Talking Simpsons - Talking Simpsons - Bart The General (Revisited) With Chris Cabin

Episode Date: February 19, 2020

Bart goes to war in this week's season one exploration with Chris Cabin from the podcast We Hate Movies! We meet Nelson for the first time, as well as Herman, as Bart decides to deal with a bully in every way possible. So grab your water balloons and give a listen to this! Peace, man... Support this podcast and get dozens of bonus episodes by visiting Patreon.com/TalkingSimpsons and becoming a patron! And please follow the new official Twitter, @TalkSimpsonsPod!

attention podcast listener we've got an exciting new podcast coming just for patrons of patreon.com slash talking simpsons talking futurama season two part one has begun exclusively for our five dollar and up patrons on the talking simpsons network that's the first 10 episodes of futurama coming to you once a week so just sign up for $5 a month at patreon.com slash talking simpsons and you'll get Talking Futurama season two and all of our limited miniseries, including the entirety of Talking Futurama season one. That's 13 episodes.

That is patreon.com slash talking simpsons. Now, please enjoy the rest of this podcast. I heartily endorse this event or product ahoy everybody and welcome to talking simpsons where we bleed our own blood i'm your host the borderline psychotic Bob Mackie, and this is our chronological exploration of The Simpsons, who is here with me today. Henry Gilbert, still waiting on my copy of Soldier of Fortune for this month. And who is our special guest? Hi, this is Chris Cabin, and I promise you victory and good times.

Excellent, and today's episode is Bart the General. You've got to tell Principal Skinner, Bart. I can't squeal. Excellent. And today's episode is Bart the General. Today's episode aired on February 4th, 1990. And as always, Henry will tell us what happened on this mythical day in real world history. Oh my God! oh boy bobby the nfc beats the afc in the pro bowl paula abdul's opposites attract is number one on the billboard music charts and in a piece of news i just learned today billy idol has a terrible motorcycle accident that breaks his leg preventing him from playing t-1000 in Terminator 2. Oh my God. I didn't know this. Did you know this, Chris? I had no idea.

And we just did a Terminator 2 episode. I had no idea. Yeah, it was crazy to read. It was one of those things where you see it on Wikipedia, and I was looking like, what happened in music on February this of 1990? And it lists like February 6th, Billy Idol breaks leg in a motorcycle accident,

gets recast in Terminator. I'm like, no, that has to be one of these Wikipedia fake things. Can't be real. And I Google it and like Robert Pattison, Patrick. Patrick, yeah. Patrick, yes. He gave an interview a couple of years ago of just like, yeah, Billy Idol broke his leg and they recast me late.

Like the original Stan Winston props were Billy Idoly idol's face is t1000 not me i didn't i feel like i should know this trivia wow no i i'm just now i can't stop but think about terminator 2 as like a rock musical like walter hill streets of fire kind of stuff i'm just hearing cradle of love as a terminator walks towards me to kill me very slowly. And Opposites Attract, I think, it activated so many furries. It was part of the late 80s furry activation with Rescue Rangers and The Last Unicorn.

Now we're living in the era of cats. And not to be a little stinker, but I'm kind of sick of hearing about cats. I agree, actually. I'm with you on that. People can have their fun. You can enjoy what you want to enjoy. As you guys say on your podcast, it's okay to like a movie. But I feel like I'm with you on that People can have their fun you can enjoy what you want to enjoy As you guys say on your podcast it's okay to like a movie But I feel like I grew up in

With like 20 years of people making fun of cats So to see people discovering it for the first time Is just like infuriating me like we knew it was crazy We knew it was crazy and stupid For a long time It's okay to like a feline Yes exactly but I guess that people are allowed to be younger than us It's legal I like a feline. Yes, exactly. But I guess that people are allowed to be younger than us. It's legal.

No, I mean, in the cats discourse, I am one of those people who just like, I saw cats in the 90s when it was a decade old as a child. And then I was like, yeah, this is crazy. But, you know, when a film comes out, it activates a lot of people in the cats that didn't know about it. I don't want to make new cats fans feel unwelcome, but there is a part of me that is the gatekeeper mentality of like, where were you for the last 40 years of cats?

It is just funny to see how people are constantly discovering these weird things. Like I remember, this is Simpsons related, but 30 years ago there was an episode of Get a Life called Zoo Animals on Wheels, which was a cats parody. It was about the main character being in a Cats parody. Bart and Milo see Cats when they're on their squishy bender. I put that as a GIF on Twitter and said, Simpsons predicted Cats, just like 9-11 and iPhones.

I have the, my Cats story is that I went to see it as a young boy, and I was in line to get an autograph from, I think, Rum Tum Tigger. I can't say for sure on that one. I was about to get my autograph signed and he was like, oh, got to go back on stage. I didn't know they were signing autographs. Yeah, they did that for a while, I think, where kids would come up in intermission or right after the show and just line up for autographs. That's cool. Wasn't that the character like Llewellyn Sinclair played?

And I played Rum Tum Tugger in the touring company of cats. Anybody see it? Yeah. And as we all know, Rum Tum Tugger is a curious cat. Is McClunky one of the cats or did I just mix up my references? No, that's a Star Wars. You're thinking of Macavity. Oh, Macavity.

That's what I'm thinking of. Okay, the railway cats. And we're not going to talk about sports. Nope, no 90s Pro Bowl talk here. But we are going to talk about Chris Cabin. Thanks for being on the show, Chris. Hey, thanks for having me again, guys. Yes, we love We Hate Movies.

It's a great podcast. You guys are coming off an amazing month. The worst of 2019, I believe. Oh, God, yeah. That was rough and uh i also really loved your your we love movies that was on your patreon this month of the once upon a time in hollywood that was that was a really good one that was also like fair to criticisms people had of it while still you know celebrating what you guys enjoyed of of the film oh yeah i i liked it was for me it

was a lot like the movie itself, where like, we were just kind of hanging out and talking about the movie. Like, we didn't have a process of where we wanted to hit necessarily. But yeah, you're everybody's right to have their criticisms of them. And they all say, were you guys hanging out shirtless like Brad Pitt does for the movie? Look, I tried and the other guys just weren't into it you know it's funny i've had my uh fair share of like man crushes but i never found brad pitt like you know particularly attractive in something i've like obviously he's always always looks gorgeous and stuff but when i saw him in the movie like take his shirt off and start like fixing a antenna i was like wow he is

handsome oh my god he's a real silver fox minus the silver 56 this guy is but yeah no thanks for coming out chris and also like you i think we talked about your simpsons fandom in the last time you're on here but uh just for season one were you there uh from the very beginning were you watching these episodes when they when they first aired uh my uncle was a crazy taper uh he would just record if he liked a show he would just start recording it as soon as he knew he liked it i wasn't there from the beginning but i think i started watching the tapes right at the end of the first season enough that i saw like the last episode of the first season okay so the pretty on board with it i mean that's that's helpful it's always helpful to have a crazy uncle who's like the nerdy person yeah

mine got me into all kinds of weird nerdy stuff and you try to be that good uncle to to you're the next generation i'm like my uncle but without without all the uh you know crazy right-wing propaganda and uh rush limbaugh tapes sounds like your uncle was Herman. A bit, a bit, actually. Very close. No military record. Rather than do the tapes, I'm going to start teaching kids how to torrent. Oh, they need to learn.

That's where you find it. Kids are only going to learn that way. So we need to begin with a writer's corner on John Swartzwelder. This is his first script now. We talked a lot about him. If you add up all of the John Swartzwelder history clips on our podcast, you'll get like an hour and 45 minutes because there's talked a lot about him. If you add up all of the John Schwarzwalder history clips on our podcast, you'll get like an hour and 45 minutes because there's so many stories about him

on the commentary, so many great stories about him. But his origins are this. He was basically working in a Chicago ad agency in the mid-80s and submitting jokes to David Letterman via postcard, but with no attribution, just like writing in jokes, I guess for free. Yeah. They pay you for a joke when they do it there are a lot of writers who did that like but if your name isn't on it how are they going to send you a check well i guess that's true yeah maybe they send a check to the return of note there could be like paid out to cash maybe yeah but uh so jim downey of snl uh was also reading these jokes as they were coming in. And he traced the location of the

postcard based on the postmark, got in touch with Schwarzwalder's mom, and then scheduled an interview for Schwarzwalder to come in for SNL to interview. I didn't know the mom part of that. I didn't know it either. But so yeah, this is when Letterman was still at NBC, of course. So they're like, who's writing these awesome jokes that are coming in? And they find him, they bring him in for an interview. Here's what happened. And this is all from the Wikipedia entry, which is, I'm just hearing this story now and I thought I knew everything. So Downey describes Schwarzwalder's interview as, quote, one of the most spectacularly awful

in history as it consisted of him entering David Letterman's office without permission and discussing the state of television that it was all shit while smoking and drinking. While smoking and drinking. He was not hired for Letterman, but Downey hired him for Saturday Night Live beginning in 1985. So just barging into Dave Letterman's office while drunk and smoking,

telling him TV sucked. Man, just to be in that office, to be a fly on the wall, the mythic meeting between Swartzwater and Letterman. That's an amazing story. I'd never heard that before. You know, other people, when they get there, like this kind of once in a lifetime Cinderella moment of like, you get to interview, to write for David Letterman, the most like

celebrated smart comedy on network television at the time. For him, his thought was like, this is my opportunity to finally tell David Letterman television's bad. David will get it. Yes. He'll get'll get me he's too real just like me sounds a bit like the plot of the joker actually or more specifically i guess king of comedy swartz walter was the original joker it's true yeah it should be pointed out that like before our time david letterman was like the only funny guy on tv if you were a cool comedy nerd Like there was no one else as funny and dark and subversive as Letterman in the early 80s. So when Schwarzelder was hired for SNL, he shared a writing office with Robert Smigel, the famous writer.

Didn't know that either. Yes. Triumph the Insult Comic Dog. And that's when he also met George Meyer and was fired mid-season in 1986. So he hired in 85, fired in 86. I mean, that was the rough Lauren return season, right? Yes. So not much is remembered from that, I think, except for like a couple of Lovett's and Hartman

sketches. I think that nobody ever references it. There was a shakeup in the upper. Somebody was trying to bring in more recorded material, I read, like they wanted to do pre-recorded stuff. Yeah, there was a big change-up happening behind the scenes, and I think George Meyer left in protest, also because I think he liked John Schwarzwalder. And that's why he hired John to work on his zine, Army Man, the mythical army man in which John Vidi, correct?

George Meyer, John Schwarzwalder, anyone else? Those are the only three Simpsons writers I know of that worked on it. They were all like kind of Hollywood outsiders that were recruited to work on the Simpsons when Sam Simon was staffing up. I mean, Meyer worked on SNL, but he hated it and didn't make any friends there. It's so special what Army Man the zine is, because it really is just like, you know, a bunch of friends basically who would just be goofing on Twitter with weird jokes. But back then they're like, well, the only way we can do these weird jokes is to write them together

and then print them ourselves and create a mailing list and do all that stuff. Ian Frazier of The New Yorker, who's actually one of their best writers, I think was also on Army Man. Oh, really? Yeah, that's cool. He's really good. If you look at an Army Man zine and they're all scanned online, like some of the articles are just like a list of jokes as if they're tweets. I think George Meyer

described the quintessential Schwarzwalder joke is they can kill the Kennedys. Why can't they make a decent cup of coffee?

It's like horror juxtaposed with the mundane. You get banned from Twitter for that joke. Yeah, that's true. That'd be a ban.

But yes, he wrote until season 15's The Regina Monologues. I believe that's the Simpsons are going to England episode. It was a season 14 holdover. So technically he was on from seasons one to 14. And he actually stopped coming into the office in season six because of LA's, and I believe California's as a whole, they had anti-smoking laws indoors.

So he could no longer smoke in the writer's room. So he was allowed, because he was so talented, to work from home essentially he bought a uh a diner booth from his favorite diner he couldn't smoke in the diner to write anymore either he couldn't smoke there either and he worked from home out of this diner booth in his own crazy house i think it's funny that he didn't do any commentaries i think out of like his own reclusiveness and also thinking they're stupid i would assume but then by not doing commentaries every commentary is just full of like tall tales about him from all the writers who worked with him they are like bill brasky stories from that snl sketch but uh yeah he still has written the most episodes of the simpsons 59 and from that uh last season he worked on he rolled right into writing novels.

And so far he's written a bunch of them and they're all very, very funny. And because he was just part of that ecosystem, in the mid nineties, he was given a development deal. John Swartzwelder was allowed to make a pilot. It is called Pistol Pete. It's online. It's not good, but it's also very fun to watch because it's John Schwarzwalder writing Simpsons jokes for a live action cast who doesn't quite get it. And it's really fun to watch. I kind of want to cover it on a podcast soon because it's just the bizarre point in history in which John Schwarzwalder, this crazy man, was allowed to make a Western pilot. Like to be a managerial role as like executive producer of something to be a boss but uh yeah we talked so much about him but there's just a few more facts in general

overview 59 episodes of the simpsons up to season 14 and his books are fantastic they're all very short reads all very funny and that's he's still doing it and he's he just i think he just turned 70 recently wow yeah and uh i mean he's yeah he's defined on the commentary as like the, also the right wing crank of the Simpsons office, which I think they, you know, in the writer's room, at least in the early years was kind of a novelty to them because you had all these like Harvard educated, you know, uh, liberal comedy writers. And then they have this like weird dude with a mustache like who just says and they're gonna they're gonna hang clinton from the rafters and it should be pointed out that

herman's design and sort of attitude is based on swartzwalder and uh the caricature is kind of him but much later i think in the front you'll see a very unflattering caricature of swartzwalder a larger man another my favorite details about him they said that like he'd be smoking the whole much later i think in the front you'll see a very unflattering caricature of swartz welder a larger man another my favorite details about him they said that like he'd be smoking the whole time but also eating a bunch of reese's peanut butter cups that he would like stack up on the arms of his chair and eat them one at a time as he goes like but we could be telling swartz welder stories yes i though one new one since we last talked about swartz welder on the podcast i think was hearing mike reese in one of his many interviews he did about his book on his time on the simpsons there's

a whole section about working with john swartz welder and he had nothing to comment on his things to say he was like what a nice guy he is weird though and he mentioned that like he had heard swartz welder did own a hitler painting just for the novelty of owning a painting hitler may he can't afford it the thing with swartz welder is i think he always knew that giving somebody a good story to tell was probably better than being like logical or competent or you know consistent uh so that's what i always think when the letterman story comes by that's what i always think i'm like that whoever was doing that interview was talking about that guy for years yeah uh but in most of those cases it's like and that's the story of the guy we didn't hire

but in this case uh now that's uh yeah man what a what an interesting guy i hope somebody gets to interview him someday but i feel like he's he just it's also crazy to hear like he's like seemingly unmarried and like lives with his brother and that's like it's different his health is uh i guess pretty good uh you hear weird stories about his health on the podcast i'm not in the podcast on the commentaries too and that he felt like running short bursts was like very healthy and also he would go to the mayo clinic to get a very expensive appointment once a year and i believe that is what inspired mr burns going in and the mansion family yes i'm getting three stooges syndrome where the the various viruses

couldn't get through the door yeah swordsweld would always brag that this as the story went he would brag that he's like actually they tell me i'm more healthy than ever and that smoking is good so they're same with like he was one of those people who'd say well actually there's more rainforest now than there ever was and it's good to burn it down and seatbelts cost more lives than they save yeah i i think whenever a character says something like that they're just paraphrasing a swartz welderism from from the room though comparatively there's not much of that crankness in this other than herman herman is where they put the the swartz welderisms in there i you know when you describe his looks i remember conan o'brien saying that like oh yeah if he was a

like mid-1800s police officer like walking around the streets of boston he would be the most handsome one at the time he really would he's be the most handsome one of the time. He really would. He's basically John C. Reilly's character from Gangs of New York. Oh my God, you're right. I can see it now. Also, the director of this one, David Silverman, we talked a ton about him before, but one thing I had forgotten about until hearing the commentary that really is nuts to me now. So he had just directed Bart the Genius. he is now working on this one and he boarded bar to the general so he is concurrently directing barth the genius and boarding barth

the general that that is an insane workload to put on anybody and i think i think they just didn't have the work practices figured out yet that they didn't realize it was horribly overworking yeah that one man couldn't direct what like, like four episodes? He directed four episodes that season. Out of 13. Like more than a third. Yeah, we would never do anything like that anymore. Put too much on an animator's desk. Or a director of animator.

They're all well paid and, you know, good health insurance. Yeah, certainly by streaming companies, too. They treat them very well and very respectfully. And also, this one on the DVDs is one of the few on the season one DVDs that has the original table draft script in full. Matt Groening's copy, correct? It's Matt Groening's copy, yeah. So I read through the whole thing right before this and made some notes about big changes

that were made. There are a few, and I'll get to them in order in the episode. I read through the whole thing right before this and made some notes about big changes that were made. There are a few, and I'll get to them in order in the episode. But the table draft itself is pretty interesting, Justin. There's Matt Groening doodles in there. You can even see him, what I think is his first try. What would I draw Nelson as? And also some big additions to it that are in Matt matt greening's uh like writing on the page so uh it's pretty interesting i kind of wish they put more of the table drafts in the dvd extras but i

think they didn't because it shows you like i think it showed too much about the sausages made i think they got afraid to show that much i also think they're like well who was gonna look at this on their on their sd tv in 2001 yeah like who is this for do you want to get to the opening yes yeah so the opening is like a very weird edit of the opening in which uh it's the normal opening for season one but once you get to the school there's like a weird like video we freeze and a weird video we zoom in and then you fade to the simpsons house and you kind of video freeze on that and then zoom in it's like very awkward but i really feel like they had to make room for bart's speech at the end, which was an addition.

Yeah. I think that's, you're right. That's the big change they had to make. And this is a first, they'd never edited the opening to this point. This is, you know, the fifth episode, they're finally like, we got, we're out of time. Like this would be a constant thing for the Simpsons of chopping up around their opening, either longer or shorter, to fit in jokes or to cover for a lack of enough scenes. But this is the first time. And you can see how primitive the technology and tools they had at the time were. Because there's like, okay, just stop it here. And nobody, I guess on an sd tv maybe the

freeze frame yeah artifacting isn't as obvious but it looks it does look bad now it's very obvious now and uh also you know a very proto rugrats opening two of starting in an oven with a close-up of it like silverman mentioned he loves posing like that of starting a a scene or a opening of an episode with a um bewildering close-up of something that takes a viewer a second to be like wait what am i looking at i think they really ripped him off on rugrats for that at klaski chupo you never start inside of a baby's mouth though well fortunately not though you do ride inside giant maggie's mouth in simpsons the ride though somebody's getting off to that. I think you pointed that out.

Yes. There's some Vor stuff on that ride. It's a horrifying moment. It is. Oh, wait. I have one thing up front, though. A weird thing. So if you look at all the season one merch and games, especially video games, they really had to look very hard.

Like, what can we mine from this? And for whatever reasons, somebody pointed out that, oh, cupcakes are a very important element of the Simpsons world because cupcakes play a very important role in this first act. And also cupcakes playing to the beginning of Moaning Lisa, where she says a simple cupcake will bring me no joy.

Oh, yeah. So that's why there's a 1990 Tiger Electronics game called Bart Simpson's Cupcake Crisis. Because they're like, what does Bart do? He likes cupcakes. And there's an entire little handheld dinky LCD game about Bart eating cupcakes and stealing

them and stuff. Man, I never saw that one. I gotta look that up. You know, they might have more cupcakes than squishies in season one, or an equal amount. These cupcakes bugged me. They never looked appetizing to me as a kid. That's the tragedy of it, is that they look like absolute garbage.

And later you get a little frosting and a cherry on top occasionally, I feel. Oh, yeah. That's the look I usually remember for this. I think in Duffless, we got better cupcakes. When Bart is imitating the scene from Clockwork Orange and he's falling down as he grabs for two cupcakes. Those are appetizing looking cupcakes. These look more like muffins to me yeah honestly but i mean i now i only cupcakes like every eight years when i go to a wedding because no one has cakes like actual cake that you cut anymore which is fine i think it's better henry who sold out i did have a

wonderful delicious 300 cake i i enjoyed my 30 piece of it and that was and that's just a two-tiered cake by the way but uh well actually i've had cupcakes a few times because my husband still he works in an office and so every now and then he'll come i'm like they got his cupcakes i brought home a few like uh so i've had i think the mistake here is coloring. I think it was not supposed to be brown on brown. Brown on brown. I think it's supposed to come out as a brown cupcake, but then have different color frosting. But so when Lisa is putting like brown frosting on a brown cupcake, it's just, I didn't even read his chocolate.

I read it as like bran or something. It just never, never looks good. It looks like they're smearing molasses on a bran muffin. And that's disgusting. Like I don't want to eat that nobody wants to like it'd be one thing if it was just like like one of those crumble cake muffins or like a chocolate chip muffin maybe i understand but like whenever i have a chocolatey muffin or a sweeter muffin i'm just like why isn't this just a cupcake what am i what are we doing with this muffin here that's my feeling with uh like starbucks frappuccino things i'm like just have a milkshake yeah like just just do that well the sad truth is they just are milkshakes what what people yeah but like people if they would feel you know they're being unhealthy if they lined up for like a milkshake

every morning but if it's their coffee it's fine uh unfortunately most cups of coffee don't have 1200 calories so that's like having a black cup of coffee and then a bag of a big bag of m&ms that's the sentence will be right back sunday keep it down! Am I making myself... Bart declares war on the local bully. Instead of fighting, why don't you try a little understanding? Well, thank you very much, Mrs. Maharishi Gandhi. But never fear. Let me help you dry those tears.

Sunday at 8.30 on Fox 5. We hope you're enjoying this podcast while keeping your arms inside of the bus. And a big thank you to our guest this week, Chris Cabin from the We Hate Movies podcast. Always awesome to have him on. So glad he could join us for this re-exploration of the first season for the 30th anniversary. We Hate Movies is a great podcast and if you'd like to support this podcast and get every episode of talking simpsons one week ahead of time and without ads like this one you need to go over to the patreon at patreon.com slash talking simpsons subscribers there support me and bob doing this full time is our real ass jobs so please five bucks a month

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of great podcasts to listen to and there's a new one every month so please if you really enjoy what we're doing sign up at the 10 level or upgrade your pledge and get to hear all of that at patreon.com slash talking simpson But yeah, so Lisa is preparing cupcakes and Homer takes a specific lesson from it. These are for Lisa's class. It's Mrs. Hoover's birthday. You know, they're names for people like you. No, they're... Teacher's pet.

Apple polisher. Butt kisser. Bart, you're saying butt kisser like it's a bad thing. Huh? Well, you see, boy, never hurts

to grease the wheels a little. I'm not greasing the wheels, Dad. I like my teacher. Sure, Lise. You see how it works, Bart? A cupcake here, a good grade there. Dad, I get good grades

because I'm smart and I pay attention and I study hard. Yeah, right, Lisa. It's the three roads to success, Bart. Work, brains, and... Oh, brother. Uh-oh, school bus, gotta go. No!

Very cartoony zip-arounds a lot in this here, including, like, Lisa's zip in and zip out, taking the cupcake back. And a lot of the early Simpsons in season one is about Homer teaching the wrong lessons to kids. I feel like the joke in the future is that he would just be too inattentive and drunk or lazy to even engage on this level with Bart. Like he would not say, get up on my knee, son.

Here's time for a lesson. Yeah, he'd be too lazy to even do that like this. Also, Homer has a a couple things in here like this is too clever for homer he's he's not uh the big dumb uh as as schwartzwelder has described him the dog who can say his own name that's that's home says i love you on command uh so this is the first mention of miss hoover though lisa says mrs hoover oh and it's it's surprising that miss hoover like she doesn't appear until late season two like you think she'd be in moaning lisa because lisa has problems at school you think you'd see your teacher but not so uh miss hoover on screen didn't

appear until very late season to brush with greatness and not even in a school context oh he's uh he's bad but he'll die so i like it right that's her yeah i think they wrote that scene and made up a character to say it and then in an coming episode they're like oh we need the miss uber okay well let's draw her in here like let's just use that old one for lisa substitute the first one with i think officially in class yeah yeah the wikipedia puts her brush with greatness is the first on-screen appearance interesting then that's true and lisa famously loves miss hoover and wants to give her things treats yeah yeah i wonder how they wanted to play this like they kind of the lisa we know does not suck up to teachers and she really is doing it to be

nice but i think they hadn't decided that yet at this time i think they want you to wonder like is lisa a butt kisser or is she uh just a nice student you know well it's funny to me is that i feel like mrs hoover would be the first one to be telling lisa lisa don't be a butt kisser yes she's seen it all really she's yeah she's the most devoid of emotion like she's more broken down than krabappel yeah like edna's got a spark to her uh hoover's just defeated and jaded i'm drinking drambuie all day and krabappel like it it's an ebb and flow like she's disappointed then all all of a sudden she gets passionate again, and then it dissipates again, whereas Hoover just seems like a total flatline. Yeah.

And I can also see why Lisa gets so depressed in the next episode, because her father is just fully saying, like, you don't earn your grades. You're not smart. Who cares? You just suck up to people. That's actually pretty hurtful on Homer's part, especially when he's like, yeah, right. There's several lines in here that are Homer being bad specifically to Lisa, which I think is definitely a Schwarzwelder trait of his.

Also not involving Marge in the plot at all. Yeah, yeah. Marge is still sort of just hovering in the background, trying to get into the stories this early. When Marge does appear in this story, it's mainly to show that moms are useless. Yeah. But that was another thing in mike reese's book he said that swartzwalder had the strange uh proclivity of turning in scripts

where lisa and marge do not appear they have to add them in rewrites but yeah i also love homers like bard you're saying butt kisser like it's a bad thing that's just a funny line to say so they get on the bus and they meet up with Otto for this brief little scene. So the funny thing about the bribe talk, like the, like it's good to butt kiss and stuff like, it's like I had a grandfather

who was a bookie for the Jewish mafia. Oh, nice. And he would, him and my dad always like kind of always said stuff like this. Wow.

Like they didn't think of it as a weird thing they always were like yeah you know sometimes yeah they never used grease the wheels but then i learned grease the wheels later i was like oh that's what they were trying to tell me uh you as an innocent child you couldn't you couldn't understand yeah that works give them stuff i don't know if i'd rather be a podcaster or part of the Jewish mafia now. It's probably all too businessy now. Too many layers of management. Not the fun way it was 80 years ago. Yeah, you know, I don't think I ever got this kind of speech of like why it's good to suck up. I think, you know, as I would learn in the working world, it was better to

have a boss like you than not like you, even you did a good job which uh yeah i'm glad those those bosses sucked i'm glad they didn't like me i think the real reason though uh but is sucking up is what peep gets people to take advantage of you and just like oh that loser will do anything for us he'll stay late he'll scrub toilets he'll just be a little apple polisher just exploit him the guy doesn't care don't trust him with anything yeah that's true yeah you can't win honestly yeah i didn't get to that point until junior high and i had been taken advantage plenty by although when i did teach college writing classes i did like the suck ups because they were at least engaged paying attention you know all right well this is very pro suck up yeah i think depends on what

kind of job you're in i guess uh so the kids get on the bus. They really used Otto a lot in these first seasons. They loved Otto. They thought he'd be like, yeah, Bart's a cool older friend. We're going to get so many stories out of this character. He's his stoner buddy. And this brief little moment here is the first time he's hung around Lisa. Yo, Otto man. Yo, Bart dude.

Hey, can you believe it, man? My sister here made a whole pile of cupcakes to butter up her teacher, and she won't give anybody else even one measly little crumb. That's bad news, man. Here, Otto, I made an extra one for you. Oh, thanks, little lady. You're welcome. I like how just to empty Otto, except like, no, that sucks.

Okay, thanks. Like, he has no judgments either way on it we the drawings in this we did that live show uh of weird drawings and here's another one we could add to it of like i think bart and lisa when they're talking to auto or when bart's saying like you won't even share one with us like their heads look like jack-o'-lanterns on them like they're they're really big heads i just looked it up in frankiak now and it's uh they're odd they they are giant i mean again rugrats he kind of heads there it feels it feels more in the klaski chupo verse of them there's a lot of uh moments in season one where it looks like they're unhinging their jaws like a snake to eat something yeah it's really really really

disturbing i was looking at the scene and there's a lot of characters who they're like their mouth line extends behind their head when they're talking so like the mouth is like sort of like just jutting out behind the flesh yeah which i think it's a fun drawing style but when you're used to the more defined and solid simpsons uh episodes that don't break those rules for cartoony effect it does seem crazy like uh this is getting ahead of ourselves in the season one redo but i think my most favorite extreme version of their giant mouths is when they wish marge a happy birthday and wake up happy birthday like their mouths are two times the size of their head that's almost like a charlie brown uh kind of parody almost uh but uh yeah they head to the back

this is where there's a i think this is a very realistic, like sibling interaction here of realizing you pissed off your sibling. They're not going to help you. So time to correct course and pretend that you like them. So they'll give them what you want. Uh, and also in this scene, there's a lot of dot eyed children on the bus too. Mostly there's good character designs in this compared to like Homer's Odyssey and some of the freaks in there,

but there's still a lot of background weirdos in here. Yeah, when Bart is trying to escape from the schoolyard much later, he sort of darts by these two dot-eyed children staring vacantly and not moving. It's very distracting. But here is Bart's convincing Lisa to get himself a cupcake.

Better let me hold these, Lise. Forget it. You sniveling toad, you little egg sucker. Tell me more. Back scratcher, foot licker, honor student. You'll never get get himself a cupcake. are you? No. I'm not a sniveling toad, am I? Not really. I'm not a little egg sucker, am I? Of course not. Then what am I? A beautiful human being. What do you like best about me? Well, I'd have to say your generous nature, your spirit of

giving. Well... Open your mouth and close your eyes and you will get a big surprise. That's disgusting. You know, I have kind of a five-second rule of food, but I would make an exception for something with, like, creamy frosting that would streak down the ground. Also, a school bus. It's a specific kind of germ factory you're talking about there that's true

if i drop something on say the the bart's train in san francisco uh that is gone forever and i would never touch even if it's not food i'd be like well my wallet's gone no more wallet for me that's for the rats now but this is uh the fun part non-apology i really like that writing of him like uh look some things are said let's just move on and it also i like it does feel very taken from real life of a sibling realizing they've got one on you like what else do you like about me like they uh it's it's a cool little moment that's that you don't get many brother sister moments with Lisa and Bart until this episode, I think.

And Bart really takes on like a traditional bratty older brother in this. Doing things I don't think he would do in like even a season three episode because he'd be like, eh, that's too obvious of a thing an older brother would do. Let's go in an opposite direction. Yeah. A lot of the stuff is really on the nose where they would try to subvert it or twist it or add an interesting wrinkle like this and the bully stuff and Skinner stuff. We'll talk more about that later, though. Yeah, I mean, the bully messaging in this, it isn't that different from a concurrently airing Tiny Toons episode where Hampton gets bullied by Montana Max and he has to learn what to do if you're getting bullied.

And I'm sure none of us were bullied as the cool kids we were in school. No, never. No. This isn't tell your most horrible bullying stories moment, but yes. This was more when I saw this at 7

was a preview of bullying to come in my life. Oh, this is a fictional situation, correct? Fortunately, this will never i mean the only fictional thing is banding together uh friends to help you defeat a bully thankfully uh all the bullying was really psychological in my case and didn't mess with me at all in ways i still remember today okay no way i was like one i was one of two like big kids in my grade and the other one like got it into his head immediately i was

stupid at the time he got into his head he's like i have to take this guy out this guy's gotta be the one who takes all the all the fat jokes from me uh so we fought uh and i thought i mean it was my first fight i have not been in many uh and i got my clock cleaned. Well, I mean, school is meant to train you for prison. Those are good rules to learn. Good lessons to learn. You know, I never got in a physical fight up to junior high, but I did like,

it was more, you know, the psychological torture was also a physical threat implicit of like, well, this will happen. But I also do remember the battle for like not to be the lowest rung on the ladder in the classroom of like this. I have to make sure this other guy. I mean, that's a horrible thing that it makes you feel guilty of like, well, I helped another person be bullied. So I would be bullied slightly less.

These are the things that haunt you. I was lucky in that i had a guy in my grade who was in a bunch of classes with me too and he only showered like once a month in the middle of puberty uh so i i got off a little light on that one because he took everything that's uh that's very lucky i remember that uh this is a little bit dark but i remember when in seventh grade there was like a new kid in our class. And clearly like the nerdiest, most, you know, outsider kid ever. And all of us nerds breathe a sigh of relief.

Like, okay, we just moved up a little bit. Yeah. Gentlemen, welcome to Easy Street. Well, this is that code of the schoolyard that it did. Like we didn't call it that, but these were the things you understood in school that you learned through i you know i'd hope with all the like last like i don't know five six seven years of anti-bullying talk in the media i hope it's better for kids in school now i hope it's not as like torturous and awful and at the very least like a teacher enforces anti-bullying stuff a bit more but uh i mean

kids will always be assholes they're like the most sociopathic beings on earth i think i think it's only gotten worse now that everyone can film everybody all the time and take pictures so uh you're right yep yeah i think the stuff in school has gotten much better and i think everything online just has like it's like a hitting the early school stuff with like radioactivity. Yeah, you're right. I am actually very, now that you've said that, I'm very happy I did not go to school in a time when every child had a phone that could film anything I did. I can't imagine if I have the tools I have now back in like 1993, what would even happen to me so yeah this is a well this story is even more quaint because it is like a 50s or 60s bullying scenario it really is yeah i mean uh there are

very like traditional relationships in the season one stuff that would eventually be twisted and exaggerated like bart is uh you know uh afraid of his his scary principal who's very stern and he's afraid of this bully who's very mean and will hit him. Like Skinner and Nelson would become much more interesting characters and much sadder characters after this. But like, I think the one wrinkle to the Nelson bully thing to make it kind of like fun in nineties is like, oh, he has assistants that like schedule beatings for him. That's like the one little addition to this that makes it more than a standard bully story. I think his assistants are called Weasel 1 and Weasel 2 in the script. The wiki calls them Yellow Weasel and Black Weasel. That could be them in the script. Did

the script say that? I don't believe it denoted race in the script. It just was, there's one and two. So maybe the wiki should update to one and two instead of i agree race thing and they would stick around as background characters very rarely i think they're still just hanging around in the background but nelson would just sort of enter the orbit of uh jimbo dolphin kearney after they were invented i just remember them don't they come back in the uh when uh bart races with martin prince's car oh i think you're right they're always with him in that one, too. I think that was the last time they were in their traditional roles as Nelson's assistants.

Wow, season three. So I guess I stuck around a little longer than I thought. That one debuted with a music video you don't talk about anymore. Oh, Deep, Deep Trouble, right? No. I know. It was Michael Jackson's Black or White, just to be clear for history's sake.

Uh, but, um, yeah, no, those characters, I mean, even in season three, when you see the weasels again, they really do look very season one because they're twins in design, but clearly not meant to be related to each other. So it's just kind of a very distracting cartoony choice. They, they wouldn't make in character designs even in season two you know just a repeated design with care with race swapped in it is or a palette swap i guess you would say in video game terms this is like the scorpion and uh ermac or whatever nelson's world or when like blanca was blue yeah i'm sorry scorpion and let's say smoke

ermac was an unrelated robot ninja uh our sub-zero or scorpion yeah reptile reptile they all were yeah rain rain yeah that's a purple one because it was a prince reference yeah i think like ermac was the robot and there was like new cybots or whatever and well yeah sorry also in this bit like bart's acting like a very just uh straightly written big brother in here like hey man that's my sister like that it's a very big brother moment for him that he'd i would see even in season three bark going like hey you fight your own battles or i'm not doing that or he'd if he did big brother help it would be helping her like plot to do something evil not really fighting another kid on his behalf and we were doing uh on a recent live

show showing off the wrong race character so we have uh white lou in this season we have black smithers we also have white janie who's a different character altogether yeah she's like have a cupcake janie and janie's just a different person i totally missed that yeah you're right that the often heard of janie lisa's only friend who barely even likes her the squishing of the cupcakes that i think that's really well done you feel like uh oh something is lost here when he steps on it i think something not fully communicated in the animation but i think what's happening when the weasel one is grabbing the cupcakes he's biting just the creamy top off of them and tossing the other part behind him i think i caught that

this time but not before yeah you gotta pop the top i mean that's the only part that's good my cousin used to uh eat the tops and then like i'm not kidding you a soup spoon full of butter and just drag it on the top of what was left oh dude and it was i i even me as a young butter lover was like oh god uh but yes then bart is interrupted from saving his sister with the arrival of nelson months his first appearance uh it's funny on the commentaries in season one gratings talking about how like the toy makers and the video game people are like, you need to give Bart more enemies because that's how who he fights

or that's the other toy we're going to use. And I think that's why Nelson was one of the first of the run of non-Simpsons family characters to get a toy. Well, the ones with the weird like word bubbles,

you just stick in their head, right? Yeah, I remember many a time in my childhood having my Bartman figure fight my nelson figure and were they non-postable uh they had no their shoulders could move these were not the bendy ones these were uh these were a little later the bendy ones were like year one i think year two is when they had the ones with the uh shoulders and hips and heads could swivel, but otherwise stiffer plastic. And those are good. I even had the, it came, I had all of the family plus Nelson and Bartman.

Bartman and Bart were separate figures. And I had the couch that also came with the TV where you could switch out the picture that was on the TV. Those are some good simpsons toys i used to i remember having the bart man one that could fight but i don't the stretchy ones i don't remember i i had a couple of the stretchy ones that were just they they were your usual you know wire under plastic bendy guys the they were pretty cheap and also made of very heavy plastic. Yeah. Not fun to play with. Unless you needed to beat

your sibling with something. It's pretty quality matter. It was a good cudgel. I mean, that comes up more than you would think. It's useful. What can I put in a sock? A G.I. Joe, you'd have to put a lot of G.I. Joes in a sock, but one barthead,

just wham!'re taking your your brother's crying after that you're breaking skin buddy uh so nelson munns uh this might be apocryphal because i could never find it but i swear in the early bongo comics they'd have like uh each month matt graining would do like a little editorial telling some story and he told a story about how like partially nelson munson was influenced by a lot of different bullies in his life but one of them was frank miller the comic creator and he says it's it's kind of informed by him again i don't know how much that was bullshit that he just made up for an essay but i i swear to you bongo comic collectors

find this uh essay for me I swear it's out there. Interesting. But yeah, Nelson makes his first appearance, and he has quite a good line here. Nelson, you're bleeding. Nah, happens all the time. Somebody else's blood splatters on me. Hey, wait a minute. You're right.

You made me bleed my own blood it was an accident man a terrible ghastly mistake ask anybody oh a cold wind hello kids everything above the board here? Good. Play friendly, children. Uh-oh, there's your bell. Come along now, all of you. No dawdling now. I'll get you after school, man. But... No, no, no, no.

He'll get you after school, son. Now hurry up. It's time for class. But... Scoot, young Simpson. There's learning afoot. Boy, you know, the doofy, gentle prodding of Skinner feels very different than the Skinner from Bart the

Genius. Yeah! It feels like they weren't sure that, like, Schwarzwald didn't get the memo about who Skinner was. Just the very still, like, move along, young Simpson, there's learning afoot. Just, it feels very different than Bart the Genius. Yeah, this is not the Skinner trying to get Bart expelled from the school and gotten

rid of, and he was tired of him. I think if any authority figure used the word a foot to me at that age i'd be saying what the fuck what are these words what are you talking about i also uh one of my favorite drawings in this is the the weird change in skinner's face when he goes like oh yeah uh and yeah the uh may made me bleed my own blood what a great line yeah that's a standout of season one uh and just from bart's wild just arm flailing about when he gets picked up like that i also like they're like that happens all the time i get tons of blood on me from other people i beat uh and that actually is a rewrite on mac rating script it was not there in the original Swordswelder draft turned in.

You know, this bit about like the silence of the schoolyard, how you're being, you know, nobody is sticking up for you in this moment and they're just leaving you to be killed by Nelson. I think that's more of Groening, you know, taking from his childhood and just it was it was when he had more of his childhood to mine and when it was more recent in his memory because he was like 30 early 30s when these uh first episodes were airing it's one thing that they're not going to like rat them out to skinner but skinner is witness to a threat and that's how uh useless he is there he's choosing to misread it well what else is he going to do in for like he knows his place in society as well as anyone. He has to enforce. Preventing bullying is counter to what they need in the school, as far as he sees it.

I think he's probably still of the generation who's like, that builds character. I was bullied a lot and it made me strong. Yeah, I'd see that. Also, not in the script are the two dream sequences in this. Yeah, it's like a real dream sequence sandwich. uh also not in the script are the two dream sequences in this like yeah there's just like a it's like a real dream sequence sandwich and the dream sequences are the bread coming up i wonder if they had like they were like oh we've got two ideas oh why choose let's just cut a couple things and i think the dream sequences i would wonder if like graining wanted to add them because

he just enjoyed the dream sequences from uh uh from the shorts as well or if it was like silverman at the storyboard stage of like hey how about a little dream sequence you know it really helps uh lighten the mood uh from bart's constant dread throughout the school day you can have a little more fun and this uh this one of him being chased by the terminator-esque nelson munns on the unstoppable one he's i like the bullets bounce off and they say in the commentary they could only get away with shooting at him in a dream if the bullets bounced off i i think i remember as a kid just seeing the knives going to nelson was kind of shocking just like it felt like an edgy choice that i wasn't expecting like him to be stabbed and just shove all the knives away and also the uh the drawing of bart holding the machine gun is such a fun

drawing it's like daffy duck holding a machine gun uh and uh yeah it's nancy doing nelson one of her like most consistent characters but uh i think his voice lightens over the years but this is a pretty pretty close to the nelson she'd be doing and we get ha ha ha instead of like that you're right i is i believe the first ha ha is when he rides by on his bike when bart is selling lemonade and lisa's like oh no do this and he she turns all the things around like now you look pathetic and then uh oh no wait no sorry i'm misreporting it yes was it the one where they're having a party and grandpa's babysitting them it's in uh yeah the war of the roses episode yeah yeah is there having a party his pants he's like you want me to take off my belt sure okay and his pants drop ha ha that that's the

first official one but i can see them hearing in the mix here like oh it's funny how slowly nancy says ha ha ha well there's other creepy uh delivery uh he like goes uh she goes into like a crease creepy whisper she's like i'll see you again tomorrow simpson yeah the this i don't think she knew how like ugly and stupid he would look so yeah she plays him a little smarter in this too yeah a little hannibal lectory i felt yeah yeah well on this uh but in this sequence i think this defines him more as the physical presence the animators saw nelson as then as maybe the writing did i think yeah this uh i mean especially the i really like the the animation of bart running up the staircase, and then the background turns into Nelson, and he plucks him up and eats him.

I think about Nelson eating Bart reminded me of Simpsons Bible stories that we just did, which it ends the same way, except Nelson explodes. You're right. Yes. Bart learned from his previous dreams of like, oh, I know that's his perfect weak point to throw in a fire into his mouth. So he explodes uh then bart is woken up by millhouse which this is like the most like normal for millhouse scene in season one i think of millhouse acting like millhouse except he is being a bit of a wiener uh trying to get bart to squeal that fits for millhouse wouldn't he be he's he's a squealer

uh but that mill like millhouse should have been in more scenes in this. There's like two other scenes in this where a different kid is in there. I'm like, you had Milhouse before. Just have Milhouse be there. But back then, Milhouse was just one of Bart's many friends instead of his only friend. He was on the same level as Richard and Lewis and Wendell. Oh, Wendell. So many more stories to tell about all of them.

Can you believe that the nerdy guys who wrote for The Simpsons were most attracted to writing The Dork? I'm shocked and appalled. So they head into the cafeteria. That's where everybody welcomes Bart as Bart the Bully Killer. And I do love his line of like, I'm not saying I'm not a hero. I'm just saying I fear for my safety that's that's a good one it's one of the smarter lines than you remember in this season like he's he's fine with everybody celebrating him other than that he'll be beaten by nelson and then there's another very cartoony zip away when nelson appears in the cafeteria and all the kids zip away

from him and leave him alone i really like the posing too on like nelson over bart's head as he as part's like it's real funny story man like get this dude and nelson's just like 315 after class is he drawn to be like much bigger than bart in this episode um i think he's pretty much normally above okay i think so though in the posing of this bart is seated on a cafeteria seat okay standing over him. So I think it makes the size disparity more than usual. Yeah, and I mean, there's a certain expressionistic thing to it. It's fine. And then comes the next of the two dream sequences in this episode.

And the funnier of them, I think, this funeral sequence, I just love every line in this here. Goodbye, little dude. You look so lifelike man yes the school nurse did a wonderful job reconstructing his little face after the fight goodbye son i guess you were right all that homework was a waste of your time thanks bart we got the day off from school for this yeah and i got the day off from work but what's the day off from work. Homer! But what's a day off from work when I'm never gonna see my beloved son again? Oh, Bart!

That's better, Homer. Be brave. Bye-bye, Bart. You were always my special little guy. Bart, here's that cupcake you wanted. I can't help but think if I had just given it to you in the first place,

this whole horrible tragedy could have been avoided. I know you can't eat it now, so I'll just place it lovingly on your forehead. Hey, look, you got food at this thing. Here's one for the road, dude. The music is a little, again, there's the iffier music in season one, especially the, it's just so down the middle of like, well, yeah, it's his funeral. So the soundtrack will be organs. And when Nelson enters the scene, it'll get more scary and ominous sounding.

And we also have the X's on the eyes, which we saw in, I think, Homer's Odyssey. And the bear in Burns' office had that. I think they were going for that as a conceit, like a physical, sorry, a visual conceit for death. But they dropped that quickly. It was like, this looks weird

on their big bulbous eyes. They really do look weird, yeah. It's terrifying. I'm surprised I didn't have nightmares from this when I when i first watched it because i i was watching it yesterday morning and i was like oh my oh that's just a really like displeasing image especially if you're like a young boy watching it who sees themselves as bart in the show like or identifies the most as bart it's the biggest character like it was the

one of the most popular characters of all time you just see you dead like that i don't know man uh this uh this episode in general feels very much in the way they thought at the start of the series of like bart's the main character like this is a very barty episode of the show it's the second one with bart and as the first word in the title bart the g yeah it actually caused me to uh accidentally tell you the wrong episode to do it first chris uh well it's just my my phone auto-filled to genius instead of general bart the general there was a a good who's on first uh between me and eric because we both we got that when we were recording and so me and we're like wait are you on genius are you on general which

one's general are you genius oh i'm even more embarrassed i was sending you those dms while you were in the same room rename it bart the commander uh but this this dream sequence is a funny one to me because it it what it tells you about the character of bart of how he imagines his funeral would be that he's like he this is how he thinks homer would treat him at his funeral he wouldn't really care there's he doesn't imagine a joke for marge he just imagines that marge would be sad that's the first use of special little guy too you're right yeah you're right and it's funny because like a bullied kid would think like oh when i'm dead they'll all be sad they'll be crying for me but this is a more realistic take where it's like everyone's pretty

indifferent about death i though i do like he imagined like at least it would definitely not learn she should have just given me a cupcake instead of i like to the very david silverman style drawing of homers like crying on the on the casket looked very much like silverman's way of doing it's very good animation i like that and uh it's the funniest of all that bart imagines that his murderer would be at his funeral to punch him more yeah the way the feet fly up on his corpse also that bart doesn't know what a coroner is so he just thinks like well yeah the the school nurse would doll up my eyes uh and then also apparently it's being done at the school too his funeral is and the skinner line of like uh if you're right all that homework was a waste of time i love that uh so bart heads off to uh to his 315 beating

uh it's a very looney tunes like daffy duck kind of moment of him hiding behind things like like chuck jonesy even i say. Running past those bizarre children, class after class of ugly, ugly children. But yes, then Bart gets his first beating, which every drawing of Bart's face during these punches here in this next clip is pretty great. Put him up.

Boy, you sure taught me a lesson. Thanks, guys. I guess now all that's left is a hearty handshake. Right, guys? I'm going to get you again tomorrow, Simpson. Is 315 good for you? Not really. Too bad.

Oh, no. Oh, man, that guy's tough to love. Joke added after the fact. You know, actually, that was a table read edition okay in the table read script bart says i hate that guy but instead uh graining crosses it out and is written in like that guy's tough to love maybe uh it's an editing thing but you know that i'll get you tomorrow simpson after class it, hello, Smithers, you're quite good at turning me on. It sounds like it was taken from five different reads of that line. Well, his face also looks wild in that angle, too.

Nelson speaks at an angle I've never seen him do before. It's weird. And I notice occasionally they'll draw nostrils on his pig nose, and that's a no-no. He doesn't have them. His chin looks like the Hindenburg. That's true. I mean, Nelson's mouth chart is wild in general because he has, he's like a more extreme Barney

because he has like a rounder Barney head. Do you know that Barney secretly is dead? I more believe that Eddie is Ralph ralph's father that one i believe what also like not only does he look like barney but like his he has kind of burns is like a way long uh overbite that it from some angles turns into like like a a hanging flap almost yeah and a lot of the season one characters also have like resting uh jutting out teeth like it's their standard stock pose just have three teeth jutting out of their face i love it but no new character is designed like that funny that you said because i hadn't noticed it before but yeah but barney and and nelson both look like bullfrogs in the middle of a mating call

they're inflating their sex yeah they're getting ready for it we've gotten to know the months family more over time but you know maybe this time they thought what if he could be or my own uh guess at it right now is that as we know barty uh gives his sperm a lot at the sperm bank so perhaps he is you know a donor father to uh i could buy that with uh though you know it seems like mrs months gets around a bit or did uh did 12 years ago or whatever when nelson uh was born yeah i i think the reason nelson looks so weird and also the timing on we'll get you tomorrow simpson i think the reason it's all off is because they bit off more than they could chew with the scene they wanted like we want one long shot of putting bart in the trash can threatening bart rolling the trash

can and seeing it from the inside and then seeing it from the outside yeah and it pulls out of the can in the same shot to see the trash can rolling away down the hill and that's always a danger in animation if the longer a scene you do the harder it is to do retakes because you can't just be like, you have to retake the entire scene. Usually you can't just be like, retake the first four seconds. Yeah. Before digital, you couldn't just, you know, cut out a small segment and redo that. So I can see that they were stuck with it. But the outro shot is so impressive and gutsy.

Like, it's such a cool for television shot i i think it was worth it even if you end up with a weird ass looking nelson for like two seconds yeah i don't know how this looks in the disney plus version with its cropping but i do like how bart's like legs sticking up sort of frame the shot in the square the square frame of the television i don't know how bad that looks when they crop it but it's a really cool shot of him like in the trash can i watched it on disney plus it looked fine from what i'm remembering it looked good but the thing the thing is is that like it looks great but then i'm completely befuddled by him saying tough to love it's completely befuddled he needs a famous bart wisecrack i i guess tough to love is more of a

wisecrack than just i hate him or i hate this guy he should have been like check please i would have taken that that would have like immediately been like what is he his like mother or something it's very it's very much a check please style like outro joke like to close the scene it feels like a graining last panel of from hell kind of joke too which from hell or i'm sorry yes the alamore book from hell life in hell uh which on the actually on the scanned script too on the dvd there's notes on there that they have of just him saying like hell ideas blank blank blank like it's uh it of just him saying, like, hell ideas, blank, blank, blank. Like, it's just him, like, brainstorming his comic strip. While on the job.

Yeah. At Fox. They're not paying you for that, cartoon boy. Yeah, Bart should say, like, he's off my Christmas card list. There's another pitch for you. Bart returns home. I think it's a very Schwarzwelder-y touch that the trash can knows where Bart lives and ends up right at his front door.

It's more reliable than Otto. And also a really fun drawing of Bart, like, tumbling out of the trash can, too. And yeah, the kids, March and Homer, are more of their, like, short kind of selves

who are just like, ooh, Bart, what's going on? And they just let him walk through the room. Hey, boy! Yeah, what's up, boy? And I do like bart's line of like let's just say i paid the inevitable price of helping out my sister that's a fun line but that uh i pinged that one on like that sounds like a brooks kind of line yeah and like the realistic sad bart crying in the bathtub is like it's too much for

me now to watch just like i don't want to see Bart this wounded. Like between this and Bart the genius, they're really into breaking Bart down emotionally and physically in this case. Well, it's like the most alienating image of Bart I think I've seen. Shutting himself off in the bathroom just to get a moment alone after being decimated like that. Like even when he gets the quivery voice in other episodes, I don't think I'm ever feeling like, oh, he's all alone.

Yeah, he's going off to cry. And you really hear overlapping dialogue in the show. But while Homer's talking to him in an upcoming scene, you could just hear in the background, oh, you feel so bad. You're right. I mean, you're supposed to feel bad for him. But with Bart as he is now, like this just crazy character character it's so interesting to see him as a real wounded kid it's true in the even in like the movie or other episodes that want you to really feel for bart uh in in more recent years

i think it's harder to dissociate himself from the cartoon character you've seen do all these crazy things but in season one it's so early you're like oh bart wants to be alone to cry like i take this as a reality not like and and that they take the time to just do it yeah and saying literally dad i need help the the thing with it is that it's never like i think back to the other moment where i really remember bart being in pain is when the neighbor where he has the crush on the neighbor girl and they but they have that fantasy to like kind of expel it and also give you a sense of it being like looking back like it's not that bad but like this is totally something you remember something hurt something you wouldn't want anybody

to go through it's like if the scene where bart imagines the girl ripping his heart out and saying you won't be needing this they instead just stayed on bart in his treehouse and he walked into a corner and just cried like that and homer climbed up what's wrong boy this is why you need abstraction and cartooniness a dream sequence and then mo coming to knife some small boy yeah that uh that's very strange that's what a weird episode they play it so at first they play it of like oh bart is hurt by being beat up but he's just walking around like oh it sucks to be beaten up having this scene in the bathroom of just breaking down and crying and wanting to be alone. This is where like the realness comes into it. And the only thing that kind of cuts through the treacle is Bart crying in front of his dad

and Homer saying, let's dry those eyes and just blasting him in the face with a hair dryer. Great animation, which they would later reuse on Lisa and Lisa's pony. I did no research for this. It was just on in the pizza pub I often work out of, and I couldn't tear my eyes away from it. No, the drawing of it, it's like a Stedman drawing, a Ralph Stedman drawing, kind of just all the lines on it. It's one of my favorite drawings in the season. I'm glad they redid it for Lisa in season three,

for Lisa's pony. Also, though, on the commentary, Matt Groening really hates Bart's tears there. He's Matt Groening on a commentary. Mac Raining really hates Bart's tears there. Mac Raining on the commentary, he will definitely complain about tears. But yes, Homer and Marge have different views on how to help Bart. I had a run-in with a

bully. A bully? Come on, Marge. I don't bug you when you're helping Lisa. Well, Bart, I hope you're going straight to the principal about this. I guess I could do that. What? And violate the code of the schoolyard? I'd rather Bart die. What on earth are you talking about, Homer?

The code of the schoolyard, Marge. The rules that teach a boy to be a man. Let's see. Don't tattle. Always make fun of those different from you. Never say anything unless you're sure everyone feels exactly the same way you do.

What else? Homer, Homer, that's ridiculous. Bart, instead of fighting, why don't you try a little understanding? What do you mean, Mom? Yeah, right. This ought to be good for a laugh. Shh. This bully friend of yours, is he a little on the chunky side? Yeah, he's pretty chunkified, all right. And I'll bet he doesn't do well in his studies, either. No, he's pretty dumb. He's in all the bet he doesn't do well in his studies either no he's pretty dumb he's in all the same special classes i am that's why he lashes out at the world so tomorrow instead of bickering with this boy talk to him you'll be surprised how far a little understanding will go well thank you very much mrs maharishi gandhi let's go boy that one sounds

almost too clever for homer for him to be like well i can't call it she's a woman so i'll call her a feminine version of mahatma gandhi i think he's just too stupid to know the term mahatma gandhi the name mahatma gandhi i get yeah that's probably it i it almost sounds too clever for homer that he's like oh i know to call her a female version of mahatma gandhi and i'm not sure if he could get through mahatma i feel like he'd be like mahumma mahumma you would probably say some food stuff that sounds like mahatma and then go that's that's i think if i can only think of one that would have been a funnier thing i said there mahat pizza yeah mahat pizza okay so march here i think this is definitely swartz welder editorializing of like

a woman is useless in the affairs of men kind of thing yeah i mean uh march's plan wouldn't work but i guess it's better than homer's plan in some ways yeah i mean both are useless like i i like as we'll see when home when bart tries homer's plan A bully is probably better than you at fighting dirty. So if you're going to start fighting dirty, all you're doing is inviting him to treat you worse when you're not going to win a fight with your bully, very likely. So it's not the best move there. But it is another of those anti-Cliff Huxtable moments of Homer teaching Bart how to fight dirty kind of scene uh so in the original script actually marge gives that advice and then bart tries it oh and it doesn't work and he's

beaten and then homer uh gives bart the uh the instruction on how to fight dirty and i feel like they would use it later because the scene the scene is very funny where bart is talking to nelson of like well i know you're like fat and stupid and that must be hard for you but i want to be your friend and then that just gets him beaten again though i also i kind of do agree with homer that empathizing with a bully is the thing your bully wants and they it's i don't think it's going to lead you anywhere helpful i think yeah that's not going to prolong your problem yeah i don't know i think i mean squealing is the way to go honestly like that's that's your best hope in it yeah i i think the real way to

handle it is to just stuff it all down and let for a way for it to explode so yeah i think they just cut it for time to show the the margins thing doesn't work they the joke is already there with homer just like rolling his eyes at him the entire time yeah i guess we don't need to see it in practice though also with uh you know i think graining by the end of the episode has kind of a moral objection to the might makes right uh message of this so maybe he also was just like let's cut the scene that also shows that empathy doesn't work very good points don't include that uh in general though homer is a really cool like just embodiment of the horrors of like twisted machismo and

this you can see that he's never grown beyond the schoolyard psychology he was taught and we get this scene in uh the rumpus room although there's no real layout for the house yet you still have these like weird like doors upon doors in the background but like a very oddly decorated uh room which is it's very sparse but there are some distracting things hanging up like this crusty scroll on the wall oh yeah which i took to read after looking at it for a while like oh it's like a height chart for the kids i think you're right i think you're right but it's just this weird like blank pink void they're kind of in with like a few toys in the corner to be like oh you're in a room you're in a room yeah i think they just saw in the script they're like oh homer takes bart to the punching bag like well where does he keep this to the punching bag room

boy uh i mean this is kind of sparse room where bart they punch a punching well it's not a punching bag but in one of the shorts it it's the one of that like spring, the held up by spring kind of little punching bag head that they draw Homer's face on. But this sequence of Homer like ripping, like he has strong jaws, Homer, to rip up this thing with his teeth. I'm looking at that Krusty now, very off model. They did not figure out, you see Krusty all over the place until what, Telltale Head? Yeah, that's when he's finally on screen. Yeah, and's finally on model like bart even has a crusty lunchbox in the casket you can barely see it oh i missed that yeah i just saw it this time and what drives me nuts about these early background scenes are these very cartoony pictures of different family members in

the scene just what is that for like remember lisa she's his sister and there's march that's his mom like it's just there to remind you i think in the shorts they were more necessary because they were so like out of context and space between sketches but here it's like well we just saw lisa and march i know who they are they're going by the rules from the shorts the rules in the shorts were for background design that there's photos of the family all in there not with any rhyme or reason of just like, well, if a family member isn't in this scene, then they need to be in a photo in the background

or like in the Christmas special. Well, we're talking about Abe. We better have a picture of grandpa behind Marge while she talks about him. It'd be funny if they even had that in like the Springfield Elementary classrooms. There's just pictures of Homer and Marge. It's like pictures of Kim Jong-un or something.

They have to hang in every room. I'm interested in what the implication of when Homer says to Marge, like, I don't help you with Lisa. Like, it's like Homer is just fully hands off of like, she's a girl. Talk to her with girl problems. I don't talk to her.

It shows, again, a very dark relationship between Bart, Homer, and Lisa in this episode. Is it moaning Lisa where he's like, is this some sort of underwear thing? Yeah, yeah. Oh, it's an underwear thing. Yeah. And also it's where he's like, get on the Homer horsey. It shows that Homer has no ability to deal with any emotional issues she might have. The way he deals with bart's

emotional issues are to just tell him like do not cry that's that's his instruction and cheat yeah do the dirtiest tricks no i love that he's like there's nothing wrong with hitting someone when they're back it's turn oh yeah it's time to kick some back yeah that is you know you're right that's an embellish they embellish that more in Bart. Brother from another planet. Oh, the same planet. Yeah, brother from the same planet. And did we know what the family jewels were when watching this? I didn't get that as a kid, no way. I didn't get it at all when I was watching this as a kid.

Testicles, everybody. I knew because I had not the same uncle, but another uncle who really loved that. I thought that was the funniest saying out there i think it should have spread around the uh these family jewels as a way to mention your your uh testicle yeah that's one term that really just stayed in the past family jewels yeah it never went anywhere although i remember it it was what i like i think it was one of the first words I used for balls because of the uncle. I just heard him one time say, oh, sat on the family jewels. And then I thought, oh, okay.

I feel like it was the cleanest way to say balls on TV. Like Johnny Carson couldn't be like, oh, the family jewels. And then people would laugh at it knowing what it was. Yeah, yeah. It's an easy, I mean mean jewels sound so classy yeah it's it's not like even funny it's not like balls balls or sack nuts i would pay quite a lot of money to hear johnny carson say nuts oh me too we missed out we've got a friend who knows a lot about him.

I bet he could find it. Yeah, if he ever said it. So yes, Bart tries to put into practice the cheating plan. Doesn't work out at all. The mud gets in his face. Bart gets one punch off. And of course, Nelson is very tough and nothing goes. He just laughs it off and beats bart all the worse and

speaking of first appearances here in this scene first appearance of the lucky red hat oh yeah he'll cough that up a few times yeah though this has a white bill on it which normally his lucky red hat is drawn as fully red i do like that which uh of course you know red hats mean a different thing now walking the streets oh yeah bart can't wear it anymore it means something different and uh we get a nice little like thought bubble of homer which bart should know that just his memory it can't give him any new information i it feels like a very uh ob1 reference there too like remember the family jewels yeah like i really use the force moment and i like how the dream like the dream or thought bubble homer is horrified at what he's seeing

that was a better way to play the scene of bark getting beaten again because it's did it be depressing to see him get punched in the and repetitive to see him take all that punishment so seeing homer's reactions to it i think is better i i can't i don't know for sure but i would bet that comes from a silverman storyboard direction because it is a very looney tunes like off screen watching a horrible thing happen to a character going like oh yeah oh the last the only thing he didn't do was like peer through his fingers you know like close his eyes and peer through his fingers and uh bart's lucky recap cap i love on one commentary mike reese is defensive about how newer writers on the simpsons he once heard them making fun of it

like oh why don't we get bart his lucky red cap and he's just like guys i'm right here come on i think the most that ever played into a plot was an episode they can't show anymore stark raving dead that's true yeah yeah it was the most offensive thing in that an episode they can't show anymore. Star Cruising Dead. That's true. Yeah. It was the most offensive thing in that episode. And I can't, all this Michael Jackson stuff coming up. That episode was about red baseball hats and Michael Jackson. So definitely can't show it. That's what Disney Plus said when they put out the press release.

Yeah, this has red hats in it. That's all. Nothing ever, other problem about it. They got to change Mario now. I think at least his red, his little white circle helps. Yeah, it's more of a maroon, I would say. But yes, so then we get introduced to Abe Simpsons, though. He had made two appearances in the Simpsons shorts. So this is not his first appearance either just

like crusty though uh crusty got more of a change from his shorts appearance into the series this abe is pretty much how he looked in the shorts they would change his like purple sweatery thing to a pink color and uh so springfield retirement home would become springfield retirement castle and we don't see the sign please don't tell anyone about the outside world yeah the the retirement castle turned into something much funnier by season two what also big changes from the script too so when bart rolls up which by the way i love the look on lisa's face like looking at the camera yeah it's great uh but when bart rolls up and lisa makes the

suggestion to meet abe they the joke before is bart says like oh nobody could help me and lisa says you should ask grandpa get the help from somebody old and wise and bart says well he is old but uh so it was in some rewrite that they bring in the, remember how hard we, how much he fought to get him in the home? Without that rewrite, who knows how many like retirement home jokes they wouldn't have had with Abe, you know? I guess he was independent in the shorts, an independent senior. And also a big change for this next clip from the script was none of this crank letter stuff was in there. It was entirely gone. An early trait for Grandpa they dropped, and I will say it's the third episode in a row where a character is writing a long letter.

Bart the Genius has one, Homer's Odyssey has one, and this has one. You're right. I think they learned to stop doing this. And I think the only other time Grandpa would do this was in the front, you know, to the sickos at Modern Bride magazine. And that scene was like a fourth of the length of this one, this writing scene. Yeah, that scene was just a setup that Abe has a typewriter. That's true. Oh my God, you're right. But I think after these came back and they were watching them, they're like, oh, watching a character write a letter for 45 seconds is not a lot of fun. Yeah, it's one of many dropped season one runners, but this one was

entirely born out of them being told by Fox that they couldn't say the word family jewels or shouldn't say the word family jewels. I too like how he says horny in this. Horny! And so when they push forward with it, they imagine like, oh, I bet we'll get angry letters from some old people. Hey, what if Abe did a whole angry letter thing? So let's give that a listen real quick here. Dear advertisers, I am disgusted with the way old people are depicted on television. We are not all vibrant, fun-loving sex maniacs. Many of us are bitter, resentful individuals who remember the good old days

when entertainment was bland and inoffensive. The following is a list of words I never want to hear on television again. Number one, brah. Number two, horny. Number three, family jewels Number two, horny Number three, family jewels Hi, Grandpa Bart, what brings you here?

I need some advice, Grandpa See, there's this bully at school who keeps beating me up Well, let me tell you something, boy If you don't stand up for yourself Bullies are gonna be picking on you for the rest of your life Simpson, give me your newspaper. Why should I? I want to do the crossword puzzle.

No, I want to do the crossword puzzle. I said give me that puzzle. No. Give me. No. Give me. No. And then they fight over it.

And Jasper wins. Not named Jasper yet. But it is his first spoken word in the show. He appeared in the background in Homer's Odyssey, but it is his first spoken word in the show yeah he appeared in the background in homer's odyssey but this is his first line pretty much how he'd always sound i think uh old jasper there and also the most energy he's ever had well that's the thing is he sounds like he's full of piss and vinegar vinegar in this but usually he kind of i always thought of him as like the actual soft and wise one of the retirement castle yeah he doesn't quite have that in this scene to me

i think he's often written to be even more senile than grandpa sometimes but also more prone to violence well if it isn't the tooth fairy pulling a gun on him that's true and prone to paddling yeah he likes to paddling this whole scene with Abe, it just hit me. I think he's writing a letter to Golden Girls, actually. Oh, yeah. Still on TV. Every complaint he'd have could be directed at Golden Girls. Yeah, and Fox was getting their share of letters for being the ribald network. Married with Children was the early controversy magnet, of course, before The Simpsons.

Rightly so. If you've ever watched some of that show, that stuff is nuts. And Dan's delivery of horny. Horny. Bruh. I think this is them also just realizing they love the way Dan does Grandpa's voice, and it's just hilarious. I just remembered that the most offensive episode of Married with Children to that point that got controversy was the one in which uh peggy and uh kelly went out to buy a bra oh for kelly yeah so that was the offending episode that caused like the one uh crank to become very very popular based on her letter writing campaign the queen of

the screwballs yes she would later inspire that episode yeah so that uh so i think bra was chosen because of that i bet you're right yeah I bet you're right. Poor shame. I think the offensive phrase was over the shoulder, bolder holder, which I find hilarious. Just all the old, like, that's funny sounds. Also, right before this, the very rare use of Julie Kavner as an incidental voice. As the, what was I saying, I have a people here named Grandpa. Third dank room on the left it's funny to hear it described as dank dank what a fun fun line uh so yes in the original scene

it's actually about abe's senility he doesn't recognize bart at first oh wow who are you he's like i'm bart homer's kid then abe pulls up a photograph of them in childhood and you see homer's face on there and homer is drawn to look like bart as a child he has bart's hairline it even says in the script so by cutting that uh we are safe to have a better looking old homer than one that looks like bart i'm glad they made that change but i mean homer with like brown hair that's just perfect i love that he used to have uh hair like that and i think it makes it more connected to the um the hair journey that dan castellan and himself went through in life yeah i mean at this point he was a real chrome dome as they would call him yet i felt bad for once he saw all his hair left.

He's like, voice acting it is, Dan. Sign me up. I'll play any genie you name. I'll never be cast in live action anything from here on. Well, I guess it's just fathers from now on. Hey, he was on Ink. No one remembers Ink. I don't remember that.

I just know he was on it. Okay. Now when I see Dan Kessler and stuff, I'm like, boy, you must have just really liked this script or be friends with somebody on this because you have no monetary reason to act in this thing. But yes, Abe instead, though, is ready to help Bart, but he realizes he can't help. And so this real turn of Abe taking Bart to a scary military antique store, I think it shows how much times have changed because this is him radicalizing Bart around a right-wing crank. And it's not seen as weird to do that. My crazy right-wing uncle would take me to a lot of these places as a kid.

He got me into weird, cool sci-fi stuff in Madden Magazine, but he was also trying to get me into guns and racism and all that stuff. And I remember being around these creeps all the time. Yeah, you look back on your life and you're like, why did this guy own some Nazi stuff? That's weird, right? This target is shaped like a certain kind of person I'm seeing in this gun shop.

I wonder why that is. I couldn't believe that was happening in, 1990 in innocent time uh well for white people who didn't want to know these things yeah like us there's a poster on the wall that says somebody talked and the planet's on fire i could not figure that i couldn't parse this for the life of me uh some of these are in the script but that one i don't know what the deal is the The funniest one in the script to me is like Hitler Teeth, 25 cents. And there's a barely legible magazine that says Borderline Psychotic Week. Yeah. Also in the script, too.

Yeah. So that bit in the script is the closest thing to what I think of a Schwarzwelder-like funny wall, a giant paragraph full of descriptions you know which they did the background people did their best at inserting there uh you know i think maybe this showed them like oh we could scenes like this really taught them of how many jokes they could stick in the corners of a background and uh they pushed themselves harder to do that in season two because of these moments like this one and i like to that abe this they don't say abe is a world war ii vet like fully in this episode but i think you're led to believe that he is a veteran of some foreign war in this one for sure i think a lot of this

is about the the odd relationship between vietnam vets and world war ii vets which you would see play out a lot of media in the 90s yeah you're right you're right i think especially when bart says you lose your arm in the war bart does mean vietnam when he says the war yeah uh and yes we meet herman for the first time much like otto another character they thought would be sticking around he's only used when they need someone sleazier than moe i think he would be seen again for the next time when he was operating the jeans ring out of the car hole uh i think that was like his last big one he's i mean he sells he sells the fez to abe in old money he's that's the last time they were really palling around like herman and abe should be hanging out all the time have some more herman and abe scenes and then of course in the pulp fiction parody oh god yes yeah i mean that's

fitting for who herman is but and that shows you what they think of john swartzwalder when they're like oh herman's you like we think you're herman they were like which character do we not need to use ever again herman when he says he when he's trying to sell them nazi underwear do you think that's like underwear with a swastika on it or actual underwear worn by the nazis i took it to mean and now i read it as not uh underpants with swastikas on it but i think it was meant to be undergarments worn by nazi soldiers yeah i just had this very weird image in my head of abraham simpson in his like uh white shirt and suspenders and having like these bright red swastika boxer shorts and it freaked me out

through this whole oh jesus i think it was like a reference to uh i mean no one in my family fought in the the big one the great one the second great one but i know like a lot of soldiers would just bring home anything like helmets and pins and medals and stuff they whatever they could find on the battlefield i mean yeah like grandpas of our age you'd think of them having like some gold swastika and they're like yeah i saved this from the guy i murdered to remind me of the guy i killed or of liberating town x but then you'd have guys like herman who you're like why do you own all this nazi stuff but yeah i like that i think abe just befriends herman because abe still recalls his youth with all this military stuff but the only person he knows who's interested in it is a right-wing

crank like herman who uh in this scene is voiced to be H.W. Bush, too. Makes total sense. What's the password? Let me in, you idiot. Right you are. So, Herman, has the large-type edition of this month's Soldier of Fortune come in yet?

Not yet. Can I interest you in some authentic Nazi underpants? No! Actually, we came over because I want you to meet my grandson, Bart. Ah, hello, young American. Hello, sir. Uh, Mr. Herman? Yes? Did you lose your arm in the war? My arm? Well, let me put it this way. Next time your teacher tells you to keep your arm inside the bus window, you do it. Yes, sir. I will.

Bart's got a problem with a local young bully named Nelson. I thought you could help him with some kind of strategy. Strategy? Hmm. How many men do you have? None. You'll need more. And you'll need to train them hard.

Now, let's see. It's weird to hear Bart be oddly deferential to this weird adult. That's true. He should say, like, cool amputee, man, or whatever. Like, how'd you lose your arm, man? You're right, yeah. This is more reserved than Bart has played in pretty much any scene. Excuse me, sir?

I have a question. You would think he'd be interacting with more of the stuff around him. Like, why would you have this? Bart holding a gun or an unexploded grenade or something or holding something really inappropriate and going cool yeah but uh this this is the more realistic way of playing a kid who is like terrified that his grandpa taking him to a weird place uh i mean this side of grandpa who regularly reads soldier of fortune that went away that that doesn't fit in with just the cuddly old coot grandpa that we know the large print edition that's i mean that's funny but soldier of fortune is a fucked up magazine uh it that's why they have the line there that it's one

of those red flags that if you see that like on someone's coffee table you're like i gotta get out of here. He's going to hunt me for sport. I don't know. I think those, like, Doomsday Prepper magazines are much more scary. Oh, sure. They're scarier magazines now. They've only gotten worse. That was, like, the most scary magazine in 1989.

And also a real Simpsony callback there, you know, in Homer's Odyssey. Bart was warned to not put his arm outside the bus window because you'd lose your hand or arm and so that's the payoff there of herman saying that's how it happened i guess herman was the original joker because he was supposed to have a different story every time someone asked him about his arm so he's the original joker all these jokers man uh but yes bart then gets told the strategy he needs to do, which is build an army to attack this bully. Which, this is also the moment where the Patton music comes in. And the Patton score is played as the references begin to it.

Is it really the first direct parody of something like super specific in the show i think so i you know in no disgrace like home marge sings a song that dean martin sang and it's kind of staged like it would have been on a dean martin like television special but it's not like a one-to-one this was in dean martin but in no disgrace like home they do one of us one of us ah that's from that episode yeah so okay that but this is a much more prolonged yeah using the music i mean and then later we have that famous uh life magazine uh picture parody yeah i'll talk more about later well it's also you could just imagine swartzwell they're both loves the movie patent and probably has a tattoo of patent on his back.

And I've never seen Patton, but I think all you need to know is like a guy talks in front of a flag briefly and then that's all you really need to take from that movie. That's the main thing. Actually, I've seen it. I love it. But it is, Coppola, I think, wrote it. He was supposed to direct it,

but then somebody else took it, but it still looks really good. Everybody always takes the American flag thing and I'm like, this one at least is doing something else with it you're right i guess he never does that there's no character that does that there's there's no bart speech actually if you remember there's that one commercial for the simpsons that came a few years later where they literally draw the simpsons into fox movie scenes and one of them is Bart in front of the big flag. They also draw him over Luke in the trench run of the Star Wars. So they eventually did do it.

I mostly know Patton from mystery science theater references. Like, when you stick your hand into a pile of goo, then you'll know. I don't know about any scene in patent after the uh the opening speech by george it's a good one and i love george c scott but yeah very specific patent parodies this is where the episode loses me a bit because um after i grew up and was not obsessed with bart the joke really is kids doing adult war things and that it doesn't really go beyond that there's some fun commentaries about war that i like and i wish there was more of they didn't need to try as hard back then because it was just so uh much of a novelty to see this but now just like i feel like there could be so much more happening here and

this montage that's coming up is two minutes long way too long yeah proto rugrats again i'd say too i mean i feel like a lot of this is swartz like this might be parts of swarthworld's actual diaries that just came into this, like the Greeks and the Carthaginians or whatever the fuck. Yeah. The tension in this third act is that as Swartzwelder wrote it, it's just about Bart learning to militarize to defeat his bully. And then you have Matt Groening's reaction to reading that and adding in lines like i'll tell i'll show you where lines were changed up to be more of a commentary on warfare but i think in general i think graining wasn't happy with the tone of the third act so that's why there's some more

scenes that were like um hey you know these are some problems with war war is not good and we're on the cusp of like uh desert storm oh yeah at this time in uh history bart's gonna be on a lot of t-shirts soon oh for sure hussein if you're at our live show you saw some of them i also love that when herman says like it's right here on elm street he just has a knife right there in his hand like that should be scaring bart that he has a knife so easily handy. So also this Patton moment was when the music starts coming in. It's another of those moments I've had watching Simpsons in the Disney years of realizing like, yeah, the Simpsons use that song because Fox owned the movie and they wouldn't have to pay extra for the film rights. Thus meaning this song is from a disney movie now and patton is owned by

disney like it's just another to add to the list of films disney owns now well that's if you had i mean if you were using uh disney plus more you know it's up on the main thing when you turn on it's mandalorian then patton and then the simpsons and uh i guess we don't need to say this but uh patton oswalt's named after patton yeah general uh very different in spirit from him but uh yeah that's his father had different plans for his son there uh in the in the script it's interesting they they wanted to do like more obvious song choices not that patton's like not an obvious song choice but they had like you know war what is it good for and also like doors songs from apocalypse now like that's written in the script like we can try this like I'm kind of glad uh you don't hear Patton music in a lot of war parodies and things you

you do hear just the same old war what is it good for bullshit or fortunate son or one of a million of the obvious things. The Forrest Gump soundtrack. Yeah, all the Forrest Gump soundtrack. That's a double disker. That was how my friend, his favorite album for the longest time was just the Forrest Gump soundtrack,

like just as the boomer playlist. That is grotesque. I was like that with the Gross Point Blank soundtrack. I think Pulp Fiction was a soundtrack No sorry Mallrats was the one I listened to the most I listened to that over and over

I sure love the band Squirtgun Who did the first Who did the opening song for Mallrats And then nothing I guess Oh yeah yeah A skeleton in a suit and tie Tells us what we ought to buy Oh man the lyrics are blowing my mind.

A bag of cocaine into your heart. Support your conscience. That's a start. When I listen to that song, I'm like, can they say this? I bought that CD for like $18 in 1997. What a ripoff. The song by Squirtgun has been redacted. It will no longer be shown.

I think that even came with a poster, too like a fold out the magic eye poster right yeah yeah uh but anyway we apologize for this uh it's the kevin smithness we have to we got to stop we could go on all day about kevin smith movies uh so they then come back from break bart is in his treehouse uh after telling all the kids to meet him at three o'clock or at 1500 hours and uh bart is late for it i think this is the first scene in bart's treehouse too even counting the shorts i don't think they went in there and i think part of the unspoken joke that they would just maybe uh pave over later is that the treehouse is shitty it's bad like it's just a poorly made treehouse. Because Homer's bad at building. You're right.

I didn't even get to that. That's the joke. Yeah. And it's also like a clown car. Like, you can fit as many people as possible. That's true. There's like 30 kids up there. But I think it's just like everything is in the background

is just not drawn very well. So it's hard to communicate. Like, what does a poorly built structure look like in this season? Yeah. Yeah. And there's also a green shirted poster of crusty behind him too and uh and yes they say bart is late which again is a joke i don't think they fully got through but he said to me to three he's beaten at 3 15 every day so that's why he's

late he was that he comes out and coughs out his his hat to explain he was being beaten but the time is part of the joke okay it's a really nice understated joke that he comes in coughs up his hat and hangs it up that's great his hat is not there in the background after that so i think the joke is just lost because you don't see the hat anymore i just i think i noticed it for the first time this time they did like just gingerly hangs his hat up and turns around to address everybody there should just be a cut scene like i don't even need be in an episode maybe a dream sequence if you want but just like a five second clip or of bart getting up one day and just before he does anything else swallowing his hat practicing his hat swallowing abilities i mean it's pretty impressive that he can uh

it swallow it fully whole and spit it back his body doesn't break it down in any way and i mean if it's a flat brim that's just gonna be trouble oh god yeah he needs to start curving that brim then bart learns the best way to get an army's loyalty is to lie to them and promise them victory they're very smart on bart's case uh and then begins the training montage including the show's first kubrick montage or kubrick reference as well though it's a real mix of things it's like it's patent music with but then the training stuff from full metal jacket and then a couple shots from like the longest day yeah the shot of like the helmet in the foreground

and the kids marching the backgrounds from the longest day is the shot of bart like chewing on the like piece of hay and the reflection of the soldiers in his glasses is that from patent too because i was looking for screenshots of patent patent more sunglasses i have to assume but it also is like is this also cool hand luke in some ways you know actually maybe this is more cool i read it as a patent scene but again i haven't seen the film i'm pretty sure yeah i wanted to watch it for this but this is more cool. I read it as a patent scene, but again, I haven't seen the film. I'm pretty sure, yeah. I wanted to watch it for this, but this is a very busy week for us. But I just have to assume. And the patent content in this is so light. Oh, yeah.

I mean, I highly recommend you watch it. It is a very good movie. But I think it is. Like, he was always with a cigar, though, I feel. Well, he can't put a cigar in Bart's mouth. Oh, so yeah, that's probably what it is, actually. Okay, yeah. So I guess they can't make Bart smoke.

Not yet. He'll smoke in season two. Yeah, in that episode with Nelson's ha-ha, right? Yeah, yeah, Nelson's ha-ha. I just had it funny the way he said it. Well, for the Full Metal Jacket one, it's not just the drill instructor and the running shot, which they did their best best but that's a very

it's a very complicated shot in live action to compose to then get it done in season one simpsons animation like it's they're gonna falter in that there's a much better version of this in uh sweet seymour skinner's badass song where he's like correcting the troop for saying a filthy rhyme yeah that's a that is a better scene i i do like though the them all climbing on the jungle gyms like up and down with the you know where it's a silhouette over orange that's a really good pull of a less used uh shot from full metal jacket that's true then a fairly recent movie it was less than three years old it was june 87 it came out wow yeah i didn't even think of that yeah that must that's really weird.

That's like The Simpsons now in a 2020 episode making fun of a 2017 movie or recreating that. Like, it's that recent. Like how I felt when I watched a, you know, I think like two or three years after The Departed came out, they did a full parody episode of The Departed, The Debarted. That's right yeah and that felt too recent but they here they are doing in season one with that look the in in there in my defense the departed also constantly plays the dropkicks murphy's song from uh the departed as well so there's reasons to like it less how long after get out came out did they get uh onto that one i wonder that seems like one they would jump right on you know it wasn't in this year's treehouse they didn't do a get out that's

got to be an upcoming one they can't really ignore it they did stranger things this season they did that one i think us might be a safer parody for them than get out that's true that's absolutely true yep yeah and there's more crazy uh insane logic in that movie than there is in Get Out. That, yeah, I think is safer. Let's go with the safer. Safer.

Yeah. Yeah. There are so many more questions that need to be answered by us in the upcoming Us trilogy. That was a real, you know, that movie didn't make the same impact as Get Out, but I really liked Us a lot as well.

I can't believe Lupita nyong'o didn't get nominated though like that was when i saw movies like this is an oscar easy yeah here i mean it was a lot of burp talking but i enjoyed it well that's i mean if you this could turn this whole podcast just into me yelling but i want to hear this i i love us i think it's just as good as get out i think it's a wilder and opener movie i think it's a movie that you can only make after you've made a hit movie um it's kind of uh we've been on the the blank check podcast that it is a blank check movie oh yeah and i the fact that neongo didn't get it is ridiculous because i forget who like i i like renee zellweger and everything

but that judy performance it's like so so just the boilerplate of every other musical artist that's being played by a very good actor that i'm just like i i don't care well i mean it wouldn't be oscar nominations if they didn't if they didn't nominate somebody for doing an impression of a famous person yeah like freddie mercury oh it just kills me this is very fun and it was like a fun ride and i actually had fun like taking apart like the very weird reality of the movie that uh just raises further questions as hermy would say hermes would say no i uh yeah and the acting is just just so great when tim heidecker yes yeah this is the Us cast. Now, yeah, this, again, I guess we could just cut it off by saying the Oscars made a mistake in nominating someone.

That's crazy. Never happened. Never. But yes, the training montage goes on a very long time. Over two minutes. There is an interesting bit here with Bart and one of his recruits. What's the matter with you, soldier? It's my nerves, sir. I just can't stand the barking anymore. Your nerves? is an interesting bit here with Bart and one of his recruits. to die on some godforsaken rock. But for some reason, you can't slap him.

Now, apologize to that boy right now. Sorry, man. That's cool. In English class, I did the best. In English class, I did the best. Because I cheated on the test. Because I cheated on the test. Sound off.

One, two. I can't hear you. Three, four. All right, there's your enemy. Now hit him. Yeah,'t hear you. Three, four. All right, there's your enemy. Now hit him. Yeah, so in the original script, Bart slaps the kid and Abe just tells him, you apologize. He says like, hey, you can't do that. And he slaps Bart back.

So that entire run of about all the irony of war that you can't slap your recruit, but you can make him die. And how the rules of war just make no sense. Yeah, that was a late addition that I'm gonna also think this was probably graining i think mac graining realized far too late they're making a pro war episode starring their main character yeah like the one like hey bart bart says war is cool guys he says war is cool, man. Oh, yes. I think there is also a scene in Patton where he slaps one of his... Oh, okay. I'm pretty sure. Again, it's been a little while since I've seen it, but that sounds...

I have the image in my mind. You know, I think comedy parodists out there, they should be using this Patton soundtrack more often. Like, they're just like... It's catchy. It's memorable. I don't know if we have the cultural knowledge of Patton anymore more often. Like, they're just like, da-da-da-da-da-da. It's catchy. It's memorable. I don't know if we have the cultural knowledge of Patton anymore. Oh, not at all.

No. You hear those things, no one thinks, oh, that old movie Patton, I love. We all think, it was an Oscar winner, that movie, though. Like, a best picture. Yeah, 1970.

I like Grandpa's line here in his later one with Herman, but it feels like just a long monologue where it's not very clever. What it's is interesting and uh makes a lot of sense but it just feels like okay shine a spotlight on grandpa to do his anti-war thing and we're done now that is why it feels like a graining like big speech balloon really is what it feels like i feel like it should be couching a story of something that happened to him in a war or something like that not just like here are the things you can do and can't do.

The kid in there, just imagine that's Milhouse. When you hear the voice, that is Milhouse's voice. But it really isn't Milhouse, but it should be. And speaking of funny drawings, I wish I'd put it in our good animation montage at the live show. The dog they run by is so crazy and fun looking. I love he's just like this rectangle that just bounces up and down. Not in the universe of that show.

He's better than the police dog that we saw in No Disgrace Like Home, the one Eddie and Lou bring into the bar. Like that's a wackier like cartoony dog. I like this boxy dog. He's a fun boxy dog herman is called in to help and that's where he like brings his bayonet in and stabs it which i think bart's lesson really should have been to hire herman to stab nelson to murder nelson to murder a boy at least threaten to do it yeah yeah get a get a motel room bring him in put the money on the bed where he is very easy yeah both uh homer and herman they both maul an effigy of nelson in this episode yeah it is pretty it is a double joke there maybe only do one of

those this is a good exaggeration of that though where he's just like gutting him that he brought in his uh probably original like 1917 bayonet to stab it uh also here's another funny one from the og script when they are planning out their strategy of like oh nelson is here we're gonna go attack him uh you know they say in it oh the reports are at he's he's at the video arcade which that is such an 80s way of saying arcade they just like the video arcade it's not uh noiseland yet uh but the original script line i love it and wish it was in there he says reports are in that nelson's at the liquor store buying candy oh that's great that's great that's a great line i wish they'd kept it in there and we have not seen the quickie

mart yet but in this little model of the town there's the quickie mart and they mentioned the quickie mart but it's spelled q-u-i-c-k instead of k instead of k w i k so i didn't figure that out quite yet i wonder if it was yeah i guess they won't go into the quickie mart until telltale head so it might have just been either they changed their mind after they did this one or just a miscommunication to the background animators that it's not with it's with a q instead of a k that's when abe has another uh rather lengthy speech in this scene here. Nelson's at the Elm Street Video Arcade. Intelligence indicates he shakes down kids for quarters at the arcade.

Then he heads to the Quickie Mart for a cherry squishy. And that's where we'll hit him. When he leaves the Quickie Mart, we start the saturation bombing. We got the water balloons. 200 rounds, sir. Is it okay if they say happy birthday on the side? Dude! I'd rather they say death from above, but I guess we're stuck.

Okay, our main force will be split into two groups. One will circle around this way to cut off the enemy's retreat. The other will drive in this way, closing the trap. It's a classic Pinsir's movement. It can't fail against a 10-year-old. Nelson's at the arcade, General. Battle station. I feel so alive.

You know, I thought I was too old. I thought my time had passed. I thought I'd never hear the screams of pain or see the look of terror in a young man's eyes. Thank heaven for children. I always laugh when they cut to herman nodding they just need a shot of something else and it's a very weird insert yeah just like herman agrees but yeah we were recently on the cusp of war and old man loved old men rather love sending young men to die

yeah it's true that's it gets them off it gets them horny i think it's it is a good uh opposite of how you expect the speech to be like a maudlin show and have a speech by a world war ii vet saying like i'm so glad today's kids grow up in a world of peace and they don't need to know the pain of bloodshed like this is abe complaining that kids don't die anymore and soon they will yes well we had a good decade after this of no war pretty nice or very little war just fun secret war yeah sure we were bombing people but like we didn't have to think about it no problems whatsoever but uh also i didn't want to mention just elm street in general is such a i mean it's an obvious line like it's just like every place has an elm street but

they don't use it much any after this when i searched on frequently i searched on frinky act for any other use of the word elm street and it was just used as a descriptor by marge for the location of the sushi restaurant in uh in blowfish okay so uh elm street was a thing yeah she'd say the uh the new sushi restaurant that opened on elm street that's that's the line but that was the only one that came up in my frankie x search i don't think anything else usually it just became evergreen terrace which wasn't originally where the simpsons lived on it was just a street name said but uh over time it just turned into the only streets in in springfield worth mentioning uh the balloon saying happy birthday that's a good joke too i do like that uh so yes nelson and his uh weasels get ambushed

hey good squishies what flavor juke blue hey you two birds you're gonna be sucking all your and uh this one artillery commence saturation bombing and the saturation is a joke it's water saturating people that's the first reference to squishies too which I like that the flavor is blue that's a funny line

I grew up in the midwest where there were no 7-11's so now whenever I go to one, I went to my first one when I was like in my 20s. Whenever I go to one and see Slurpees, I think of Squishies because that's what introduced me to the concept of the fun like Slurpee Squishy drink. Yeah, I didn't have, we had like Icy's. Icy's we had in Ohio. Oh yeah, my town Icy's too. No Slushies.

Yeah. No, I also, when 7-Elevens came to New York City, all of a sudden I was like, a whole new world. Because I used to get that stuff at gas stations. Oh, yeah, yeah. I think 7-Eleven upscaled it a little bit from what you expected from a gas station, though. Well, I'll tell you what, the regional one I've been always jealous of not having is Wawa. Oh, yeah. I've never been to a Wawa.

Sheetz is good, too. Oh, I should check that out, too. If I'm ever in the East Coast, which I never Oh, yeah. I've never been to a Wawa. Sheetz is good, too. Oh, I should check that out, too. If I'm ever in the East Coast, which I never am, ever, one of these days we'll do a live show in, like, Boston or something. New York City is the only place in the, you know, Northeast I've ever been to. It's, yeah, so it's still a magical world to me of like, wah-wahs with damn hoagies. We have another fun Nazi reference, too. Oh, boy. With the weasels.

The weasels say the Nazi line of, we were just following orders. And the children immediately embrace them as they turn on Nelson. So in the original script, they don't say that line. They just say like, oh, we want to join you guys now and they're like oh okay and then the kid and then the weasel say isn't it good to be on the winning side and then they start throwing uh balloons too is that like a direct quote from the nuremberg trials i'm sure it was said many times it's what uh it was a stereotype of what nazi said and and certainly no other army would say that in defense of anything.

Only Nazis. True. No, no, no. But to put those words into the mouths of kids. I mean, all these Nazi reference in here. I think it feels like in 1990, we're like, oh, yeah, they'll never be Nazis again. What an old silly thing to make fun of. Tell all the Hitler jokes you want.

Non-stop. Also, Nelson's grunts of pain throughout here they don't sound like the noises nancy normally does for like nelson pain like it's just all kind of over the place well he's drowning that's why oh yeah so it's going into his lungs i mean also nelson i would think that nelson even as he's portrayed in this the fifth time that water balloon hit him he'd run towards the people throwing them and start punching them all in the face and beat the shit out of them. But he just kind of accepts like, oh, by being hit by these water balloons, I am a mobile. I mean, that's how it works better for the plot.

So that's why they do it. But I have a bit to say about the parody of the famous Life magazine photograph, if you want to get to that. Yeah, yeah. So they capture Nelson and it's time to celebrate right right so uh it's getting it's very strange in which you can now reference uh memes on tv shows but i think you can no longer reference famous photographs or even paintings i think those are all just like lost to time but this is a very famous world war ii photograph taken on vJ Day, Victory Over Japan Day. And I have a great story that's kind of creepy. So, the guy in the photo kissing the nurse, it was George Mendonca,

who just died in February of last year at age 95. Oh, wow. Yeah. And the story from The Guardian is, there was many stories written about him when he died, but the story from The Guardian says, Mendonca was on leave and had been on a date with another woman when he heard, but the story from The Guardian says, Mendoza was on leave and had been on a date with another woman when he heard the war was over. His date, Rita Petri, is seen in the background of the photo. So you can see his date in the background while he's kissing another woman. She said she didn't mind that he kissed another woman amid the celebration. In fact, she became his wife of seven decades. And the quote from her was, either I was dopey or something, but it didn't bother me, she told CBS, adding that he would sometimes repeat the performance. Quote, it'll come up

that he's the kissing sailor. So the kissing sailor has to think he has to kiss everybody. So he does. And they eventually found the woman he kissed. And basically, it's like, this guy just grabbed me and kissed me. I was on a break from my job. I didn't really like it. No, it was harassment. Yeah. And she was an older lady from my job i didn't really like it no it's harassment yeah and she was an older lady from the generation i don't know if she had the language of modern feminism to work with but it just seemed like well you sexually assaulted that woman in the streets and several others but he's in hell now but thanks for saving our country listen you can't sexually assault five women in the street and then go to heaven i'm sorry

there are standards i feel like that sounds fair. Yeah. That sounds fair. I just have this image of him going into McDonald's and ordering and then saying, Hey, fellas, you know who I am. I'm the guy from the BJ picture. How about if I give my wife here a smooch? How about can I get some free fries?

If I do it in a photo for you guys in front of mcdonald's i'll get a happy meal right i mean did anyone try to make out with strangers when osama bin laden was killed uh i'm sure somebody assaulted somebody on that day yeah yeah i mean and i guess i guess the attitude was like oh you you know yeah well in 1940 especially to a man in uniform what are you gonna say other than like oh you it just is like it's a very famous photo but just like well he just kind of grabbed the random ladies like and uh smooched her yeah lisa has the correct response yeah of i mean also she could have reported him to like the authorities but at the very least to slap and like you knock it off like that's what that

nor should have done back in the day i think that has damaged the legacy of that photograph being a famous one and that it was one of many women he did that to that day that time yeah while his girlfriend is in the background what a creep yeah the the girlfriend who became wife in the background that is the craziest revelation from yeah to me i guess they tracked them down in like 1980 okay when they're doing like a retrospective on the war and that was the time to just brag and nobody wanted to hear the sad parts of it only only in the modern era were they like hey wait a minute it wasn't so you forced yourself on a woman huh oh that's weird

i mean can't you just say he was a good kisser? Come on, we're trying to write something here for a big day. We need a silver lining to the sexual assault. I would think the Time Magazine editor just cut that out of his original reporting. Like, oh, she said she didn't accept that kiss, or he didn't know her and was a stranger. Eh, forget that. Let's not talk about that. Let's just keep the whole section of us dropping bombs in hiroshima yeah that's easy it's more pleasant uh so uh i have two more things to mention that would change big from the script one is

right after the war's over they have a scene that is totally unneeded where abe says well i gotta go war's over now uh you you beat him i have to go home and then he says if i'm late they'll declare me dead and collect my pension and they so they cut that from the episode but save it to use in bart versus thanksgiving in season two i thought i had heard it before yeah i do like that joke yeah homer when abe leaves thanksgiving he doesn't say pension he says collect my insurance but he's like i now. If I don't, the home will declare me dead and collect my insurance. So at least they saved a good line. They cut even this early in the show. And then the realization that Bart can't leave Nelson tied up forever. It takes five pages. Like it's really long in

the original script. A mistake, really. Yeah. things really zoom to an end here after this uh little tie-up came like as a marginal thing yeah like in the original script bart's like oh you can't you can't just leave me tied up forever oh yeah and then like time cut four hours pass time cut it's night time now time cut they even have in the script mr and mrs months commenting on where's our kid like so the wagon is just full of piss uh yeah so they i think they realize like let's just cut to the chase and and realize we need the treaty the treaty is still there in the original script but they cut to it way faster as uh bart makes a deal with nelson i guess you learned your lesson, so now I'll untie you. The second you untie me, I'm going to beat you to death, man.

Well, if that's going to be your attitude, I'm not going to untie you. Ha! You're going to have to sometime. Uh-oh. He's right. Don't you worry. I was ready for this little eventuality. Armistice Treaty Article 4. Nelson is never again to raise his fists in anger. Article 5. Nelson recognizes Bart's right to exist.

Article 6. Although Nelson shall have no official power, he shall remain a figurehead of menace in the neighborhood. Wow, sounds good to me. Okay, I'll sign. What about you, boy? All right, I'll sign. Are you of menace in the neighborhood. Wow, sounds good to me. Okay, I'll sign. What about you, boy? All right, I'll sign. Are you boys through playing war?

Yeah. Yes, Mrs. Simpson. Good. Then here's some cupcakes. Oh, boy. Mmm, cupcakes. Mmm. Oh.

Oh. Lemonade. Thanks. Yes, please. I didn't remind you of that. lemonade thanks yes please yeah and that's uh right to existing obviously in israel um you know pull uh very complicated a lot of baggage there can't go into it now yeah we've already gone two hours yeah let's talk about israel's history for another two but another just noisy tv blaring a cowboy show in the background like i think like the third instance of this.

Yeah, like, I think this also wasn't in the original script, but in the posing there where Homer says, what about you, boy? I feel like there's an implicit threat with Homer there. Just like, huh? You gonna do it? You gonna do it? That's why Nelson finally signs that Homer backs up a threat for him. It's a fun reveal of just Nelson on the couch watching TV with Homer and Lisa.

But still tied up. Yeah, still tied up. And also in the original script, the thing that gets him to agree isn't Homer saying that, but being offered $7. And they call it like reparations, not bribery. That's the joke in there. Yeah, I like that Nelsonelson's like yes mrs simpson and when the cupcakes come back in which that the original end of the script is that they

eat cupcakes and then the music plays so that's why i wanted this clip to end there too so you can see like this was the original ending of the episode okay and bringing back the cupcakes is a real book end of like now everybody gets to have their cupcakes and they're all happy this non-alf clausen composer likes to end the show reminding you're watching the simpsons yeah because like his episodes end with like i mean it makes sense yeah it makes sense as uh it just is a branding thing non-subtle i think alf clausen would do similar things but not as just like brassy and in your face. It's early on, too. I mean, it's super

I mean, this early on, I feel like you have to do that. Yeah, yeah. I welcome the Alf Clausen years with his more subtle choices and unexpected places he went to. But yeah, no offense to Richard Gibbs. This has become like this

revisiting of season one has really been trashing richard gibbs a lot of our part going easier on klasky chupo harder on gibbs uh but that was not to be the real ending as this is the best part of the script that's on the dvd is that matt graining in the writer's room at the table read on the back of his page, just in cursive, wrote this entire last scene of the episode. Pretty much verbatim as Bart says it in the episode. Yeah, I was actually scanning through it too. And I saw that and I was like, this is just what he says.

Yeah, yeah. He had the executive power to make it happen, to add this addendum to the show, which shortened the title, probably cost more money to give them more animation. Yeah, I think it was probably a retake or a late addition for sure. It's one I welcome. I mean, yes. Is it a little like, you know, PSA or, you know, the more you know kind of moment that is not as smart as The Simpsons would be? Sure. is uh not as smart as the simpsons would be sure but i think it's necessary with especially if you

come from like the peacenik uh hippie ethical background of graining he couldn't imagine this show going out without bart saying that on the commentary 11 years later they're laughing at how sweaty and contradictory this is and like well that takes care of that yeah that's true, that's true. It's like, well, then you're right. In that case, it's like, well, I mean, then don't do an entire episode aggrandizing more to just stick on 30 seconds of saying it's not good. Actually, it's bad. That's true.

I mean, you have to imagine that Schwarzwilder's like first idea was to just put like the entirety of Red Dawn at the end of it. Yeah, he should be celebrating our Mujahideen fighters at the end of the episode. Nelson dies in his draft, his original draft. Bart just shoots him in the face at the end of the episode.

Ooh, that'll get some letters. But, yeah, this, well, actually, let's just play the moral of the story. Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, contrary to what you've just seen, war is neither glamorous nor fun. There are no winners, only losers. There are no good wars, with the following exceptions. The American Revolution, World War II, and the Star Wars trilogy.

If you'd like to learn more about war, there's lots of books in your local library, many of them with cool, gory pictures. Well, good night, everybody. Peace, man. Gets a little undercut by Patton music coming back in. That's true. Oh, a simpler time

when there was only a Star Wars trilogy. Oh, yeah. Yep. That hurt us more than thinking about real life war. She's thinking about

new Star Wars films. You can see what our priorities are. Okay, so yes, I do like the energy of Bart saying, you know, there are no good wars in peace, man. Like, I like that messaging on a TV show. Oppositely, I think it is really clunky to have Bart just earnestly say, go to your local library and read more books about it.

I guess the cool gory pictures is a nice subversion on that but it's still like hey like go out and do research to find out why war is bad well it's basically what he-man would say to you at the end of something too or but he wouldn't even have an anti-war message that light like because bart can't even be just fully anti-war he has to say say the accepted caveat that most Americans then would have agreed to, like, well, no, there were at least two good wars, World War II and the American Revolution. There aren't only losers in war. I think some civilians would disagree with what he said.

I know in 1990. Yeah, not so much. I'm sure in 1990, some people, though, were still like, Vietnam was a good war. It was just this bullshit kid on tv saying it was wrong turn off this yellow filth yeah they oh also the last thing i'll say is that silverman on the commentary says they they thought they might just reuse that for a bunch of scenes of just like bart doing commercials and just saying whatever they need him to say in reusing those shots which i think they did do in a few early commercials,

but it didn't repeat for very long. Just, I mean, it's an easy setup of Bart dangling his feet, like Bart sitting in a library and mouth moving. That could work for a million commercials for Nancy Cartwright to say, like, watch Drexel's class next or whatever. I see it as more of a Herman's head vehicle. Oh, yes. Yeah. But Chris, thanks for sticking with us for so long.

Can you please let us know your final thoughts on this one? I really like this one, especially because I've just been going through the first season since getting Disney Plus. Not to give them too much press here, but I have been going through it. And this one is one that sticks with me because there are a lot of big images in it, like Bart alone in the bathroom like the uh full metal jacket uh reference with them going over things like it was one of the first ones and the noise the the patent score i thought that was them at first when i was younger

and all those little things was like it was the first one that really locked in for me i think still i still love it this is a fun episode that also has the animation more together than in the previous four i think this is the second one silverman directed so it must be like another round of animation deliveries so he can learn from some of the stuff that's starting to come in you can tell he's getting better at his craft and the backgrounds there's not as many gradients or anything and the the character the background characters are more together so craft wise this show is is more together too than the uh the previous four so chris uh let us know all about we hate movies you've got a lot of podcasts you've got a great patreon with even more stuff on there uh please let us know uh yeah we do uh we do a weekly show that you can uh get for free on itunes or wherever

you get your podcasts. And then we have patreon.com slash wehatemovies. We have a bunch of stuff up there. We have a Star Trek show. We got Animation Damnation, an animation show we do. And we've been doing We Love Movies now. They're monthly. And we're finally doing Movies We Like, which is a nice turn.

You deserve it. You earned it. Thank you. And you're at Cabin on Twitter, right? At Crabbin. Oh, Crabbin. Sorry. Yes.

Which is an old thing I was called in college for many years. Because I'm crabby. Well, thank you so much. You weren't crabby on here. That's for sure. Thanks for having me again, guys. Oh, yeah. So thanks so much to Chris Cabin for joining us today.

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so much for joining us folks we'll see you next week for moaning lisa and we'll see you then I'm going to be a hero.