it is, though. That was our longest line that day. It was about an hour. Yeah. That Exxon stuff, too, it reminds me of when I was a kid, when it happened. i'm slightly older than you uh kate so i was like seven or eight when it happened and i remember there was a ton of

cartoons about environmentalism and eco i mean captain planet is the most famous but there are many others and it did turn kids into like the eco kids who like i'm gonna save the planet and i do kind of miss that energy that like lisa gets infected with in this too yeah i think they're kind of passing the buck to kids like well you guys figure it out we're done that's that's a problem yeah well and also i think one of the problems with that vision of environmentalism is that it it makes it a very person level thing with while not really blaming the corporations that are doing so much more damage than any million people not recycling would do comparatively but well it's i mean it's

the plastic straws thing right it's like oh we're gonna fix everything by doing this very very tiny gesture that inconveniences a lot of people but not you know the much much larger scale things that would have an actual impact down the line. It's very corporate environmentalism. Very much so. I also like the gag here of the celebrities going there for a photo op and that they've called all the cute animals on camera. this episode has a little not like south park level cynical but kind of a cynical idea on environmentalism of like they mostly agree that it's a good thing but that it's boring and no fun and the only people that really a lot of people who care about it are just doing it for the cameras and it's joyless and it's yeah it is joyless i mean i mean marge is wearing kenny's same jacket

so yes you could say it has that irreverent South Park humor. It is. It's a very strange one because I feel like Marge and Lisa's plot is so sort of inconsequential. Like it happens and then it's over to kind of take up some screen time. And then it's like, oh no, here's the part of the show everyone's actually interested in. It's very odd. Yeah.

Strange setup. It feels like they just decided they needed them out of the house for Bart to work at the burlesque house, and they thought of the reason why later. I guess we didn't need to see it, but a few good jokes come out of it, but it is very slight. Yeah. This episode also made me feel guilty that back when I was a cat owner as a youngster, I didn't trim their nails. I was just like, they're going to scratch me when I do. The cats just kind of bit their own nails if they felt they were too long. What's your opinion on trimming cats' nails, Kate? My cats won't let me. I have tried. I've tried for many years. My older

cat, Leeloo, I've had for nine years now. She was a year and a half when I got her. And she's let me trim her nails maybe twice. I just buy a lot of scratching posts and things because technically that's all they need. I'm sure an angry cat people will tell me that I am a monster. It's impossible. I can bathe her. I can give her baths and she will let me do that. But nails not going to happen. And my boyfriend's cat, Ray, she's only a year and a half and she was a street cat. And I can't imagine trying. I just can't imagine. Yeah. Cutting my bird's nails is like disarming a bomb. I let an expert do it. I'm not going in. Yeah. No, I take her to the vet and I'm like, here, please, please. We used to

have to, I grew up with guinea pigs and we had nine of them at one point in time and we would have to clip their nails because otherwise they couldn't walk. It would get really bad or they would do that thing where they curl under and it's really painful for them. But that was easier. They're small, but they're very docile. Kitty pigs are lazy hamsters. They're great. I really love them.

Yeah, cats are a whole other thing. I also love Lisa's very childlike tactics of begging for something. I'm like, well, this could be my birthday and Christmas present. I definitely tried that one. And when you're told by a parent, you barely ever use that last thing I got. You're like, no, I use it all the time. The peach tree is a very good Lisa gift. Yeah.

I wrote down, because I took notes, because I, you know, I do stuff on a Buffy podcast, too. And so this is like ingrained in me. Two of the first notes I took were like, great jokes. Cat nails Lisa peach tree because they're both this is the thing that really came up you know watching this and a thing that is really different from a lot of the cartoons i watch now is the the joke per minute ratio is wild there is so much you look away and it's like it was still very good at this point in time yeah the density of the jokes still

are so great like in this scene with uh bart and homer being left home alone now the cat needs his medication every morning and the furnace has been getting off a lot of carbon monoxide so keep the window open in the furnace uh you know i think i'll take maggie with us and if anything happens just choose your best judge... Just do what I would do. Woo-hoo! A whole week of just father and son. See you at dinner.

What time? I don't know. Shall we say 10? All right. Just wake me up. Yeah, but I'm starving. And they're watching the World Series of Bumper Cars. That's one of many World Series of X jokes that were, I think, in the Al Jean Mike Reese World Series of Dog Racing.

This was the return of the World Series stuff this year. The World Series of Cockfighting they did as well. The World Series of Sandcastle. That's right, yeah. I think Nancy and Dan have a really great chemistry. It gets to be shown off in these, when Homer and Bart are friendly to each other, you get to see that a lot more. Yeah, it's some nice echoes of homer alone like what does homer do when marge isn't there to keep things clean and to make him actually cook real food and things like that useless he's pretty useless it does remind me as a kid i sometimes welcomed a

father only night of if my mom was out doing something which was kind of rare but the fun of the negligence was often outweighed by his eventual like harping on me too much and uh but really kind of projecting his unhappiness onto me so i i eventually got tired of uh dad days as it were same yeah i also i do i do love the line though cat in the furnace homer thinks she's very helpful with that. The Simpsons will be right back. 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 electricarland.ie. Thanks for listening to this week's episode. Perhaps while you're playing with your peach tree, that's not a euphemism, but,

uh, and we really like to thank Kate Lath for being our guest this week. She was so great. Follow her on Twitter at Kate Leth. You should buy of all of her comic books. You should watch all the TV shows she's on. She is the greatest. And we thank her so much for doing this week's episode.

Also, if you're enjoying this week's episode and you'd like to hear next week's A Week Early and Ad Free, you can hear it right now at patreon.com slash talking simpsons you can be listening to us talk about a millhouse divided with ian jones cordy and toby jones the masterminds behind okko who also worked on regular show and steven universe uh ian on steven universe toby on regular show you can hear that and so much more stuff at patreon.com slash talking simpsons you can hear our brand new interview with dan mcgrath a writer on the simpsons from seasons four five and six who doesn't give too many interviews and we talked to him about his work on the simpsons as well as his work on gravity falls mission hill king of the hill and snl we learned so much from dan you can hear all of that and so much more at just $5 a month. Patreon.com

slash Talking Simpsons. Whether you're cleaning up an oil spill or doing a fan dance, it's always helpful at your job to listen to a cool podcast did you know that me and bob do another weekly podcast we do it's called what a cartoon where me and bob and a guest go through a different cartoon each week in the talking simpsons style we've done steven universe we've done king of the hill we've done daria we've done cowboy bebop and we've done tons more stuff you can listen to all of the episodes on their own rss feed what a cartoon or if you sign up for that patreon.com slash talking simpsons you'll also get access to that podcast a week ahead of time and ad free all for the same five

bucks and we've got some really great episodes coming your way in the future including our review of disenchantment the brand new netflix television series from matt grainy josh weinstein bill oakley and a ton of other people who worked on the simpsons and futurama so check all of that out at patreon.com slash talking simpson the last bit of exxon valdez stuff the the bit with cleaning the rocks that was what you mainly had to do when you were cleaning up it was either animal bodies or you were cleaning rocks but one of the uh the most sisyphean things about it wasn't that if you cleaned it then the water came in and it made it dirty again it was that the oil had seeped in so much that it's just coming back up anyway after you've cleaned the rocks like i saw a clip of tom brokaw going back there in 2014 and a local was telling him now see look you just press a little into the ground, bloop, more oil.

Like, this is ruined forever. And Marge has rocks that need washing at home. I also wrote that down as one of my favorite jokes. It's a very mom statement. It's very good. Yeah. But here's them cleaning up some rocks. I'm going to rescue a baby seal, and then I'm going to save an otter.

Oh, I'm sorry, but all the animals have already been reserved for celebrities. There, that's 104 pounds of sandpipers. You mean there's nothing left to clean? Well, there are rocks. Thousands and thousands of rocks. I've got rocks that need washing at home. And Marge is not being sarcastic. I can see her thinking about the dirty rocks around her yard.

Marge doesn't have much capacity for sarcasm. They don't grant her that much. Except when she says, well, duh, to Homer. She does get that. I started writing down in this episode, God, I love Marge so much. She's such an unsung hero. And in such a horrible marriage. But then she becomes like, oh, right.

No, the way she acts in the latter half of this episode is so contrary to how I think and feel and believe. It's very conflicting. Yeah, I think not to get too far ahead of ourselves. I do think they kind of dug up Marge's old prudishness from the Itchy and Scratchy and Marge episode from season two. It's not something they often go with with Marge Marge. I kind of prefer the line Marge said in Homer Palooza, where she's just like, she doesn't care about pop culture at all.

None of my business. None of her business. I feel like, yeah, she would become much more meek, I guess, and she would not want to engage on this level of activism. So I don't, again, my memories are super fuzzy and scream at me if I'm getting ahead of myself. I don't know if you guys are like, oh, spoilers, don't talk about episodes we haven't watched yet. No, no. But they're, you know, the ones that I remember, the ones that stuck with me so strongly over the years, even though a lot of them haven't, were like the episode with Marge and her Chanel outfit. The one that she like keeps redesigning so that she can keep wearing it. episodes as a kid and like not really understanding why and and years later going oh god it's because marge so rarely gets a chance to have this emotional nuance and this like you know really

elaborate story and so it's sort of a bummer to see yeah to see her written in in a certain way in this episode although it does kind of make sense someone has to fill that role yeah marge is a much more fleshed out character in that Chanel episode. Maybe because it was written by a woman, I'm directed by a woman too. See, there you go. I did watch, okay, so I do this thing when I watch the credits of any movie or cartoon now because I'm a

writer in animation in Hollywood where I count how many title cards go by before you see a woman's name that she wasn't a producer or a casting person, basically anyone in an actual creative role. And woof. It is rough on these

some of these earlier Simpsons episodes. I think we have two in this era. So Rachel Polito and Jennifer Crittenden are in this era. On staff. On staff as staff writers. Crittenden might have left by season 8. She's still on for Twisted World of March. so she's still there yeah but great but i mean that that's actually by simpson season standards that is a very feminine writing staff compared to it's wild previous years i swear

if you start doing that even as a person who you know isn't really invested in those kinds of things it will blow your mind when you start watching movies and you're like okay all right how many how many names how many names or how few which is one thing that i completely off topic really loved about black panther because when the credits came up it was like half women in all kinds of different roles like not just you know writing but it was great yeah yeah i mean we did cover some of the problems the show had with hiring anything but white men who graduated from harvard yeah and uh so jennifer crittenden was the first female writer that was hired in the sixth season and that was only because sam simon left and his role was no dames in the writer's room yeah yeah

that was uh we we chatted about this actually on our our interview with mimi pond so we there were two women who wrote as freelancers before it, Mimi Pond and Nell Scoville. And we actually interviewed both of them. Mimi was the one who talked about how Sam Simon wasn't into, I believe his reasoning was that he said he was just divorced and he didn't want to work with any women for that. Like, what a great guy. But anyway. Imagine having that kind of power anyway um it's it's not my my only hill to die on but it is something that i do pay attention to so it makes sense and it kind of warms my heart that that march episode was written by a woman that's cool and that episode

is also one of the like only times march has any friends of her own yeah she just has her sisters yeah and they're not particularly great. But Bart had, after making some garbage angels with Homer, which definitely reminds me of my apartment before I got a husband and started cleaning up after myself. I also am very much on Homer's side

of not wanting fresh air and wanting to not have to get up. Do I have to sit up? Yes. That's my opinion on most weekends. Like, do I have to sit up to go to this concert? I do. They head to the park and that's where we get to see Milhouse and his

plane. Milhouse, this is boring. Make it crash or something. Perfectly level flying is the supreme challenge of the scale model pilot. Give me that! Hey! It's standing on us! I'm pedaling backwards!

A man that's shit! I don't like being outdoors, Smithers. The one thing, there are too many fat children. Martin and Ralph are an odd pairing. It has to be the first time they've ever talked to each other in the show. I don't think they would intersect. No, not at all. I think they just needed two fat children.

As Burns put it, yeah. So rude. It's quite rude. But, I mean, that's Mr. Burns for you. Yeah. I did really, like, I remembered that specific moment more than I remembered a lot of other stuff in this episode. The two of them in that paddle boat and how just strange that was. It's a little cute.

Well, Martin also has written often to have no friends. So if Ralph wants to hang out with him, who is he to turn him down? Ralph is low enough on the social ladder to be a Martin companion. But I really do enjoy the plane ricocheting off of Smithers' flat top. Such a good saying. It's a weird joke, but it's funny. It's very good. Yeah, and I also love that it really fits that Milhouse is the type of geek who would tell everybody,

like, no, having boring flying is the point of this scale model airplane i understand it though because i've tried to fly toy drones um before and i am terrible at it it is absolutely awful so i understood i recognized that desire when i watched it because mine just is bad news i was working in a nerdy tech office when those things started being created and brought into the market. And I'm like, get that thing away from me. I'm trying to write a preview that no one will read. My work is so important. Get it away from me.

The plane lands on top of this spooky house. And when they head over to the haunted house, I like the kids talking to each other. It's a very kid realistic scene. Very Sandlot-y. Oh yeah so uh i i like the reaction of that's the house i wrote that one down too they've all heard of the house where they put brains of zombies into other zombies to make super zombies but this is that house they've all heard of milhouse has a lot of crazy conspiracy theories. It's this, the reverse vampires. We're through the looking glass here, people.

And I have to point out, so I see this, I swear to God, I see this on Facebook every month, but it's like, nine ways Simpsons predicted the future. And I think I wrote even a parody of this because I hated it so much. But when Bart is ringing the intercom, the intercom kind of looks like an iPod. Kind of.

It does, yeah. I noticed that, the shape of it. But it's looks like an ipod kind of yeah i noticed that the shape of it but it's just like an arbitrary yeah it's a circle at a smaller it's a circle with a circle in it and a square on top but that article is like they they predicted the they predicted the ipod it's like no no no it's it's a square animator didn't want to draw the intricacies of a call box yes there's a lot of buttons on those i'm still still mad about this, by the way. But here's Bart and his success at the haunted house. Thanks a lot. Now it's stuck on that haunted house.

I heard a witch lives there. I heard a Frankenstein lives there. You guys are way off. It's a secret lab where they take the brains out of zombies and put them in the heads of other zombies to create a race of super zombies That's the house? Stand aside, wussies

Go away No children Enough talk that is not the way you spell success did bart jinx it by misspelling it maybe on the commentary david silverman compares this to a scene from Lupin the Third, though, which I appreciate. Oh, my God. That's right. He does.

He calls it Lupin Three, though. I always thought it was a hereditary thing because of Homer's SMRT. Oh, yeah. I mean, he's got that Simpson gene for failure. It's a really clever trick that they have. The first time you hear Belle's voice, that it's Tress McNeil basically doing her voice of Seymour Skinner's mom. It does sound like Agnes. Yeah.

And so it really goes into the witch thing. But then when you know the other side of it, that she's just trying to say like, you dumb kids get away from my burlesque house. You're scaring away the clients. It works on so many levels. Go bother the bordello it's also like don't don't come in here this is not for kids i feel like she's just you know giving them common courtesy warning yeah she's she's so great my love for this character is basically limitless it's a really cool gargoyle part breaks too and the little gag of the caterpillar walking on his fingers and a very funny cartoony moment. Belle's design. I love Belle's design.

It's so good. Especially with her cloak. It's so scary at first and then the way they're able to soften her while not really changing her design is really impressive on the animators. I love it. I believe they had a problem

trying to find a guest voice for her because they wanted older women to play this role, obviously, but no one wanted to play the proprietor of a burlesque house. An entrepreneur. Yes, that's right. Entrepreneurs. But Tress does a great job. It's so good.

She's, yeah, so wonderful. I think we've said this before, Bob, but how Tress McNeil, she often she has so much range, but she especially in animation, she kind of gets typecast or has to play the same roles. She doesn't get cast in these kind of guest star level roles like Belle. So she really gets to show

off her skills, including a song like in this character. That's right. And also in that Chanel dress up, she plays Marge's friend. That's right. Because they couldn't get Stalker Channing. I superstar stalker channing yes i wish they they'd have gotten her but yeah that was bill oakley had uh in our interview with him as long as i'm talking up our interviews all the time uh but he he mentioned that they just had kind of a problem with they would offer the roles to some prominent character actresses and for one reason or another

they just said no they just had bad luck so it's really hard i mean we're you know working on a show now and and i'm not really in that role on it but yeah finding finding voice people getting a hold of the ones that that you're looking for is uh i mean i would think it would be easier for a show like the simpsons because i feel like they had a pretty big reach and probably a decent budget, especially by this season. So I don't know. They said they're, the producers have said before they're in with a lot of people over 40 was men and women was that they just got, they said like, well, your kids love this show or your grandkids. So they'll think you're really cool if you do the Simpsons. Yeah. They, when I worked over at Hasbro, that was the thing about My Little Pony was that it's so easy to get voice actors

because everyone's kids love My Little Pony. So everyone wants to be cool for their kids. Bart is taken home for discipline. Just a minute! Hello? Your son was trespassing on my property and destroyed a very valuable stone gargoyle and...

Are you wearing a grocery bag? I have misplaced my pants. I'm not going to press charges, but I assume you'll want to punish him. Yeah, appreciate the suggestion, lady, but he hates that, and I gotta live with him. You're the man, Homer. Well, if you won't discipline him, I'll come back and speak with his mother.

No, wait, wait. Madam, I run a house of discipline. The boy will be disciplined and disciplined severely. Good day. Oh, I don't know how to punish you. What does Marge usually do? She makes me taste beer. Come on, boy, Give your old man a little

credit. Yeah, well, I still get to punish you. I totally forgot that she has a slight, maybe like a 10% southern twang in her voice. Just a little bit of a southern bell. You really have to focus in on it. It's not super overpowering, but I like it.

It adds a little bit to the character and her history. It's like someone who came from the South and then has moved to Springfield, you know, has been there for a long time, but there's still a little bit of the lilt. It's great. There's, there's so much to Belle that really flavors her character with so much

background that they don't have to address. You're like, did, has she always owned this, the, the Maison Derriere? Did she inherit it? Is,

is she a former performer who then bought the place? Like, what is her history? I'd love to know. See, I have always imagined, and especially since I have seen the movie in recent years, I now believe she's like a goth version of Dolly Parton in Best Little Whorehouse in Texas, which is one of my favorite movies. So there's definitely a lot of influence from that in this one. Yeah, I mean, most of the time, madams, women of the house used to work there and then they like inherit it and then they run the show. They're always so interesting. It doesn't feel like Christmas if I don't listen to the song Hard Candy Christmas. It doesn't feel right. I love that. I didn't see that movie for

years and years and years because the title put me off. And then I finally sat down maybe three or four years ago and watched it and was like, who's been keeping Dolly Parton from me? And then I watched nine to five and I was like, this is a work of genius. Why is that? I guess because of where I grew up in Canada, there was, you know, Dolly wasn't part of the oeuvre in the background. And it's nice to discover later in life. Dolly is the greatest.

I love Dolly Parton so much. I also love Bart's, she makes me taste beer. Like there's kind of a hopefulness to the line reading there. He wants beer and bras in this episode. He's really grown up too fast. He's curious at the very least. Bart gets sent to his job. Marge, Bart, and Homer all do damage to poor Belle's house.

Although I will say that Gargoyle is back on the house like the next time they show the house. Bart didn't need to work there that long to fix whatever he broke. He just wanted to be an employee, I think, after like two weeks. He's like, yeah, I'll do the right. And the reveal of the club where he thinks that he's going to be Dustin Doyily's and then he sees the nature of the club is a really fun reveal. I like just the animators, Dominic Pulcino and his team,

working overtime on just so many dance sequences and unique sequences of the burlesque performers. Yeah, so made a lot of different costumes. I did write down, one of the first things I wrote down was like, oh, there's a lot of racial diversity at this club. That's nice. Yeah, there really is. It's not just all the exact same uh you know model or character yeah that's

fun from uh from just even a uh time saving stance that they would go undiverse in shows like this they'd be like look we can draw the we can draw the same dancer the same white dancer and change your hair color or we could make a diverse group, which would take a lot more time. But they went with diverse sets. It didn't hit me really until I saw, until the end song, Spring and Spring. Me too, yeah.

But Princess Cashmere. There's so many characters and voices in this episode. They, I'm sure, had to stretch that budget just nearly till it snapped. 25 minutes before we started this interview, rewatched the steven universe episode mr greg one of my favorite episodes of cartoons ever and there is a whole series of butlers dancing it's the only musical episode um forgive me if i'm telling you something

you already know but they're all the exact same model like there's and i like it embraces that but it's also like working sort of in the industry and knowing the inside it's like oh well you had a full musical episode so you had no budget for animation that is true and we see more princess cashmere than we've ever seen before oh my yes more since it was it i kind of like that callback to the previous it wasn't really a burlesque episode it was more just about exotic dancers in general the uh i don't know that that last number was a burlesque number right yes in that i love a million girls yeah yeah that is a burlesque one i stand corrected and so it's cool that they brought

back uh the season one superstar princess cashmere for this episode too but when bart first sees the club i think this is uh bell has a very succinct description of burlesque. Wow, man, what is this place? I prefer not to be called man. My name is Belle, and this is the Maison Derriere. That means the back house.

Are you having a party or something? Non-stop. We're a burlesque house. A private club where a gentleman can play some cards and see a show. Miss Bell, we're about to do our around the world number, but Monte Carlo can't find her dice. There you go, darling. Normally we don't allow children in here, but your father was so insistent. He's tough, but fair. I'll start sorting these bras.

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Just glad to be on the team. So Bart is on board immediately. Oh, very much so. You know, I noticed again, if you ask animators to draw a heaving bosom, they're going for it. It's a cute moment there that Bart is just, he's ready to be on the team. And he then gets introduced to the idea of the old greet and toss. When you work the door, the main things are to greet the visitors and toss out the troublemakers. Oh, the old greet and toss. No problemo.

How did I ever get along without you? Is your name Bart? What the... Does your father know you're working here? It was his idea. In that case, I'll have a whiskey sour. That's so great. I forgot that there's more to the joke than him just walking out because that is the meme online.

When you don't want to be part of a conversation anymore or you don't like a topic, you will post that gif on Twitter or whatever. It's wild now going back and watching things that you saw so many years ago that exist in perpetuity and gifs and see them in context. It is strange. I think it feels very, very odd about it. Yeah, we have that in so many episodes where we're like, oh yeah, this is the meme and I forgot all about it. When we did steamed hams, I was like, oh, I forgot what the scenes were before and after steamed hams. And now there are shiting versions of this meme in which there are different characters walking out and a different person is the receptionist. They've done so much with it. Yeah.

And it's great acting by Dan there on Abe going like, blep. Is your name Bart? He's not totally sure if that's truly Barth there, but that he just accepts it and gets his whiskey sour is once he realizes. Yeah. Oh, sorry? I said it's a good drink. No, I haven't.

This makes me want to try a whiskey sour this episode. You'd like it, Henry. I enjoy, I mean, I enjoy fruity drinks, sure. It's pretty fruity. It's also, believe it or not, sour. Yeah, I was going to say, I wouldn't put that one in the fruity category. That is, so I quit drinking almost a month ago. And before I did that, I would specifically always ask bartenders if I didn't understand anything that was on the menu or didn't recognize anything i'd be like make me your most old man drink because i like things that are are savory and that you can like taste the booze and

that you know feel like i would be sipping them while talking about wartime um that has always been my favorite oh that's gin and aspirin it is yeah i know my most of my drinks i'm not a big drinker but most of my drinks need at least like one cup of sugar in it for me to enjoy it that's fair uh but the uh we then we then come back to marge and lisa scrubbing them rocks and again i already talked about how how it's useless in a different way but i their stance on the environmentalist here that they're just no fun because they're boring and they the real torture is having to watch environmentalist comedy i that's that's cute it's cute i want to try a kelp burger though yeah and in our modern age i eat hamburgers made out of everything weird so sign me up for kelp in In 96, that idea was insane.

You're being ridiculous, Bob. A kelp burger? Why don't you just sign up for kelp? Yeah, and now it's like, you know, I live in LA, and they'll make a burger out of any vegetable here. Pretty good ones. Oh, yeah. I've had good ones made out of sunflower seeds, believe it or not. Wow.

Yep. And meanwhile, Bart finds out that he's replacing Mel Zetz, which that's a great name. Even Homer knows about him. He's also, I guess because of his advanced age, very, very small. He's a small old man. I mean, he could be a little person that's always worked there. He could be. He broke a sip by getting out of bed too quickly.

That's a mood. An elderly little person. That seems like the perfect fit at a burlesque club, I would think. That he has a spinning bow tie. And it's also just great writing on the part of the show of Bart's classic burst belt style humor that wouldn't have to change since 1940. The nudist comedy stuff. And when people laugh at the first joke, he's just like,

okay, I don't get this. Yeah, he rolls with it so quickly. There's a bad bookkeeping joke I haven't heard. And yeah, and I love those jokes too because they're risque.

They're risque in the way that would make like people in 1918 go, oh my. I'm blushing. Homer is looking for Bart. It's 11 o'clock. Do you know where your children are?

I told you last night. No! Where is Bart anyway? His dinner's getting all cold and eaten. Bart, where are you? Come on! I have to be up at 6 a.m. to swipe Flanders newspaper. What the...

President Eisenhower celebrates 40th wedding anniversary. Not pictured Mrs. Eisenhower. I'm sorry. This is all my fault. Bart was filling in for... I don't care if he was filling in for Mel Zet. He's my son, and I don't want him working so late that... Oh, I agree. Kids need rules and boundaries.

Yes, everyone loves rules. It's so tough to be a parent these days. What with all the gangs and the drugs. Oh, yeah, drugs. You gotta have drugs. Hey, you didn't pay the cover. Oh, Bart, he's your father. We'll comp him tonight. Start a tab tomorrow.

You got to have drugs. Got to have drugs. I love Belle so much. She's quite an entrepreneur with that comp him tonight and start a tab. That's so great. She's played this game so many times. She can talk anybody into that place which i just love too she's a great like business woman really and i

mean you you have to be she's good at it it can be a tough line of work yeah well that oh man that fan dance animation on princess cashmere wow that is that was something salacious for 96 late night tv or prime time tv being very like titillated by this episode, even as a youth. And I guess this would predate my self-awareness about being very attracted to women. But it definitely, some check box got checked in my mind where I was like, this is all right. This is okay if this happens, like watching Lola Bunny in Space Jam. I was too young, but I knew. Well, I was 14 and it didn't take much, so.

Yeah. Yes. Well, and, you know, that's another credit to the animators on this, too, that, like, the Simpsons character designs for any gender are not intrinsically sexual or easy to sexualize. So finding a way to draw sexy ladies and also animate them in different dance routines, like that's, it's quite an accomplishment.

It's wild. They're just like boobs. There's just a bunch of boobs and they'll be, have tiny waists and otherwise they will look like every other Simpsons character. Is this it? I think this is it.

This works. But the costumes are great. They're really good. And I really enjoy the... So I love Principal Skinner. And I love this next scene with him because Skinner is the kind of guy who would think a stripper or a burlesque performer would be falling in love with him. Yes. He is that kind of guy.

Totally. Oh, also that just for stats purposes, if that was Eisenhower's 40th anniversary, that photo was taken in 1956. Wow. He married his wife in 1916, and they stayed married until his death in 1969. Wow. That was Mamie Eisenhower, who was not pictured there.

But yes, I want to hear Skinner. It's perfect casting for Skinner to be this guy. Oh, I hope I didn't miss the floor show. Nope. Is Roxanne back? Yep. Did she get my flowers? She did.

Hello, Bart. Hello, Principal Skinner. This is the National Air and Space Museum, isn't it? Oh, this isn't going to be about Jesus, is it? All things are about Jesus, Homer. Except this. Your son has been working in a burlesque house. Principal Skinner saw him with his own eyes.

That's true, but I was only in there to get directions on how to get away from there. Helen, as a responsible parent, I was already well aware of that. Homer, I'm as permissive as the next parent. I mean, just yesterday I let Todd buy some Red Hots with a cartoon devil on the box. But you can't possibly think it's appropriate for your 10-year-old son to work in a burlesque house. Oh, no?

Well, if Homer Simpson wants his 10-year-old son working in a burlesque house, then Homer Simpson's 10-year-old son is going to work in a burlesque house. That's the... Hi! Now, Marge, you're going to hear a lot of crazy talk about Bart working in a burlesque house. It's a great act break. And also, Skinner should have bought Bart's silence. He's giving himself away, which we'll see later.

Yeah, that's true. He would learn later to buy his silence in a future episode. What's going to happen with Roxanne? Yeah, it's true. It's Splitsville. I love that so much. It's like, yeah, he's the guy who now would be like, reply to all of your tweets and say that you were very good friends,

even if you had him muted. It's great yeah it's he's the guy now i think who would be replying to way too many porn stars on twitter oh yeah and just being like lovely gorgeous great pic eye emoji uh it it was good to cast skinner in it though too because he's not there is a certain sweetness or at least like naivete to it that he uh that you wouldn't get from if it was say I don't know Dr. Nick Riviera or Lionel Hutz when Bart is just enjoying confronting Skinner about it the way Bart says nope like it's so he has the upper hand it's so great. I also often have Homer's reaction if I see religious people, like, this isn't about Jesus, is it?

But everything is about Jesus. Except this. We used to, back when I lived in Nova Scotia, on our mailbox, we had written, no flyers, please, beware of cat, praise lucifer and the reason it said praise lucifer was because i meant to write hail satan because i only had one s left but then i put a p on it and was like oh i gotta put praise and i was like i only have one s i can't do satan i can't do all these different things but i went inside and asked my roommate so i was like what's another word for satan that doesn't have an s in it and like without missing a beat my room is was like, Lucifer, obviously. It's like,

great. Thanks. And ran back out to the mailbox. Anyway, it kept a lot of well-wishers at bay. Man, I am going to, I need to steal that.

That's a good idea. I really need one of those. When I moved to a new apartment, I don't know, eight years ago, it was a terrible day. Moving always sucks. And I finally get all the stuff in. I'm just sitting down having like a beer or something.

There's a knock at my door and it's two Jehovah's Witnesses. And I open the door and I only say, this is the wrong day. And I close it. It was the worst possible time. I feel like when they see me, they know it's a lost cause. Like I'm covered in tattoos. I have a pink mohawk. There's just gay art all over my walls.

You're not getting through this. You can try. Good luck, buddy. Jehovah's Witnesses on moving day, I think that would be the only time I would be like, just truly rude to them. I'd be like, you know what? I'm not even going to be, I'm not pretending here. It's just- And I was. I would say I was more curt. Yeah. Not more curt than rude. My grandmother was Mormon and her experience that my mom used to tell me about was that Jehovah's Witnesses would sneak out because they would come to her door, and she would invite them in for snacks and keep them there, asking them questions for so long that they would be like—

She told me a story about one time them being like, oh, can we get some more cookies? And she went to the fridge and they like snuck out. Not like this. Not like this. And, you know, when I worked at a cashier job at a movie theater, I met parents like Ned who, it wasn't about Red Hots and a cartoon devil on it. It was about selling Harry Potter jelly beans to kids.

Like I had at least two parents. They were just like, we don't, we don't take that. This was in Northern Florida, just to give you an idea of the area. But yeah, that's the gateway drug to just full on blood orgies and animal mutilations.

If only, if only Harry Potter opened it up to that. Yeah. Now that Marge knows about the burlesque house, she really just, she shows up covered in oil and then she immediately turns like, nope, not, and now I am, I am the prudish Marge who censors, whoed into that sometimes by writers who just want to make her like, not that there aren't white ladies who want to take away people's fun, but I feel bad that it has to happen to Marge. It's very strange because it seems like

a role that's so obviously filled by Ned's wife. But it's not because I think maybe the stakes then wouldn't be too high or maybe they didn't want to morally put marge on the side of the burlesque house for a lot of different reasons i i wonder if you know in every draft of the script it was always marge or if they were like this is the only way we can

get away with it is if we are condemning this action by one of our main characters because you never know yeah the s&p has has a lot of uh input on stuff like this i think the problem is marge has to become the villain in act three alone and that's not enough time to develop why she's against this and i feel like if this was more developed and maybe marge could be conflicted and there could be a different villain that would be great but i i think it was the easy out to choose marge as the prude but i do like this episode but this is not the kind of marge i like to see no i agree i definitely don't think she is that prudish and sex negative and and all that kind of stuff i think she's the kind of person that's like oh i don't i don't want to talk about that we don't we don't

talk about that in this house maybe that is the unsaid thing but she's definitely not the you know i'm gonna take a bulldozer to this yeah. Though this is before Marge is like awakening as an exhibitionist in a couple seasons. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. Scandalous episode. Weird.

But here's when Marge confronts Belle which I again great just Tress McNeil so good here. I have a favor to ask. Please shut this place down

and move away from Springfield. Oh honey you can't be serious. Springfield doesn't want places like this. I think I away from Springfield. Oh, honey, you can't be serious. Springfield doesn't want places like this. I think I know what Springfield wants, sugar. Oh? I've lived in this town for 37 years.

I've lived here 52 years. I'm third generation. Six. Get out of my town! Listen, darling, we're just as much a part of Springfield as the church, the library, or the crazy house. So I think I'll stay right here, neighbor. Is that so?

Well, sleazy entertainment and raunchy jokes will never be as popular as sobriety and self-denial. You're about to learn the two most dangerous words in the English language are Marge Simpson. It's a light pink 87 wagon. The Valley joke is so L.A. I love it. Oh, yeah, it really is. Wow, I didn't think of it that way. This is getting super nerdy, but that's what our show is for.

This is the first time they're pinning an age on Marge since... So, Life in the Fast Lane,lane season one it was her 34th birthday yeah that's right I don't think another age was named for her until this episode so Homer just wait Marge was 34 and she had a 10 year old kid yeah yeah I guess that wasn't that strange it feels

strange now because everyone I know is like turning 30 and just starting to think about kids it's weird if you go back to the Simpsons timeline there's between 8 to 10 years in which Homer and Marge is like turning 30 and just starting to think about kids. It's weird. If you go back to The Simpsons timeline, there's between eight to 10 years in which Homer and Marge are out of high school with no kids, but together. There's like almost a decade of time. So yeah, she'd be, I guess, having Bart at 27.

It's kind of a slight, well, because they graduated in 74. Bart is born in 1980. Well, we can't acknowledge those years anymore. It's been way too long. But this is the first time they've said her age. I'm pretty sure it's the first time she's said her age since her birthday in season one. And they recently aged up Homer to 39 in this or last season.

It was very recently. I forget the episode. I think it was a very recent one we did. We've done a lot of these all out of order and uh and well and also dating it that it's an 87 wagon which in 96 that's an old car now it's like no 87 car runs i would think i would hope not we go to the town hall which i love the double awe like first that they hear that they can't get a super train to aruba and then the set and then when they hear that they have to hear from the moral committee they just go it's the same animation and same sound just awe again the first thing that uh

cohen said because we were watching it together was uh these town halls are really well attended everybody turns up for these town hall meetings. Not a lot going on in Springfield. If you go into public access and watch who actually shows up at your town hall meetings, they're empty except for like three cranks who show up to air their personal grievances with like specific officials.

No, it's more realistic in the town halls in say Parks and Recreation, which... Oh yeah. Yes, those are so good. I love that. That's when the show feels the most Simpsons-y, like when Pawnee feels like a Springfield. Especially when Mike Scully's there in the audience.

But, oh, sorry, yes. The Marge is confronting the town hall. Next on the agenda is the Citizens Committee on Moral Hygiene. Aww. The agenda is the Citizens Committee on Moral Hygiene. I'm here to share my moral outrage. But this time it's not about that giant inflatable Dos Equis bottle. It's about a certain house in our town. What's wrong with this house? Is it the plumbing?

No. It's a house of ill fame. A house of loose ethics. Is there a building code violation? A drainage issue? A surveying error? The house is perfectly fine. Well, then quit bad mouthing the house. Yeah, leave the house alone.

Jeez, it's what's inside the house that's disgraceful. Drinking, gambling, and debauchery. I forgot how long that runner goes without taking her very literally, asking what's wrong with the house. So funny. I thought, for some reason, I remember it just being one joke, but then it keeps going on, and I love Otto's like,

quit bagging on the house. Oh, right, sorry. Wiggin was quit bagging on the house. I'm sorry. I also wrote that one down as one of my favorite jokes. It's so good. Well, they won't let her finish her obvious. They won't let her finish her obvious setup of like,

no, there's this house in town. What's wrong with it? Like, let me speak. I love her. I love the quote, a secret house of burlesque. Yeah, they all just go, there's such a great gasp on the house of burlesque. And we haven't seen much more from Eugene and Rusty.

They're great one-time appearances here, Eugene. The one-off club. They live with Dr. Spyro, Hugh Jazz, all my favorites. They're the local perverts. Their nervous laughter is great, too. Actually, yes. But who does visit this burlesque house? Oh, yes.

Let us give no more scrutiny to this bawdy house and its small clientele of loyal perverts. Oh, I'm afraid this problem goes far beyond Eugene and Rusty. Marge, if you please. Julius! Clancy! Skinner! Seymour!

Mother! Patty! Clancy! Skinner! Seymour! Mother! Patty! Cletus! Oh, uh, Barney! Clancy! Hey, come on, you did me twice! Smithies? My parents insisted I give it a try, sir.

Mayor Quimby! Ah, well, there could be any mayor. I rest my case. Er, uh, well, in light of these new facts, of which I now realize I was largely aware, I must take action. It's very, very sweet how Mo feels the need

to step in and be the one person to care about Barney. Barney has nobody. Nobody cares what Barney does. That is nice. I wrote down in all caps patty's gay yeah that was uh to that point that was their most overt patty is a lesbian thing they've done in the show yeah it was one thing that like i i wrote down earlier in the episode was though this is the thing that's wrong about this burlesque house is there's no women in the audience because that's what makes clubs like that sleazy is when there's no women and

that's when they get gross. Not all the time, but that's the generalization, but it does help the ambiance. Anyway, I was very thrilled with that. And it was like two overt gay references in a row. Cause it's her and then Smithers.

Wild. Yeah. I, I like to that bell. It shows that bell is open-minded. Like she's not turning away Patty for wanting to go there. I. Wild. I like, too, that Belle, it shows that Belle is open-minded. Like, she's not turning away Patty for wanting to go there. I like that. And it would still be, I think, another 10 years before Patty comes out in the show.

I think it was like 2004, 2005. Did she actually? Yes. She did, yeah. Oh, wow. I didn't know that. That was long after I stopped watching. That's fun.

Yeah. Oh, wow. I didn't know that. That was long after I stopped watching. That's fun. Yeah, there was the episode Homer becomes an officiant of the briefly legal in Springfield gay weddings. And Marge is not approving of that. Again, Marge becomes kind of approved in that one, too. And that's when she finds out that her sister wants to get married as well. And, you know, sometimes you can bag on newer Simpsons. And actually, that one isn't even newer anymore it's like 10 years old but there's a really funny scene in it where marge is remembering all the things that were like oh that she remembers now they're like oh that's patty's gay i'd never realized it like them playing with different toys or patty doing more

butch things as a kid but then the third one is Marge is looking at like a Sleepless in Seattle movie poster. And you think it's about to cut to the joke is going to be that Patty is looking at some sort of lesbian movie poster. Instead, it cuts to Patty making out with a woman. Oh, that's great. It's a great, I love that joke. That was like one of my most like laugh out loud jokes of a Latter-day Simpsons I've seen. At what point in the chronology is the rainbow construction worker guy? Oh, that's this season. Yeah, coming up at the end, I think.

Oh, right. Yes, I did look through that. And then is that the same one with John Waters? Yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Okay. All right.

I remember this a little bit. Yeah. No, I also love that episode i can't wait for us to do that episode it was that construction worker especially one of the first non-binary people i worked with they just loved that character so much because they're like he he's this big tough construction guy but who's just having more all this like femme femme fun in it he works and he plays hard yeah and i have to wonder if Jasper was talking about the sex cauldron. Is that the bordello?

That's the bordello. The sex cauldron. This is when they really leaned into the idea that Quimby always wears his mayor sash. Just all the time. People have to know he's the mayor, even when he's at the secret burlesque house. Once they've

decided they're gonna be an angry mob i i gotta say in today's climate climate the angry mob is a little less funny to me now even though they're an apolitic well they're not apolitical but they're they're not as hateful and angry mob as other mobs can be the simpsons mobs are more like old timey frankenstein mobs yeah like pitchforks and torches and all that stuff. So the mob arrives. Oh, there's no justice like angry mob justice. I'm going to burn all the historic memorabilia. I'm going to take me home a toilet.

Der da better be too. Who is it? It's an angry mob, ma'am. Could you step outside for a twinkle while we knock down your house? Just a minute. Stand aside, you degenerate two-bit proprietress. Don't you call me that. I'm an entrepreneur. Oh, shut up. You're wasting valuable smashing time.

This was the first time I got the proprietress entrepreneurs joke. She's not offended by being called two-bit. It's that you didn't call her an entrepreneur. She's proud of her two-bitness. She earned it. She worked her way up. It's true. She is rightfully proud.

And it's a great scene of Belle and then her being flanked by her performers walking out like it's uh they they have a lot of like power and they're not feeling shame at all or anything it's a good face-off scene yeah yeah i do really like that i like that she's not like oh you're right i've seen the arrow of my ways she's like you know get off my lawn my lawn. Yeah. You're on my property. Leave me alone. And they have one more quick clip here. I love Homer. Homer realizes the importance of emphasis.

My friend, stop! Please hurry. Sure. We could tear this house down. No! My friend, stop stop let me finish we could tear it down but we'd be tearing down a part of ourselves and then we get the amazing we put the spring in springfield song and one of the best songs from the show i monorail i think i have think. I have to say, after much thought, I really like See My Vest. But See My Vest could not exist without Be Our Guest.

This song is wholly original, and that's why I think I like it the best. And it also won an Emmy, written by Ken Keeler, this song. Oh, really? It deserves it. It's so funny, the use of the sound effects, the quick cuts towards the end of it. This is definitely one of the sort of cornerstones that made me want to write songs in animation and write musical episodes of things. 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 hope at electric Ireland. I, I, it was such a delight to watch it again and remember how much I loved it. Yeah. I believe this episode won two Emmys for music, one for best original song and then another for the incidental music that

plays throughout. So maybe it was submitted for both. You could close down Moe's or the Quickie Mart and nobody would care but the heart and soul of Springfield's in our Maison Derriere. We're the sauce on your steak We're the cheese in your cake We put the spring in Springfield We're the lace on the nightgown The point after touchdown

Yes, we put the spring in Springfield We're that little extra spice That makes existence extra nice A giddy little thrill at a reasonable price Our only major quarrel's with your total lack of morals Our skimpy costumes ain't so bad They seem to entertain you dead The gin in your martini The clams on your linguine

Yes, we keep the in Springfield We remember our first visit The service was exquisite Why, Joseph, I had no idea Come on now, you were working here Without it, we'd have had no fun Since March of 1961 To shut them down now would be twisted. We just heard this place existed. We're the highlights of your hairdo. The extra arms on Vishnu. So don't take us.

We won't take the... Yes, let's be the... In-Spring-B! Yeah, it's great. I mean, so many great rhymes, so many characters are worked in, and again, it's two and a half minutes long as well. Yeah, the ragtime stylings of it are so fun, especially when the band just walks out.

They make it work in a diegetic sort of way, but then also they'll do even better jokes after that of like it was just a spontaneous song we can't just do it again i do like those jokes at the end but yeah this is one i catch myself singing in the shower a lot like if i have to go to a simpsons song in my brain it will be this song and i know i mean i should know the lyrics by now but of course i do it was really funny because we watched it last night and then today i was working on a script at work where someone was using a bow and arrow and I could not stop thinking about the guy holding it. Please hurry. And I was like, I have to work this in somehow.

Per Hans Molden. Poor guy. Yes. Oh, he's great. This was my favorite part of the episode. This is the thing I love about it more than anything. It is so wild. I mean, especially for a cartoon that I saw when I was little that was so positive about this environment and about the burlesque house and it was everyone going yeah actually these fun sexy shows are great and the bullies with uh we just heard this place existed and their nice little barber barbershop trio is so good yeah it was a pre-internet porn era then too so they were like this So they had few other options. I also wish we saw more of Lovejoy's dad.

I don't think we've ever seen Reverend Lovejoy's father since this scene. He's just been there ever since. He lives there. He hasn't left. I watched it, and it also hit home, I think, especially because, you know, I would watch and rewatch and rewatch these episodes. So I came from Halifax, Nova Scotia is where I used to live before I moved to Burbank, California. And we had one strip club in the entirety of the Halifax Regional Municipality that Ralph's. It was called Ralph's.

It may still be called Ralph's. And it was not close to anything. And several times throughout my life you know because we lived there from when i was 10 until i was 26 other clubs tried to open and got shut down by basically the the morals squad if they were anywhere and it was always the excuse of oh it's so close to a school oh it's so close to this we can't have this it was very strange for a town that liked to think of itself as being sort of liberal and progressive in a lot of ways and we had five universities you know so but so i definitely recognized a lot of my

hometown in in the way that they react to this place that that reminds me of uh where i grew up in jacksonville florida was almost like there were not there were maybe a couple strip clubs but there was one this gay bar and it was barely able to stay open on the outside of town like it constantly was in danger of they carted you like four times at that place just because they're like we got to be sure like but they said we had one like that too and it moved locations and i don't know i haven't lived there for almost three years now so a lot has changed But so many places have closed down. But yeah, the one gay bar, they would. You'd have to bring like at least two pieces of photo ID and something else to get in.

It was very strange. And I also think in the song, it's really sweet that Quimby married a performer there, I think. That's right. That's where Jackie Onassis Quimby comes from. Yes. Yeah. And last thing about the performance of this song, it's that they pulled this off on a TV budget. Like this is like a Disney,

well, with the number of performers and characters in the scene, it's like a Beauty and the Beast type sequence. Yeah, it's very complex staging. Lots of people doing lots of different things. It's very impressive. And I would think Dominic Pulcino worked out this muscle just

as often when he was like the series director on Family Guy as well because Family Guy had even more musical sequences than The Simpsons. So when the song ends, we get another very cute we talked about before, but it's just, God, it's so funny when they comment on how unnatural the song

is and how they just let it go. Well, I'm convinced the house stays. This house is a very, very, very fine house. Here I come, everybody! What are you doing, Marge? Didn't you hear the song? No, I had to go rest the bulldozer. Well, we all changed our minds.

Yeah, now we love the house. What about the sleaze and the depravity? It was a very convincing song, Marge. Mm-hmm, there were kicks and everything. Can you sing it again? I'm sorry, it really was one of those spur-of-the-moment type things. Well, I also have a song to sing. Don't make up your mind until you hear both songs.

Morals and ethics and carnal forbearance. Sorry. The Hans Mollman arrow joke is funny with how late it shows up and how it almost kills Marge. But it's also funny because it would have been perfect if it happened in the song when all the boings were happening at the end. But it happens like a minute after the song is over. He was still holding it. Yeah. He had his chance to fire it during the song.

I get that one little clip that Marge sings stuck in my head to this day every once in a while. Moral forbearance or carnal forbearance. Morals and ethics and carnal forbearance. It's just such a well strung together series of sounds. It sounds like she's going for a parody of These Are A Few Of My Favorite Things. I think so too. You know, I don't agree with Marge, but I want to hear her song.

Exactly. You have to hear both songs. You got to hear both songs. Love Joy's Very, Very Fairly Fine House Thing. that is obviously a quote from the crosby stills nash and young song too just to get one little extra reference in this episode we don't need all those varies but i will say like even on watching this one though there are obviously references galore in it it's an episode that sort of still stands on its own. And that is the one thing that, you know, not to disparage people who like what The Simpsons is now, that was part

of why I fell off is it just became so topical that I would watch it thinking like, this isn't going to be funny in even like six months, you know, and stuff like this, the earlier seasons, why I love them so much is that even though there are a lot of references, it still really really funny even if you don't get all of them and that's that's an art i think yeah we've been doing this show for over three years now and i could say henry i don't know if you agree with me oakley and weinstein were not as into super referential humor as they were into storytelling i think merkin and algin and mike reese i remember just doing a lot more work in terms of digging up youtube clips looking up the stories behind things well and like in say a merkin in season five or six you just be like you know it'd be funny if we just redid a scene from big or free willy and

then do a funny spin on it or rear window or rear window uh but in the sims in these seasons they if they get specific it's a character talking about something. They earn the specificity of a reference and they're not just going by, do you remember this thing? And there's a real timelessness, I think, too, to the burlesque concept as well that makes this work in 96 or 2018. Yeah. And I think it is, you know, to lean so much on references is a crutch that I had to get over when I started writing because it's like, oh, this thing is funny. And I think it's funny. And if I include it, the people who read it will think it's funny. But, you know, you sort of

realize, well, that's no reflection on my ability whatsoever. I'm literally just like paying it forward, like moving the piece across the board. So I think that there are definitely places for it. And there are some great ones in here. But I do appreciate the earlier Simpsons has a lot of things that just, yeah, they're just funny because they're funny. Well, this is a funny ending here. This is a really cute little close to the episode, I think. Thanks a lot, Marge. That was our only burlesque house. I do love it when you drop by, Marge.

Next time, why don't we get together at your house? I'm so sorry. How can we ever make this up to you? Oh, there's a way, Mom. So, Twiggy, I hear you and your husband Woody just had a baby. What did you name him? Chip.

Take it off! All right, Dad, you've been warned. Let's go. Hey. Come on. Easy. I love it. I love that it didn't end up with Marge having to be a burlesque dancer.

I like the left turn on that. It's great. That was great. They gave her a puppet version of herself, too. It's a cute puppet. Yeah. Who made that? Whose name's Twiggy.

I like that name. Twiggy is cute. You know, a raunchier show, a lesser show, a show called Family Guy might have just made Marge a dancer there and a performer, which, you know, there's jokes to be made with that. But that also feels like a kind of like married with children kind of ending would have made her a performer. Yeah, I'm really glad they did what they did and i love that you know homer's the heckler getting kicked out it's a great it's just a great circle

comes around it's it's very satisfying her humiliation is much more fun this way yeah and and it's cute that i feel like when homer's saying take it off he means just like take the puppet off of your hand take that puppet off I just assume he wants Marge to get naked. Yeah. I think it's more of that element. And also, though, I like that Bart doesn't cotton to that kind of harassment at the club. He's kicking Homer out of there. He gets the bum's rush.

He does. You got to treat the dancers as well. That's true. Yeah. So what a great episode. And then it goes out on an instrumental version of Spring in Springfield which it just shows how great the

instrumentality of it is even beneath the lyrics and we heard that a lot at Universal Studios yeah they played a lot in the speakers there in Springfield it's

they have a very particular set of music a very fun fact is that the Harry Potter area of the theme park only plays the soundtrack I think from Prisoner of Azkaban oh so you pretty much only hear those songs it is area of the theme park only plays the soundtrack, I think, from Prisoner of Azkaban.

So you pretty much only hear those songs. It is one of the better soundtracks. Oh, so this is for almost no one listening, but I went to the One Piece amusement park in Tokyo Tower, and on one floor, which is where most of the stuff is, one song plays.

Only one song, and it plays forever. Well, if you go to the minions area of the universal park i'm pretty sure they only play happy uh over and over and over i would lose it that's like ironic punishment or some other like three other pharrell songs and then that again it's not great kate wrapping up like what's your final thoughts on bart after dark i definitely think this is one of my favorites I had you know it was fun to go back and look at this season when you sort of sent me a list of the episodes and remember because when you you know grow up with something on syndication it's just

sort of part of your DNA eventually it's the thing you watched when you got home from school every day and that's what The Simpsons was for me for so long. It was on at five o'clock, you know, watch it before dinner. Yeah, I just I just really like it. I like the episodes like this that are sort of centered around these these different characters. I don't know. It's just it's a good one. I don't have I don't have much more elaborate things to say. I think everyone should watch Festival of Horror House in Texas. And this episode, you know, you mentioned the syndication version, Actually, were there any jokes in this one that you hadn't seen before because you'd seen it in syndication and they sometimes cut stuff out for that? No, because strangely enough, I don't think they were as edited in Canada.

Ah. There's weird things that were, like watching the dub of Sailor Moon that was, you know, crazily edited but i don't think this the simpsons was necessarily i mean there might be stuff that i have no idea about but there wasn't anything here that i was like oh i don't remember that they're leaving money on the table in canada gotta sell ads i want to put in more commercials as for me i thought uh i like this episode a lot but uh act three is the real fireworks factory because it has all the best jokes. The town hall scene is so good and it has the song.

So I'm just sort of waiting for it to get there. So maybe that's why. I did. I did write down a thing in my notes because Cohen said it while we were watching and he was like, let me get a check. And we paused it and he was like, all right, five minutes, 26 seconds. And the plot is finally starting. It's a short act three, but there's so much crammed in there. And again, Emmy award winning song for a reason., but there's so much crammed in there. And again,

Emmy award winning song for a reason. I think it's the best Simpsons song. Argue with me if you disagree online. And this episode, 22 years ago, I think way ahead

of its time on sex positivity and like... Yeah. I think that's a really big part of it for me too because I'm a very sex positive person.

I think people should be able to do whatever they want for a living and legally and not be persecuted for it. And I think it's really strange that The Simpsons, which, you know, a lot of stuff from it has not aged super well. I mean, even a poop popping up in this episode with this Vishnu joke, I was like, Oh, God, this is weird now. But that is is strangely forward thinking so kate before you go can you talk about where we can find you how we can help you uh what what you've done that we can look at

right now well yeah um so if you are into comics you can find uh spell on wheels volume one is out from dark horse it came out last summer i am currently chipping away at volume two which will probably be coming start to come out later this year and next year. They haven't fully announced it yet, but whatever. And Hellcat has three volumes. That's really fun. Next week is the first of the Mysticons graphic novels that I wrote that's coming out. Mysticons is a show that's airing on Nick in America and YTV in Canada. I think it's a nelvana production it's magical girls um but with a very heavy dnd bent to it it's really fun cool and yeah so the first one of those i think comes out august 15th if you live in or around new york i'm gonna be at flame con which is a

gay comic con in times square it's gonna be really awesome this is my third year going and it is always the best convention of the year so that is the the weekend of August 18th. And then keep an eye on my Twitter around September 1st. There might be some information coming out September 1st or 2nd. And yeah, I'll be at SPX in Maryland in September, but not officially. I'm just wandering around. But I will have my Simpo Friends zine. I'm putting it together. I'm going to sell it online, but not in great quantities because I don't want to get sued. What we're doing is highly illegal. Yeah, we get away with it. It's fine. But yeah, you can find all of my stuff at kateleth.com. And if that is not updated well enough, I'm caitleth on twitter caitleth on instagram yeah well thank you so much kate for your time and doing this yeah thanks for joining

us thank you this is great it is it is a very fun episode oh also if you like listening to me talk i do bi-weekly fashion updates for the buffering the vampire slayer podcast which is an episode by episode podcast breakdown fun time about buffy the vampire slayer so uh and i'm also full episode guest at least once a season so yeah thank you again to kate for being our very special guest on this episode and check out all of her stuff she's got a lot of stuff my god we had a lot of stuff she's got a ton of stuff amazing how much stuff she's got going on and her work is great like her comics especially know, I'm an old school Marvel fan. So Hellcat, or it's Patsy Walker, a.k.a. Hellcat, that she did with Brittany Williams.

Such a fun comic, such a, like, probably the queerest comic Marvel's ever done. Brittany and Kate did an amazing job at that. So thank you so much for listening, folks. This has been Talking Simpsons. I've been one of your hosts, Bobkey and we are supported by patreon so if you go to patreon.com slash talking Simpsons you can find out how to help the show at the five dollar level we have so much bonus content going on there like exclusive series like talking Futurama and talking critic exclusive interviews with so many Simpsons writers and directors and artists and also our monthly community podcast season wrap-ups deleted scenes specials there's so much going on there at the $5 level.

And if you sign up now, there's going to be so many podcasts you've never heard before. And it's so easy to listen to all of them on your podcast device of choosing. Henry, what are two of the most recent things we've done that people should check out on the Patreon that we're both super excited about? Well, there is a new interview going up at the end of this week that I don't want to spoil for listeners. But it's a really, really good one. Folks should definitely listen to that one with a Simpsons writer who doesn't give a lot of interviews, and we learned a lot of really cool stuff. It's a big sclusi. And you should also listen to our Disenchantment review, which was also on the free feed of What a Cartoon.

But if you want to know before it comes out if the new Netflix series from Matt Groening and Josh Weinstein and Bill Oakley is any good, me and Bob, we really enjoyed it. And if you'd like to hear more specifics on why we enjoyed it, listen to that. Yeah, that's actually part of our What a Cartoon podcast where we cover a different cartoon from a different series every week. And if you want to jump over to the What a Cartoon podcast to check out that disenchantment review, you can also also subscribe to it and even more of us talk about cartoons and we know you like that you have to you're listening this far into our plug section you have you have some attachment to us am i right so yes again that is patreon.com slash talking simpsons as for me i'm bob you all know that and my other podcast is retronauts it's a classic gaming podcast i've been doing that since uh well it's been going on since 2006 i've been doing it since 2011 so if you go to retronauts. It's a classic gaming podcast. I've been doing that since, well, it's been going on since 2006. I've been doing it since 2011. So if you go to

retronauts.com or look for Retronauts in your podcast machine, you can find, I don't know, 400 episodes. We've done so many. Just find a topic that interests you and then download the episode. And if you like it, subscribe or give us money. I get money from that too. It's crazy. The internet's nuts. Henry. I am H-E-N-E-R-E-Y-G on Twitter. You can follow me there for updates on this Patreon and all the cool stuff that we do on Talking Simpsons and What a Cartoon. And you can find my spicy thoughts on political things as well. So follow me, H-E-N-E-R-E-Y-G. Thank you so much for listening, folks.

We'll see you next week for a Millhouse Divided. I'm flying on my peach tree.