Talking Simpsons - Talking Simpsons - Bart Vs Thanksgiving With Tim Kalpakis

Episode Date: May 12, 2021

We return to Thanksgiving in 1990 to discuss this Simpsons classic with comedy performer/writer/musician/podcaster Tim Kalpakis from the band/podcast The Sloppy Boys! The whole family gets together for a traditional Thanksgiving, but Bart messes it up and evades an apology for the rest of the day as we learn some lessons about food and family. Plus, Tim gives us behind-the-scenes info on working on the show over a decade ago in this podcast that'll make you say "Hooray for everything!" 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 talking simpsons listeners we have a new podcast miniseries exclusively on patreon right now for five dollar and up subscribers at patreon.com slash talking simpsons you get talk king of the hill season two part one that's right we're returning to king of the hill once again putting out 11 new episodes covering the first half of the show's second season. Again, that is patreon.com slash TalkingSimpsons. Be there or be not right. I heartily endorse this event or product. Ahoy hoy everybody and welcome to Talking Simpsons where it's all your fault. I'm your host, the blow-dried college boy Bob Mackie and this is our chronological exploration of The Simpsons who is here with me today. Hey, it's Henry Gilbert and every year I outstrip myself in succulents.

And who do we have on the line? Tim Kelpakis. Hey guys, how's it going? And today's episode is Bart versus Thanksgiving. I hope you're happy, Bart. You ruined Thanksgiving. This episode aired on November 22nd, 1990. And as always, Henry will tell us what happened on this mythical day in real world history. Oh my God. Oh boy,by today margaret thatcher resigned as the prime minister and i hope she rots in hell the undertaker debuts in the world wrestling federation and the super nintendo entertainment system but called the super famicom launches in japan alongside super mario world we wouldn't get it for nine more months yeah long long wait

we had to make but yeah i realized as i said that undertaker thing that i've had like seven different undertaker news bits it's true and i'll use the same joke i used before he's never been scarier than when he revealed himself as a blue lives matter guy yes uh yeah the the undertaker did make his debut at the yearly thanksgiving pro wrestling event called survivor series and so okay yeah so that would be that he was on his first paul bearer at the time uh yes yeah got it her was uh was well he wasn't slim but he was young he was young uh and yeah i guess we need british listeners to talk about how margaret thatcher got edged out of the prime minister position and had to resign or something. Is that covered in V for Vendetta?

I have read that. That was written early in her regime. So I would guess it was people in anonymous masks that got her to resign. But Super Mario World, one of the best video games like ever. Love that game. The introduction of Yoshi. He was born that day. He was.

And dinosaurs just took over the 90s from that point on. The coolest. I just watched the Super Mario Brothers movie. And it's so Mario World specific. They're in Dino World and stuff. And they chose to really get behind that movie. I mean, that video game instead of the earlier ones. It was bizarre.

I think they just basically stopped at Dino World and then wrote their movie because there's nothing in the movie that's anything like Mario. In fact, the princess in the movie is from Mario Land. That was a weird pull. Yes. Yeah, why wouldn't there be Peach? Everyone's tuning in for Peach and we get Princess Daisy. Come on. And everybody's like a pile of mucus.

Like, yeah. And it's really the luigi movie yeah ultimately oh like was almost breakout role i liked seeing uh there was a funny thing like 10 years ago like wasamo i saw him in an interview get asked about that movie and he's just trashing on it like worst movie ever bob hoskins and me were drunk every day and then five years ago he's asked by fans of the movie to like record a thing for the anniversary. And that he's like, you know, it's not everybody's favorite movie,

but you fans keep it alive. Like I appreciate it. That was tone has changed. Just I think it would be so great if on the 25th anniversary of something, he was like, I hate this. And it's embarrassing to me, even though you guys love it.

You're wrong to like it. And I despise you. But yes, our special guest today is Tim Kalpakis, one of our favorite people. One of the birthday boys also was a writer on Comedy Bang Bang and I Love You America. Welcome to the show, Tim. Thank you. Thanks for having me. And don't forget, my most important credit is production assistant on The Simpsons.

That was our special surprise for the listeners. And you are, I think, one of two production assistants I think we've talked to so far on this show. Yes, we talked to Kate Raft a little bit ago. I think she came after you. I think I paved the way for Kate. Well, yeah, I mean, I guess let's start there. Like how did you start there while you're beginning your Hollywood comedy career? Yes, it was. It was my first showbiz job. So I would be sort of doing, getting really, really, really into UCB and doing sketches at UCB every night. So then I was just a terrible employee for, I was specifically working for Gracie Films. So I was like James L. Brooks's production assistant. And I would drive things back and forth from the Fox lot to the Sony lot where he was. But I had the job for four years.

And in Hollywood terms, there's no such thing as a production assistant who worked someplace for four whole years. You're supposed to be promoted. And so in retrospect, I was kind of grumping around the place. And now I look back and just think it was probably all my fault. And I did a really bad job. You really brought the show down. I've heard tales that the one way they're able to splurge usually at the Simpsons is getting a big meal or like crazy meal. So as the lunch guy, you've you probably some uh some tough giant orders to fill where they really did you could see i mean i think this happens at a lot of offices where lunch it takes on so much

meaning because your whole morning is spent just being like oh man lunch is gonna be good and all the power through lunch and simpsons was that like to the greatest degree where um we would always get lunch from a restaurant a different restaurant every day but then you could if you didn't want anything from the restaurant, you could get from the Fox commissary, which was pretty good commissary food as well. And it started off as like, you know, if maybe if you were a vegan and you didn't want from the burger place you're getting, you could get soup from the commissary. But then it just sort of turned into everybody mixing and matching like within one writer's lunch, like commissary soup and then an entree from the restaurant and could you stop by starbucks and get me a piece of cake and i would be putting down a

grocery a brown grocery bag for each writer and they would have a stack of lunch that they would go to town on and it seemed very wasteful to me but's like, hey, if that's what was powering them through this job and inspiring them, that's what they needed. Who had like the funniest lunch order? Were they all just like the same like islands kind of order? They were. I remember that Matt Selman is a foodie. So he was sort of interested in food. So and I don't even know Matt Selman, but foodie. So he was sort of interested in food. So, and I don't even know Matt Selman,

but I handed him his lunch. And I remember like a lot of the guys just would want like Junior's Deli and just a pastrami sandwich and something that was just classic lunch food. So I feel like when that Selman would be the one who was excited about getting something, maybe like a little more international, whatever.

But I also remember him having the biggest bag where it would be like maybe like four four lunches piled up so that he could taste them all uh what i i've heard tell that mike mitchell uh did he follow you as working there was that at the same time he um i hooked him up with that job because you know what happened is they they were hiring a pa and i m Mitch was my friend and I brought his resume in and I went to the receptionist and I said, hey, this is my friend Mitch. Can you submit him to be a PA? And the reception is related up the chain as this is Tim's friend. And they thought that it was Tim Long's friend, not Tim Kalpakis' friend. So Mitch got an interview, a lot of people submitted, but Mitch got an interview based on that misinformation that

the writer Tim Long was recommending him. Yeah. Then Mitch got the job. We worked there together. He was more like a writer's PA while I was working for Jim Brooks, but he had, I mean, one of the all time low moments was, um, they, they sent Mitch out for dinner and he went to junior's deli and got 30 dinners, all different types. And then when he got back with the food, they had all left for the night and decided that they weren't going to have dinner, dinner, but nobody texted him. and mitch cried oh okay oh god and uh i felt so bad for him but i said hey bring all the food up to my house and then we brought 30 different dinners up to my sketch group's house and the seven of us sat and ate 30 dinners like

we just opened them all up and had forks and just went into town on them. It was subsidizing the birthday boys. I love that. Yeah, they helped us out big time. This is a very Jim Brooksy episode, so you can tell us if he showed you the same kind of warmth he shows in his comedy writing. Oh, yes, he shows that warmth to everybody. I noticed that, too.

I was watching and thinking these early seasons. It is very Brooksy. Everything tugs at the heartstrings and it works i think he was doing it until he started like working on the uh as good as it gets once that production started up that probably took him away from simpsons yeah exactly then he was in movie mode and and uh i mean tim were you watching this on thanksgiving day in 1990 nope i i was a late bloomer with the Simpsons. So 1990, I'm seven years old, but probably still just watching kiddie cartoons and not cool ones like the Simpsons. So I caught on later. I bet I would have seen this in, you know, my Simpsons heyday

would have been like late nineties, early two thousands when it was on my local affiliate, like at 6 PM, 6 30 PM and then 11 and 11 30 and i'd watch like four episodes per night that's probably when i first laid eyes on this episode oh yeah your time on the pa thing that must have overlapped with some of the movie production too so was that even uh busier than than other times when you were working there it was it and you're exactly right that when i started they were midway into the movie wow So everyone was telling me like, it's not usually like this. This is crazy. But you know, to me, I'm still just getting lunches. So I'm not really taking on any of that stress. But it made me very happy as a comedy nerd. All the old writers who had left and become billionaires were back for the movie. So just John Schwartz Welder with like a big handlebar mustache would be standing outside smoking all day. And I never said more than hi and bye to him. But that guy, I was, you know, idolized him and had heard all these stories about

how he lives in the desert and collects Civil War artifacts and stuff like that. And then one time, I made a delivery up to George Meyer, the writer of this very episode. Oh, wow. And I was in his parking, in his driveway. He lived in Wilt Chamberlain's old house. Whoa. Wow. On Mulholland Drive. And I was delivering some, maybe a script to him.

And I said, hey, by the way, you know, I really love Army Man. I've seen some of your old newsletter, Army Man, online. And I think it's really funny and he was like hey do you have hard copies and i was like no i've only ever seen scans and he went into his garage and came back out with like a stack of like you know comedy nerd treasures for me uh and so now i have uh all those old army mans from the 80s with like jack handy and bob odenkirk i've got all original copies of those that's amazing man i i was saying you know you mentioned bob odenkirk yeah i wondered if you'd i was gonna ask if you'd met george meyer maybe through the the odenkirk connection because he was an executive

producer on uh on the birthday boys right it was two totally separate worlds i became friends with bob because he saw me at ucb and we did shows together there and then separately during the day i'd be going into work and seeing bill odenkirk uh working at the simpsons but i never really and i introduced myself to bill and bill's a really nice guy and stuff but those worlds felt very separate to me because i was also ashamed of what a bad employer i was. And in my meetings with Bob, I was trying to convince him that I'm a hotshot writer. So I didn't talk about how I was pouring coffee all day. And they were like these two worlds

that didn't really intersect. It's always strange to hear someone having actually met John Schwarzwalder because I think there's only one picture of him online and it's from maybe 1991 in a group of other writers. So it's always strange to know that he's real. His mustache is real. He was present somewhere. That picture is why I recognize him. from maybe 1991 in a group of other writers so it's always strange to know that he's real his mustache is real he was present somewhere that picture is why i recognize him i know the exact

picture you're talking about and then i was like that's the guy aging him up 10 12 years and that's the guy and uh and yeah the the george banger thing i i also think of him with odin kirk because like the way i knew how he looked was i was not only an obsessive of simpson commentaries but also the mr show commentaries and like yeah on the first episode of it bob odenkirk goes like hey there's george meyer one of the funniest writers in hollywood and he tells some story about when george was starting on simpsons that he called like bart matt or Mark or something. He's like, I don't care what his name is. It's the, the boy says this. The boy George Meyer was super nice.

And I will say when I talked to him a real like genius vibe, you know, not, not just like, Hey, I'm a goof around comedy guy, but just like everything he said was very sweet and nice and very smart. And, uh, and I was like, Oh, that I'm talking to a genius right now. George Meyer. I, he was the first right i think we've already done a writer's corner oh yeah because he's a credit in season one he's uh this is his first solo script but wasn't he on um the uh crepes of wrath as one of five writers on that episode yeah i thought so which we we found out later from interviewing john vd was like literally the draft was written together in the room which is never how they write a Simpsons but they did it that day and uh and and I knew Meyer he was the first Simpsons writer I actually like knew because I in the year 2000 he did a New

Yorker profile that like my mom uh well I mean he didn't do it the New Yorker profiled him and it was like my mom passed it along to me and it was also one of those moments where I felt like, man, I'm so mature. My mom is passing me along a New Yorker profile. I'm a grown up now. And he's actually credited with melancholy, but he, I think they kind of frame it as that he was so valuable as a joke writer that they needed him in the rewrite room. So he doesn't have too many script credits because you could send Schwartz Welder off to go write his own episode, but you always wanted to have George Meyer present for rewrites. And that's where he was most useful and i know in the sea in the mike scully years of nine to twelve that like meyer became basically co-showrunner with him or at least like co-head

writer in the room i guess that new yorker profile also is about how like his the the tense family situation growing up which this episode is entirely about that yeah wow that uh that's some james l brooks stuff as they probably were pulling autobiographical things i i just remember from that i think in that new yorker piece he says george meyer is like if my tombstone says simpson's writer that's the saddest thing i can think of and to me someone who looks up to him i'm like oh no that makes you sad am i basing my life on the wrong thing that sounds more like a harry sheerer quote to me yes he's would say spinal tap i would he'd say maybe simpson uh maker creator of the show oh of course the gene was the show jazz radio and stuff like that i guess i mean let's

um start from the beginning here i guess with this episode so this episode is you know when i saw it as a kid i think it was the introduction to the uh idea that thanksgiving could be stressful for people like i i don't think i ever really as a kid got thanksgiving until this episode so i i didn't get it until this one and i don't think we had a big i can't remember a family big thanksgiving fight until uh let's say i was 15 i think it was one of those, but it took a while. But this one starts out with Marge, the visual of her pulling the guts out of a turkey and humming green sleeves.

And this has a real like shorts kind of feel to it because it's just Maggie like silently walking around. Yeah, there's a lot of just observational stuff with the family. It's a bit, it's not really high concept at this point. And it also really feels, I do like like silverman the director of this one the opening is real clever i think because it follows maggie two places it's like maggie looks at marge then she goes into the living room then she follows lisa upstairs that's right yeah it's back down they drop it after this first act but it's uh i think it's a good framing device i like those kind of visual

chilled out passages it really doesn't feel like anything we have on on tv anymore and i did get lulled into the tone of it that there's like well you can really feel this this is sparse and like i'm enjoying the animation and actually thinking about it as a cartoon as opposed to just like joke joke joke plot plot plot we we know the simpsons and we're barreling along like i felt like uh i was really lulled into the world even two years later you'd never start an episode with marge humming green sleeves for like 20 seconds yeah but i but i love the the feel of it and then uh and then in another very like shorts moment it's just bart and lisa acting like actual children and arguing over something and yeah and i i mean me and my brother we fought over dumb things but i didn't have the the ability to

explain it the way lisa easily does i'm just like he only wants it because i want it what do you think in like the cultural context i don't have many like real world memories of the first big splash of the simpsons where it's like bart like don't have a cow man and bart simpson is is a a t-shirt and like he's an icon for being a little bad boy and i guess that's what maybe season one that was like right off the bat that was huge so then when we get to an episode like this where he's like we meet him and he's like suffocating lisa it's not even like a it's not a likable little stinker you know he's kind of like a bad boy in this episode and i wonder how if that how people

reconciled that if they were conflicted about it or if or if little little stinkers were watching this being like yeah i'm gonna choke my sister i think america had been introduced to bart enough to realize like we watch bart because bart's a bad kid but in these episodes these early seasons he would at least be remorseful or even if he had a struggle to reach that point but I think in the future he would just be in league with Satan and cackling over his evil deeds right yeah this but he he has an arc here and he has the conscience still yeah as as a little boy definitely I I viewed Bart as the main character I was like i i'm almost bart's age he's the main guy and i i agree with him so even when he acts up here probably eight-year-old me was

thinking well bart's right his lee is lisa's trying to keep all the glue for herself but this is a correct part deserves some of that glue part to get on his skateboard and escape with the glue say cowabunga and then jump yeah there's also the joke of maggie almost drinking glue again it's like these these dangers of maggie things happening to maggie very short almost getting electrocuted and i also liked it homer first he's like uh just the mean dad of trying to discipline him but then he becomes just like a big kid watching the Macy's day parade. Like my, my mom growing up, like the Macy's parade a lot. And I do too,

but my dad never gave a crap about it. I love when Homer likes something, especially when he's watching TV, but it's just so, it's the best thing ever to watch like a dumb oaf, watching something dumb and loving it. But I do just, he got the first like big LOL they got out of me in this episode was when Bart's like, what float is that?

And Homer's like, it's underdog. Don't you know anything? Did that, like that's Homer's knowledge. Like you're informed if you know who that cartoon character is. This is not a problem for modern kids anymore because nothing ever goes away. In fact, Bullwinkle and Underdog would come back within 10 years of this and bullwinkle came back again with a new series oh yeah there just was a new bullwinkle show on amazon wasn't there the and today they just announced a velma prequel what get ready for that on hbmx really yes well all right yes yeah you

know the homer joking about that is probably the same energy that got Hollywood producers to, by the end of the 90s, produce a live action Rocky and Bullwinkle and underdog film. Yeah, yeah. But when people thought of like, oh, an underdog film, did they imagine like an anthropomorphic dog voiced by Jason Lee? Like that's going to be the underdog. Right. It's just like it was green lit and then they had to figure out like, uh-oh, how do we actually make this movie now?

We got the money. But yeah, Transformers, He-Man, they never go away. It's just our culture must exist for the next generation forever. We like words that we've heard before. The Simpsons will be right back. Thanksgiving is a time for delicious food.

Blah! Cranberry sauce a la Burt. And warm family gatherings. Ding dong, here comes the cavalry. Oh, nothing can ruin this holiday at The Simpsons. Oh, no, shouldn't you go pick up Grandpa? Half-time, Marge, half-time. Well, almost nothing. All right, Marge, go to your room, now.

Okay, I'll take some white meat and stuff to go and send up the pumpkin pie in about 20 minutes. The Simpsons, Thursday at 8 on Fox 5. Welcome to The break, everyone. And now I know how the Pilgrims felt. It's Henry Gilbert. And a big thank you to our guest this week, Tim Kalpakis. Me and Bob were so excited to have him on because we're big fans of his sketch show, The Birthday Boys, his band, The Sloppy Boys, and also his podcast the sloppy boys please check out all of that stuff right now and also if you're a fan of the talking simpsons podcast you should know that me and bob do this as our full-time jobs because of support of listeners like you

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Talking Simpsons style, if you're a $5 and up patron at patreon.com slash talking simpsons, plus tons more. Hear them all. Sign up today. But if you want something even fancier than cranberry sauce a la bart then you should sign up at the ten dollar premium level at patreon.com slash talking simpsons all that five dollar bonuses i just talked about you get those but you also get for 10 bucks a month the what a cartoon movie podcast the most in-depth big-time podcast that me and bob do each month we cover an animated feature film as deep as we go into the Simpsons.

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But yes, this is an interesting culture clash. Also in this first clip here of Bart reacting to Bullwinkle. Uh-oh, here comes our friend Bullwinkle J. Moose. Bullwinkle's antler sprung a leaf. Uh-oh, looks like old Bullwinkle's kind of got a taste of his own medicine. He certainly did, Bill. Wait, what did that mean? Did what I say make sense?

Well, no, not really, Bill. Boy, now I know how the pilgrims felt. What are you talking about, Bill? Who the hell is that? Bullwinkle. Who? Wait a minute. Who's that?

Underdog. Don't you know anything? Well, I know it wouldn't hurt him to use some cartoons made in the last 50 years. Son, this is a tradition. If you start building a balloon for every Flash in a Pan cartoon character, you'll turn the parade into a farce and then you see the bart balloon which made its debut that morning that morning yep 10 hours i i guess it would be it would have probably been at like 10 a.m or something and so within 12 hours of this episode airing on the east coast the macy's parade had shown that balloon that's amazing what they're

planning for that too because don't these episodes take like seven months to animate that they had a a deal for that and then planned it all out so uh i i want to thank the twitter account that guy 3002 uh simpsons historian on twitter because he uh i think just buys old table read scripts and then notes all the differences on twitter and he did a great thread on this episode and so yeah i know thanks to we know thanks to his thread that the may 15th 1990 table read script had this joke in it so they must have known then you like uh said nine seven months ahead of time uh that that would be in the parade that's amazing i you know when i was watching this episode i had to pause and go back because when homer says a farce and then the word farce sounded like bart to me

and because i was looking at bart and hearing the word that sounded like it i thought he just said the whole parade turns into a bart well farce is not a farce is not a word that homer should know yes yeah i know it is a little elevated for him that probably confused me as eight-year-old zillow because i definitely didn't know what farce meant i maybe i heard it as fart as a kid i know like hey that's a good joke i don't think i even got the joke with bill and marty as a kid but it's one of the funniest jokes in the episode where they go back and evaluate their previous dull commentary yes they're noting each other and just uh i like his statement like now i know how the pilgrims felt which means they he thinks pilgrims didn't know what the hell they were saying uh i probably loved

that joke though as a kid because i would have diligently watched the macy's parade that morning only to see the balloons to see the spider-man balloon and then the kermit balloon and then here comes and here comes bart's like yeah i and i actually do have a clip if you'd like okay let's hear their commentary on this the inane commentary that one willard scott gave on the 1990 morning of Thanksgiving. my group bart simpson has won hey man he is one cool dude cruising down the street with his own band consort escort like a rumba wow wow perfect hey man he is one cool dude i love hearing willard scott's like hey man who who was with willard scott i don't she was very dismissive of the underachievers thing she said all you underachievers or whatever he does.

It must have been whoever the woman was or one of the women hosting the Today Show. Katie Couric. Yeah, maybe I was. You know, that did sound like Katie Couric. Yeah, let's say it was her. But that was Willard Scott, just like him trying to act cool at knowing like, I know Bart Simpson. Man. Bill and Marty's inane commentary was even was was better

than will willard scott's and i looked up online was the bullwinkle uh accident a reference to any other famous macy's day blimp accidents or balloon accidents rather but there are simply too many over the years here's one of those you know want to feel old math things oh god uh but uh so the bullwinkle balloon first appeared in 1961 it actually got retired in 83 so it wasn't even in the 90 parade but bullwinkle balloon was in 61 that was 29 years before this episode aired in 1990 it is now over 30 years since bart's balloon premiered in 1990 so more So more time is in between that episode premiere and now than the bullet winkle balloon was. Wow.

I don't like that one bit. I wonder if modern 10-year-olds know who Bart is. I wonder. Yeah. Well, they'd know him from all the memes. They'd know him from like the chair smashing meme. Oh, right. It's chair smash boy from the internet.

I appreciated that joke that they worked that hard to get in a reference to uh i mean also that is kind of them like both celebrating themselves and dunking on themselves like yeah we made it into the parade but it's actually a sign that the parade is worse because bart's in it now i think at this point a lot of them thought this will just be a fad too so we'll be done with this show in maybe two or three years yep yeah uh so maggie makes a dangerous walk upstairs uh past a bunch of like the house has never been messier which like they're about to have company they really should have cleaned up more i love the little scene with lisa and maggie like decorating the centerpiece together how much lisa like cares about it how important

it is to her taking that moment to you know we wouldn't care like later on when it gets smashed or when she's sad and making bart apologize we wouldn't care so much if we hadn't had this moment with her and seeing how much she how important it is to her and i always that's another thing i wonder about with all these like comedy writers writing you know a lot of very irreverent jokes in this episode i also just really like picturing george meyer scripting the scene where a little girl is proud of her centerpiece and it's putting a lot of thought into it and there's really like no jokes for a few seconds what were and it's just sweet and and for meyer too that like he kind of

snuck on to dv these very like urbane references of george o'keefe i i can't i can't imagine any other sitcom in 1990 was making references to george o'keefe oh they all were every every channel i think marjorie stillman douglas was a hero to him and she's the only one i had still had to look up for this recording yeah she was still alive then like she was a hundred and uh she was a hundred when this episode aired i believe she could have watched it uh i wonder if somebody passed it along to her i i also think george meyer you know when you you find out that he's you know not just a harvard grad but also like an eagle scout i bet he made a lot of dioramas like these in his time yeah uh but yeah it's just

it's just a sweet little scene of like and also lisa just commentating on how unknown in 1990 like nobody celebrates any of these feminist icons back then and she's like yeah it's a it's a fun it's it's a nice little commentary on the world too yeah then we get uh a little sequence of bart trying to help i uh as as a useless boy growing up who couldn't really help my mom with things i i appreciated these jokes too i think mom it's broken should have been on simpsons sing the blues yeah an extended cut of that little song i love that song i i love i probably sang that song as well and i mean that's the instant kid thing too to tell your parents like this thing's broken it's uh it's not my fault it's broken and that that little sketch he's doing there with the the cranberry sauce is like that's another example of

it it's a slightly different tone it's kind of straightforward and and it's very relatable and like you're saying as a kid you'd be like oh i was like that and it's this little moment that it feels for like a slightly uh broader more earnest audience would relate to that and laugh at that and it made me laugh and it's very funny but it's interesting for like the same show to deliver you know the the snarkiness of some of the parade jokes or whatever and then to this sort of like very relatable joke about a little boy being no use you can feel them like appealing you're like oh this show is for everybody and everyone can laugh and it's just this long scene of like a mother talking to her son of just like no no there

okay and then here nope like it's uh that many like stage direction like again they wouldn't also the time they take to make you watch the cranberry sauce loop out of it a great sound yeah great foley on that yeah so after bart creates cranberry sauce loop out of it and great sound yeah great foley on that yeah so after bart creates cranberry sauce all apart he just leaves his mom to the rest of the work and uh then we get it uh maggie then walks into the next room to start the next scene and that's where we find out that homer is uh it's it's their first football gambling joke in the show yes the room uh by their own admission was full of degenerate gamblers and to make the day more exciting they would gamble on things i think because of the uh the mention of smartphones

writers rooms there's less eating and gambling in them i'm curious tim would you say that there's how has uh in writers rooms you've been in a few like how have the iphones dealt with like boredom in the writer's room at times i've i've always been in rooms where you're allowed to use your phones and you're allowed to get distracted and then you just look like a jerk if you disappear into your phone but a lot of rooms say phones off we're gonna really work work work but no um i i feel i'm like half always have like one eye on the Internet and have drifted. And I think it would be nice, though, to be back in the Simpsons room in 1990 and actually working hard. We heard from Bill Oakley, one of the showrunners, and later be a writer after this, that people when you join the Simpsons, you would gain 50 pounds because all you would do all day is graze because there were no other distractions.

So you just eat candy all day or eat snacks all day and look forward to lunch as your big treat but now that you have smartphones you have something else to do to give yourself like that endorphin rush yeah for sure and i've definitely like i love it's so rude to uh peek at another writer's laptop or phone and see what they're doing and you know like that is incredibly rude to put your eyes on someone else's screen but i kind of do love stealing a little peek at another writer and just see what like i was a comedy bang bang i sat next to nick weiger and he had some like slot machine app where he was just like fake gambling all day and then was pitching brilliant ideas and pitching more than me but he's like a high functioning guy so it'd just be like he had like three video games going but then

also writing a script and also pitching jokes. Some people it helps him. It just like keeps him awake. Did you notice any football gambling still going on in your time there at Simpsons? Yes. James L. Brooks had a weekly football pool. It was like a star studded bunch of celebs and i every monday morning would uh drive like an envelope up to a beverly hills mansion to give like adam sandler eight thousand dollars

so jim brooks was the ringleader wow jim um when i was there jim brooks's assistant was totally like running the whole show as far as the the football pool and yeah it was like it was all these uh i want to say like josh dumel and just like actors and cool people from showbiz were part of it wow we've we've heard on other commentaries about how getting the envelope like is the prized enough like i got the envelope i won like i think all of these gambling jokes would end when david merkin took over in seasons five and six but everything you see from one to four is based on them being in the writer's room trying to make their days more interesting i i love another one where mike reese this shit's all over the game because he didn't he doesn't care about this football he's like you

guys in your football gambling who gives a shit uh but But, yes, Homer wants the Dallas Cowboys to lose. In reality, on that day, the Cowboys beat the Washington football team 27-17. So, Homer lost that bet. So, the spread, too, is something I still kind of don't get. They're his favorite team, so he wants them to lose by five and a half points. So, I guess he bet on them to lose by that margin that was what his bet was and it was it was a high bet i guess or it paid back a lot i guess i guess that's how it works people yell at us in the comments i watched that film uncut gems and i still don't really

understand the uh the all of those uh like side bets and prop bet stuff i'm so i'm not a gambler and i've never i've never been a part of any of this stuff because i'm also just like winning money is kind of cool but losing money hurts me way more than winning like the good feeling of winning doesn't equal the the harshness of losing money so i've never placed even one dollar on us on a sporting event uh i forgot to mention earlier we saw we saw bill and marnie on screen for the first time right their first appearance but it is their first time on screen and and i also like that these announcers too are just kind of sick of each other as well they're just like get on with

it like that's what it's i think meyer also says on the commentary that he recognizes this script is one of the like uh angrier ones and he says that's why he started going to therapy not long after this script i did feel uh i i loved and i laughed out loud at the harshness of this joke here when a player gets hurt and it's like oh it looks like he'll be uh eating thanksgiving dinner through a tube just like to toss that off is light convo uh it's such a violent thought i love it and and the other guys just try actually it feels now that we're discussing it it actually feels like a mocking of the writer's room because that guy throws out a joke and then the other guy is like oh they can put a turkey in there and he's like shut up like he's he's dumping on the guy trying to add on to his joke lots of announcer humor in this episode yeah uh and so uh homer

is diligently watching marge i like homer's delivery too on when marge asks him to go pick up grandpa and he's like halftime marge halftime uh but yes patty and selma arrive and i note this scene because it's like the first time patty and selma have ever been mean to marge they've always up to this point they're rude to homer but they're supportive of marge just leaving homer it's not like they say marge you're great but they do say you're too good for homer but this time when they arrive with their own meals like that is them negging marge like they're telling marge you suck i think it's because mom is going to be there and that changes the dynamic that's just my own uh headcanon i guess i like that and uh me and bob were talking about this beforehand

but uh before recording with it it's such a 70s like this is about a 70s thanksgiving yeah yeah like patty and selma's dishes are 70s party food dishes swedish meatballs swedish meatballs that's such a classic betty crocker type of thing and like trout almondine which is just like well it's just like a pan fried fish like it's just it's a very fancy i looked at the recipe i was like i've made this before just with different sauces uh but yeah i i love how hurt margis is like you knew i was making the turkey but uh homer then walks by them and heads on his way out i i love this exchange for him like this is a different dynamic with homer and the twins

still here because this is them being lightly nice to each other's faces and instantly um complaining about them away but soon enough they would just be hom Homer in the they just became a more normal sitcom thing of yelling insults at each other to their face. Yeah, just insincerity up front and then the backstabbing when they leave. I love Homer's version of their voices in the car. It's it's so subtle. He's just kind of like he doesn't fully do an impression of them. It's just sort of this half grumble. Dan does such a good job there.

Yeah, actually, I have that clip right here as Homer goes on a drive and enjoys listening to the halftime show. Well, it's good to see you. Well, got to pick up my old man. Bye. So insincere. I don't know how she puts up with him. And now, get set for our fabulous halftime show, featuring the well-groomed young go-getters of

Hooray for Everything! Oh, I love those kids. They've got such a great attitude. Ladies and gentlemen, Hooray for Everything invites you to join them in a salute to the greatest hemisphere on I just wanted to hear all that song. i think you're starting to like it yeah it's so great it's so funny that homer is a fan of hooray for everything and then like him getting into it when it cuts to the outside of the car and he's flashing his lights and i feel like they they did that later with him being like usa usa or something but just like the idea that homer expresses his happiness

with his car lights this is the homer that is slightly out of date the early homer where he likes mambo he is not the homer that grew up with classic rock of the 70s quite yet so he is a 70s or 60s dad who enjoys the wholesome kids as the alternative to rock and roll but henry did a ton of research on up with people which is what this is a parody of this reference has lost the time but henry please a lot of great information about this yeah so uh since we we they make fun of up with people so many times because uh like they're a specific target of george meyer and i i i understand why they're a wonderful target plus he even says on the commentary like his sister nancy was was a member of up with people for a time and that's a different sister than the one that

married john viti uh but so this i i learned all about this finally from watching a documentary that's just on vimeo uh called smile till it hurts about uh the up with people groups like it is a christian cult or was uh that was created it's uh its roots are in the 1950s anti-communist movement. Like it was a Red Scare group. And their aim basically was co-opt youthful sentiments of like revolution and counterculture and all that. Take those and then say you're doing it for America. And America's great. And we're the young people who want to set America straight.

And you have these clean cut people. They also are a very white organization. But the few diverse people they had in there, they put them right in the front row and they'd say how everything's fine. It's great. Hooray. And they were for years apart. They were supported by every evil Republican of the 50s to 70s giving them millions and millions of dollars they were basically like the you know the Koch brother

stuff that happens today that was up with people back then and then and then also that included the guy who ran the NFL then in the 70s and 80s he was a big believer in up with people being this like anti-hippie anti um progression progressive movement and he would just he would give them the super bowl halftime shows like they did five different super bowl halftime shows okay i didn't know this from from 10 to 20 and by 20 they got made fun of so much that uh which was 1986 that one they were mocked so much that the nfl finally went like we have to have something hipper than this like we can't we can't keep having up with people man i didn't know i'm not a huge nfl guy and i didn't really know that that the super bowl halftime show wasn't always earth's biggest pop star it's so quaint to think of it being this like silly little christian group at the at the super

bowl uh they and yeah it sounded it sounded cult-like too where these people had to like if you were a member of it one you paid them to be of it and they didn't pay you and and also uh like they told stories of like well i i got i lost my job as lead singer because I married somebody without the boss's approval of who I chose to marry like oh boy yeah and full of there's a very funny person in the documentary who uh very entertaining he was a member in 1980 who uh he was a closeted gay man and he mentions that like every guy there was a closeted gay man pretty much because it was a Christian group where young men went to sing and wear colorful outfits. But yeah, if you want to see some of the real corniness that this is mocking, look up the Super Bowl 10 halftime show and you'll see them talking about the celebrating the Western Hemisphere. Like it's not that far from the reality of it.

That feels insidious. And one thing I want to point out is whenever you hear a non-Simpsons voice actor in a non-guest role, it always stands out to me. So that radio announcer, not a regular, you'll hear him a few more times in this episode. That is Greg Berg. And I want to say that he was used to fill in for Hank Azaria when he wasn't available. So he would do the temp track for things. But then perhaps Hank Azaria didn't show up or he wasn't available. So he would do the temp track for things. But then perhaps Hank Azaria didn't show up or he wasn't available or he was sick.

So you'll hear him as an announcer. You'll hear him as the second homeless man with Dan Casaneta. And you'll hear him playing Lou with his voice coming out of Eddie in the third act. You're right. Hank Azaria, I don't think he talks at all in this one. He doesn't.

He is not in this episode. So I know. So that is Greg Berg, by the way, doing these voices voices he will be appearing throughout season two he comes back in season eight i think he is just his voice is on the temp track we couldn't get whoever does this voice so greg berg can do it he also is the stand-in for kelsey grammar at table reads for side shabab episodes so previously i said it was greg berger it's actually greg berg they're both voice actors yeah they're they're they're both Saturday morning legends. Greg Berg is the original Donatello.

And Baby Fozzie on Muppet Babies, the original Baby Fozzie. So there you have it. You'll hear him a few times, but yeah, you're so used to the flavor of the core six voices that when a new one enters the mix, you're like, who is this? What are you doing? Where is Hank Azaria? Not in this episode. I like Gregg's voice a

lot like they could have kept using him just as i mean he's not hank azaria is like a comedy genius and a great voice actor i wouldn't say greg berg's better than him but to switch up the voices like it's nice yeah i assume this was like during his uh earlier years in hollywood he's probably doing a lot of pilots he might have been you been researching the role for Herman's head. He would appear on in a few years. Yeah, I think he did years and years of research for that. Yes. That character, what was his name again?

Steve? I don't know. The horny guy. Right, man. What would you call? I'd guess like Steve or like Tom. That would probably be the horny friend. The funny friend in a 90s sitcom

oh i think it's it is funny to think for a time that hank is area like i think he viewed i've seen him say this in interviews i think at the time he viewed simpsons is like well this is a nice little thing i do but soon i'm gonna be the star of a sitcom and i'll have no time for the simpsons like he i was in fierce competition with matthew perry for a lot of his uh earlier years right uh yeah like matthew perry was his best friend and they thought they'd be on friends together and and not getting it he talked uh there's i think it was his wtf interview he was talked about that it was hard for him for a while to deal with the fact that his best friend was matt perry and his girlfriend and then wife uh was helen hunt helen hunt And they both are becoming giant stars.

And he was feeling inadequate to them. He said he's doing much better now. But he was very nice to us. I don't know if you've ever met Hank Azaria, Tim. No, I watched him in records and marveled. But I never got to talk to him. He felt like one of those guys who, when I was there, he was definitely busy. Sometimes he'd be over the phone. Or you know sometimes he'd be like coming from another job

but he was definitely a mover and a shaker but man that greg berg he's still i i'm surprised uh you know he's he's still at it he still he voices a ninja turtle every now and then when there's like a reunion thing it's great i oh sorry there was one last thing i wanted to say about up with people uh which is that glenn close was a member of it like in the 50s or 60s it's uh in that documentary i showed it to bob yeah in the documentary they have footage of her like it's glenn close from greenwich connecticut and just her saying i'm in up with people because it'll help america or whatever she said something very milquetoast i apparently she is not a fan of of uh people remembering no no uh but yes that hooray for everything will appear more than once uh in the series but this is their first one and and also that song get

dancing by discotheque discotheques and the sexolettes uh that's the name of the song it's a disco classic i will actually be talking about it soon enough in a season 12 episode really uh yes in the praise land episode disco stew gets his vision of heaven and when he goes to heaven there's i didn't know i i had forgotten that bit too i had to look it up it's what simpsons is the main bit of information on the wiki page for get dancing that is true it's a big paragraph on there that's amazing because i do feel like i hear i mean i definitely recognize the song and was like oh is this some big hit but yeah it's it's a good song i like it uh and homer

he picks up abe uh there's some funny signs uh you know thank you for not discussing the outside world i like that sign gag and it is just an incredibly sad and depressing retirement home like i like the sick coughing in the background oh yeah this was definitely the felt like the other harshest moment of like people faxing in their well wishes to people and just be like that must have shocked people in 1990 to watch this episode and be like, ouch, we are laughing at what it's like to be in a retirement home. These poor people who the extra sadness of it, that woman who's like in tears that she's like, I knew they wouldn't forget. Like that's how low the bars for like the facts makes her cry in a positive way.

That's how starved she is for any attention from her family. And Homer just shouting in front of all these people, this is depressing. I can't be here anymore. This place is depressing. I love that. Then we get another first for the episode. Now, she had appeared in a dream sequence flashback that Marge had in Moaning Lisa. Right.

But it was just her legs or something, right? You know, you do see her face, but it's just they drew Marge's face Moaning Lisa. Right but it was just her legs or something right? You know you do see her face but it's just they drew Marge's face. Okay yeah you're right you're right yeah. But this is the non-dream first appearance of Marge's mother who I still don't think has a name other than Mrs. Bouvier. Oh Jackie. Oh she's named after Kennedy's wife. They went all the way with it. Yeah Because I remember in the episode where she dates Abe that he just calls her Mrs. Bouvier the entire time. I think they might have forgotten her name. But yeah, named after President Kennedy's widow later, Jackie Onassis. Her maiden name is Bouvier.

And she's rarely seen. And when she does, she rarely speaks. So she's only made speaking appearances in four episodes since Fear of Flying. If you remember in Fear of Flying, it was the flashback of Marge seeing that her father was a flight attendant. Yes. And her mom was in a few of those flashbacks. The mom is a very James Brooks character, too, like this. They don't explore the jokes in this episode about Marge's relationship with her mom.

Seems to tell you that Marge has a very withholding mother who has never given her a compliment and Marge has always tried to be good enough for it like that that's what's implied in her first line of telling her like you never do anything right but but they kind of drop that for pretty much all their other interactions yeah I don't really know that it really feels totally right for marge when i think of the the character she doesn't have that thing you know like people who were raised by withholding parents tend to then like need to prove so much of the world and then they're really driven or something like that and i i always just think of marge as

kind of a content homemaker um So it doesn't totally ring true. I don't know. I guess her one joke gimmick would be, I have laryngitis, so I'll just say this one thing. And always it's just a super negative thing. But I don't know how long that joke could have carried, you know, multiple appearances. And I don't think Julie Kavner liked doing the voice.

I mean, it's such an extreme voice. Here, actually, I've got her first line here. Mom, you made it. How are you? I have laryngitis and it hurts to talk. So I'll just say one thing. You never do anything right. Yeah, I guess the joke, maybe they even made it a joke that much uh she hates to do that voice is that they

make it a hard voice to talk i think also from a writing perspective characters that speak slowly they really fill up a page they really they really fill up your time there so it's hard to have a lot of dialogue with this character there's a lot of ellipses on the page i i also i do like the joke that she just as a way to show her character very early, the taxi arrives and the guy is helping her out and she takes the long way around to refuse help from someone. It's a good little character thing. But again, all these characteristics that definitely feel like stuff, like straight out of Terms of Endearment. Yeah. This kind of mother-daughter interaction

that they don't really spend any time on with her i mean they're they're not that interested in marge's background uh too often in the show like they for years they joked that they'd say how her father died and uh it was a very i think it was like in the 20s seasons that they finally said it was from lung cancer right yeah i guess uh in one of the comic books or something they joke that he died on a roller coaster or something yeah yeah that was yeah i remember it was in simpsons illustrated they they have like lisa says ever since grandpa's untimely roller coaster accident that was them like workshopping jokes that were in the writer's room that uh that then wouldn't make

it into an actual script i remember when i worked at gracie films there's always these needs for simpsons related things whether it's books or you know a commercial and when i was there the big thing was a the ride the universal studios simpsons ride was being written and it was interesting to see that they did usually get real writers to head up those projects and it would be this separate thing through gracie films but they would make sure to get some of the writers involved and it was almost sort of like a weird little pet project where it's like because they didn't want to if it was books or whatever they didn't want to have it be a voice outside of the show but it wasn't worth like bothering the showrunner for. So a lot

of those books and things, I saw them kind of come and go with maybe one writer would be shepherding them. Yeah. You made me just think that when you were there, they were working on the show, the movie, the ride, and probably the video game too, because that had writers on it as well. Yeah. And I saw there were little breakout rooms for it all. And I mean, it's crazy because those are all huge projects on their own, but it would just be sort of, you know, a series of meetings that were tagged on to the end of the day for a little breakout room of writers to go. The crazy thing is so much of that stuff, video games and rides require so much writing that not even everybody sees, you know, like video games, you write a lot of things that the player might not get to or on a ride, you have to put all these different jokes on different screens. So they had

to, they had to crank out so many alternate jokes for every single thing. I don't know how you balance that with making a TV show at the same time. Man, you, you were there at like what had to be the busiest year the show ever had. And it really was, it's like a big explosion but i want to say like maybe that maybe there was a little bit of cynicism in the air because of that like and maybe that's what i picked up on is sort of just like here we go we're doing all this shit and i and it's a lot of stuff and we're cashing in so like it felt very busy but i didn't really i didn't get the sense of like everyone being very excited about those projects but but that they were happening did did you get to go to the opening of the ride i did and i loved the ride

and i was uh i never i'm a huge back to the future fan but i never got to ride the ride when it was back to the future oh no so it was a nice fresh take for me a lot a lot of people around me were kind of couldn't help but compare and contrast it with back to the future i liked it yeah you know for me and bob were also both big Back to the Future fans. We had ridden that ride. I missed that ride, and I'm very sad that a Simpsons, for a Simpsons ride to exist, a Back to the Future ride had to go away.

Like, I wish they could coexist. They couldn't bulldoze the Waterworld section of Universal? That's still, well, not in the last year, but that was still one of their biggest things. No one gives a shit about Waterworld, but they love that stunt show. I think we'll see some cuts soon. universal still well not in the last year but that was still one of their biggest things like people no one gives a shit about water world but they love that stunt i think we'll see some cuts soon but yeah so we come back to the home maggie is watching the halftime show as homer comes back with with abe uh there is a quick joke about the pontiac silver dome which in the time between

recording our us doing this the first time uh the it has been fully demolished oh wow the games had stopped there but it's been demolished and i know it of course as the home of wrestlemania 3 in 1987 is that the andre the giant and hulk hogan fight that is wow that's how did i know that it's the biggest wrestlemania of all time that's why i know it yeah and yeah again we talk about the slow pacing and no jokes like march just walks through a room and walks back out of it and i guess i guess there's jokes with the with the announcer talking about how the flash photography won't work in the stadium is that basically just what's happening i guess yeah that's all it is yeah it feels like it was added after the fact just because there was nothing

happening but nobody seems to care yeah it's time for dinner and lisa has her centerpiece in this next clip dinner time everybody dinner the hell with it okay lisa we're ready for your centerpiece. Lisa, my goodness. That's very impressive. Holy moly, that's the biggest one of those I ever saw. I only said she was gifted. Definitely from our side of the family, right, Mom? Leave me alone. How long did that take you, honey? I couldn't tell you how many hours. It was a labor of love. It's my homage to some American heroes who may not have fought in any wars, but who nevertheless...

Speaking of heroes, here's mine. Tom Turkey. First off, I want to say the way Homer says, to hell with this. I think I've said it in that tone many times in my life. Anytime I'm fed up with doing something, I say it the way homer says to hell with this like i think i've said it in that tone many times of mine anytime i'm fed up with doing something i say it the way homer says it did you guys the specific of centerpieces in in your homes growing up on thanksgiving was there like a cornucopia or something in the middle of the table because i don't think my family ever ever made a big big deal out of a centerpiece no no at best there would have already been plastic flowers on the

table or something at my grandma's there was no special thanksgiving centerpiece right well it was rare my family did an extended family thanksgiving anyway but i but also i had a my close friend in high school he did have a big big extended family that all all lived there and uh in the in the same town so they'd have a big meal every thanksgiving like and i mean like 40 people in the house kind of thing but yeah they never really did a centerpiece either actually i also like the bit that like marge marge and homer they're really stressed out because their parents are treating them like children too like it marge is already being put back into her her place as a kid with her mom being very withholding and here's

homer trying to do something and all his father can do is tell him like you're doing that wrong it's uh i i definitely think meyer's making a statement about like well thanksgiving sucks because everybody is treated horribly in it and it's you can never escape your trauma it's and it's generational trauma passed down next to each other and it probably still like in 1990 is still kind of novel to just see a thanksgiving that wasn't perfect because i mean i guess we had like national lampoon movies and stuff like that in the 80s but for the most part i feel like a lot of tv through through the 80s would have still been like thanksgiving is this wonderful sacred thing and then it's sort of like simpsons and married with children are the first time people are like

seeing dysfunctional families and it's like oh my god i can't believe they're doing it they kick off with two very depressing holiday episodes christmas and this yes just very dark things happen on the wrong side of the tracks i i also love uh marge's mom going like leave me alone like she and i'd never heard i never recognized lisa's using the word i i thought it was you know i've heard it pronounced homage but she says homage but either way it's fine now that's just i mean now it's just a term a comedy term of just saying like no i'm not stealing it's an homage like but she and oh and bart actually in an homage to the 20th century fox he's doing the fanfare as he presents the turkey

i love that that was a good little wink and uh and yes this is when uh all hell breaks loose and bart ruins thanksgiving in this next clip yikes what is that it's the centerpiece bart well it's taking a valuable real estate hey bart stop it move it or lose it toots mom now just a minute i'm sure there's room for both. Bart, you're wrecking it! Let's go! I worked forever on this! Hey, that got her going. Bitchin'.

Bart! You don't even care! You don't even care! Ha, ha, ha. Ha, ha, ha. All right, Bart, that's it. Go to your room. Now! Okay. I'll take some white meat and stuffing to go and send up the pumpkin pie in about 20 minutes. I said no! Mom, do I have to?

Yes, you do. I hope you're happy, Bart. You ruined Thanksgiving. There's the line for the commercial. Great act break. Oh boy, that is such an amazing scream from Yardley Smith. I played it back twice when I was watching this for the show, for the research. It's an incredible amazing screen from Yardley Smith. I played it back twice when I was watching this for the show, for the research. It's an incredible, incredible screen.

That line, you don't even care. You don't even care. That really gets me because it's like, I feel like the way most people would write this scene or just the lesser TV show would be like, she's just mad about her centerpiece. But I love, like Lisa's smart enough that like she's so, that's what gets her the most is that her brother, who she loves, doesn't even care that he made her sad. so that's what gets her the most is that her brother who she loves doesn't even care that he made her sad and that's what hurts her and it's like oof that's a real that that line really cuts me i can't believe that's coming from

when you really care about someone you shout it from the mountaintops so on behalf of desjardins insurance i'm standing 20 000 feet above sea level to tell our clients that we really care about you. Home and auto insurance personalized to your needs. Weird, I don't remember saying that part. Visit Desjardins.com slash care and get insurance that's really big on care. Did I mention that we care? Just like a wacky little cartoon yeah lisa yardley when she's given a real emotion to play she's so good at it with lisa just her scream of agony and yeah that you don't even care like that it says so much like she's she's angry but she's also being introspective. Like the total opposite of Bart, who he does a bad thing and his instant reaction to it

is like, what, what did I do? I actually did a good thing. Like he's, he is in complete denial while Lisa is already turning it inward. Her anger. Yeah. He's all surface. And then she so quickly is thinking about her relationship with her brother is the problem that's awful uh and the and the lighting too like the green light that comes out

of it and the shot of lisa as she screams like it's like that could be on a poster i love that shot like uh and uh and bart's reaction to it saying bitchin apparently that was a fight with the network to get it uh them to be allowed to have Bart say bitchin'. He said bitchin' previously this season when, during the fire, during the Halloween episode. When Homer summoned the aliens by putting too much lighter fluid on the fire, right? Yeah, you know what? Maybe they're remembering that previous bitchin' fight. And then after winning that one, they're like, we're going to say it at Thanksgiving, too.

Bart says bitchin' when he sees fire now. It taught me that phrase as a kid i didn't know i i don't know if that's an okay we're uh if that has more negative connotations now even uh because you know it's bitch but it's positive yeah it means it's a good thing i should bring that back i like i like bitching it's like it's like a fun it seems so harmless and yeah so the goes to commercial break with uh bart ruining thanksgiving it comes back there's smoke coming out of the chimney because the centerpiece was burned uh homer then gives one of his an early runner in these times i think it's still stuck around of homer starting a prayer that ends with him just sobbing to god and hating his family him

talking directly to god and gossiping with god would continue through the series yeah sure yeah like the uh recent season 12 he has a prayer wondering how many guys maude is fucking in heaven yes that many huh well here's a line i always misheard when i'll play it really quickly here but what selma says it never sounds like what she says to me. And Lord, we're especially thankful for nuclear power, the cleanest, safest energy source there is, except for solar, which is just a pipe dream. Anyway, we'd like to thank you for the occasional moments of peace and love our families experience.

Well, not today. But you saw what happened. Oh, Lord, be honest. Are we the most pathetic family in the universe or what amen where's prairie yet so i always heard that as her saying where's prairie at i totally so what did you think that meant i assumed that there was a uh that it was a reference to some character in a book i'd never heard of called prairie yet and she's saying where's prairie yet and that was like her nickname for lisa that was how i always until freaky yak and i could see that it said because i never put on the

closed captions for this or the subtitles i always thought it was where's prairie yet not worst prayer yet that was on my lisa t-shirt where's prayer yet but season one had where's that bart and this this episode is where's prayer yet okay i like it sorry tim it's such a kid thing to just accept words that make no sense to you like i think about that with so many song lyrics and and movie lines and stuff is like when you're a kid you are very accustomed to hearing things that make no sense to you so you're just like okay where's prairie yet i guess that's what she said and as an adult you'd be like no if i don't understand words i must be hearing them uh in your 20s i think is when you shed a lot of those things where you just repeat a thing or like

a lie your parents told you as a kid and as you're telling it to friends in your 20s you then go like wait no that's a lie why am i saying this and then as she says worst prayer yet i love the shot of them looking at the ceiling as uh hearing lisa playing her sax sadly it's also like these are scenes they rarely do too of just marge and lisa interacting and her comforting her and this this very sad thing of like l Lisa's like new to being disappointed while Marge is like kind of hardened to it. Like she says, like things like this always happen in our family. I've noticed that too.

Like she's, Marge is, she's seen it all at this point, sadly. I like Marge comforting her. And it also, Lisa doesn't even demand an apology from Bart. It's Marge who wants it, which she should. Like Bart was bad. like march comforting her and it also lisa doesn't even demand an apology from bart it's it's march who wants it which she should like bart was bad it's only his fault and he did he did that in that particular moment made thanksgiving worse like could you say he ruined thanksgiving i don't know but he he made it worse at that moment i think so i definitely i and i identify as a kid who was

like a little stinker. I definitely, I love that in that moment, Bart isn't just being like cruel to be cruel. It's like, it's about attention. And he's like, look at the turkey and I am saving the day. And it's just like he, in that moment, he wasn't trying to be awful, but it was just about like, I'm the funny one. And I did even watching it at 37 i did like made my cheeks a little red just being like oh i'm kind of like that no yeah i i grew up i was eight then my brother was six and i can see it now as us getting in fights about this like

my job is to present the turkey and now my brother is taking attention from me again by having the set if he had the centerpiece, if he had the centerpiece and I had the turkey, I would have had Bart's reaction of like, this is taking attention away from me, the star of this with the turkey. I'm the protagonist of this family. It's so funny that you're showboating

just for your family. It's not like you're cool friends around. It's just like, I wanted to get attention from mom and dad while I put this turkey on the table. Ooh, this really played well with mom. Yeah, I'm killing the mom. But Bart won't apologize in this next clip. Bart, you can come down to dinner as soon as you're ready to apologize to your sister.

And it's going to be a real apology in front of everybody, and you have to mean it. Apologize? For what? Clearing the table having a sense of humor they think they can start an apology out of me again from a selfish little kid perspective that is a very understandable reaction to being told to apologize but i've also seen adults act like this because a lot of this is about bart learning uh what empathy is and how to have it and uh people that don't learn that who i've dealt with in life where if they'll do something hurtful to you you'll point that out and now it's suddenly about you're being mean to them by pointing it

out it's a real uh childish thing that bart does but adults do it all the time it's an easy trick they didn't learn the lesson at the end of this episode no no they just they start with the bart lesson in the middle like yeah everybody keeps asking him to apologize. Enough is enough. But yeah, I also do like the design on, they kind of dropped this too of like Bart's messy room and the, all the toys in the hallway. Like that. It's a lot of things to draw, I think. Yes.

Yeah, that's true. At least makes it easier on them. But, but yes, just like in the Telltale Head episode bart escapes through his window and runs away uh down the tree and they also bring in santa's little helper connecting it to their other holiday episode of uh of the xmas one so it's uh i i like them fighting over the turkey leg together too that's cute but um but yes bart runs off and very quickly ends up at mr burns's home uh which is on the corner of uh croceus and mammon crisis and mammon that they're biblical references to greed i i know that much uh but yes i i love the design uh cartoon food looks so tasty to me it's true and they were uh very burns obsessed in this era so they had to find a way to work mr burns

to this family focused episode and it works i think it works bart walks by burns's house what's burns up to on thanksgiving day i uh i mean also just burns eating five bites of i i do like myers talking about like just this wastefulness of a rich guy who lives in a mansion and has a thanksgiving meal just for himself won't share it with anyone and throws it all away he's still not cool enough to smithers though he actually compliments smithers on his food you know what you're right he should despite throwing most of it away that's right he he tells me how it strips yourself in succulents which is funny words but but yeah you know by the end of this season he'd be saying coffee's too hot and throwing it in Spinner's face.

I was surprised because I haven't revisited the very early seasons in a long time. I feel like I've just heard a lot that like, oh, when Conan got there, he really started to give Mr. Burns a lot of the old timiness. And that's when Mr. Burns really started to take shape with his funny references. So even just that the use of the word succulents there and stuff i was like oh that's very burnsy and a funny word word choice that i didn't really realize that they had were writing his voice that clearly already by season two yeah you know on the conan thing i i see it now we we all heard the stories of like conan he's the secret sauce of all these seasons and it's i think conan was one of the best writers they ever had but he was more like he was jumping on the moving train and helping it go faster i guess and he was for a very bad metaphor i did he was there for 18 months

too as well there's actually it's just too much fun to just take a famous guy and be like oh he's their secret weapon when it's it's like no he's he's a smart funny guy who saw what these other geniuses were doing and was able to shovel some coal into the engine yeah it was in my mind so i looked it up there's a much different scene in the trouble with trillions in season nine where smithers does make burns food and he just says he just says i hope you enjoy it sir and burns gets mad that he's looking for a compliment he's like i'm choking it down isn't that enough and then smithers says i don't know why i even bother oh i love that so uh he would get much meaner to smithers in the future uh you know all the the urbane references to les mis and and all that i did not get as a kid but even as a kid i could laugh at the the sadness of

burns having i could notice the joke is that Burns has all of this food and he won't share it with his guards who are eating tv dinners while working on Thanksgiving day like uh do we know is there like a specific burn I know that like we'll eventually have Burns reference Howard Hughes or or um Hearst or Citizen Kane and stuff like that but did they ever say like is there a specific grumpy old lonely billionaire that they originally based burns on well i i've said it before on here but i do know to a degree in seasons one and two especially burns was inspired by barry diller the then owner of the fox network or the president of it uh who uh was a cantankerous old man who uh but though he's gay

and burns is not gay though i think that might also be the where the smithers jokes come from as well i think so yeah i thought in terms of attitude he was uh very much based on mr potter from it's a wonderful life oh yeah yeah i see that for sure yeah and also well speaking of the burns and sm Smithers relationship, when you see these guards here, it reminds me of, like, by the end of season two, everyone else who could do a job for Mr. Burns all just disappear, and Smithers does everything. He would inherit all of these jobs.

Like, there's no security guards. Okay, if they need to hire goons, Burns will hire goons because Smithers can't like physically assault someone but other than that smithers if someone's going to release the hounds it's smithers doing it not a bunch of the guards at base command here i love that it's so funny that a billionaire is still just has a staff of one it is still cooling a pie on a windowsill yes technology has not improved and and also when they spot bart i love that there's this beautiful statue that just has a giant gaudy surveillance

camera right on top of it uh but yes the hounds are released that had happened before in the series but we never saw the hounds before so this is the first time on screen we've seen the hounds of burns. And a great action scene. The shot, I love the background of the dogs as they're running and hit that part. It's very anime. I wonder if the anime inspired just the abstract background as they're rushing towards him. Is the line, release the hounds, that also feels, that must be a reference to something very specific, right? Is that just something old timey people said? Or there must have been some guy that released hounds in an old movie or something and you know i i can't think of a specific it does seem like a thing like ebenezer

scrooge would do or whatever but yeah i can't i think it was my guess is that it just came from like in the no disgrace like home episode they just wanted to end a scene with burn saying if you don't leave now leave now or i'll release the hounds and from there they're like oh him saying release the hounds is really funny like like on the simpsons sing the blues album his song is about releasing the house on people it is a very fun expression i agree uh to the point where the hounds will be a important plot element in season three episode where uh where burns is uh burns adopts and his little helper to be one of those hounds he does he becomes a hound uh but yes bart escapes through the hedge wall narrowly burns very happily is

going to murder a child on thanksgiving day too i like that in another show he'd be like oh this poor child wants food on thanksgiving and then but here it's like kill him and he warms the billionaire's heart uh then meanwhile lisa has uh her own version of howl the alan ginsburg poem in this next quick clip i saw the the madness of my brother. My soul carved in slices by spiky-haired demons. I do like the show Sympathy for Lisa, but they also point out she's being a little extra, you know, because she's writing a poem about her pain, and then she later recites it to the family. It's a bit irritating. She is going too far with it it even though she was wronged and i

love i was thinking um just referencing howell and alan allen ginsburg like i had to i recognized the line and i was like where's that from where's that from and i had to google it to to place it and i just like i love just putting that out there knowing that a lot of people are not going to get that reference but just knowing for the people that do that uh it places uh lisa in such like a literate crowd that is so fun and at the height of bart mania when their their primary audience is children they put in a reference to you know uh gay beat poets and and uh and meyer says that he had heard from a friend of alan ginsburg that he was tickled at this reference on the simpsons to his to his ball which that's that's very sweet and also back then it was they stuck in all these jokes behind lisa including her end apartheid now

south africa poster which was i i think by the end of season two apartheid had ended or maybe season three around that yeah it was put in by MacRainey and his insistence to Have the political message in the show And also though Speaking of how like long scenes Lisa's sitting at her desk writing and it's just A shot of her writing for like 20 seconds

Like that also they would not Do a shot that long And also like It reminded me of in Bart the genius bart writes with a in a very similar pose for a long time yeah we just revisited season one last year and there's a lot of extended letter writing scenes that i think they learned was not very interesting to watch as a cartoon a character sitting down to write a letter i wonder like how once they've learned to not do that anymore what are the tricks in their little toolbox for getting around that when it's like, okay, somebody's writing a letter.

Is it just now we're going to dissolve to like their face and their hands and make it look more dynamic? Or do they just say like, no more letters, guys. Or you'll just hear the end of the letter and then they just stuff it in an envelope and walk off the screen. I mean, earlier, I think on the commentary, they mentioned that they felt bad that they would write extended things like Homer listens to the radio. And then the animators have to find out what to do with that scene and homer is very funny in that scene but a lot of it is just him like wiggling his fingers as he listens to the music bobbing his head up and down it's a funny set of drawings but yeah it is i uh for the longest time i've felt bad for the simpsons animators who often just get handed a script but like you figure it

out guys i do love how they can i mean sometimes i'm looking at homer when he's doing nothing and his eyes will get just get that extra kind of dumb look when his like pupils are kind of small and he's just not doing anything and they can get a laugh out of me just looking at a character that i've looked at for a million hours and then i'll laugh when he's doing absolutely nothing. I miss when they would do, like in these episodes, they do like an eyes, the eyes would bulge on a word just for emphasis. Like these little things that are lost over time. I miss them.

And so then Bart decides he's going to cross instantly over the tracks into Bumtown, also seen in the season seven Itchy and Scratchy episode. But there's some really funny signings i like that at the massage parlor they put ironic quotes on the word massage i like that a lot i didn't notice that that's great and uh and also they have a sign that says we yes we have rot gut which is uh i'd never heard of rock gut before but it's it's a powerful low quality liquor that is called such because it it is very strong and cheap but it fucks you up uh like uh in your and also in the background i believe the tuxedo store is closed

i missed that that was a good very subtle joke i love that but uh but bart sells his blood here which george meyer tells the story of trying to sell his blood and finding out he could they took me in off the streets to sell plasma i don't know what george meyer's deal was he could look like a hippie or something there he was like a deadhead right uh yeah yeah maybe he was in maybe they don't like hippie blood well i will say uh that's give me give me on my gay right soapbox here but i i haven't given blood because if you are openly a gay man for the longest time you couldn't like it was like wow i forgot about that out of hiv fear i don't know i haven't tried to give blood in a while but uh they

that was a very bad rule for a long time though i'll be honest i wouldn't try to give blood because whenever i have my blood taken at a doctor's office like i am out i am just like i need 20 minutes to to give me that apple juice box that you give to the little kids here because i need it bart is giving plasma which i've done before and it takes a long time because you're strapped in this machine and they suck your blood out and then they spin it around and take out the plasma and put the blood back in you and i was able to buy one game boy advance game with my winnings not worth it and yeah this this blood bank scene here too is a big cut there's weren't a ton of big cuts but this is where the biggest one was in the original script you go inside with bart and see the nurse take his blood and we we found looking it up like there there's not any

footage out there of it but there was a drawing from like the animation stage of them showing the nurse taking bart's blood so i think they did animate it or at least got far animating like at least layout happened i think but unfortunately from the uh from seasons one through three there's almost no deleted scene footage out there and then bob you had a funny i i think you cracked the code on why that is oh i think it's just because klaski chupo has it all and their uh jim brooks doesn't want to work with them to get some of these materials back i don't know if they inherited them when they switched to film roman in season four but i i honestly believe there's it's no coincidence that once the film roman season

start in season four that's when they have access to deleted scenes. Yeah. Yeah. Or else maybe Klasky Chupo just threw them out. Who knows? Could be. But the nurse in this scene, it is such a tiny, tiny line. And she'll appear later in the episode.

Uncredited, Carol Kane, which I want to say probably because Jim Brooks was, you know, the creator of Taxi and she was on Taxi, but for some reason did not want to use her name, but she will later play Maggie in the dream sequence as well. Carol Kane, a like comedy legend. She's so funny. Everything she's in. I love her. I, for the longest time, I didn't know that was her. And in Mike Reese's book, he said it and like his 2018 book, he, he mentioned it and al jean backed it up on twitter but then we we watched the commentary and they actually do say it but it goes so fast everyone says it 0.3 seconds apart from each other so it just overlaps it becomes just a smear of audio i had missed it for so many times but she's i'd want also the bit uh so then in the script and i wonder if they

animated this too i'd feel really bad if this got cut because it sounds like a lot of work and then if they cut it it's that when bart is knocked out he then has there's there were originally two dream sequences in this he would have a dream that he ruins the first thanksgiving and it's the simpsons family with squanto and they offend squanto bart's mean to him uh and then all of the Native Americans try to kill the Simpsons. And Bart then wakes up to the homeless guys. But I hope they didn't animate that entire sequence and then cut it. That'd be really harsh. And I love the dream sequences back in these days.

And the animators do. I mean, the dream sequence later, one of the best stuff they ever drew. I love it. But yeah, so I think as a kid, I didn't understand you even could sell your blood. That was a new idea to me. But yes, Bart passes out. We cut back to the family. I like that mom just says, I'm sorry I came.

Just mean, mean to the end. Meanwhile, Abe tells a story about how Homer is just a complete pushover and had never had any self-confidence as a child. And he gleefully agrees with him. Yes, Dad. Just this broken man child. He's like, that's right, Dad. I had no free will of my own.

So then Bart wakes up, and this is when the episode almost verges into like very special episode thing. Like there's an episode of, I think it was a Christmas one of Saved by the Bell. I was going to say Saved by the Bell. What was it? Zach befriends a homeless girl and her father, right? Who live in the mall.

I only know that because it's the most memorable episode of that show because they leave the school. Right. There's another set, which never happened. But this whole, I think they undercut it enough, but it definitely is the setup of a normal sitcom of the magical homeless people teach you the true meaning of a holiday kind of thing and in the script they have names rory and casey although i don't know which is which i love um whichever one dan castellaneta is voicing it's um i kind of love that when he

does a voice for a side character but it's like kind of not hiding his voice at all and the kind of character is sort of really kind of sounds like homer uh i i love uh i love just being like i'll just do this kind of uh kind of straight but i also yeah in that scene i felt like i was getting ready to cringe either that they were you know that it was going to be harsh about homelessness or that it was just going to be the trope you're talking about of a magical hobo and i did feel like they kind of walked the line kind of well where it's like brockman is being kind of shitty to them and stuff like that but you could feel the show is on is sort of on the on the right side without overdoing it yeah the the show definitely agrees that it's hard to be homeless and it sucks that these people are

lost to society and they get uh like the the line that comes later in this when the guy says see you at christmas i'm like oh they don't get fed every day like this this is a special thing for thanksgiving and yeah i guess the by having kent be the asshole who is using their pain for his uh television show i think that at least helps them a little bit be like, hey, maybe we're not totally doing that ourselves because we're making fun of it. But yes, the homeless guy, one of them is, it's also a bit of Bill Murray from Caddyshack.

But Tim is right. He definitely sounds a lot like Homer. He's got the Homer beard line. He's balding too. So this is a Homer from a different reality. Things went much worse for him. Yeah. But yes, Bart gets a meal with his new homeless friends.

All right. Twelve big ones and free grub to boot. Viva Skin Row. Hey, it's that anchor dude from Channel 6. Oh, yeah. He's doing one of those be thankful for what you got stories. Oh, we have lots of names for these people. Bums. Oh, yeah. He's doing one of those be thankful for what you got stories. Oh, we have lots of names for these people. Bums, deadbeats, losers, scums of the earth.

We'd like to sweep these people into the gutter, or if they're already in the gutter, to some other out-of-the-way place. Oh, we have our reasons. They're depressing. They wear ragged clothes. They're crazy. They smell bad. Hey, listen, man.

Wait, I'm going somewhere with this. So every year on one lone, conscience-savving day, we toss these people a bone. A turkey bone. And that's supposed to make it all better. That's such a, to me, it feels like such a great writer joke, too, that Kent, an editor would have told kent to say half as much and the the point is there but he says it for so long that the guy just has to go like hey

come on right here and you're so right about the bill murray thing i didn't really pick up on that the first time but that is the castellaneta is kind of just doing and murray that's great i think specifically his character from caddyshack right right? Yeah, the gopher chasing guy. As a kid, I loved the gopher. I think I asked my parents to rent me Caddyshack in the late 80s, and every sex and drug joke just flew right by me. But I was just counting down, like, when's that gopher going to show back up? Me too, and I'm so ashamed that years later you find out that the gopher was added after the fact

because the studio made them have those animatronic shots and that Doug Kenny and Harold Ramis put up a fight against it and then me to be like, uh-oh, when I was a kid, that was my favorite part. Hey, the studio execs were right. Yeah. They brought a new audience to that movie. There, I mean, hey, I would bet all bet all the caddy shack guys who fought against it they're cashing all their checks from those gopher toys now like they oh yeah yeah yeah i also i like the design on the mission the mission just feels like very realistic of like yeah there's no joke signs on

it or anything like that yeah and it's also kind of broken down because it's like you can see this is poorly funded and probably it's a rescue mission because it's uh likely like a catholic or other organization that's doing it it's not a government uh i mean it feels like a comment on you know reagan's america of uh letting all these people down with no social programs and i mean i also like the kent speech is just a guilt trip there's no other uh he he does not have a call to action to help these people no it's to make the viewer feel bad and that's that and also apparently the original script of scott christian who was there the other news reporter that's right keeping in line with the joke that kent brockman was always on assignment or on vacation it would always be scott christian i think this is the first time they truly fell in love with giving kent brockman a very long speech like this this basically is the

prototype for the kent's people definitely done and and also it's the first time a simpson has occupied physical space with kent brockman so before they'd only seen him on tv and yes we we then get to learn a little bit behind the scenes about Kent as the family sees where Bart is in this next clip. Everyone, Lisa wants to read us a poem she's written. Sounds interesting. How of the Unappreciated by Lisa Simpson. I saw the best meal. It's Bart!

What show is this? And how long have you been on the streets? Going on five years, Kent. Son, your family may be watching. Is there anything you'd like to say to them? Yes, there is, Kent. Ha ha, I didn't apologize. Oh, no.

My sweet little Bart. Hello, operator. Give me the number for 911. Oh, man, that is a classic dumb person joke i mean i swear uh kelly bundy had to make that joke within three years of this episode being aired yeah i was i was wondering about that too like that joke is just it's like such a meatball of a joke that i'm like everyone in america must have been making that joke it's it's one of my mom's favorites that she she would as she's if i was going out uh somewhere in my teens or

20s she'd say like can you remember the number for 9-1-1 right she loved that one it's uh it entertained my mom a lot i hearing lisa's title for it howl of the unappreciated it gives you even more like urbanity to it because she she is like through this title she knows that you know this is a reference to howell and she's kind of winking at it like i'm referencing howell pretty smart of me right exactly and and i like that they give just a moment for lisa alone in the room to just kind of look at her paper like bart upstaged me again i can't i can't stand it so i did google the phrase what's the the number for 9-1-1 the only other hit i could find was it was it uses a joke in the little rascals movie starring our former

president oh oh god oh right oh my god well cameoing sure our former president starring yeah no he played uh alfalfa better movie also the the bit about them saying you know she's married to he's married to the weather lady like that would exist in the show there's uh there was a deleted scene in i'm with cupid of kent throwing to the weather lady and uh her stephanie and stephanie saying like basically there's a cold front coming in uh buddy but but she wouldn't appear in a broadcasted episode until tennis the menace in season 12 as the couple's partner with kent brockman i love that abe likes that tidbit that that they're a couple because it's like he's like blow-dried college boy and, but he's still, it is such a great little class play where it's like, like how

you're saying about Lisa is reading her, her take, her update of Allen Ginsberg. But then she's in a family that would like look at a news anchor and be like blow dried. Blow dried. It's just such a funny specific to me. And I love, it's like, we all kind of like mock and hate rich ivy leaguers but just the idea of blow-dried college boys like it's such a low level for him to be up on a pedestal because he blow-dries his hair but then he's still interested to hear who he's dating it does feel i feel like when i was growing up in my hometown we knew facts about the news people like

oh he shops at the food land i've seen him just these very banal facts about them i also love bart created a backstory for himself like he's living a character they're like going on five years kid i just love that and also i i like even the design of the food it it looks like the thanksgiving dinner you'd get at a mission of just like well these are reheated cold cuts yeah everything's very wet yes very wet uh and so homer calls up then it cuts to uh back to the emission and uh kent drives off thanking them for another local ebby and i love they go like yeah i'm really rooting for you pal in that scene this is very small but in that scene uh the person saying those lines has kent's voice but it is not him it's's another white haired man. Yes.

Which I only noticed this time. I've heard that line a billion times. I've seen this episode probably 50 times. And in the future, in this season, they will call him a local Emmy winner. Yeah, that's right. And I think Itchy and Scratchy and Marge. Yeah, yeah. So this did get him a local Emmy.

That leads up to all the other jokes. I love his later in the kids news episode of him presenting the greatest award that Del Monte gives. But, yeah, looking at that picture, they completely off-model Kent there. I think it is. I told you my theory. I think that somebody at the overseas production mixed him up with Carl, not carl bahomer's co-worker but carl from simpson and delilah his gay assistant because it's the very similar hairline it's it's the kent colors but it's carl's nose and and hairline instead it's like they put his head on kent brockman's body

yeah it's very strange but also it's like it seems like kind of a complicated shot. It'd be hard to do a retake for, too. I also, I like, too, that the way it doesn't go into the magical hobo thing of, like, when Bart just says, when Bart offers up 12 bucks, the homeless guy's like, I wouldn't feel weird. In another show, they'd be like, kid, keep your money. We've got dignity. Yeah. But they are realistic guys who are like, i could definitely use six dollars right now i could buy some of that rock cut yeah put me to sleep for at least a couple days bart runs off we then get a shot of lou and eddie talking to marge and homer with a scene they reused at least one other time in radio bart of just if they need the cops talking to Homer and Marge.

Normally it would be Wiggum because at this point in time they were still thinking realistically police chief Wiggum would not be investigating these local causes. He's got local cases. He's got better things to do. But no, in the future he would be there with them. And there'd be more jokes. And this is also where it's a real mix up. Not only does Lou speak with Eddie's voice. No, Eddie speaks with lou's voice well but also like you said it's greg berg doing the other cop not uh not the sheer of

a cop voice and uh and then apparently in the in the script there's a quick scene of homer riding around in the car with the cops searching for barts and this would have been the first appearance of millhouse's dad oh man he's in the script i don't think he would have appeared until season three i you know i'm glad they didn't use it because i bet they would have done a character design for him that wouldn't have been the iconic kirk van houten that we all know and love actually it might have been season five was his first line get off our property i believe it is i believe you're right i get to an elephant i think yes uh and uh. And yes, I also love the shot of when you see Bart walking home in silhouette with Santa's little helper. And he's like, some Thanksgiving, huh, boy? I just love that shot.

It's real pretty. And I also like in the next scene, when I think about it, it's crazy. The entire extended family, when the son is missing, they're like, yeah, I'm sure he'll turn up. We got to go home. I think if it was Thanksgivinggiving day and i went missing my grandparents wouldn't go like i gotta get out of here abe has a good reason abe doesn't want to be declared dead when you really care about someone you shouted from the mountaintops so on behalf of dejardin insurance i'm standing 20000 feet above sea level to tell our clients that we really care about you.

We care about you. Home and auto insurance personalized to your needs. Weird, I don't remember saying that part. Visit Desjardins.com slash care and get insurance that's really big on care. Care, care. Did I mention that we care and i like the family exchange of marge trying to sell homer like we can't blame ourselves like we can and will and also marge saying that every every uh syndicated advice columnist will tell

you the same thing kids need discipline uh but yes when bart has come home and that's when we get the apology nightmare in this next clip hey everybody i'm home you're home oh my special little guy we were so worried oh it's great to have you back boy we were afraid we'd lost you welcome back i'm sorry we had such a terrible fight. Bart, isn't there something you'd like to say to your sister? Okay. I'm sorry, too. No, no, no. That won't do at all. Yeah, boy, get down on your knees and beg for forgiveness.

Yeah, beg me, Bart. Beg me. Lisa, I beg of you, please forgive me. Now we can blame him for everything. It's your fault I'm bald. I'm sorry. It's your fault I'm old. I'm sorry. It's your fault I can't talk. I'm sorry.

It's your fault America has lost its way. I'm sorry. It's all your fault. I'm sorry. It's all your fault. I'm sorry. It's all its way. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry.

I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry, all right. Sorry I came back here. Amazing drawings. You have to look this scene up on Frankie Yak if you haven't seen it in a while. It's just one of the most expressive and stylized dream sequences they've done in the show. And it was actually laid out.

The drawings, the animation drawings were laid out by Eric Stefani, who would later leave the show for a little band called no doubt yes but he was working on the show at this point really i didn't know that yeah eric stefani the original lead singer of no doubt when it wasn't going well he was like well i can do my animation work and then while working on simpsons that's when with his his sister in the lead role, no doubt got huge. And he I think they tell the story on one commentary that like he got a gold record delivered to the office. And then that's when they realize, like, he's not sticking around much longer. But then he didn't like he left the band as well. So then did he go on to have an animation career or a solo music project?

He would come back to the show occasionally, right? I think freelance wise, he'd do some stuff every now and then. But yeah, I think the old record sold enough that it's like, well, I can just retire. Right. Yeah. Those were old. That's like old school record industry where you could still just be like, well, it's platinum, so I'm rich forever. I remember hearing some story about oh was the band great whites and it was a follow-up with them about how uh the band that burned a bunch of people in a horrible accident right uh but it was an interview with them where

they were being asked like you know you guys aren't touring anymore how do you make money and they're like we had a hit song in the 80s we're good forever like they they'll always have money but yeah the staging on this whole thing is so great like it starts as a normal shot that you'd see in a regular episode and then the camera starts to move down and you're seeing it from bart's perspective and the everybody towers over him into the camera and then that pan that great pan across all the family members releases there three times oh right god it's so good the colors on it and and that it's a circular pan that it comes back to homer and i do think it captures how a selfish

little boy thinks who thinks like if i apologize for this then they'll blame me for everything i'll be on my like he's thinking he'll be vulnerable showing that small amount of vulnerability of apologizing will make you a victim forever is what bart thinks and so i can't do it it's a pandora's box and he can't ever apologize and then also uh the i love the shot of all the fingers pointing at him moving in it's so great sort of a rough the pink elephants on parade yes yeah from uh from the old dumbo and so so yes bart refuses to apologize heads up to the roof which that was another thing from George Myers' life. I think, too, I feel the pain of these writers that, like, in your first, you know, five, six years on the show, you plumb the depths of every childhood experience you have, and eventually you run out of them.

And it's like, well, where do you go from there? Yeah, then you're trying to pitch episodes about being like a sad overpaid tv writer who eats huge lunches yes or being mad at executives yeah or a divorced rich guy's mad about jay sherman yeah jay sherman has a lot of problems with alimony that's why but yeah bart throwing the football to himself also great animation and I love his celebratory like the boy who nobody wanted just won the super bowl then comes another big cut from the episode where when in the script when Lisa is writing in her log to herself there was going to be shots of other families having very tense thanksgivings after she says like probably doesn't happen to

other families and then you're supposed to see oh no it's hard for everybody it's another scene of lisa just sitting down and writing something yeah on her fancy you know good for your posture me killer seats or whatever i've never sat in one of those i couldn't figure it out i think there's one in an office and i just was writing it like a mechanical bull by the time we were in office cultures it was more the yoga balls as seats i saw those oh yeah but yes then comes another of my like all-time favorite lines that really it really captures the feeling of a person who like tries makes excuses for bad things being done to them dear log my brother is still missing and maybe it's my fault because I failed to take his abuse with good humor.

I miss him so much already that I don't know. Hey, Lisa, it's me, Bart. Bart, where are you? I'm on the roof. Bart, what are you doing up here? Everybody's worried. Really? Did they cry? Yes.

Whoa, bullseye. Bart, why did you burn my centerpiece? Oh, come on. Was it because you hate me or because you're bad? I't know i don't know why i did it i don't know why i enjoyed it and i don't know why i'll do it again that whole speech sums up like why bart's whole thing it's just he likes he can't explain why he does it but he's like yeah he likes being bad he can't he doesn't understand it but it gives him a lot of pleasure and and also it says so much about Lisa that she like wants to, she actually feels bad that Bart is missing.

She's worried about him while being mad at him. This is a very Bart adventure episode, but Lisa's going through a lot. She's so mature. It's so funny that this little girl is like speaking like someone who has, you know, had plenty of therapy and read a lot of books and like really knows family dynamics and stuff like that. And she can key it onto this. So it's so funny that then Bart is just the exact opposite. I mean, the, one of my favorite lines ever in the show is because I failed to take his

abuse with good humor, because that is just this understanding of a dysfunctional family that if she had just taken his abuse with good humor and laughed it off that is the accepted way that everyone in the family deals with it it's like no we're not supposed to actually get mad at each other because then this all falls apart we don't talk about it yeah and that she's uh they'd actually do a better version of that line though in marge marge says it in street car gentle good humor yeah when when she's talking about how her character reacts to stanley treating her poorly couldn't she just take his abuse with gentle good humor which which says a lot about marge in a very

sad way bart interaction with lisa here is like sweet like she's she's trying to reach him and she's like please why why are you doing this he just can't explain it and uh then we get to our last clip here in a very james l brooks speech as well about why people apologize just tell me you're sorry why should i but the only reason to apologize is if you look deep down inside yourself and you find a spot something you wish wasn't there because you feel bad you hurt your sister's feelings. Leave me alone. Just look. Okay, okay. Looking for a spot. Still checking. This is so stupid. I'm not gonna find anything. Just because I wrecked something she worked really hard on and I made her cool uh-oh i'm sorry lisa apology accepted you know what we're great parents oh lord on this blessed day we thank thee for giving our family one more crack at togetherness amen

a lot of asmr of smacking lips there there's a funny joke in the script that was cut where marge is the one looking out the window at them uh reconciling and she says if they don't fall off the roofs and kill themselves if they don't fall off the roof and kill themselves we'll have a family again that's funny i i think it under it undercuts the the the the gentle sappiness i can take the sappiness it's very cute but uh i did like that line well also in the script like bart gives her she doesn't accept the apology and then bart gives her 12 and she doesn't accept it that also kind of it's funnier but it also is kind of cynical undercutting of the uh of the of the moment there i mean that must have been a constant conversation in the room right like i think of these writers as such such smarty pants funny boys that like when when brooks is saying like guys just have it be a nice moment that that must have been hard for them or maybe

they they grew enough by the time they even got to this episode that they could just uh do it and and happily made those cuts but like it is so strange that even though i'm just like a comedy fan who's in it for the jokes i don't really want that moment to be uh undercut with a with uh snark it's like well earned we've had a lot of laughs along the way and i'm not really like somehow i i never roll my eyes at the schmaltz in this show uh because it's done well yeah you know by i i definitely think it was that over time brooks got less involved and they could get away with things like they i think they they mentioned on the commentary for the monorail episode that when they had

leonard nemois teleport away they're like boy i can't this was this was a show about a family at one time this this really does feel uh this really does fit with the earlier theme of finding success and failure because their their thanksgiving was ruined and bart was gone but now the very sweetness is them you know eating cold turkey at the end of the night and i think aljean said it's the biggest trick to have nothing but dark jokes and tragedy and cruelty but then if you end with 30 seconds of niceness it's the biggest trick in the world yeah and everybody falls for it i agree and it works that's i mean that seeing them eat those sandwiches is like a really nice image and very rewarding to the viewer and i also like like that speech on the roof you're right it is very brooksy because it's like it's also sort of generic in a way that i like but that you don't see in half hour tv

writing anymore where like i feel like right now, most of the shows on the air, like what Bart did wrong would have to be such a specific thing that leads to a very specific way. He learns his lesson and then needs to apologize. I feel like there's a sort of genericness to just like Bart did something bad. And what makes him see the error of his ways is just like his sister being like,

don't you feel bad? And it's kind of straightforward. And it saves us a lot of like shoe leather to create some scenario where Bart needs to learn the exact lesson he needs to learn. Because all he needs to learn is like, don't be mean to your sister.

She's your sister. Yeah, it could have easily been way too clever with maybe let's say Bart along his journey outside of the home he picks up items and then he presents lisa with the centerpiece at the end like i made it for you lisa it's just like yours and then it'd be too much but you're right how broad it is it does feel like at least it's a bit too smart for age but it seems like it conceivably be children having this conversation yeah and it's it just it you know the the more broad you keep it the more like relatable it is and it's like i'm not gonna have the experience

of like well then i ground the streets and put together a scrappy centerpiece of my own or or whatever like that's not gonna happen but in in real life this conversation could happen you can see that kind of speech being made in a mary tyler moore episode that brooks would have worked on because those you can't just cut to a crazy thing or whatever it would just be a speech about you know mary tells to lou gray or ted about like here ted this is why you need to apologize to this person yeah and that thing the the line about just like find that little thing in your in yourself that feels that is it's it's it's a movie type of speech and it's an old timey sitcom speech but you can't really picture in on like a mike shershow or a tina fey show or something like

that it's probably just too generic for them and they're like oh come on let's let's beat that i like that we don't beat it yeah yeah this episode uh i do like it as an adult as a character trying to uh find empathy uh and just a discussion about empathy but i also like the first act because it reminds me a lot of the garfield christmas special oddly enough where it's just a very slow and observational thing saying what is this holiday like for this middle class family and just having a bunch of observational humor so you get two different kinds of uh content in this episode if i can call it that is that the special where they go out to the farm and meet the grandma yes i love that one that i gotta re-watch that because i remember that like to me as a kid that was just as classic as like

rudolph and frosty uh but uh they don't air it anymore i gotta track it down yeah it's uh it's very relaxed like there's not a giant like issue or anything. It's just the family goes through what every Christmas is like for them. Just a series of traditions. It's illegally available on YouTube. Thanks to Jim Davis. Yeah. It's just on the official Garfield YouTube channel. Yeah.

No, no, I agree with you, Bob. I think I really like this feels like a crystallization of what George Myers Thanksgiving's were. And it just feels or just one person's thanksgiving growing up and it and it does have a certain universal quality to it as well and then it it verges towards like magical homeless guy stuff and uh and all that but other than that i think it's just a really just well told just full thanksgiving event story i i like it quite a lot made me uh feel like i got to give more credit to the early seasons you guys know the show a lot better than i do and i feel

like i've sort of been walking around with this thing in my head of like oh baby i love those you know seasons four five and six though i had those dvd sets and i watched them the most and that's where the show gets the best and then and, and I knew that this would have the Brooksie sweetness to it, but I got enough LOLs out of this episode that I was like, I have to rethink my feelings on season two. It's a good show. It's a different flavor,

but I think it's just as valid as the sillier seasons for sure. But man, Tim, thank you so much. That was a long one, but we really appreciate it, Tim. I hope you had a good time. Oh my God, what a blast. Great talking to you guys. And I guess, Tim, do you have anything you'd want to promote? we that was a long one but we really appreciate it tim i hope you had a good time oh my god what a blast great talking to you guys and uh and i guess tim do you have anything you'd want to

promote uh sure easiest would just be um i got a podcast with my band the sloppy boys and it's a cocktail podcast where we make a different we look up some classic cocktail we've never had or sometimes never heard of and make it every week so check out the sloppy boys and i know you have a twitter account that has appears to have been taken over by a woman named linda yeah uh look for linda underwear on twitter uh has nothing to do with me she's taken over the hand i've been enjoying that i i'm good i'll relay the message i i'm a big sloppy boys fan too i love the i i think Party with the Reds is one of my favorite songs. Thank you. Or the Lifeguard song.

That is also another... Folks should just look up all your guys' songs on... I mean, you're on Spotify, I would assume, right? Yeah, we're on Spotify and Apple and all the streamers. We got three albums, kind of like a party rock thing. And hopefully when COVID's over, we'll be touring your town soon i like that i was very jealous of a friend uh of ours that who lived in la and was saying like i've seen the sloppy boys like three times i was like oh man yeah it's funny we we've for a long time we just keep humbling the same people with

shows over and over and over again and it is so nice to get out of town. Like I've always heard New York and LA crowds are bad, but it's all I've ever known. I've been doing some touring to any other, like you go to Philadelphia and you're like, oh my God, this crowd is so much better. Oh, but thank you so much for your time, Tim. Thanks a lot. I had a blast guys. So thanks so much to Tim Kalpakis for being on the show. Please check out the Sloppy Boys, his podcast, and also check out the the birthday boys a great two-season sketch comedy show he is one of the birthday boys there are many others as for us if you want to support what we do and hear more of our shows please go to patreon.com talking simpsons sign up there for five bucks a month you'll get every episode one week ahead of time and add free and also access to everything behind the five dollar

paywall that includes too many things to list here but we have so many miniseries behind that paywall the most recent one it's currently ongoing is talking of the hill season two part one 11 new episodes of king of the hill and you can hear so many other things like talking critic talking futurama talking mission hills so many more things happening behind the five dollar paywall but if you sign up for 10 bucks a month at patreon.com slash talking simpsons you get all the five dollar stuff plus also access to one mega long podcast every month just for patrons of that level or higher. And what is that, Henry? Why, Bob, you're discussing

the What a Cartoon movie podcast, our premiumist of podcasts. So, you know, every week in addition to Talking Simpsons, we do the What a Cartoon podcast and each month we do an extra long premium podcast where we cover an animated feature film in the same level of detail that we cover The Simpsons.

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for season 12's The Great Money Caper and we will see you then. Maggie! I'm about to unveil my centerpiece to the family. It's a tribute to the trailblazing women who made our country great. See? There's Georgia O'Keeffe, Susan B. Anthony, and this is Marjorie Stoneman Douglas. I'm sure you haven't heard of her, but she worked her whole life to preserve the Florida Everglades. As one of the Simpson women, would you like to contribute something to it? Oh, thank you.