Talking Simpsons - Talking Simpsons - Bart Gets an Elephant With Andrew Jupin

Episode Date: July 30, 2025

"You never know when an old calendar might come in handy. Sure, it's not 1985 right now, but who knows what tomorrow will bring?" - Homer Simpson In this spiritual sequel to Lisa's Pony, Bart forces K...BBL's hand and wins a much larger herbivore: an elephant named Stampy. And as the giant beast slowly gets over the impulse to shove Bart in his mouth, we learn that some animals are just jerks. Our guest: Andrew Jupin from We Hate Movies Support this podcast and get over 200 ad-free bonus episodes by visiting Patreon.com/TalkingSimpsons and becoming a patron! And please follow the official Twitter, @TalkSimpsonsPod, not to mention Bluesky and Instagram!

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Starting point is 00:00:00 This podcast is brought to you by patreon.com slash talking simpsons head there to check out exclusive podcasts like talking Futurama, talk king of the hill, the what a cartoon movie podcast and tons more. I hardly endorse this event or product. Ahoi hoi everybody and welcome to Talking Simpsons, the podcast with three distinct varieties of inane chatter. I'm one of your hosts, a man whose ivory supplies are low, Bob Mackie, and this is our chronological exploration of the Simpsons. Who is here with me today as always? KBBL is going to give me something stupid!
Starting point is 00:00:48 I mean Henry Gilbert! And who is our special guest on the line? And I'm the saxophonist for the White Girls Jazz Quartet, Andrew Jupin! And this week's episode is Bart Gets an Elephant. Hehehehe, Jazam. Stop remembering TV and get back to work! It is work, Marge. This episode originally aired on March 31st, 1994, and as always, Henry will tell us what
Starting point is 00:01:11 happened on this mythical day in real world history. GASP! Oh my god! Final Fantasy VI is released in Japan for the Super Famicom, Madonna swears a whole bunch when being interviewed by David Letterman, and Major League Two defeats Mighty Ducks Two at the cinemas. It's a Sheen versus Estevez box office battle. Now, Andrew, I know you folks covered Major League One. How do you feel about Two? Because I miss both of these movies entirely. Oh, Two's weird because it's
Starting point is 00:01:42 a classic case of like, they waited way too long to do it, so everybody's like, not everybody, but a lot of them are sort of unbelievably old to still be playing baseball. And the thing that I like about the first one is like they lose and it's whatever. I believe in the second one if I remember it right, like they go all the way and it's like,
Starting point is 00:01:59 get out of here with that. But still, you know, not without its fair share of laughs. Although I would wager a good chunk probably don't hold up by 2025 eyes and ears, but you know, what does? When it came to early 90s Sheen comedies, I was more a fan of Hotshots. Oh yeah, oh. Those hold up.
Starting point is 00:02:17 Yeah, superior property. As I recall too, I think Major League, was it Major League one to two, the R-rated to PG-13 shift or was were they both PG-13 now? Remember like the Major League was a little dirtier with like nudity and stuff. I think but yeah, I don't remember if it got the classic Rating softening for the sequel. I wouldn't be surprised though, but I do remember like the plot of Major League two was like success spoiled everybody and like instead of like losers who become winners
Starting point is 00:02:49 It's like well now wild thing became a sellout or yeah the voodoo guy or no the whatever He had converted into like Christianity. I think like they all have to like get their groove back for for the movie, right? Right, right. Yeah, they got gotta learn how to be slimeballs again. Also, Major League Two, PG. Oh. Well, and Major League R, that is a leap I was not aware of. Are we even saying shit in Major League Two?
Starting point is 00:03:18 I really wanna know. With that PG rating, probably not. I mean, you maybe get one. And he beat his brother, Emilio Estevez, who's I think barely in Mighty Ducks 2. Now, strangely enough, the Mighty Ducks 2 is going for a title parody, because the full title is D2, the Mighty Ducks.
Starting point is 00:03:36 So I feel like they're about three years late to a Terminator 2 parody. Right. Yep. And I think, Henry, you might be thinking of part three that he's barely in. Part two, he's still kind of part three that he's barely in. Part two, he's still kind of around a lot with the coaching. Okay. All right. Well, I mean, audience spoke. They wanted more Charlie than Emilio. That's
Starting point is 00:03:54 how it worked out. And I mean, especially you seem, Andrew, like a Letterman viewer at the time. Do you remember Madonna's appearance on it? It got parodied on the critic as well. Yeah, oh, I remember that happening. I remember like Entertainment Tonight kind of going crazy about it and the reporting. I didn't see it. I was kind of like dabbling in Letterman at the time because my mother's sister was a huge fan and anytime I would like go on vacation with them or whatever it was like Letterman all the time. So I was like a weird young kid oddly into David Letterman, but did not see it live, but Letterman all the time. So I was like a weird young kid, oddly into David Letterman, but did not see it live, but those clips are crazy.
Starting point is 00:04:29 It's one of his, you know, wilder guest spots for his shows. If you look it up on YouTube, somebody uploaded what seems to be an international airing of it, where it's not bleeped, so you can hear, you can hear Madonna say, you're a sick fuck, I don't know why I get so much sick. You know what, and then the next year, I look this up, the next year,
Starting point is 00:04:47 that's when Drew Barrymore dances on his desk and flashes him, these poor women cannot leave innocent David Letterman alone. He's never done anything untowards to a woman in his life. Oh man, at what, and then the next year, he gets a lap dance from Elizabeth Berkley, right? Is that happening? That sounds about right if it's for the promotion
Starting point is 00:05:05 of Showgirls. Right, oh right, yeah. Not really a saved by the bell appearance probably. And yeah, Final Fantasy VI will be released in the US the following October as Final Fantasy III as nerds know. Yes, just replayed it last year because I went to Midwest Gaming Classic, did a little panel on that game.
Starting point is 00:05:23 And your buddy Steve Sadek, he started that game during COVID. He never played it before. I don't know how far he got into it, but he recently came down with the COVID and was taking up his sick time with some gaming, which is always recommended. That's what I did. Yeah. Oh yeah. No, he, I think he's still going at it.
Starting point is 00:05:39 I think he's still making some progress with it. I am ashamed to say I've literally never played a Final Fantasy game in my life. The only interaction with Final Fantasy I ever had was that first movie that they put out in theaters with the like really cheap animations. Steve Buscemi's in it I think. Right, The Spirits are Within. Yes. In my head I thought well there's no second movie but then I realized there are technically I guess three Final Fantasy movies although the other two don't really count. They're not like big American releases. right right are they were they like theatrically released elsewhere Yes, I believe so maybe the second movie god
Starting point is 00:06:15 I feel so it looks to nerd here But Advent Children is the second movie and then if you remember this Henry Kingsglaive the Final Fantasy 15 movie where most of the plot of Final Fantasy 15 is offloaded to a movie you don't have to watch, which I think is doing a service to us, the gamers. I had completely forgot about Kingsglaive. When you said three movies, I was like, boy, what was that third movie? I cannot remember.
Starting point is 00:06:37 Yes, Kingsglaive. And they also did a Matrix short. That was the last official Square Pictures movie was that Final Flight of the Osiris. What's funny too is, Andrew, you say it's cheap looking. It is a weird looking movie that is like the uncanny value of the movie, but it's one of the most expensive movies at least by profit to or lack of profit and cost ratio. It's an extremely expensive movie. Final Fantasy 6, I've been thinking about it as well because I haven't played the game recently, but I just started getting into Magic the Gathering.
Starting point is 00:07:10 Now this is really getting nerdy. Magic the Gathering now has a Final Fantasy set, and the Final Fantasy 6 dedicated cards really do express the game well. You transform characters into espers, you equip jobs. It is reminding me What I liked about Final Fantasy all the Kefka cards are really interesting. Okay, that's too dirty bad Just wait until the spider-man cards come out. Oh my my wallets hurting already Oh, but you know, it's sorry on that letterman thing
Starting point is 00:07:36 I just remember one other fun fact about you Andrew is that you and the rest of we a movie guys I believe we're in the exact like space where that happened because it's the same studio as the Colbert's late night or late show. Yeah, we recently took a trip to the Ed Sullivan theater, a buddy of ours works on the show as a segment director and he invited us like, it must have been like at least over a year ago and we've been trying to figure out like dates and we finally nailed it down and it was wild you guys. I like, it felt like a dream going into that theater for me
Starting point is 00:08:09 and seeing the show. Bill Shatner was a guest, which was crazy. It was Bill Shatner, Neil deGrasse Tyson, hawking some show that the two of them were doing in Seattle, and then the Doobie Brothers played. And that was awesome. And then afterwards, yeah, we got like a tour of the stage and everything and we're standing there
Starting point is 00:08:28 and the guy goes, hey man, like you see where you're standing right now? And I said, yeah, and he was like in the setup of everything where it was at the time, like you're standing where the Beatles played. And I was like, good God, this is, Tago, that's uncanny. I mean, that was like, I still kind of don't believe it happened, but it was very sweet.
Starting point is 00:08:43 And then that's actually, we think, where Steve and also our buddy Eric Siska both got COVID. God. Yeah. Yes, yeah. I mean, I guess you would expect the Colbert audience to be more enlightened, but who knows? Well, you know, it's also like a big tourist thing
Starting point is 00:09:00 to get in there, so who the heck knows. But we kind of were like trying to figure out like, where could this have happened? And I don't know you guys, there was a lot of boomers in the audience clapping for the Doobies. Yes, yes. They're doing their own research on the Doobie Brothers and on COVID.
Starting point is 00:09:15 Now, I didn't know about the William Shatner thing. That's astounding because I mean, this episode goes live in a few weeks, I feel comfortable saying this. Anytime you see William Shatner in public, that could be the last time anyone sees him. He's a 94-year-old man. Yes.
Starting point is 00:09:27 And God bless him, he looks great. Oh my God. He looks amazing. It was crazy. We were sort of nudging each other like, Bill Shatner looks pretty good. And he was like a little spitfire on that stage. Only William Shatner could get Neil deGrasse Tyson
Starting point is 00:09:40 to shut up. Tyson said almost nothing the entire time. And if he did, it was mostly in response to like Shatner sort of teeing him up for something. But it was like, it was like Shatner Colbert, but almost just like Shatner Shatner. Like it was really, he was a Spitfire, crazy. Yeah, I'm really glad the sun did not set on his career
Starting point is 00:10:01 with shit my dad says. Oh God, yeah, thank you. At least we get some more, the unexplained with William Shatner. I think a new season is airing right now. Well, that's everything that happened in the week. This classic episode of The Simpsons first aired. And joining us once again is Andrew Jupin
Starting point is 00:10:17 from the We Hate Movies podcast, and Andrew Last joined us last year for season four's Brother from the Same Planet. Welcome back to the show, Andrew. Hey guys, happy to be back. Thanks for having me. And this is a perfect one to have you back onto, Andrew, because you've been one of our earliest guests
Starting point is 00:10:31 on many episodes, and now this is a big one in Talking Simpsons history. We just celebrated our 10th anniversary, but this also was the first episode we covered when we launched our Patreon eight years ago. Yes, so the prophecy is complete. Yes. The prophecy that involves us treading the same ground
Starting point is 00:10:48 every eight to 10 years, which, hey, you guys are along for the ride. It's great. Yeah, hell yeah. The listeners who signed up eight years ago and said, like, well, where's all your old episodes? Now it's complete. You can listen to all of the ones in order.
Starting point is 00:11:01 Another cold moment for us with the launch of the Talking Simpsons just as a show 10 years ago. But I mean, Andrew, you're also here for just a true classic. Like this is one of the best. I know I'm saying that about every season five episode we do that I'm like, oh, you know what? This is actually one of the best. But this really is one of the best.
Starting point is 00:11:22 It's a great episode that I, for whatever reason, I kind of just like subconsciously skip it in the rewatches a one of the best. It's a great episode that I, for whatever reason, I kind of just subconsciously skip it in the rewatches a lot of the time, in what I like to call my mindless, cherry-picking Simpsons rewatches at 2 a.m. and whatever. But it is so good. It is so funny. It's one of those, I was sitting here trying to
Starting point is 00:11:41 catalog some jokes as I watched it, and my fingers just got tired. Like it's a really joke packed script, which is great. And also really great joke packed like design and stuff. All the stuff at the beginning with like the house being dirty, all those little details are so funny. It doesn't rely too much on references and they know how to do a good reference every once in a while, but this outside of a brief Lassie reference, that's kind of it. And they, this could have just been a Lassie parody, but they don't, they don't do the scene where it's like, Oh, what's that Stampy? Somebody's in an old well. They could have easily done that very tired parody joke.
Starting point is 00:12:13 I mean, I guess Stampy saving him is like Lassie-like, but that's in all of the kid be friends in animal movies. Yeah, I mean, then also like Harry and the Hendersons. I think Harry saves John Lithgow from something and his worth is noticed finally. And there's not a lot of preamble stuff. We should note that this is written by John Swartzwalder. According to the showrunner David Merkin, this just came fully formed out of his head. And I think Merkin liked it because Merkin is a big animal lover. He's way into animal rights.
Starting point is 00:12:41 And I believe even at this point in his life, he was a vegan. I'm sure he still is. So this really meshed with Schwarzwalders crazy plot ideas and Merkin's, you know, he has crazy plot ideas as well, but he likes to get this kind of message about our treatment of animals into the show. And this episode won a Genesis Award and an Environmental Media Award because I guess in the end, it's all about sometimes animals can't be domesticated and we don't deserve to have them in our backyards. It's funny that they give conservationist
Starting point is 00:13:09 or environmentalist episodes to environment hater, John Swartzwalder, who is like, and we love him folks, but we just read recent guest Alan Segal's new book, The Stupid TV, Be More Funny, and he has lots of fun news stories I hadn't seen before about, Sw, Swartzwalder in the writers room then was the libertarian crank of the group who like kind of like poking the, the, the lefty writers and the liberal writers. He's a lot more like Mr. Blackheart than, uh, Lisa Simpson. You know, I looked up those environmental media awards again and and yeah, this won the
Starting point is 00:13:45 94 television episodic comedy category. They should have called that the Simpsons and Dinosaurs Award, because for the first seven years, those are the only shows that won that award. It was either the Simpsons or the dinosaurs. I would imagine that the series finale of Dinosaurs probably had to win that award again, did it? Man, I missed what the last one, the specific episode it was they won it for. It's all on the Environmental Media Awards website in the category.
Starting point is 00:14:11 I can tell you the last time the Simpsons won for that category, which they haven't been doing as well lately. There's other shows, Bleeding Heart Liberal shows getting the awards now. The last one Simpsons won was in 2016 for the episode Teenage Mutant Milk Caused Hurdles. Okay, whatever you say, TV show. I get what it's about. Yeah, no, it sounds like Swartzwalder. I mean, it's a perfect idea.
Starting point is 00:14:42 What if Bart won one of a silly radio contest and demanded the stupid prize instead of the money? And then you've got Jim Reardon and his animation team, like, killing it, like killing it so hard. And it's funny how timing rhymes when we cover these podcasts, because we are bouncing between this in 15. And in season 15, there's Simple Simpson, which which we're approaching or just did. We're recording out of order guys. But in that, that's the last one Jim Reardon directs for
Starting point is 00:15:12 the series before leaving for Pixar to work on WALL-E. And on this commentary when they recorded it, he had just left for Pixar and they're complaining. They're like, ah, we get Pixar takes all of our most talented guys. We're sick of them. Oh, wow. Yeah. Co-writer of WALL-E. I believe he's co-director as well with Stanton. I think so. Yes. Yeah. Though it's like Stanton gets director and then separate, there's a co-director for him. Yeah. I think so. Man, you know, I lost track of Reardon. I feel like he left with Rich Moore when they both left Disney animation, but now I'm not so sure. I know Reardon worked on Zootopia. I forget what after that he's been doing. Yeah, last credit for him at Disney is Ralph Breaks the Internet.
Starting point is 00:15:54 Ah, yes. Which is not the best note to go out on, but I've never seen it, so I'm speaking out of ignorance. It's alright. Well, it's another of the many Pixar and Disney films that are about my child went to college and I'm sad. That's all of these aging animators, their kid goes to college and they're sad about it, which hey, it's fine to be sad. I'm not mad. Is that a Wreck-It Ralph sequel?
Starting point is 00:16:15 Is that what that is? Yes, yeah. Oh, okay. And from what I've heard, it's kind of like the Emoji Movie. Oh, it's if the Emoji Movie was funnier. Yeah. Oh my god! Better animation, but no Patrick Stewart playing poop.
Starting point is 00:16:28 Oh yes, the poop emoji. What a classy role that was for me. You see, I'm glad he bounced back from that as well. It's not like Shatner died after shit my dad says, Stewart died after playing poop. Shit's involved in both of them, fecal matter, both. And for this one, there's no deleted scenes on the DVD, playing poop. Shit's involved in both of them, fecal matter, both. And for this one, there's no deleted scenes on the DVD and there's no original script
Starting point is 00:16:50 out there, so I don't have too many things to note. I will just tell listeners though, if you've got your season five DVDs handy, look up the extra section because they have a full animatic of Act Three, which has two changed jokes, slightly changed jokes I'll mention. But what's really interesting is they have on rarely heard Simpsons veterans Paul Wee and Lance Wilder to briefly talk about what layout and background process is for the Simpsons, and there's no jerk writers talking over them, preventing them from giving you interesting history. Though then it just made me mad, because I was like, they get five minutes?
Starting point is 00:17:24 This should be the whole episode! Yeah, totally. Well, 21 years later, however long we've come since those DVDs, we get nothing now. That's true. There are no extras. Are they even putting out discs of newer seasons? Has that been working? The last official release of a new season was, I think in 2018 when they released season 19, and that's the
Starting point is 00:17:45 last traditional release. They put out season 20 on Blu-ray just to get out the first HD season as soon as possible but there were no extras. But the last full Simpsons DVD release experience was 19 and now they've done what 16 more seasons, 17 more seasons since then. And I mean, it's not a coincidence that 2018 is like right before Disney buys Fox or like it's finalized. Like I had one of those like, don't know what you got till it's gone moments recently because I just opened up, I think it was a yeah, I took the plastic off a DVD set of King of the Hill and it had one of those like leaflets in it of like, get all the other TV on DVD
Starting point is 00:18:23 things. And it's like Cleveland show, American Dad, Family Guy, and they're all getting physical releases. Like, man, you don't know what you got. And when it's happening, you didn't know it was the Golden Age, but we know there are people working on the show, want to keep making these DVDs, but Disney just, I mean, Disney puts out their biggest,
Starting point is 00:18:43 like, Lilo and Stitch just got a 4K release for instance. It's not like they don't ever do physical media. But, okay, well anyway, this episode though, begins first with the floating eyes in the dark for a couch gag, good stuff, and now it's time for the dirty house, which you know, Bob, my new place, I don't leave underwear lying around as much and no sandwiches. Well Henry, I've only leave underwear lying around as much and no sandwiches.
Starting point is 00:19:06 Well, Henry, I've only seen this one room for the past two years. I don't know what's lurking beyond that door. How many waffles are falling off the ceiling? Well, for you it'd be pancakes. We know the waffle pancake split on Talking Simpsons. No, I keep my house cleaner, but yes, Bob, you've only seen my current place
Starting point is 00:19:24 within a month of me, a couple months with me moving in, so it's still pretty clean in general. It was elephant fresh. It's elephant fresh. But when I see Homer react to cleaning in this episode, I'm like, oh boy, I learned a lot from Homer here. Bad lessons, I think. It's the one bonus of having anxiety is not being able to relax unless things are clean. I feel like that can cause stress, but it also keeps the ship very tight around here I think.
Starting point is 00:19:54 I wish I had that. You can only see so much from here, but yeah, it is clutter central around here, including way too many unwrapped DVDs, the physical media is in need of some work around here, including like, way too many unwrapped DVDs, like the physical medias, it needed some work around here. So I'm very, very jealous of that gift, Bob. Mine is all carefully sorted on shelves, have you seen that? Oh yeah, look at that.
Starting point is 00:20:16 Oh, I love it. And we get some fun little callbacks in this episode, starting with like, the Homer bowling ball from Life on the Fast Lane, the one where Marge is going to have sex with Jacques, is sitting there. I guess it's a different color, but I assume it's supposed to be that gifted bowling ball. Sure. I mean, the Olmec head is a different color, but it's the same one. Yeah, not a large variety of those floating around probably. Unless that was just a weekend project for the Simpsons, they went downstairs
Starting point is 00:20:45 and they painted the old neck head. And so after we see Marge disgusted by her home, the family comes down for breakfast. Hi mom. Hey mom. After breakfast me and Milhouse are going down to the ravine. We got a tip from a six-year-old that there's a dead Martian down there.
Starting point is 00:21:08 And I'm going to the park to jam with the little white girl's blues quartet. Wanna come with me, Daddy-o? I'd love to, honey, but Daddy has to go to a beer-drinking contest today. Think you'll win? Son, when you participate in sporting events, it's not whether you win or lose. It's how drunk you get. Gotcha. Well, gotta go. Me too!
Starting point is 00:21:27 It's hard for us to leave when you're standing there, Mom. Well, sure don't, son. No one's going anywhere. We're going to clean the whole house from top to bottom. Oh, dear God, no! I think you'll find that escape is impossible. Now each one of you take a floor and get started. I call the basement.
Starting point is 00:21:51 Fine. D'oh? D'oh! I think Marge is paraphrasing a James Bond line because I tried looking that up but I only found Marge. Right? Yeah, I think it's the use of, I think you'll find, and then that's,
Starting point is 00:22:08 they take it from there. It's Dr. No like, but also it's like, or am I just thinking like a thing Dr. Evil will say later too? Am I? That can also be it. I love the scattered food around the house, like the sandwich on the staircase is very funny,
Starting point is 00:22:23 but I love the, Bart's like scrubbing a coffee table and there's like two bites of a hot dog left, which I find, like that existing in the Simpsons household is a little unbelievable. Like Homer Simpson, letting a delicious hot dog just sit on a table, I don't know about that. I have to feel like he was distracted by other food
Starting point is 00:22:42 away from the hot dog. Exactly. I like, there's a little detail there when they all sit down. It shows that Homer, in this case, is more dirty than a glutton because he takes like one bite of the top waffle and then throws it behind his back, like just onto the floor. Also I love that Homer enters with high mom because, you know, he's one of the kids now. He's not the husband or partner. Also Homer's, I mean, Homer's perfect in this episode.
Starting point is 00:23:06 His blank statement of push her down, son. He's like, that's the easy answer. Shove your mother to the floor. That's great. I love the dough question mark when he calls cleaning the basement. Then the dough confirmation once he goes down there. That is a great one too. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:23:23 There's a few very dull, blank Homer sentences in this that make me laugh. The push her down and also, he's getting the elephant instead of the money. Yeah. Yeah, the fact that he's not like screaming about that is great. And he likes peanuts.
Starting point is 00:23:35 Yes, another one, there you go. Yeah, I forgot about that one. And this is where Marge introduces the idea of cleaning to music to make it go easier and puts on the radio. And this, I mean, today, for me, it's YouTube music playlists. Like, now I just search either,
Starting point is 00:23:51 like, just genre plus the word playlist, or like, honestly, those lo-fi beats plus video game name really gives me a lot of good cleaning music. What about podcasting? You could laugh along with your, you know, pals talking about The Simpsons? Or perhaps bad movies? Why not?
Starting point is 00:24:07 Yeah, oh there you go, that's an idea. That's my exercise music is listening to guys. To listen to the guys talk about Andor season two for instance this week. Hell yeah. On We Hate Movies, yeah. Though my husband and I, we disagree, he prefers listening to Spotify
Starting point is 00:24:23 rather than YouTube for stuff. I kind of, I don't know, I'm now so deep in the YouTube music algorithm. I feel like why start a new algorithm? I find the, uh, YouTube is better for you if you're looking for those like endless lo-fi beats, you know, that's often like a picture of a cool cityscape pseudo Blade Runner looking whatever. Like I love that stuff. And I've done some like lo-fi stuff on Apple music.
Starting point is 00:24:50 I don't use Spotify, but it's for whatever reason, it's just not the same. I think it does have a lot to do with me looking at a cool visual on my TV while chill music is playing. But yeah, I love going to YouTube for that stuff specifically. Though now I need a visualizer set to Roku City
Starting point is 00:25:04 because that also is, I like seeing that in the background, Wok. Roku City seems like a chill place. I love the purple hue that it's got going on. So weird sun situation in Roku City, I don't know, but it's a nice looking place. I had to move out of Roku City. It was getting bad.
Starting point is 00:25:23 They force you to see too many ads while you're living there. Yeah, no HDR. What are you talking about? This is where Bart starts listening to hard working music, 16 tons. He knows it's Tennessee Ernie Ford as soon as he hears it. Bart will later meet the ghost of Tennessee Ernie Ford in Branson, Missouri, and the old man in the key in season 14.
Starting point is 00:25:42 Oh, wow. I do remember that episode, actually. It's a good joke where you go to Branson and people you think are dead are still performing there. And then Abe meets him, he's like, Tennessee Ernie Ford, I know you're dead. And then he just turns into sand? He vanishes or something, right?
Starting point is 00:25:58 Yeah. So then we go to Homer with his leaf blower blasting everything. I think leaf blowers have probably only improved technologically in the last 30 years. I've never owned or operated one. Neither have I. They have them here in the city for like, you know, the super will be blowing leaves and things away from a building, like so the street sweeper can get it and stuff like that.
Starting point is 00:26:21 But as far as the technology, I guess maybe longer lasting battery packs and so on, not as many like cord ones and whatever. I can't imagine how else you'd really boost the technology for one of those things. I guess like horsepower on the fan or something maybe. Well, they could never make them quieter, that's for sure. Oh, definitely not. They should make them so they can't turn on before noon.
Starting point is 00:26:44 I feel like that'd be a great feature. Now, we have the old mech head again in the basement, and I was looking this up. This is only the third appearance since its initial appearance. So we have Blood Feud, something else, and then this one. And then I was looking like, how much does this appear in The Simpsons?
Starting point is 00:26:57 Well, it seems like they kind of forget about it around halfway through the series, or around season 15, because there's a bunch up through season 15 and then there's maybe like six more over the next 20 years. So I think people are just forgetting about it or maybe they think, well, this is no longer a novelty
Starting point is 00:27:12 just to see this weird thing and maybe people aren't as familiar with Bloodfue and they're gonna say, what is this giant head it's distracting? Well, now in the HD era, I gotta think they're drawing in, they draw in details so much, it's honestly distracting in background design in Current Simpsons.
Starting point is 00:27:28 It's like, you go to the comic book store in the show for instance, there's two dozen references all behind him, all drawing your attention. Oh wow. That's why Poochie appears a bunch in the show, just because he's usually like a bobblehead in the background somewhere, if you count that as Poochie appearing. It's a collector's item. Then we get a bit that, you know, I feel somewhat called out here as a keeper of things. It's true. All done.
Starting point is 00:27:55 You're not done. I want you to throw away these old calendars and TV guides. Are you mad, woman? You never know when an old calendar might come in handy. Sure, it's not 1985 right now, but who knows what tomorrow will bring? And these TV guides. So many memories. Gomer upset Sergeant Carter. Oh, I'll never forget that episode.
Starting point is 00:28:17 Pile! Shazam! Pile! Shazam! Pile! Shazam! Heh, heh, heh, heh, heh, heh, heh, shazam. Pile! Pile! Pile! Pile! Pile! Pile!
Starting point is 00:28:26 Pile! Pile! Pile! Pile! Pile! Pile! Pile! Pile!
Starting point is 00:28:34 Pile! Pile! Pile! Pile! Pile! Pile! Pile! Pile!
Starting point is 00:28:42 Pile! Pile! Pile! Pile! Pile! Pile! Pile! memories. It was just a part of my life for a year. Now it's going to be in the trash. Justin Perdue Printed calendars, huh? I couldn't tell you the last time I had one of those, like, functioning for what it's supposed to do. I think I've gotten some, like, in the mail that I use as, like, a coaster for a little while or something. Justin Perdue I never do actually use it for, like, planning things because your phone is your calendar all the time. But I, every year they have sold a Simpsons calendar, I have had a Simpsons calendar from the Christmas of 1990 to now.
Starting point is 00:29:08 Whoa. Those are the calendars I do not throw away. Now old TV guides, fortunately those can be scanned and put on internet archive and more people should be doing that. I would actually kind of love to look at some PDFs. Like I don't want to do a Frank Costanza sift through a like, you know, actual collection, but it would be a real trip.
Starting point is 00:29:28 Like I don't think Homer's thinking of it in that way, but like it would be a real trip to kind of like time travel back and see what was on the air and which episodes of which shows were like premiering. Like, oh, that Frasier went with that Seinfeld episode or whatever. I can see that being kind of nerdily fascinating, at least for someone like me. Instead of holding onto old TV guides, I'm now going back and buying old issues of Mad and Cracked.
Starting point is 00:29:52 I just pulled one out from under my desk, and you can see them really take it to Wayne's World. Oh, wow, look at that. See, what if it was Wayne's World, but they just were eating a lot? Looks like the joke is there. Oh, yes, yeah, and Garth is holding a bag, a barf bag that says chunk and donuts. Well, I'll tell everybody
Starting point is 00:30:08 more about this later. Everyone bagged on crack, but now cracked is hard to find. It's a collector's item. There you go. What did you pay for that, Bob? Oh, it went down in value, so... $3. Okay. It was $1.75, 30
Starting point is 00:30:24 plus years ago, so I think it's actually worth less than it was in 1992. That checks out. I do still have a lot of physical comic books as in the Floppies, though most of them are stored in my mom's garage very nicely. So she's the one burdened with it. I'm sorry. I want my elephant! Don't we all want our elephant? Well, I want to thank our guest this week Andrew Jupin for being a great guest as always. We love We Hate Movies. We love having on all the We Hate Movies. Guys, We Hate Movies does a ton of cool stuff.
Starting point is 00:31:38 We've got links to it in the description for this episode and Andrew is such a fun guy. I also love reading this letterbox stuff. He's great on there, too. this episode and Andrew is such a fun guy. I also love reading this letterbox stuff. He's great on there too. Thank you very much for being with us for such a big episode of Talking Simpsons because you may have heard this was the first podcast we covered on the Patreon era. We've been for so long, but now we've come back around again to Bart Gets an Elephant and we are only able to stick around this long on this is our full-time job because of the support of listeners at patreon.com slash Talking Simpsons. Those $5 a month folks for so long have made this possible
Starting point is 00:32:10 and now they get early and ad free podcasts. You don't have to hear ads like this one in your podcast if you're a $5 a month subscriber and you get a ton of bonuses, over 200 in our back catalog of $5 bonus podcasts. And each month you get a new one. We talk about Futurama in case you didn't know. We cover Futurama and King of the Hill just like The Simpsons but only on our
Starting point is 00:32:29 Patreon. For $5 a month folks they get a new episode of Talking Futurama and Talk King of the Hill. We're deep into season four of King of the Hill. We're in the comedy central years of Futurama and we're having so much fun talking about those. Plus we've covered all episodes of The Critic, all episodes of Mission Hill, and many of our favorite episodes of Batman the Animated Series, all right there on our Patreon. So sign up today for five bucks a month to support me and Bob doing this as our full-time job for another seven or eight years, and you know it's at patreon.com slash Talking Simpsons. But if you want something that's even better than a giant bag of peanuts to an elephant, you want our awesomely sized What a Cartoon Movie podcast at the $10 level at patreon.com
Starting point is 00:33:15 slash Talking Simpsons. Folks who go at that level not only get all the $5 ad-free stuff, they also get a monthly triple-linked podcast of us covering an animated feature film. As you're listening to this, we are deep in the summer of 2000s era Disney where we are covering animated films from the aughts of Disney. We started with an extremely goofy movie. We then did 2002's Lilo and Stitch. We then did 2001's Atlantis, The Lost Empire, and then we're wrapping it all up in August with Treasure Planet. It's all right there at patreon.com slash Talking Simpsons at the premium level often for four or five or even six hours We talk about these films super in depth their history and all the cool stuff that happens in them with a ton of
Starting point is 00:33:53 Behind-the-scenes secrets in history to divulge there, too And those are just the most recent ones of many years of what a cartoon movie We have covered hundreds of hours of stuff is right there for you of us covering tons of Disney Renaissance, Toy Story, Studio Ghibli, superhero stuff of Batman and Spider-Man, Beavis and Butt-Head, Who Framed Roger Rabbit for six and a half hours. Come on now! It's all there at patreon.com Talking Simpsons, so if you want to hear all of this awesome ad free stuff head over there and sign up patreon.com Talking Simpsons over there and sign up patreon.com slash talking Simpson.
Starting point is 00:34:38 You know, I also like their vision of how people remember TV. Like it's such a great cynical kind of joke on Merkin's part of it. Or it's like his place in life for Merkin and the other writers are like, we worked so many hours, all of us, so much on these things. And all anybody's gonna remember is Shazam.
Starting point is 00:34:56 Like one catchphrase. That's all a TV show is to people. Though also I guess it's a burn on Gomer Pile that every episode could just be described that way. I've always kind of taken it that way, is they're like, there's a reason why that's the only thing Homer's remembering is because that's like, Gomer was constantly annoying him and that was, you know, just what that show did for however many seasons. I also, I do love Homer screaming, or we so vain, which is, he thinks he's a great boy,
Starting point is 00:35:23 it's like, but it's just about being clean, it's not about being me. There's a lot of great Homer screaming in this, and I love how far they pull back to show him on his knees in the basement. Yes, part of that I understand though, because when we're cleaning our apartment here, I'm like, who are we doing this for?
Starting point is 00:35:41 The queen's not coming over, what does it matter? Like I do have to fight to get that out of my head because I'm like, dude, look around you, man. Look at the clutter. Look at the dust. Come on. You have to clean. But part of me is also like, who are we doing this for? Who are we kidding? It's just going to get cluttered again. I've had the statement of like, can't we just move to a new place like that? No. The last big clean we did was just three months ago for when my mother-in-law visited for the first time. So we look good for that. It's all about upkeep,
Starting point is 00:36:11 little bits of upkeep all the time. I'm gonna be the prudish skold on this episode. Yes, and you should be Bob. I need to be whipped into shape. You boys need to dust every two weeks. You know there are great camera moves all over this episode. I meant to say too and when Bart runs to the door it's this perfect overhead shot. Not to just bag on current episodes but I feel like that that's not something they seem to think about in the show is staging like that these days. It's a little great unexpected choice there in the staging. We cut to Lisa looking at her white girls in jazz group, the little white girls quartet.
Starting point is 00:36:49 With them is Bill Clinton, now Swartzwalder at the time was telling people that was pranking the office, well not pranking, but he would incite the office by saying, oh, now they're gonna, basically implying they were going to lynch Bill Clinton before the end of his term, that's what he was saying. Oh my God. Mike Scully, when we interviewed him during the first
Starting point is 00:37:09 Donald Trump impeachment, we asked him like, hey, you were the head writer during Clinton's impeachment. So what was that like then? And he was mentioning how Swartzwalter would always be saying like, oh yeah, Clinton's getting it this time. He's going to prison, man. I love, is it Mo that comes out and says, get back to work?
Starting point is 00:37:30 Yes. Yeah, and Barney is driving. It's a very strange pairing there. There's two weird Barney things that happen in this episode. Like that, and then, yes, him being in the tar pit is weird, but I mean more that like Barney having that cigarette, very un-Barney thing, smoking a tobacco cigarette.
Starting point is 00:37:49 I mean, it's for the service of that really weird joke that I love with the tar pits, but it's weird seeing Barney do things that Barney normally doesn't do. Yeah, I mean, we'll get to it, but I feel like Barney's one of those guys that if he drinks enough, he will start smoking. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. I only drink when I smoke, yeah, for sure. And another funny thing with this is, and listeners will get to hear it as one of the vintage ads
Starting point is 00:38:13 in our break this week, but the archival account, Daily Simpsons, uploaded a vintage ad of this. It's just 10 seconds, and instead of it being about the elephant or anything, it's like, guess who's coming to Springfield this week in an all new episode, and it's the Clinton clip, and it's like, are they trying to trick people into thinking that Bill Clinton
Starting point is 00:38:32 actually appeared in the show? That's what it sounds like. That actually, you just totally knock something loose. The episode where, oh man, and now which one is it? We just watched it over the holiday weekend, where Marge is trying to read that smutty romance novel and Lisa's bothering her. Oh, Lisa's rival, yes.
Starting point is 00:38:53 Yes, Lisa's rival, yes. And Marge is having the fantasy reading the book and it's about the full bosoms and all that. I specifically remember a preview ad for that episode that was like, this Sunday on The Simpsons, The Simpsons hit the high seas. And it was that joke. And that was it.
Starting point is 00:39:11 And talk of like, that's like a thing built into a Marge fantasy sequence. What false advertising. It was nothing about Lisa having a rival at school voiced by I think Winona Ryder. Yes. Why would you not put any of that in? Just this weird Marge's heaving breasts
Starting point is 00:39:26 and this big muscular guy. So weird. Yes, the Simpsons were hitting the high seas that week. It was 94. I think they wanted people to think Fabio was on the show. And I guess maybe you could think it was Clinton because he was on Arsenio, you know, he was getting into pop culture
Starting point is 00:39:42 around the time of his election. So it wasn't too far-fetched. And then we cut to Homer cleaning with ventilation. I think of this scene when I first got a job at AMC Theaters for a couple years when I would pull out cleaning supplies or when I do it. When I do clean my apartment, I do think of Homer's like, oh wait, don't be like Homer or if this says the ventilation, listen to it. Instead of saying screw you buddy. Which I actually thought of that recently because there's an episode of, in the new season of Poker Face, the Natasha Lyonne show, one of the murder of the week episodes is
Starting point is 00:40:21 a aquafina gets locked in a laundry room where there's some chemicals that have spilled on each other intentionally and she is asphyxiated. And I just thought of Homer fighting with these little guys and was laughing to myself. The screaming quieter is one of the funniest vocal ticks Castellaneta did performance-wise that I just love. Just screaming quietly. Oh, it's great. And all the drawings of Homer being strangled and screaming are done by David Silverman. and that I did performance-wise that I just love, just screaming quietly, oh, it's great. And all the drawings of Homer being strangled and screaming are done by David Silverman. They're very Silvermini, if you're familiar with his style
Starting point is 00:40:51 and the kinds of Homers he draws. Especially a lot of the finger acting, like when Mr. Cleanser gets a little ashamed of getting scolded by Marge, he's sort of like tracing his finger along Homer's arm in a very bashful way. Yeah. Yes, let's hear Homer's attack from Mr. Cleanser and Terrapin Wax among others.
Starting point is 00:41:09 I must destroy you! Homer, what's going on down there? Nothing. Then stop screaming so loud. Okay. Ah! Ah! Ah! Ah! Ah! ["The Okay, just answer the phone with a special phrase the face and you'll have your choice of $10,000 in cash
Starting point is 00:41:49 Or a really stupid prize Well, let's make that call Can't type the line grandpa It's a good bit that it's them calling Bart's Maybe this also lets them not have to like say a phone number, but this really got me watching it as a kid because, you know, around this time I had become addicted to listening to the local oldie station where I lived and, and would try to win contests. I was probably just following my mom's example because she listened to the radio, Fox 97.1 in Atlanta, all of the time at work, and was always trying to win contests. So I was probably just imitating her.
Starting point is 00:42:32 And I remember you guys did win some stuff, right, like concert tickets or something? Yeah, we got to see the big oldies concert at the Georgia Dome, which is how I've seen Chubby Checker and Herman and the Hermits perform live. Whoa. That's pretty cool. And my Bill and Marty growing up was Randy and Spiff. I had to look them up.
Starting point is 00:42:52 Unfortunately, there actually is like a 2016 interview with them where they're like, yeah, nobody wants to hire us. Our demo doesn't matter anymore. They aged out of being profitable. Oh, wow. We had Mason and Sheehan on like a classic rock station. They were the wacky morning guys for like 40 years, 30.
Starting point is 00:43:14 I mean like a real long 10 years. So much so that like when they stopped, it was like area news. Like there were many local news profiles on Mason and Sheehan's retirement. Yeah, I just remember some guy, his last name was Mangino and it was Mangino in the morning. So you get an Italian, you get some alliteration, but I'm glad we're talking about this because
Starting point is 00:43:36 important note about Bill and Marty, they essentially disappear from the show around the time of the movie because the landscape of radio had changed so much, and these kind of non-vulgar morning zoo guys were a dying breed. So their last appearance before a cameo in season 29 is in season 18, and an episode that we're about to cover in season 15, Fraudcast News, is essentially the end of Bill and Marty,
Starting point is 00:43:58 because we know what happened in the early aughts, like Clear Channel bought all the local radio stations, and basically installed the DJ 3000. Yes. Right. Yep. Except instead of just doing inane chatter, it also gives you very conservative readings on everything.
Starting point is 00:44:13 And also, every time I listen to the radio now, it usually is when I am a passenger in a ride share. And the radio usually is like, it sounds like they still have these type of DJs, but it's like they're just one host that just makes like things that can be played anywhere. Like they're just interchangeable things that make them sound like a local person. So you completely lose any local flavor of these things. It's incredibly weird. I'm a big serious guy. I, I do love it.
Starting point is 00:44:46 And it's weird because I feel guilty. I love a lot of the extra channels and that is like the DJ 3000. Cause it's like, it's just music and then like a call tag from like what channel you're listening for, but there's not a human being to be found. And then you have like, you know, sort of like the main stage channels that do have people But like it is lacking that like local thing and funny enough We just went upstate to see my folks a few weeks ago and I have there's a app called I think it's called radio garden and it's like
Starting point is 00:45:20 Anywhere around the world radio stations can sync their feeds up to this app and you can listen anywhere in the world. And I tuned it into a great independent radio station in Vermont that I grew up listening to in upstate New York. And it was like night and day. Like that dude's talking about like a local like food event that was happening and you know, make sure you go to this concert by the river at five o'clock on Friday, You know, and I was like, wow, like the change in how this has all gone and the fact that these people are still doing the local stuff. It's really weird, but yeah,
Starting point is 00:45:54 total night and day. And I miss the local stuff more, you know? Yeah. It's not morning zoo stuff, but the, there were at least two polka stations in my hometown because it was very Polish. Oh, that's cool. I listened to one on the way to work to cheer me up and it was funny just how old the DJs were and how they didn't actually care about the music where there would be songs playing and they would be reading the birthday
Starting point is 00:46:13 dedications over the music. Yeah. I know, I want to hear the Beer Barrel Polka. I don't care who's 106th birthday it is. Yeah, well, talk about unlocking memories. Yeah, that's for Randy and Spiff. They would play the Beatles, say it's your birthday, over the birthday announcements. I know my mom called it in for me and my brother at least once.
Starting point is 00:46:36 Oh, nice. Again, here the show is mocking these inane morning DJs who go like, pretty weird, boing. It's like, boy, we didn't know how good we had it. Oh yeah, totally. I love the DJ 3000, those clowns in Congress. It's, hey, how does he stay up on the news like that? Yeah, how does he stay up on current events? There's also a joke about American Gothic,
Starting point is 00:47:02 which seemingly they have the original there, with Bart removing all the paint from it. It's not a print. I've seen the real American Gothic in person, but don't let you get close enough to clean it and see if Grant Wood's writing is underneath, unfortunately. Which museum is that in? It's been around the world, but I got to see it where it still currently is at the Art Institute of Chicago in downtown Chicago.
Starting point is 00:47:25 Great, great museum. Holy smokes, I love that place. Yeah. Yeah, if you can read this, you scrubbed too hard, which like, so much about that is great because it's like him anticipating someone is gonna scrub his painting, which is a great joke. You know, I think we've moved past
Starting point is 00:47:43 Simpsons predicted it as a phenomenon culturally, but I don't think anyone ever pegged this as a predicted it moment, like when that old woman in real life tried to clean the painting and just destroyed it. Oh, right. It was like a Jesus portrait, wasn't it? And she made it look like a chimp afterwards, I think.
Starting point is 00:48:00 Oh, God, you're right, Bob. This is a Simpsons predicted it. We're giving people listicle ideas for five years ago. Well, no, then the funny thing, God, you're right, Bob. This is a Simpsons predicted it. We're giving people listicle ideas for five years ago. Well, no, then the funny thing, Bob, is that she made Jesus look like a chimp or something like that, and then that now looks closer to what the updated Trump portrait is,
Starting point is 00:48:18 because he just looks like a big, fat, bloated monkey too. We need to clean the filth off of that thing. Get scrubbin'. Speaking of cleaning, the cleaning is complete, the house looks great, and Marge gets to be happy for three seconds, and the timing on the door, they never have a door that works like that, only for a joke, it's never been normally.
Starting point is 00:48:39 They install a door just for a great psychic, that's great. The random calling then goes to the police station where they're being tortured, but it's not too dark because Wiggum likes it. He likes it eventually. I love him getting tased on the air. It's just so fun. And Bart just sitting there at the table,
Starting point is 00:48:58 listening, not reacting at all to what's happening. Oh, it's great. And another slightly old poll, because Bart is eating the chocolate out of the Neapolitan ice cream, and that was a running gag in an earlier episode where Homer keeps saying, mmm, chocolate. He opens every box and all the chocolate is gone from the Neapolitan boxes. Marge, we need more vanilla chocolate and strawberry ice cream. The answer from Radio Bart is here. It's Bart who eats all of it. Homer never gets to have it. And this is where the phone call finally rings and Bart is there to prevent Homer
Starting point is 00:49:30 from ruining everything. Now let's try another lucky phone call! Help! Help us! They stole our uniforms, guns, and tasers! Ew. Fry piggy. No. No. Fry piggy. No, no, not down. A little to the left. Oh, that's the stuff. Oh, I'm sorry, the phrase is,
Starting point is 00:49:54 KBB L is gonna give me something stupid. Pretty weird. Let's try one more number. Yellow. KBB L is gonna give me something stupid. Well, hot dog, we have a number. Yellow. KBBL is going to give me something stupid. Hot dog, we have a wiener. Yellow.
Starting point is 00:50:08 I won, I won. You win your choice of $10,000 or what's our gag price this week Bill? Full grown African elephant. Well that money sounds mighty tempting Marty, but I think I'm going to have to go with the elephant. He's taking the elephant instead of the money. Kid wants the elephant. We don't have a damn elephant. Don't whisper into the elephant. He's taking the elephant instead of the money. Kid wants the elephant. We don't have a damn elephant. Don't whisper into the mic. Kid, the elephant's a gag prize. Nobody takes the gag prize. You want the cash. I want the elephant. An important lesson as a podcaster,
Starting point is 00:50:37 don't whisper into the mic too, unless you're doing an ASMR podcast. No, yes, uh, yes. Hot dog. We have a wiener like that's such a great, like it also the way they go pretty weird. Oh yeah. This the, the pronunciation of stupid. Yeah. I, uh, sheerer and Kesslin at a, they really get in the zone is Bill and Marty. I feel like you could just give them the assignment of like, do a 10 minute improv scene as these guys, at least back in the 90s you could give them that, and they could do it like that, like they're great at it. And that they know, clearly one is dumber than the other. Like, Marty is the stupider one than Bill.
Starting point is 00:51:18 Marty always has to explain things to, no wait, Bill is bald, B for Bill. Bill is the one then that plays the Monster Mash accidentally on Valentine's Day. Actually yes, here I know what they are because I have the toy right here. Oh wow, look at that, Bill and Marty. Bill is the bald one, Marty not bald.
Starting point is 00:51:37 Did that immediately go into clearance as soon as they rushed on the store shelves? That's why I haven't taken this, this is a Playmates for Listeners, you can't see. It's the Playmates combo set of Bill and Marty. The box is so good, I can't take it out of the box. It's too good. But look at that packaging and graphics.
Starting point is 00:51:54 And you can see it comes with interactive KBBL environment where you can see in the background Kirk Van Houten is seemingly singing Can I Borrow a Feeling in the background there. Oh, weird. So it was a radio station where Kirk was recording the record too. Maybe that's why he made some extra cash on the side is let people record bad demos in the studio. Though if you see the Try Me button here,
Starting point is 00:52:16 doesn't work no more. No, that battery is just an acid cake nightmare at this point, I think. And lastly, you can see in this toy and in many other appearances, Bill is white. He has darker skin in this episode, but he is typically white. We're all talking about black smithers.
Starting point is 00:52:33 No one's talking about black Bill. I'm a member of the Simpsons shitpost Reddit, just as a lurker. They always bring up black smithers every now and then nobody ever brings up black Bill. That sounds like pejorative now that I've said it, black bill. That seems wrong. When Homer finally realizes what's going on, like it takes him too long. He doesn't even know a phone has left his hand, but once he finally gets there.
Starting point is 00:52:55 That is so great. Him just still saying hello into nothing. Oh my God. Just silently looking at his palm a little bit before realizing I'm no longer carrying the phone. The line where Homer says with $10,000 we'd be millionaires is great, but I really think underrated is Marge actually wanting to improve the house, but then as she's describing what she wants to do, she just suddenly loses steam as they're all glaring at her. Yeah, she realizes it's totally futile and just stops talking mid-sentence. Oh my god, it's so sad. And one additional detail I love about that is
Starting point is 00:53:25 one of the benefits of the windows is like, they look just like regular windows, so there's not even a visual difference in this thing they're investing in. So it makes it even less interesting. It's also because like the number is so unimpressive. Like we'll save 4% on the heating bill. The way Marge starts with the excitement
Starting point is 00:53:43 and get like Kavener's performance like on our heating bill. Well, it will. I mean, this also shows you the Swartzwalder, like he has little interest in writing Marge and Lisa. So when it's Marge, Marge's line is about being boring and Lisa's lines are about being a scold basically, or I would say being correct, but Swartzwalder would say being a scold And I guess when she sent to her room, that's that's her also being imprisoned. I'm guessing sure And now we get to see Bill and Marty meet the Simpsons here rarely do these characters get to interact in person and I'd love them trying to negotiate with Bart in our next clip here We appreciate you coming down, but look, kid, the thing is,
Starting point is 00:54:31 we don't have an elephant. Come on, kid, just take the money. Otherwise we might get fired. You don't want us to get fired, do you? Either way. We think we know how your mind works, Bart. So how about this? We pay your principal $10,000 to pull down his pants
Starting point is 00:54:47 and keep him down for the rest of the school year. I'll do it, Bart. Um... no. Okay, okay. What if we use the $10,000 to surgically transform Skinner here into some kind of a lobster-like creature? Now wait just a minute. That wasn't discussed with me. Uh, gentlemen, I am not leaving without my elephant.
Starting point is 00:55:09 Hey! Whee! Where's my elephant? Where's my elephant? Where's my elephant? Where's my elephant? Hey, they're playing the elephant song! I love that. Reminds me of elephants.
Starting point is 00:55:25 Marty really had that lobster creature idea in his back pocket. I think he's been waiting for the chance. I just love that something like that, he's pretty sure is only gonna cost them 10 large to do this procedure. So I love Skinner's just like flat sober look on his face. I'll do it Bart, like he needs that money.
Starting point is 00:55:44 He'll do it. Absolutely. There's no deleted scene, but for some reason Homer is in the background in a recording booth with cans on his head. I'm wondering, was there going to be some other joke about him? Oh, I didn't even notice that, yeah.
Starting point is 00:55:57 It's just for a few shots you can see him just smiling in the background in what looks like a recording booth, like the play set Henry was showing off. Yeah, I love the framing of that too because when Bart says, mm, no, like he walks forward and that's where it reveals Homer is in the background, and then when he turns sharply
Starting point is 00:56:16 to say no, then Homer disappears from the shot. Like, yeah, I wonder if there was something else they had there for Homer, or if it's just like a weird thing that they put it in the background just to distract you. But that- Yeah. You know what's crazy is this whole story in this episode was reminding me of something, and I was surprised that the thing I was thinking of happened two years after this episode aired,
Starting point is 00:56:41 but the Leonard versus PepsiCo incorporated case, the Pepsi Jet kid. Yeah. There was a Netflix thing about this. I don't know if you guys know the story, but basically Pepsi was like, if you turn in however many number of points, we'll give you a jet. And the guy calculated how much it would take and got it and was like, cool, give me a jet. And they were like, we don't actually have a jet, dude. We wanted people to just buy Pepsi.
Starting point is 00:57:05 And he sued them. And yeah, it turned into this crazy court case. And I thought, like, maybe they had seen that and sort of put a little bit of that into this episode. But no, this was two years prior. This is before radio DJs were also getting people killed. Because like 13 years later, they had that Hold Your Wee for a Wii contest.
Starting point is 00:57:23 I think there's a documentary about it now where people had to drink water and hold in their pee 13 years later they had that Hold Your Wii for a Wii contest. I think there's a documentary about it now. Where people had to drink water and hold in their pee to win the Nintendo Wii, which was a very hot property at the time. And there's a huge story behind it, but literally like doctors were calling in and saying, stop the contest, turn it off. Oh my God, that's crazy. And a woman died and her kids are now Sony fans.
Starting point is 00:57:41 And that's the end of that story. I had also seen there was, I was trying to find other lawsuits like this, there was the one I couldn't find how it was resolved, but somebody was told you'll win a hundred grand in a radio contest and they were handed a candy bar called a hundred grand, the hundred grand candy bar, and they sued over that. But no, that Pepsi points one, I got to watch that doc because I remember that ad as a kid. It was selling the new Pepsi points thing that was like Marlboro Miles and it ends with a kid
Starting point is 00:58:14 flying to school in a Harrier jet for like a million Pepsi points, which I think was in the tens of thousands of dollars range or whatever, but yeah. Yeah, that's what it is. They say that you could have redeemed seven million Pepsi points to get this Douglas AV-8B Harrier 2 vertical takeoff jet aircraft valued at $37.4 million.
Starting point is 00:58:35 And what this dude figured out was you could directly purchase Pepsi points from Pepsi at 10 cents a point. And so he cut them a check for $700,000, eight dollars and 50 cents, and was like, there's my points, givy givy. It's so great, what ultimate trolling, I mean, wild story. That's what rich people should do. One last thing about the Wii thing,
Starting point is 00:58:58 I was just looking into details about it, the woman who died, I mean, RIP, what a horrible way to die, like public humiliation and then you're dead. Her name was Jennifer Strange. If I was Jennifer Strange, instead of winning a Wii, I would be enrolling in medical school to become Doctor Strange.
Starting point is 00:59:11 Absolutely, hell yeah. You know, all this contest talk too, to be a stereotypical millennial man on a podcast, this reminds me of an 80s film, but seriously, in real genius, the secret roommate they have, who's getting all of the free contests, and like, calculating, like, oh, if I do all these, like, I win.
Starting point is 00:59:30 Oh, yeah, oh, right, yeah. I always thought that was so cool. I was like, man, I gotta do that someday. I'll win all the, it's, you know, free to enter contests. You just gotta mail it in. Yeah. Which character is that? Is that John Grease is his name?
Starting point is 00:59:44 Oh, wait, yeah, isn't he the guy from? The guy who played Uncle Rico? The White Lotus dude? White Lotus, yeah. He's the wack, I think he's the wacky guy in that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You're right, man. I haven't watched it in a minute.
Starting point is 00:59:54 I've got the 4K sitting over there, begging to be watched. I'm definitely due for a re-watch, just with losing Kilmer and everything this year. The other guy, though, like the nerd kid or whatever, the protagonist of the movie, that guy got in some hot soup. I think IRL. Oh. I'd have to look it up,
Starting point is 01:00:12 but I don't wanna say anything on the air and get the details wrong, but I believe that guy got into some hot soup in the last few years. Oh dear. Yeah, unfortunately. Hey, speaking of getting in a hot soup, that's what Bill and Marty are in,
Starting point is 01:00:21 is the media jackals descend upon them here. I mean feels like a very sports welder thing to have just like especially like that The news is calling Bart a straight-a student who got ripped off Yeah, and this time I realized that they're really receiving all this hate mail and letter bombs I think the letter bombs are really a unibomber reference because Unibomber was doing his final attacks in the summer of 93 when this episode was likely written, so I feel like this is hot off the presses. Oh, okay. You know, this also reminded me of Merkin getting over into the spelling world because for David Merkin, he probably had meetings just like this because on his previous show
Starting point is 01:00:59 before going on to the Simpsons, The Edge, he did a sketch where they really roasted, specifically Tori Spelling, but the whole 90210 show. I don't know if you, did you know about this, Andrew, as a 90210 expert? No, I've never heard of The Edge. You're saying it was a sketch show that was out? Live action? Yes, yeah.
Starting point is 01:01:21 Yeah, essentially, the best way to sum it up is what if In Living Color was all white people? I think that's, you get Mad TV, don't you? Yeah, basically the edge is a walk, or sorry, crawled so Mad TV could walk. Got it, got it. Now I'm trying, there's so much of the edge. No, not the U2 guitar player, come on IMDB. And well, he did a sketch about how the, like,
Starting point is 01:01:42 just saying 90210, it had other, like, fun parody stuff in it, but it was especially mean to Tori Spelling, as I recall, which Aaron Spelling, not a fan of that, and kind of got the show canceled. Honestly, he just made it so unhappy for Merkin that Merkin just, like, quit and left the show. Yeah. That's too bad. Actually, I wasn't recalling that it was called The Edge, but yeah, because this was the show
Starting point is 01:02:03 with Jennifer Aniston and Wayne Knight were players on it. Yeah, crazy cast, Wayne Knight, Julie Brown. Yeah, Tom Kenny. People that you would later see everywhere else. Exactly, yeah, yeah, yeah. Jill Talley. Well, I guess it's less of a white in living color, more of David Merkin wanting to do the young ones in America.
Starting point is 01:02:20 Yeah, there you go. And it's like half a Mr. Show as well. Yeah, oh, Alan Rock, Paul Feig, Rick Overton, Kevin Cone. Yeah, there you go. And it's like half a Mr. Show as well. Yeah, oh, Alan Rock, Paul Feig, Rick Overton, Kevin Nealon, wow, this went deep. It's a promising show. That's crazy. It's full of dated things that,
Starting point is 01:02:33 if you don't know television from 1992, it's full of things that don't make any sense. Yeah, and I only watch it because it was the Simpson's sister show for, I believe, all of season four, or a large portion of season four, 4 so But this is where we get a vision of the future as Bill and Marty learned they might get fired Look our ratings are down and the station is being swamped with angry calls and letter bombs And it's all your fault yes it is ma'am this is the DJ 3000 it plays CDs Automatically and it has three distinct varieties of a name chatter Yes, it is, ma'am. This is the DJ-3000. It plays CDs automatically,
Starting point is 01:03:05 and it has three distinct varieties of inane chatter. Hey, hey, how about that weather out there? Whoa, that was the caller from hell. Well, hot dog, we have a wiener. Man, that thing's great. Don't praise the machine. If you don't get that kitten elephant by tomorrow, the DJ-3000 gets your job.
Starting point is 01:03:26 Looks like those clowns in Congress did it again. What a bunch of clowns. How does he keep up with the news like that? I mean, unfortunately, reality has outlapped satire because at this point, the DJ 3000 would be saying Heil Hitler. At this point in time, we just had saying, heil Hitler. Ha! Yeah. At this point in time, we just had to dismantle Grok because it was spouting Nazi ideology, like, uh-oh, you can't be this obvious about it, Grok.
Starting point is 01:03:52 I woke up this morning and saw that headline and was just like, my God, just another bit farther into the crater, is it not? Grok keeps saying the quiet part loud. It was pretty amazing to see it say like, you got names a bit Jewish. I was like, wow, that's a man. Yeah.
Starting point is 01:04:10 It's a new low every day, but yes. Bob, you got out while the getting was good, dude. Well, hey, the good thing though is at least if you still post things on Twitter, you get so much engagement and people go to your website so much and hear about it too. I basically now only use Twitter I mean, there's so much engagement, and people go to your website so much and hear about it too. I basically now only use Twitter for posting the thing
Starting point is 01:04:32 I posted on Blue Sky to promote the episode, and I feel like that's even useless at this point now, honestly. We straight up stopped using Twitter for show promotion. I just was done with it, partially because the auto scheduler that I use to do posts across various platforms, I was like, I'm not going to pay for this service, so if I can only keep it as three destinations,
Starting point is 01:04:53 it's gonna be Blue Sky, Instagram, and Facebook, and then Twitter just kind of went away, and I'm fine with that, because yeah, like you said, Henry, there's no engagement anyway, so it's pointless at this point. Technically you'll have thousands of fewer followers, in our case, on Blue Sky, but people actually click on a link and go to it.
Starting point is 01:05:15 They can actually see the links that you post. Though also, you know what, what a bunch of clowns always works too. What a bunch of clowns. The clowns too. Like what a bunch of clowns. The clowns in Congress really did do it again recently too, as in passing a horrible bill that undid a bunch of stuff. I'd rather have this bill than the big beautiful bill. Yeah, yes, I want the bill.
Starting point is 01:05:37 I also, I love in this scene how Marty, the Harry Sher voice, is so obsequious, like he's like, yes we are, man. Like he's like, he easily takes, man. Like, he's like, Inslee takes the blame. But listen to yourself, folks. Don't praise the machine. You don't gotta hand it to AI or any of those things. Remember that.
Starting point is 01:05:54 Don't praise the machine. Exactly, exactly. You may think that the photo of Kermit and Phasia's pulp fiction characters is cool, but you don't need to praise the machine. Never praise the machine. There's a person I used to like in the video game world 15 years ago, he now regularly on Facebook is just like,
Starting point is 01:06:14 hey, look at what this AI thing can make my old photos move. I was like, ah, ah, how dare you. Yeah, please stop it. I prefer the Kermit and Fozzie as the Paul Fiction characters than something made to flatter yourself. Yeah, please stop it. I prefer the Kermit and Fawzi as the Pulp Fiction characters than something made to flatter yourself. Yeah, I know. It's like, hey look, now my mom in my old photos is moving again.
Starting point is 01:06:31 I was like, oh, I hate you. All right, anyway. So hey, speaking of movie references we have in the episode, we do have a very brief one to Jurassic Park here as they get a knock on the door in the morning and there's a giant eye in the window that Marge looks at, not unlike the T-Rex eye in Jurassic Park. Yeah, hot off the presses. I imagine this was written and they probably did the table read like in August or July or something, somewhere around that time. So it was in theaters.
Starting point is 01:06:57 Everyone was talking about it. So one of the first Jurassic Park references on record, the first of the show, period. That's wild. Wow. What a thing to pinpoint. And yeah, talk about just like timely with the writing. That's so crazy. And you know, there's no explanation of how Bill and Marty were told, you're fired tomorrow or get an elephant. Somehow they got one, and I think it's funnier that you don't know. They just, they drive, like you see their truck drive off implying they just put that stampede in the back of a flatbed like regular truck somehow.
Starting point is 01:07:27 Well, he also is kicking a few back at Moe's at some point, another physical impossibility, I think, unless the whole front door of Moe's has been completely decimated. Yeah, we rarely see how Stampy gets from point A to point B. We just follow the trail of destruction normally. I mean, this is insane. Just to talk about it as a concept, Bart gets an elephant as an episode. This is near Homer Goes to Space as this is pretty crazy, but they explain it so well. Matt Groening only complains a little about inconsistencies in this episode. Yeah, he doesn't like the elephant putting Bart in his mouth, but towards the end of the commentary, it does grow on him.
Starting point is 01:08:06 Yeah, well, the first time it happens, Groening explains that he's like, well, elephants aren't carnivores, they don't eat people. But Merkin makes a good point, he's like, no, Stampy's just an asshole and is being a jerk to Bart. Right, yeah, he's not chewing on Bart or anything. It's simply to suffocate him. Yeah. And Bart thinks it's cool. Bart thinks it's cool, Homer likes it too He's not chewing on Bart or anything. It's simply to suffocate him. Yeah
Starting point is 01:08:30 And Bart thinks it's cool. Bart thinks it's cool. Homer likes it too when it happens to him What's his life now my head's been in a this that and an elephant. That's a great joke Why I will first let's let's hear the the family meet and name their new elephant It looks like a cagore It does look like Elgore. He smells worse than anything. Hey you, elephant, lift me up on your back, man. What? He tried to kill me.
Starting point is 01:09:02 I really think this is a bad idea. Marge, I agree with you in theory. In theory, communism works. In theory. Look, he thinks he's people. I think I'm gonna call him Stampy. I have said, anytime I say in theory about something to my husband, I always have to repeat like, in theory, as like a punctuation on it. You know, I'm not sure if I said this last time we covered it, but this does almost feel
Starting point is 01:09:42 like a parody of Lisa's Pony, in that they're hitting a lot of the same beats, but the humor is much different. They've evolved a lot in terms of the kinds of jokes they can tell, so things are a lot crazier, faster, and funnier, even though I love Lisa's Pony. It's also a zanier way, or not zanier, it is kind of zanier, but it's a funnier way that Homer tries to pay for the upkeep versus the really sad working the graveyard shift at the at the Quickie Mart and he's exhausting himself and sleeping on the floor. This is elephant rides and viewing it and I'm going to charge you in my backyard. So you know still trying to pay for it but in a funnier way. Yeah you're right the groundedness in in Lisa's pony is like that's the
Starting point is 01:10:23 point of it to show like well what would really happen if you got a pony and in the episode Homer says he'll sleep in the garage between the cars that is essentially what they do with Stampy like we chained him up in the backyard that's what we did with our elephant he's chained up in the backyard yes also I mean I've been close to a circus elephant in my youth they Some don't smell that great. I love that Bart thinks it's awesome how horrible he smells too. And also I love the blank, the look on everybody else's faces
Starting point is 01:10:53 as horrible things are happening while Bart is laughing at it is so great. And oh, then yeah, Marge basically says her catchphrase of season five, I think this is a bad idea. I don't know if you caught this, but when he names Stampy, we get a weird fade to black. I feel like that was supposed to be the original act break,
Starting point is 01:11:10 but they decided the animals disappearing over the horizon was a lot funnier. I think you're right. Yeah, I think you're right, because then they just replay the same Stampy reacting to being chained up shot, don't they? Right, right, right. And that animal's reacting is a great gag because I love the heads coming back up
Starting point is 01:11:27 over the horizon, just in shadow, like silhouette. It's so good. They're checking to see if it's safe and then get scared off again. This is where Lisa offers up a small, a big plate of veggies that instantly get eaten. It is almost a take that Lisa's beliefs joke in just that she wants to be helpful, but also sees like, oh yeah, there's, I am grossly unprepared for how much this animal needs.
Starting point is 01:11:50 Sjoerd Because she also has like a very cute, naive line of like, now make it last because it's got it, you know, and then of course this elephant is going to take the tray of greens, you know, so it's a nice moment of like, Lisa, yes, she's smart, but I always love these moments where it's like, she's still a little kid sometimes. And in Bart Gets Famous, I mentioned that there's a scene that is, I think they say out loud, Homer's screed against charity is just transcription
Starting point is 01:12:17 of John Swartzwalder talking. And this little bit here also feels like a Swartzwalder transcription. What's he yelling about? And this little bit here also feels like a Swartzwalder transcription. Oh, everything's cruel according to you keeping him chained up in the backyard is cruel pulling on his tail is cruel Yelling in his ears is cruel Everything is cruel. So excuse me if I'm cruel Now I've had my head in an elephant, a hippo, and a giant sloth. Got to be a big sloth to get Homer's head in there. Also they're extinct, so I don't know,
Starting point is 01:13:11 Homer could be mistaken. I just love the way that, I swear, Swartzweiler must have had that in life. Like, oh, everything I do is cruel, huh? Well, excuse me if I'm cruel. He's a dude that bangs on the fish tank glass. And this is where, God, there's, I couldn't play every clip from the episode,
Starting point is 01:13:32 but Homer taking him to Moe's for peanuts. And then when Moe says a funny line and he just replies with, shut up! That was a little bit of a running joke in Deep Space Homer where Homer had nothing clever to say. He just would shout shut up Yes You know it also feels like a great classic
Starting point is 01:13:49 Swartzwalder is because he loves to do things that are like This is a cartoon thing of like oh they took the elephant to the bar to eat all the free peanuts And then the next scene is like well an elephant actually be very sick if it ate that only that many peanuts all of it Yeah, and they're saying that was also a Jurassic Park reference with the sick Triceratops? The way Stampy is laying down and how they're kind of framed around him. Oh yeah, oh it definitely is, that's right.
Starting point is 01:14:15 Man, I mean yeah, like you said Bob, it was the biggest movie of when they were like doing the layout for this episode. And this is where Homer learns that they need to eat plants. Instantly takes him, the several times I have been to an arboretum, I mainly think about what an elephant would or would not do there. Several, are you hitting up arboreums
Starting point is 01:14:36 without telling me, Henry? Well, I guess it's more of like a park. There is like a park thing attached to the Charles Schultz Museum that I would call Arboretum-like. Maybe it's not exactly an arboretum, but... And then I just went to that logging museum that is attached, that's in Portland, first of all to see the log lady's log, but there was... Oh, cool.
Starting point is 01:14:56 I looked at a bunch of trees too. How was the log set up? Like what were they doing for it? That's pretty cool sounding. It was neat, and if you're in Portland, check it out while it's still there. It is a one single room. Right. And it's just basically, here's the log, here's her glasses, and also there's some
Starting point is 01:15:13 saved correspondence between her and David Lynch as well, the late actress who played the log lady, as well as like dated Polaroids for continuity sake during filming days. It's a lot of cool stuff. So the Arboretum, did it have an outdoor area in which different varieties of trees were being grown? Yes, yes.
Starting point is 01:15:34 Okay, I figured the logging industry would not want that. Well, yes, I've talked about this before, Andrew. The museum is also run by the logging industry. Ah. So there's tributes to the machinery too. But yes, they have the trees outside that like, these are the type of trees we cut down, but aren't they nice trees?
Starting point is 01:15:52 And they're cutting down the trees as part of what makes a good forest, as I learned from the very accurate and not at all biased logging museum. Also, it's a good joke of not having a punchline where Homer's like, any more arboretums here? No. The guy doesn't say anything funny or that.
Starting point is 01:16:10 He's just like, incredulous, Homer would ask. It's where Homer learns about grooming for the first time, which obviously that's a more loaded word now on the internet, but I took it as just like, Homer had never learned about cleaning himself before. You can groom yourself without being canceled. HOMER learns he's elephant fresh and I love the design of that bird.
Starting point is 01:16:32 It's like a, it's a mat graining life in hell bird. It's not an overly designed like extra realistic bird. I like how cartoony the bird is. Yeah, I've always liked the look of this little bird. And it's also funny, this is Homer thinking again that one animal doing something to another and it's automatically, it's killing it. That's the great, where he learns about sex at the zoo, zookeeper, those monkeys are killing each other.
Starting point is 01:16:55 They're having sex, oh. Yes. And on the commentary, Silverman is on it, David Silverman, he assumes that the poses of that bird's killing the elephant is from their dogs and they're playing poker. Yeah, same scene. The layout artist definitely was looking to that. I mean it is good. It's good Homer screaming. So if you're gonna copy Homer screaming and pointing at stuff, David Silverman is the guy you copy. And this is something David Merkin loves to do. He did it in
Starting point is 01:17:23 many shows, but on Get a Life when they did the ET parody, he always wanted to punish you for thinking a cute thing would happen. In that, the ET parody is Spewy the alien who when a cute thing might happen, he just barfs in Chris Elliot's face. In this case, Bart has a cute moment of being tucked in by the elephant and then he's almost killed once more. I also love the Nancy's delivery of like uh thanks a lot bud like he's uh Bart is thankful he didn't get murdered appreciate it. Then we cut to Homer he is very confused by the simple content I feel like the way he looks at the bills he doesn't understand what a bill is while he's looking at it. He lets Bart know that he's going to have to pay for everything when he sees the list
Starting point is 01:18:08 of stuff. Oh, I also love Homer's delivery of like, good luck. Like, oh, that's another one I love as the underwritten pets demand attention. Yeah. It's one of three jokes where the pets are all trying out new tricks, the existing pets. Yeah. It's a good gag. It also feels like almost a meta commentary on how underwritten the pets are usually
Starting point is 01:18:30 and the writers forgetting they're even there. Totally. And also I love Bart bought an oversized novelty poncho, but technically it's for a giraffe, but he thinks he can let it out a little. Bart thinking that he can let it out is such a funny, it's not like I'll have mom fix it, I think I could let it out a little.
Starting point is 01:18:45 And then we have another just perfect joke, Homer hitting kids, knocking at the door, they even once says, like for the nighttime no, signs away, he says like, we'll give you money, and the smash cut to go away on the side, god, so good. Homer refuses to learn plot points here. This is just like how he never noticed Bobo, the stuffed bear in the house too.
Starting point is 01:19:10 I'm gonna get something to eat. Visually, it's a very well-told gag because you see the bottom of the sign going into the lawn and then you see what it says. And then his whole, like, with Bart having the sign that he should have written and it's like, I don't have time to read it, boy, just the gist. Bob you're so right that like this is reared into showing what good direction or future Oscar winner level direction
Starting point is 01:19:33 makes the difference in a great script becoming a great episode or not like that because that joke could be you know averagely done or poorly done but it knows what the joke is and punctuates it correctly. You know, the timing is great. Then as the money starts rolling in for their backyard elephant show, and boy, do we get a first appearance in our next clip here. Your kid flew five feet, that counts as a ride, two bucks.
Starting point is 01:20:03 Well, that was never five feet. That animal of yours is certainly bad-tempered. Yeah, well, you'd be grumpy, too, if you were taken out of your natural habitat and gawked at by a bunch of slack-jawed yokels. Hey, Ma, look at that pointy-haired little girl. What the hell? You guys don't understand, Stamby. He's just like me.
Starting point is 01:20:21 We're a pair of juggers, and both of us are wild. We don't take nothing from nobody Smithies this reminds me of that fat man. I used to ride to work Yes, Cletus Spuckler the slack-jawed yokel makes his debut here Well, I want to become just a you know, one of the many people in a crowd who will say something funny But later they develop him, they give him children, and he gets entire episodes devoted to him, so they do a lot with this character.
Starting point is 01:20:50 It's one of the, I guess, newest big characters on the show. Wow, that's so weird. Is he still with Brandine? He still is, yeah. Oh, good. His sister, mother, whatever the joke is about their incestual connection.
Starting point is 01:21:04 His sister, mother, aunt, I think is even called in one episode. Yeah, which is, it's funny that they went so far with the incest jokes with them that then a year or two ago in a recent season, they do a dedicated Brandine episode about how there's a deep rich inner life to Brandine, which I'm not against that, but it's like you guys have done like 12 different jokes about her actively having incest with Cletus. And now we're going backwards for that. But they say on the commentary that the script just calls him slack jawed yokel. Cletus comes later. And of course we know too that Jeff Martin, who's not on the staff at the time,
Starting point is 01:21:45 but he had a relative or has a relative named Cletus because he's from Texas. That's how the name entered, I think, the Simpsons writers room via him. Unimportant, but I think it was a baseball coach. That's, thank you, Bob. Yes, you're right. I believe he mentions that on the Jeff Martin interview that you can find on the Patreon. Look in the back catalog, folks. Also just the drawing of him pointing at Lisa and ah, pointy haired. It's crazy how much Cletus becomes like the 20th most important character in the show in certain eras.
Starting point is 01:22:17 Man, that is so weird and foreign to me. And if you go to Universal Studios, Cletus has his own restaurant. Because the Simpsons, they poke fun at everybody, every race, every ethnicity. But when you're in a theme park, it's like, well, we can make fun of Italians and white people. This is about it. And poor people.
Starting point is 01:22:34 So Cletus is the target of fun. Are all the dishes named after roadkill gags, is that what we're doing at that restaurant? I've never eaten there. I guess they can't get too gross, but Henry, what do they serve up at? I mean, Cletus' fried chicken is Doc Brown's fried chicken, but done over for the Simpson girl. Oh. For theme park sickos out there, and we go deeper into this when we reviewed Krusty Burger on the Doughboys, but Cletus' fried chicken took over what used to be Doc Brown's
Starting point is 01:23:05 fried chicken, which before that in Hollywood was just the fried chicken selling spot in oldest universal Hollywood. But it's still the same recipe. So basically you can get the fried chicken plate, which is just your regular, like it's two pieces of fried chicken plus a biscuit and mashed potatoes. Now there's other funnier named things, but the only one I can remember is Cletus' Chicken Thumbs. They're chicken thumbs instead of chicken fingers. Yeah, yeah, again, they can't get too gross.
Starting point is 01:23:33 I'm actually looking at the menu for Cletus' Chicken Shack, and they could get a little funnier, because we just have chicken and waffle sandwich boring, chicken Caesar salad, and then I guess a half joke is a thrilled to be grilled sandwich. Right, yeah, that and then I guess a half joke is thrilled to be grilled sandwich. Right, yeah that's, I guess. They don't go far beyond TGIF naming schemes. Right, oh okay, that's kinda too bad.
Starting point is 01:23:53 Though you know in Orlando Universal, they sell, they don't do it in Hollywood, but they do sell a Mount Swartz Welder apple drink there. So you can actually buy a drink named after John Swartz Welder. Wow, that's kinda cool actually buy a drink named after John Swartz Welder. Wow. I think they were only able to get away with that because it's a thing in the show too. Yeah, it is a thing on the map so it's been approved.
Starting point is 01:24:13 But if you want to walk through a two story themed restaurant of Cletus stuff with like portraits of all this family in it, like that's how big Cletus is. He takes up real real estate there. I don't think that shack is gonna be around long enough to offer me impossible chicken. I think they're not gonna innovate and it's gonna be taken over by something else. Soon it will be Dominic Toretto's chicken shack.
Starting point is 01:24:37 Oh thank God. There you go. It's actually right next to the Simpsons area now in Hollywood is where they will soon open the new Fast and Furious roller coaster. That does look pretty cool, gotta say. It does look pretty neat. If it was Dom Toretto's chicken though,
Starting point is 01:24:54 they wouldn't be able to fry it anymore because those dudes, they're just grilling. They're always in the back. I think they're boiling that chicken. Hey, speaking of AI and the DJ 3000, there was a recent clip of Vin Diesel saying, oh yeah, we're about to start filming the next movie, and he says that Paul Walker's character's gonna be back,
Starting point is 01:25:13 and I'm like, but he's dead. Yeah. He has to think he's gonna do an A, he must've been told, oh yeah, AI can bring Paul Walker back, he'll be fine. Which, that's so awful, like the end of that seventh episode, uh, film is like a really nice sendoff for that character. They foolishly have teased like, Oh, he's babysitting this week or he's doing that
Starting point is 01:25:39 to explain away like after that, which is fine, but like an AI thing would be ghoulish. Like if you want to do it, he's got two brothers that look pretty much exactly like him, who are still kicking around. Just have that be the guy. It's so ghoulish, and there's something even worse about it because it's so much more recent than a grandmom of Tarkin, Peter Cushing in Rogue One.
Starting point is 01:26:04 I don't want an Egon Force ghost to show up. Oh yeah, that was another one that was a little too recent. Whoa, shudder. When I finally actually watched that movie, I really couldn't believe how long he was on screen. I was like, cause there's like five seconds, also the opening of the movie too is like kind of bad as well like all of him in the shadows,
Starting point is 01:26:20 but it's like Red Letter Media made the point of like, everybody should just be pissed at Bill Murray for wasting all those years of Harold Ramis' life being mad at him when he could've been making movies with him, and only when he's dead and they can reanimate his corpse does he wanna make a Ghostbusters. But instead he made Garfield, which we covered
Starting point is 01:26:37 on We Hate Movies, we were the guests. Check it out everybody. That's right, hell yeah. Afterwards, Homer is counting his money. He wants Marge to not humiliate him in front of the money. As he learns he wasn't pricing it correctly, and this again is perfect Schwarzwald or Homer writing, Homer is grossly undercharging for it and is not making enough money to cover the price and then increases everything by by a
Starting point is 01:27:02 hundred times over. $2 becomes $200 or $2 becomes 500, I think, actually. No one is grandfathered into the old price scheme. He's going to every person who's ever paid for a ride or a picture. That is the funniest, like him at the Van Houten's trying to retroactively get this money. Oh, and like Kirk actually like having a spine, get off our property.
Starting point is 01:27:27 That's his second line in the series so far. Whoa. Previously we had, it's a miracle when in Bart's friend falls in loves when Millhouse is out of bed and full of beans. All right. They're fighting on the ground. Why don't we hear an important moment for Kirk Van Houten? Millhouse saw the elephant twice and rode him once, right? Yes, but we paid you four dollars. Well, that was under our old price structure. Under our new price structure, your bill comes to a total of $700. Now, you've already paid me four dollars, so that's just $696 more that you owe me.
Starting point is 01:28:05 Get off our property. This town is full of deadbeats. I think Homer only did math correctly in that scene because that wasn't the joke. Otherwise he could not be trusted to subtract four from 700. You're totally right. Yeah, if there wasn't any follow-up for Kirk,
Starting point is 01:28:24 the joke ends at Homer giving some astronomical amount of money. Now listeners, when we up our Patreon to $500, you'll only owe us $495 for one month, that's all. I do feel like when Kirk says that line there, it's like it's the first time he's spoken in two years in the show, and I wonder if this is where Bill and Josh are the champions of Mr. Van Houten.
Starting point is 01:28:45 I wonder if hearing him the delivery of this line, they're like, you know what, it'd be funny to have, he should say more stuff in the show. We should do more with him. And he also won't be named yet until season seven in the tree house in a deleted scene. But he's winning. A deleted scene, yeah.
Starting point is 01:29:01 So this is really Kirk Begins. And this is from, this is the behind the scenes story on Bart's friend falls in love, but the funny thing is is that Maggie Roswell is Luann Van Houten. She was told not to do an imitation of Millhouse as the mother when playing her and casting it. Then later when Hank Azaria is is assigned Kirk Van Houten, he does do a Millhouse imitation
Starting point is 01:29:29 and the producers don't tell him not to. Maggie Roswell was right to be bothered by that a little. It's such a funny voice. And I like when he began saying, oh, before every line, just this nervous kind of tick made it a lot funnier too. Cause that kind of reminds me of, is it the really like short haired,
Starting point is 01:29:49 like wily teacher on, is it Beavis and Butthead? Yeah, you're thinking of the principal on Beavis and Butthead. The principal, yeah, oh, Beavis and Butthead, oh, yeah. We went for, it was dueling impressions there. Yeah. But yeah, it's just, I don't know why, I don't know what about that tick makes it funny to me, but I just love, it just spices things up a little bit. Yeah. This is where Homer Decides are going to sell the elephant. And yes, also this reminds
Starting point is 01:30:15 me of going to like any salesman who actually knows things about stuff and I have to pretend like, oh, I know what's in a car or I know how to like put up roofing. I go like, oh, I know what's in a car, or I know how to like put up roofing. I go like, yeah, well it is and it isn't. That's right. I feel like people have been trying to figure out the meaning of this scene, but I think it's just absurdist and that there is some quality about the elephant that does not exist and it's just so like obscure or unknown to the audience that it doesn't make any sense. Well, I mean, honestly with friends, we've been, with Simpsons dilettantes out there,
Starting point is 01:30:47 people will ask a question like, oh, didn't the Simpsons predict Donald Trump? And you'll have to go like, well, it did and it didn't. Right. I don't think there's anything more than absurdism to it either, Bob. Yeah, and it's just like, the perfect customer arrives first,
Starting point is 01:31:00 but there is some strange quality that is not defined that keeps him away from buying the elephant. It just, it's very, very smart. I mean, it goes along with like, you know, you must find the Jade Monkey by the first full moon, or I'm the first non-Brazilian to travel through time. Like these just funny thoughts that have no basis in like an actual reference or something like that. But because so much of this show is reference based,
Starting point is 01:31:26 I love it that it always triggers like, what was that from? And then the answer is like, it's so cool. And then Homer is getting a meeting with a charity organization with a big open sanctuary and it's perfect like, Swartz Welder hate for charity is just like, so your bid is zero.
Starting point is 01:31:45 Thank you. Homer should at least get a tax write off on this. But I mean, as Homer said, Stampy is costing him thousands of dollars. So instead of getting $10,000, seemingly they have lost $10,000 in taking care of Stampy for a month. Yes.
Starting point is 01:32:02 And this is where Homer finally gets a good offer he's ready to take. Mr. Simpson, I think you'll find this amount more than fair. Dad, I think he's an ivory dealer. His boots are ivory, his hat is ivory, and I'm pretty sure that check is ivory. Lisa, a guy who has lots of ivory is less likely to hurt Stampy than a guy whose ivory supplies are low. Grrrr. Grrrr. Grrrr. Grrrr. Mr. Blackheart?
Starting point is 01:32:32 Yes, my pretty. Are you an ivory dealer? Little girl, I've had lots of jobs in my day. Whale hunter, seal clumber, president of the Fox network, and like most people, yeah, I've done a little ivory. Dad, you can't do this. Stampy is my friend. Don't worry son, I'll get you a new elephant. I'll take that one too.
Starting point is 01:32:54 Done. Alright, I'll be back in the morning to pick up Stampy. Here's the keys. Elephants don't have keys. Well, just keep these then. Talking about joke placement, I love how the pets wander into the middle of a scene. They're not referenced and then they come in. They just sort of interrupt the exchange
Starting point is 01:33:09 between Homer and Blackheart. Ha ha ha. Oh, Blackheart is so great. The way he goes like, yes, my pretty. Yeah. He's. Ha ha ha. It's total Disney villain mode.
Starting point is 01:33:20 It's so great. Also, Homer's reasoning on a guy whose ivory supplies are low. That's the defense of why rich people should be trusted by the government. Why would Elon Musk take a bunch of money from the government? He's already very rich.
Starting point is 01:33:34 Yep. He wouldn't need that. I also love the detail. And like everybody, I've also dealt a little ivory. Yes. And we say it every time, but I love when they're mean to the Fox network. They never would do this with Disney. They wouldn't do this with Disney.
Starting point is 01:33:51 No, no. I think that Disney would just shut it down. They'd be like, make another Iron Man short for us. Oh, those shorts. Yikes. It's been a minute. I guess the budget's not there anymore for them or something. They moved around the money. So yes, the deal has been made on a check made of ivory, and Bart decides
Starting point is 01:34:12 he's going to free Stampy and run away. I mean, this is also the thing that happens in so many, like, this is a parody of a million kids and his animal friend stories of like, oh no, he's going to lose the animal. They run away together, except Stampy, the second he is freed, smacks Bart to the ground and leaves and not brings him. You know, part of me hates explaining jokes, but I love the idea that a man is wearing ivory boots. Just, it's the worst material to make anything out of, and a hat, it just, he's so devoted to ivory,
Starting point is 01:34:41 he is just making his life worse. Yeah. Like, there's no way you can like walk around without slipping on every surface I'll suggest the delivery of like mr. Blackheart like the reveal that his name is Blackheart And be they smash stamp he smashes through the the fence waking up Ned and he thinks it's the one of the four elephants of the apocalypse and that's horseman Neddy. Getting closer, anytime I have to say getting closer, I say it in Ned's cadence here too.
Starting point is 01:35:12 It's just getting closer. And it is that perfect, like he's excited that it's getting closer, you know, here we go, almost there. So we come back from the commercial break and it's the next morning and I had to get this one too because Homer rules in this shot in this moment too. Mom, Dad, Bart and Stampy are gone. Oh my lord. I bet it's because of that horrible
Starting point is 01:35:36 ivory dealer, Dad. He took Bart too? That wasn't part of our deal, Blackheart! That wasn't part! Piece of cake. All we have to do is follow the path of destruction. Oh, stupid tornado! Look! It's got Patty and Selma! I feel it all the way up my skirt. Ditto. I Feel it all the way up my skirt did I Believe that that wasn't part joke that whole exchange was a George Meier invention. I guess he cracked himself up It's great. It's such a it definitely feels like he's taking it from bad action movies where they have for P Like that wasn't part like not finishing the sentence
Starting point is 01:36:26 half repeat like, that wasn't part, like not finishing the sentence. Like I mean that he's mad that the supervillain of the movie double crossed him and said that wasn't part of our deal. And yes, the path of destruction being upset by the twister is great as is the Patty and Selma on the rocking chair just like the old woman that Dorothy sees in the cyclone sequence in Wizard of Oz. So another brief, just as brief as the Jurassic Park references, a brief Wizard of Oz reference here. And this final act is just nothing but wall-to-wall gags until they find Stampede. Yes, I love the first two here.
Starting point is 01:36:57 This is what I love about Swartzwalder and the Peake Simpsons writing in general, which is they know what you think a joke is gonna be, and then they just screw over it each time. Like first off, they're doing the windowpane joke, and then they just throw it in the garbage because it was trash to begin with. And then they do the, oh, the police are getting crazy calls, and then it's just, Wiggum believes no phone calls
Starting point is 01:37:21 to him either, like he thinks all of them are crazy. Which is a great, it makes me also think of the, he's doing that again with the, I'm gonna write that down in my invisible typewriter. Jackass, all that stuff is great. But sure buddy, liquor store robbery, officer down. I don't know if they were going for this. It reminds me of a not great old Warner Brothers short
Starting point is 01:37:45 about a tiny pink elephant that is just causing mischief and mayhem. And when people start calling the cops, like, yeah, sure, you're seeing pink elephants. It's like, why don't you dry out, sister? The cops think the people are drunk because they're seeing this tiny elephant. I think it might be a Chuck Jones short.
Starting point is 01:38:00 Yes, yeah, no, you're totally right, Bob. That was like, it was one of the Chuck Jones ones where he basically wanted to make like a UPA style short, except it's at Warner. Yeah, no, you're totally right. I forget the name of that one, but you're right. If you want to watch the short, folks, it's called Punch Trunk, T-R-U-N-K.
Starting point is 01:38:17 Oh, nice titling there, I like that. I wonder if it has an Edward G. Robinson imitation in it too. That's a... I like how he punctuates it with whee. Yeah. Now look, we've talked a lot about Swartzwalder's politics in here too, but I think about this joke every day these days. Yeah, especially in the last decade. You could just post this on whatever day you want and it's always correct. Doesn't matter if it's the weekend or Christmas time.
Starting point is 01:38:47 So yeah, Schwarzwald, they say it on the commentary too, like this is Schwarzwald's politics and I think Merkin jokingly calls him a fascist. He says, well, Schwarzwald is a fascist. I think he'd be fine when we say that. But it really plays on two levels because when you're a kid, you think it's funny. Oh, the Republicans are cheering for the elephant, the Democrats are booing. But then when you're an adult, you see the signs in the background you're like oh I know what this means this accurately reflects the reality I've lived in.
Starting point is 01:39:11 The Republicans do stand for we want what's worse for everyone and we're just plain evil and the Democrats I have really especially shown themselves I'd say this year in all years we can't govern and we hate life and ourselves. Like, it's... We've got nothing. Yeah, we got nothing. But yes, I mean, we're just playing evil. What a perfect, perfect sign.
Starting point is 01:39:37 And I like how cartoony the guys are too at the convention. Like, cause it's kind of a cheat to make it, you know, so the artists don't have to draw two gigantic crowds, but it's, I like how cartoony it is, cause it is like, it's a New Yorker gag, but it's hilarious. Right. That's, you know, that's dismissive of the perfect joke
Starting point is 01:39:54 on The Simpsons, but it's New Yorker in like, kind of pacing, I mean. And then, that's followed by another perfect joke, as we stop by the peanut factory. This is the moment we feared, people. Many of you thought it would never happen, but I insisted we spent two hours every morning training for it. You all thought I was mad.
Starting point is 01:40:17 Many of you requested to be transferred to another peanut factory. But now we've... Oh, that's too good. Again, I hate just explaining why I think it's funny, but it just, the perfect Swartzwalder jokes, perfect Simpsons joke, the guy is too caught up in being sanctimonious that all of these years of preparation are falling apart in front of him. He is ready for this. Two hours every day he makes everybody at the peanut factory practice for what a
Starting point is 01:40:45 mad elephant appears to take all their peanuts. Yes he's so distracted by finally being right that he he wastes their time again. It's so good. So then after that we get a quick Lassie reference of Bart Coll with the music even or or a sound like in the music. You know this one I'm not sure if it's they actually did the orchestration of the Lassie theme song. But we, if you want to learn all the history of Lassie, previous guest to the podcast, Pop Arena, their YouTube channel, the Knick Knacks, they did a history of Lassie that was very informative. It's the ultimate definitive history of Lassie, at least for millennials,
Starting point is 01:41:25 I'd say. Wow. I believe I learned there are 700 episodes of Lassie. Holy shit. There's really a, it's, yeah, it's insane. It went on for like 20 years and of course multiple dogs. Yeah, it was, I learned from Paparina's video that there was like a consistent continuity in the Lassie show that when Timmy or another boy would grow up
Starting point is 01:41:46 and leave the show, there would be an episode of Timmy gives Lassie to a new owner who is then the regular on the show. Timmy ages, Lassie never does. Oh, that's weird. Lassie is a Highlander. And by the way, 591 episodes on 700, but still, there's 19 seasons of Lassie.
Starting point is 01:42:05 Good God, so much Lassie. How many times can they find a new thing to do with a dog, a great dog? I watched so much of those on like, you know, Nick at Night reruns or wherever they were. I couldn't tell you much about them, besides I was always fascinated by, because I think it was my first exposure of the mother having to crank dial the phone and she had like a
Starting point is 01:42:29 nice rapport with the operator. That's literally, I mean then like what the dog looked like I guess, but like that's really the thing I remember most about The Lassie Show was the mom, June Lockhart I think if I'm remembering right. Yes, yes. Just on the phone with the operator, and I thought it was fascinating as a child. Yeah, I recall seeing the icebox and thinking, wow, that sucks. I'm glad we have a fridge. Exactly.
Starting point is 01:42:53 I think our generation was the last one of American kids who had to watch Lassie or chose to watch Lassie because it did get cheap reruns on Nickelodeon in the 90s. And then after that, I don't, well, I wonder if he can watch it on like MeTV or something now. Oh, I'm sure it's floating around on those things. And then they had the movie in 1994, which I believe the mother was played by Helen Slater
Starting point is 01:43:16 of Supergirl fame. Wow, I forgot that. But if you're an elder millennial, you know that throughout the late 80s and early 90s, you were punished every day when Nickelodeon showed you a Lassie and a Dennis the Menace back to back. And not the cartoon Dennis the Menace. No, no, no, no, no.
Starting point is 01:43:30 Lassie made Dennis the Menace look like, oh, thank God, the Dennis the Menace one's on. Time for some edgy humor. I, for real, have memories of a five-year-old being like, oh, Lassie's on now, mom, is this nap time now? I'm gonna take a nap. And so this is where Bart finally finds Stampy, but first he thinks he sees Stampy,
Starting point is 01:43:53 but it's really just a statue of a woolly mammoth family. And just like I saw American Gothic, I have now since been to the La Brea Tar Pits in Los Angeles. I was gonna ask Hollywood Henry Gilbert, who's in LA once a month, if he's been there. It's only every six months, averages out. I've got a list, Henry.
Starting point is 01:44:10 I've got spreadsheets. I'll be there again soon to see the Evangelion concert in Los Angeles. Oh, nice. Those tar pits are wild, man. They're a weird thing to sort of walk through and look at. Yeah, so I obviously wanted to go to them because of the reference on the Simpsons, but I had always wanted to see them. So they're a quick walk from the Academy Museum, the
Starting point is 01:44:32 Oscar Museum, which is a really cool museum. Hell yeah. And so you take a little walk, you go to the La Brea Tar Pits. Now, is it a fun place to be around a bunch of stinky tar on a hundred degree day in the summer in Los Angeles? Not so much. Not so much. I lasted about 40 minutes there, but it is neat. There are indoors. It's cool. And you as in with air conditioning, it's great to look at some, uh, some fossils as well though. I, yeah, I mean, if you want to, if you are going there just as a Simpsons fan that is the wooly mammoths are
Starting point is 01:45:05 still there. Like all the animals are there and I pointed at them to my husband and said, this is from the stampy episode of The Simpsons. And I pulled it out of my phone to show it to him. Those were also top of mind for me because we just did an episode on Sin City and there's that whole portion where Clive Owen is in the Tar Pits and he's fighting the vague IRA splinter cell gang that's happening. Yeah. It had been a long time since I'd seen Sin City and was like remembering almost none
Starting point is 01:45:37 of this Tar Pit sequence, but it is there and Clive Owen falls inside of it and it's a cool, he turns into like an all white silhouette against the black of the tar, it's an awesome image. Yeah, we're not getting as much Tar Pit content over the last 20 years I've noticed. I think growing up there were so many jokes about let's go to the Tar Pit or here's a scene at a Tar Pit. I feel like this generation of writers and directors
Starting point is 01:45:58 and creators aren't visiting the Tar Pits as much as they used to. No, it's a real shame too, Bob. I think I actually remember the first time hearing about it was My Girl 2. They go to the Tar Pits and that. I think that came out around, during the season of Simpsons.
Starting point is 01:46:11 I think I mentioned that in one of our history bits. Yes, My Girl 2, Revenge of the Bees. Yes. See, kids today don't want to go to it because they're not reading Time Magazine. It calls it the best in Tar entertainment. As the sign says when Bart arrives. And this is where Bart learns that Stampy is lonely for other elephants, which is why Bart's going to support what Lisa had suggested. And this
Starting point is 01:46:35 is where we get another classic Simpsons moment as the family reunites. A deer! A female deer. Son, you're okay. It led us to the precious ivory. And of course your lovable pet, who it's connected to. Dad, I can't let you sell him. Stampy and I are friends. Anyway, I want him to go to that animal refuge. Forget it! That elephant cost me thousands of dollars. Dad, how would you like to be sold to an ivory deer?
Starting point is 01:46:52 I'm not sure. I'm not sure. I'm not sure. I'm not sure. I'm not sure. I'm not sure. I'm not sure. I'm not sure.
Starting point is 01:47:00 I'm not sure. I'm not sure. I'm not sure. I'm not sure. I'm not sure. I'm not sure. I'm not sure. I'm not sure go to that animal refuge. Forget it! That elephant cost me thousands of dollars. Dad, how would you like to be sold to an ivory dealer? I'd like it fine. Even if he killed you and made your teeth into piano keys?
Starting point is 01:47:14 Yes, of course I would. Who wouldn't like that? To be part of the music scene. Dad, he's sinking! Huh? Get a rope, Bart. No, that's okay. I'm pretty sure I can struggle my way out. First, I'll just reach in and pull my legs out. Now I'll pull my arms out with my face.
Starting point is 01:47:35 Dad! Homie! Stan, be quick, pull him out! Oh, that Homer's like to be part of the music scene. Like, Homer's been dreaming of it his whole life. Yeah, at this point had he, or he was a Grammy winning artist by this point, was he not?
Starting point is 01:47:52 Oh, hey, you're right, you're right. He was part of it. He was all the way at the top. By the way, My Girl 2 released February 11th, 1994. I'm gonna guess probably still in theaters. I don't think it was a big hit. At the very least, it's at the Dollar Theater. Yeah, right, yeah.
Starting point is 01:48:07 Even bad movies lasted in theaters way longer, 30 years ago. Man, that's, yeah, Homer, Homer just walking into the, the tar unannounced and trying to pull his arms out with his face and just shoving his face in the blub blub blub blub as he drowns, god.
Starting point is 01:48:24 And this is, yes, this is where the crazy, and he comes out with his face, and just shoving his face in the blah blah blah blah as he drowns, god. And this is, yes, this is where the crazy scene of him, he pulls out a different body. How long has Barty been in there? Like they arrived and had a whole conversation. So crazy. Yeah, and I guess he knows Stampy's name? Yes, how'd he learn?
Starting point is 01:48:43 Maybe he stopped by and got a ride that afternoon when Homer was charging $1. You know, now I should go back to double confirm this, but I think he must be in that shot when Stampy's eating the peanuts. So let's say he met him at the bar. There we go. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Starting point is 01:48:56 They're old drinking buddies. That's how he knew to save him. I love his delivery of, thanks, Stampy. And the little noise that he makes, when he lights on fire, he's like, bruh. It's not screaming in pain like you're getting a Mortal Kombat fatality. It's like, bruh.
Starting point is 01:49:15 Barney has really high HP. We've seen him get his head slammed in the car door over and over and over again. Right, yeah. This is where there's one of the two changes I noted in the animatic, which is the timing of Barney walking away, he actually walks like, you watch him walk down the street for like five seconds.
Starting point is 01:49:32 Oh, see, you gotta continue that joke, that's amazing. And this is where Homer is pulled out and saved by Stampy, and Homer seems to have learned his lesson, though then tries to go back on it. I'm alive! I'm alive! And I owe it all to this fusty feline! Dad, feline means cat. Elephant, honey. It's an elephant and I'm sure he'll make a grand piano. Dad! Oh, I guess it wouldn't be right to sell Stampy after he saved my life. And the boy seems to have some sort of relationship with him. Thanks, Dad.
Starting point is 01:50:11 On the other hand, who's to say what's right these days, but with all our modern ideas and products? All right, we'll give this stupid elephant to the stupid animal refuge. Yay! Uh, Mom, we're stuck to Dad. This is just what happened at the Caramel Factory. Ow, my hair! Caramel.
Starting point is 01:50:42 Despite the heartwarming resolution, Homer thinks, what if I play devil's advocate one more time? Maybe I could still get that ivory money. Yep, just take one more shot at it, why not? I mean, I feel like that is a social media argument you hear now, like, well, who's to say what's right these days with all our modern ideas and products? I also just love how Homer hits and products.
Starting point is 01:51:04 Like he's in a commercial or he thinks he's got them, but he gives up. I mean also to the like, Homer does need to be like, I'll take him to the stupid animal refuge. Like he doesn't want to. Right. I also love the, anytime they reference a thing that like you never saw in a previous episode,
Starting point is 01:51:24 this caramel factory bit is so great. So this is where we say goodbye to Stampy, at least for now. We'll get to his many appearances later, but first, this is where they give themselves a little sweetness as they actually have Bart not get eaten for once by Stampy in our final clip here Hey! Ha ha ha! Attaboy, Stampy!
Starting point is 01:52:14 Put him once for me! Gosh, I thought he'd be happier in his true habitat. Oh, I think he is. Then why is he attacking all those other elephants? Well, animals are a lot like people, Mrs. Simpson. Some of them act badly because they've had a hard life or have been mistreated. But, like people, some of them are just jerks. Stop that, Mrs. Simpson. Uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh The headbutting lasts longer than I think every time.
Starting point is 01:52:51 This was very instructive to me as a little kid and I've carried this with me all my life. Some people you want to give them the benefit of the doubt when you're mistreated. You're thinking like, where's the trauma? What's causing you to be like this? But then sometimes you realize, oh, they're beyond redemption and they're also just jerks. Yeah, there's just jerks out there. That's all there is, you know. Once you accept that, some stuff gets a little easier, I would imagine. They mention on the commentary, they even say like, it looks like Stampy killed that
Starting point is 01:53:16 one elephant. Like it's down. He's at least knocked him out. So this is the one other visual change in the the animatic I can note here, which is originally they drew it that Homer and Stampy, they aren't headbutting, they're kicking. So Stampy is kicking the other elephant to death, and then Homer is kicking the guy. It's funnier with headbutts. Yeah, the headbutts are funnier, and a nice little detail, the guy is not really reacting, he's just kind of getting bumped a little and just slightly annoyed, but it's not causing him to stop what he's doing.
Starting point is 01:53:48 No, it reminds me so much of the burns with the baseball bat, I'm gonna give you the beating of a lifetime, and he's just like gently hitting the guy. Stop that. It's also perfect Merkin cynicism or dark ending too, that it's like, to save one elephant, it seems like Snampy kills two other elephants
Starting point is 01:54:05 after he is saved. So the arithmetic of conservation doesn't add up here either. But Stampy, we won't see the last of him here. He makes way more appearances than you would think. Wow. Yeah. They kind of sit on Stampy for like a decade, right? Around a decade? His next named appearance is in Large Marge, yes. As like Stampy is there, and that's the one, Andrew, in case you don't know, where Marge gets breast implants accidentally
Starting point is 01:54:32 and has large breasts. Okay, that I've seen. I don't remember Stampy being in the episode, though. You were too distracted. I was. By her bountiful bosoms. So in that one, Stampy is going crazy as part of a stunt. And then Krusty needs to remember the safe word for it, which is mcgumbo. And then he only thinks of that when he sees Marge reveal her, like basically flash everybody. And Stampy
Starting point is 01:55:01 is about to kill Milhouse in that one too. And he's not named, but that's him in The Fat and the Furious, right Bob, at the bear sanctuary? That's what the wiki says, and I believe in this time. Yeah, no, I mean, it's the same like, oh, they dropped off the bear at the animal sanctuary. It's the same one Stampy's at. I think was the intention there. Though, you know, the internet tells me in the episode from season 32 Diary Queen That stampy appears in this musical section, but I pulled it up on Disney Plus like
Starting point is 01:55:36 It's a dance sequence where an elephant is there dancing with everybody, but it's it's just a gray elephant nobody calls him stampy We will get to it in 2050. We'll figure it out Any any solo stampy episodes where he's the focal point of the story? That, no, other than ending in large part, I didn't think so. He kind of just becomes the living Olmec head, this giant thing they could wheel onto the stage, into the scene every once in a while. Oh, that's so funny. And he doesn't appear in it, but he is shouted out
Starting point is 01:55:58 for a good joke in the two Miss Nahas and Pima Petalas at Appu's wedding when Barko's like, wish I had an elephant. Lisa says, you did, you named him Stampy, you loved him. Oh yeah. It's so great, I'm a dead fan of that, you loved him. Oh yeah. Homer put in the mouth of that elephant in that episode,
Starting point is 01:56:15 I was trying to remember. Cause he is doing the whole like, you've angered Ganesh. You know, it stomps him upside down, I remember that. Yeah, yeah, I couldn't remember if there was any mouth action in that one. Home or getting sucked off again by an elephant. But yeah, I mean, there's a reason Stampy is constantly brought up in later episodes of Simpsons
Starting point is 01:56:40 because this is such a memorable, perfect episode of Simpsons. I mean, it's a crazy thing happens. They find every possible joke they can about what if the family has an elephant? They also have a big action ending and they have a double first act. Storyline one, what if the family cleaned up the house together? And what if Bart wins a radio contest and they find great stuff to do in every bit. It's just a really straight pitch down the middle in terms of the premise where outside of the clean the house that piece was such funny
Starting point is 01:57:11 there's nothing but the elephant story there's no B plot or anything and it's just a bunch of solid jokes about this insane premise. It's one of those great like you know the title is as advertised it's not There's nothing funny about it. What it is is Bark Gets an Elephant. I think sometimes you get those just straight away episodes like that and they tend to be the more focused kind of better ones and this episode totally rocks in that regard. I guess the title is a parody only for Simpsons writers at the time in in that the classic episode was Bark Gets an F, and now they've like, well, Bark Gets an Elephant.
Starting point is 01:57:49 That's their new spin on it. But yeah, a great, great episode of Simpsons. Thank you once again to Andrew Dupin for being on the show. Andrew, let us know more about We Hate Movies, where we can find you online. What's going on with your podcast? Yeah, so at the time that this airs, we'll have just finished up residency
Starting point is 01:58:04 at the Oxford Comedy Festival, which I am'll have just finished up residency at the Oxford Comedy Festival, which I am anticipating is going to be a lot of fun. I haven't quite done it yet. But yeah, you know, we are at this point sort of at the tail end of our 15th season. There's a, I think we're closing out on the, what is that, the 29th with an episode on Night of the Museum, the Ben Stiller movie. And then we are going into our August sort of gray area break where we're releasing a bunch of live episodes on the main feed, but on the Patreon, which is patreon.com slash
Starting point is 01:58:35 we have movies. We cover tons of different things like Star Wars, Star Trek, Lifetime movies. We release sinkable commentaries on there. We have a show show Called we love movies where we talk about more critically acclaimed kind of stuff But still sort of knock it around a little bit So it's kind of a perfect time to catch up with we hate movies right now season 16 We'll be starting in earnest in September, which is crazy to even say still half of the the Simpsons run But yeah, so you can find us anywhere you get podcasts. We Hate Movies is there, and patreon.com slash wehatemovies
Starting point is 01:59:09 for the sea of bonus content. You guys put out an impossible amount of content, and I'm so happy that every year you give yourselves a month off from recording. Honestly, Bob, it is needed, man. You get that, like, there's just a wall that comes at some point, and you're like, oh boy, is it August yet?
Starting point is 01:59:24 Which never in my life was I excited for the month of August, especially here in the Northeast with the humidity, but now I'm like, oh, bring it. Bring me that sweet, sweet downtime. Your guys' live shows are great. I was at your, I got to see your Seattle one where you talked about Harry and the Hendersons. That's right, yes.
Starting point is 01:59:41 Oh, that was a lot of fun. Yeah, so we're doing that, and I think I'll say it here, it's fine. We are doing December 6th of this year, I think we'll just be announcing it on this Night at the Museum episode on the 29th, but what the hey. We are doing a 15th anniversary show here in Brooklyn at the Bell House, where we will be talking about Total Recall, the OG with Arnold Schwarzenegger. So I believe on the 29th, tickets for that show will be on sale on our website, whmpodcast.com, and that's gonna be crazy
Starting point is 02:00:14 to ring in 15 years. It's a, you know, Bell House is kind of like our home base when we play here in the New York area. So it's gonna be a lot of fun to Saturday night. It's gonna be great. That rules. I'm glad you guys are doing that because I know your 10th anniversary show
Starting point is 02:00:26 was destroyed like many things by COVID. Yes, yeah, we got totally screwed by that and we had to do an 11th anniversary show instead. Talking about Shud, which was great, but yes, hopefully everything can be totally fine and this December we will be celebrating 15 years. Totally crazy. Can't wait for it.
Starting point is 02:00:44 Thank you so much, Andrew. Yeah, thanks for having us, guys. Can't wait for it. Thank you so much, Andrew. Yeah, thanks for having us, guys. It's always a blast. Thank you once again to Andrew Jupin for being on the show. Please check out We Hate Movies. We love everything that they do. But as for us, if you want to check out more of what we do and get all these podcasts ad-free
Starting point is 02:00:56 and also access to hundreds of full-length bonus podcasts, go to patreon.com slash Talking Simpsons and sign up for five bucks a month. And when you do, you'll access over 200 full length bonus podcasts, along with getting all of these other podcasts ad free. And on those bonus podcasts, we've covered shows like Futurama, King of the Hill, Batman, the animated series, the critic and mission Hill. And that five bucks a month also gets you a new episode of both talking of the
Starting point is 02:01:18 Hill and talking Futurama every month. It's a great deal. It's a great bang for your five bucks. And it's only happening at patreon.com slash talking Simpsons and there is a $10 level as well. When you sign up for that, you get all the $5 stuff, but you also get a very, very long podcast once a month for patrons of that level. What's happening there, Henry? Bob, it's talking about our What a Cartoon movie podcast, where we talk about animated feature films, just like we do a classic episode of The Simpsons. We've been doing it for years
Starting point is 02:01:44 and years now. They're basically like triple length podcasts you get each month at the $10 level for the summer. We have been doing the two thousands Disney films. We started it with an extremely goofy movie. We continued with 2002's Lilo and Stitch. This month, you're going to hear us talk about Atlantis, the lost kingdom. And then we're going to be wrapping it up with treasure planet. And that's just the most recent stuff we are doing. Huge histories and deep dives into every scene in the movie explaining it all. And the entire
Starting point is 02:02:13 back catalog covering tons of other Disney films, tons of Pixar movies, tons of anime and Studio Ghibli, even live action stuff like Little Shop of Horrors or Who Framed Roger Rabbit. You can hear all of that when you sign up for the $10 level for the entire back catalog at patreon.com slash Talking Simpsons and it gets you all the ad free $5 stuff too. Check it out once more at patreon.com slash Talking Simpsons. And I've been one of your hosts for this one, Bob Mackey. You can find me on Blue Sky and Letterboxd, other places as Bob Servo,
Starting point is 02:02:50 and my other podcast is RetroNauts. It's a classic gaming podcast about old video games. You can find that where you find podcasts or just go to patreon.com slash RetroNauts and sign up there for some bonus episodes every month. And Henry, what's going on with you? Well, I am talking Henry on Blue Sky and on Instagram. I'm sometimes posting on there the fun stuff I'm doing. And if you're following me and Bob on Blue Sky and Instagram, that's
Starting point is 02:03:12 also where Talk Simpsons Pod is. At Talk Simpsons Pod is the official account of our podcast where you learn whenever new episodes come out, whenever things are bubbling up in our world, you learn about it first if you are following at Talk Simpsons Pod in social media. And don't forget that TalkingSimpsons.com is the home of all of our previously released free podcast, both for Talking Simpsons and What a Cartoon Podcast, our sister series, that name again, TalkingSimpsons.com. Thank you so much for listening folks. We'll see you again next time for the latest episode of our community podcast, Talk to the Audience,
Starting point is 02:03:47 and we'll see you then. I think you're taking unfair advantage of my generous offer. Shut up!

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