Talking Simpsons - Talking Simpsons - Bart's Dog Gets An F

Episode Date: February 3, 2016

Santa’s Little Helper is the worst dog of all time, but can Bart fix him up by the end of the episode? Only Bob, Henry, Chris, and Dave can say for sure in this podcast…

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And if you sign up through geekfuel.com slash LazerTime, you will get an exclusive Star Wars item worth $20 added to your first box. Ahoy, ahoy, everybody. Welcome to Talking Simpsons, where we're all proud subscribers to Teen Steam Magazine. And today's episode is the season two episode bart's dog gets an f as always i am your host bob mackie wow okay thank you i am bob mackie your host who else is here today for this glorious occasion christopher edison henry gilbert uh i'm teen scream cover boy day rudden i'm henry cody gilbert cory cory yes there are eight of them, apparently, according to this episode. Again, today's episode is Bart's Dog Gets an F.

It aired on March 7th, 1991. Chris, what was going on in the universe on this historic day? Oh, my God. Well, Bobby, Chris Rock makes his SNL debut, Arthur Murray dies, and Rodney King is freed from prison, which resolves all issues of police brutality forever after. Oh, thank God that happened. Knowing Chris Rock's tenure on SNL, I bet he debuted at like 1250

for the next 18 months. He probably didn't do much that first few episodes. Pretty much his entire tenure. I think they call it the bailiff role. There's a court sketch and you'll be the bailiff. Or as Tim Meadows said, the other black guy.

He was with Tim Meadows for that. For a very short period of time. No, it was Tracy Morgan who identified himself as the other black guy to Tim Meadows. Yeah, but I mean, when Chris Rock came on, Tim Meadows was already there at that point. So, yeah, everyone was always the other black guy to Tim Meadows. And then Tim Meadows left and then Morgan ascended. And then it was a while before they cast two black people ever. If you have the fucking bulls to do an SNL

show-by-show episode, I will kill you. That would take... The most sacrilegious thing is I barely have watched the first five seasons. 80 to today, I have watched them all. You have not. I have not watched the Julie Louise Dreyfuss, Tim Kazaretsky eras. I had Comedy Central

in the late 90s. Those were the worst. They'd play them all the time, but I had to watch them. You know, we just did that nerd episode. We should have talked about the Loopners from the Bill Murray and Gilda Radner. I totally meant to mention that, because that was the first time a butt crack was shown on television. Really?

But that's in my five-year blind spot, which is the area that everybody loves. They were on Nick at Night, and my father bought me all the DVDs with all the Gil Scott Heron musical performances intact. But this is a Simpsons show. Bob got the reins. This episode has an historic occasion in it. It is the guest appearance of Tracy Ullman, who would sue the show a year later.

I've only heard that one information on Conan O'Brien's Serious Jibber Jabber, where he talks with the writers. He talks with Al G., Mike Reese, and Jay Kogan. Or is it Walidarski? I think it's Walidarski. They make a passing reference to a lawsuit with Tracy Ullman, which sounds like either is still in litigation or was settled at a court. It was settled in 1992. If you Google it, there are variety articles from 1992 saying, like, don't have a cow, Tracy.

Things like that. Go home! What happened was it's really simple. Of course, Tracy Ullman had contempt for this thing because, I mean... It overshadowed her show. Not just that, but it was also stealing her talent away. Like, oh, we need to record lines. Get Dan and Julie in here when they're working

on sketches and doing other things on Tracy Ullman's show. There was a time where they were simultaneously in production. Yeah, I mean, the Simpsons and Tracy Ullman. Yeah, on the shorts, yes. I mean the shorts specifically. Apparently, there was a deal in Tracy Ullman's contract where she would get between 5-10% of profits from characters that sprung from the show.

But it was ruled that the Simpsons were not Tracy Ullman show characters because they were created by Matt Groening as interstitial pieces. So she wanted, I believe, $2.5 million. That seems almost light. Which is nothing compared to what The Simpsons made. They could have just thrown her a bone.

We'll cancel one Duffman figure. But I believe she was making snarky comments to the press before this that, like, oh, they started on my show and no one cares about me anymore and things like that. Yes! Well, her show had been canceled to this point and that Matt Groening on the commentary is nice enough about it he says they wanted to have her on the shorts but she said she was too busy i i partially believe that she was running a show but i also feel like who cares about this cartoon i'm doing a sketch comedy show

fuck you and then but then hearing that uh it was walla darsky out there on that interview with conan al jean who still is an executive producer on the simpsons had to be very nice about it and But then hearing that it was Walidarski out there on that interview with Conan, Al Jean, who still is an executive producer on The Simpsons, had to be very nice about it and would not comment. But Walidarski was just like, yeah, she hated the show when it was there. And then when it started making money, she's like, it's like they took my children from me. Exactly, yeah. But this is during the honeymoon phase, I guess. Or maybe she was trying to show like, no, we're friends. I'll be on your show now.

I think it was a show of good faith. Like, hey, maybe I want to work with you. Maybe we can talk about this. But I think she is why we never saw season zero on DVD. As rough and bad and ugly and off model as it is, I still want that preserved on DVD as like a historical piece. Because everything that's online. It's not on DVD, is it? No.

Well, aren't they all, aren't most of them actually? Some of them are not. No, no. They not on DVD, is it? No. Well, aren't they all... Aren't most of them extras? Some of them are extras. No, no. They were on the 138th episode of Spectacular. And that's it. All I can remember is Troy McClure's face. Yes. They haven't changed a bit, have they?

Exactly. And the only way you can see the rest of them is on YouTube, recorded on Comedy Central 15 years ago with the bug in the corner on SLP mode. So I want to see these things preserved in the pristine. You can see the work of David Silverman and all those great animators

doing what they can with what they have. I just want to preserve. You watch them grow and change as it goes. That is really weird that it has not seen the light of day. And some of those later Omen shorts, they're not written as well, but they look better than season one and two. There's something happening in them.

One of you showed me, it was astonishing, because you only have probably seen the grotesque Tracy Ullman show shorts. There's one on the 138th episode of Spectacular where Bart's like, this looks better than that Sun and Chain at Evening. It looks way better than what they would do for the next couple of years.

I don't know how that happened. I think it's like, oh, I only have to animate two minutes of animation instead of a 20-minute show? You can put a lot more work into it. I'm all concerned. Did we present that The Simpsons premiered on the Tracey Ullman Show? You should know that.

Otherwise, you're not going to like the rest of the show. I would hope if you're listening to this. Yeah, in what, like 87? I know. I'm just getting yelled at from my friends who listen to our shows but aren't as dorky as us. I've definitely been told to give a little more context. I'm sorry. I thought I explained it.

No, I'm blaming me. We all know where The Simpsons came from. So Bart's dog gets an F. Yes. Finally, we're here. She plays Emily Winthrop. I don't think we hear her name that often. And Mrs. Winfield.

But it's one of the few names you see because she has a little thing in her desk. Oh, that's right. Yeah. And I think we talked about this before we recorded. I confuse this episode a lot with Dog of Death from next season. There's a lot of similar stories. It is a better episode, I agree. And they both get weird classical dog montages.

It's the same. When I would see Dog of Death, I thought, hey, if 8% of this is just taken from that episode, you needed a couple more shots of Santa's Little Helper doing stuff. And so they just took it from this episode. And Santa's little helper had barely done anything on the show since the Christmas special. He did something in the Thanksgiving special and then maybe four other jokes ever. This then brings him back. Which we will now refer to as SLH because we got time, baby.

SLH is the worst dog of all time in this episode. I think Dog of Death gets the advantage because it was written by John Schwarzwalder. And I thought this one was because he writes like the dog stories and the Homer stories because they're essentially Homer is a dog. I didn't see Frank Welker credited this time.

He usually gets the same. He is, yeah. Whenever there's a lot of SLH material, he handles the voice, not Dan Castellaneta. But if it's just like... You know what the first dumb clip I have is? We're like 10 minutes into the show now. Hey, that lawsuit was important.

The episode is set up as Santa's little helper's a bad dog and Lisa's sick with the mumps. The first clip I had that I don't get this and I hope somebody does. Marge calls Dr. Hibbert. Hello, Dr. Hibbert? This is Marge Simpson. Not that I'm angry, but how did you get my home number? I see. Quite ingenious.

What does that mean? Well, it's just the joke is that the joke is not being told. It is impossible then for her to find his home number. So the joke is for you have to make it up in your mind. It's kind of like a Where is Springfield joke. It's contrived. That's the joke. for you have to make it up in your mind yeah it's kind of like a where is springfield joke it's like it's contrived that's the joke like we're not going to tell you we need march to call hibbert but having him sorry her having his number would be a weird thing to do so they can't explain it so they don't i i mean i just love what this is something i just

discovered watching me too i'm like wait so they don't say why but he said so clever. So I guess that's kind of a joke in the way that she found it. And that's satisfying to you guys? It is. It counts as a joke. It's the writers being writerly about, like, we couldn't think of it, so we're just denying it. Exactly. They're hanging a lantern on the fact that they couldn't think of it the good way. I guess I was hoping you guys would have, like, an answer from the commentary or something.

But we do see Hibbert at his most Cosby. His male son looks exactly like... I grew up in Tallahassee, Florida near the University of FAMU. The oldest historically black university according to its Wikipedia. That's what they call it.

Historically black. All the bootleg Bart shirts. That's what he looked like. Green shirts. Black Bart. By the wayleg Bart shirts, that's what he looked like. Oh, wow. Green shirts. Black Bart. Yeah, black Bart. By the way, the phone that he's using is way bigger than his head, which is very unrealistic. Wow.

And so then Lisa gets the mumps. It's revealed she has the mumps, which I looked this up, too. I never, in my youth, when I was Lisa's age, I had never heard of anyone getting the mumps. Me neither. I had never gotten it. And I looked up how rare it was. Back then, it was very rare, too, because it was an easily preventable vaccinated disease. Guess what?

We've had some outbreaks of mumps in the last few years. Jenny McCarthy, what are you doing? You were saying that in another episode, that it's the writers growing up in the 70s. In the 80s, I grew up with the pamphlet would bring up fevers and chicken pox and mumps. I'm like, what the fuck is the mumps?

I've never seen it before, but I was cautiously aware of mumps at the time. I'd never known anybody who had them. By the 80s, it was a vaccinatable disease. Yeah, I think it was called the MMR shot, measles, mumps, rubella. You got them all at once. That's exactly it, yeah. And then no more for life. You have to update that, apparently.

Uh-oh. I've had i've had a cut the last time i had to check up like i think it's been a while since you had your mmr shot so we're gonna do that and i was like mmr what i'm not even sure i haven't been to the doctor in a while i'm not even sure if swollen cheeks are a symptom but i believe the director was like that's just the best shorthand we can come up with for her being sick no well fuck i could the symptoms that are playing Crash Bandicoot. Yeah, that too, yeah.

But Santa's Little Helper's acting up. This is a long clip, but it's Homer being so mean to a character we never meet again. I love this. The old lady clip. Well, Homer locks him up in the backyard and he gets free. She does come back, though, Chris.

No, she's around, but she never talks for this long. Oh, no, no. And she's only voiced by Tracy Ellman here. Oh is that this is tracy ellman yeah that's double duty hello simpson this is sylvia winfield that canine of yours is in my pool again i'm calling a dog warden right now oh are you well you go ahead and call your precious dog warden you old battle axe because my dog is tied up in the backyard. There's only one family on this block.

No, on Earth, inconsiderate enough to let a monster like that roam free. Are you losing your hearing, or are you just stupid? I am going to explain this to you one more time, and then I'm going to hang up on you. It is not my dog. I tied my dog outside myself. I am looking at him right now. That's my line of the show. I do.

My precious dog, Warden. It's legitimately good acting once again. It is. My dog. My dog. My dog. I do want to say, I was surprised to hear Tracy take on more than one role. Anyone like that? I love slandering her because I don't love a lot of her stuff, but she is so good at characters.

Really good at characters. And this character and the one we'll meet in a few minutes. I don't know if Dog of death tackles this too but like do you guys have like i feel like it was a way more suburban thing to have your dog run away than like people in the city like just get a call from somebody else like it's over here yeah whereas like i don't know people in the city like i see people who have their dogs out without leashes and like go to parks and the dogs just play and i'm like my dog would have just fucking bolted and went for the hills. And I don't know if that's because I was a shitty dog owner.

I grew up in Florida in the woods. And this doesn't even happen now. Well, a gator has eaten several of my friend's dogs. A friend of mine has been attacked by an alligator because it thought he was trying to go for his dog. I do feel like dog anxiety, Dave, that you feel like. Because I grew up in the suburbs and I don't have a dog. But I felt like as soon as the dog left the fenced-in backyard, all bets were off.

That dog is dead. It's in another state. It's some other family's problem now. Our dogs roam the neighborhoods free and develop packs and friendships. It was really weird. So you had a feral dog colony in your hometown. Yeah, with a Westie and a beagle. And they were all fixed.

Here's the big question. At some point, Homer meets up, sees Flanders, and finds some shoes he aspires to buy. The Assassin. Well, let's hear this clip, and then I'll ask you. Look at that kid of heavy hands. Eight key weights. That's cute. West Assassin.

Oh, you betcha. You know, they got the Velcro straps, a water pump in the tongue, built-in pedometer, reflective sidewalls, and little vanity license plates. How much, how much, how much? Well, you know, they're not giving them away. But sometimes you've just got to spoil yourself. Yeah.

Oop, my heart rate's dropping. Better skedaddley-doo. Pretty great shoes. What shoes do you think specifically they're pairing? I think Air Jordans. Oh, Air Jordans, for sure. This was like the era where Air Jordans were getting popular. And the Reebok pumps.

I say no. Yeah, there's definitely pumps involved in there, too. I say no. What are they? Around this period, the hottest shoe in my school, and I would have been fourth or fifth grade, was the Agassi. In terms of looks, the Agassi,

it's a Jordan-esque shoe based off of a tennis player. So instead, it's just insane. Reflective material and Velcro straps and things in the back, so many reflective things. It's like a 90s-esque tennis ball. The only thing you'd have to know it relates to tennis even slightly.

It's a high top. They look like Agassiz. I would love to be wrong. I'd love you to point out in the comments, lasertimepodcast.com, hit me up on Twitter. I think they're the Agassiz. So all I know is that it's called the Assassins

because it is a somewhat callous joke about people being murdered for their shoes in the 90s. I just got that now. What is so callous? Foster the People made a great hit out of it. That's true, yeah. That's true, yeah. The thing is, I think it's a joke.

I mean, it literally is a joke that the shoes are tracking his heart rate, but there are literally things you can cram into your shoes now, or shoes that come equipped with the Fitbit thing or whatever. That lady got a Fitbit for Christmas. You're welcome, baby. Also, I still act like Ned when I see a dog. Like, ooh, you little baby boy. I do that with every dog I see.

How many of the elements of the Assassins made it into, what was it, the world's best belt? Or the belt that Bart got a couple of years later? There were no turn signals. Yeah. Before this, though, there's the bit where Bart tells Lisa, like, you've wasted chicken pox

don't waste them that was my thinking I was way more Bart of just like sickness means I can be lazy and school sucks I remember being

disappointed like oh fuck my fever's breaking these two days have been the best I'm gonna have to go back to school now getting sick during

the summer this is a waste but in terms of a good lisa moment i love her conversation i love marge's whole spiel here about the bouvier family quilt and the music is great and her flipping her whipping out the thread and throwing it around she's the mj of threading and knitting well lisa here it is the bouvier family quilt wow neat it smells historic for five generations women in our family have each added a square to it

now it's your turn oh but i don't know how to sew oh yes you do you just don't know it the memory of a million drop stitches flows in your veins. Sorry. She was great. And I like the animation of Lisa thinking she has to try to do the flippy thing. And so she just throws it in the air. The animation is a bit too much for the Simpsons in this episode. But, like, I don't know.

In sequences like this, it works really well. Marge's sewing ability, hand sewing ability, is pretty much gone now. It came up where she made the dress in that one episode. She kept changing up her Chanel dress. Yeah, and she also has skills on the loom.

I, Bart, I am weaving on a loom. Meh. One of my favorite clips is Homer finally being tempted to buy the assassins. Oh. Assassins. Oh, 125 bucks. Sometimes you got to spoil yourself. Spoil yourself.

Spoil yourself. But I can't afford to. Simpson, I order you to buy those shoes. Okay, Blander, you're the boss. Is this the first time that The Simpsons made a joke with a recollection bubble? There was one in... What's the one where Barket's bullied by Nelson for the first time? Bart the General. Yeah, Bart the General.

Where Homer's head appears giving him advice, and then Barket's beaten, and the head's just like, ugh, and then it turns away. Homer shrugs his shoulders like, oh, he tried to kick him in the balls and it didn't work. And then he goes, ooh. What is up, Talking Simpsons fans? Chris here.

Briefly jumping in to tell you this show is brought to you by GeekFuel. And if you go to geekfuel.com slash lasertime right now, you can get a free star wars item worth twenty dollars just for signing up for a mystery box so what's in the mystery box you ask uh six to eight items an exclusive t-shirt and a fifty dollar value of kit and caboodle featuring famous stuff from marvel dc nintendo zelda game of thrones pop figs pint glasses posters you never know quite what it's going to be but it's like a delicious geeky gift that shows up at your door whenever you feel like it and oh guess what they've had simpson stuff involved in the box in the past so go to geekfuel.com slash laser time right now sign up for one of their boxes get it as a gift for a geek in your life and get a free 20 star wars item right now Wait, Chris, you skipped over Homer buying the teen magazines.

That's the funniest part of the episode. I don't have a clip of that. Number one, don't you think... They're from my daughter's shitty album. Isn't Lisa's eighth? Is she that into all these teen magazines? As an older brother. I didn't have a sister.

I never had a sister. I never had a sister. My sister was full on a teen magazine at around nine or ten years old. Yeah, an older sister, and that's true. Okay, all right. Well, and then second, yeah, just Homer. $2 magazines, which is a pretty good deal for magazines now. Seems kind of pricey. $2 magazines is just the way the guy, just the clerk looking at all the magazines.

Homer's called Teen Steamer. magazines is just the way the guy just the clerk looking at all the magazines. They're for my daughter. I didn't really get that as a kid. I got it and it was like oh that's fun. It's humiliating for Homer to buy these but now it's really that the clerk thinks like oh Homer is into teen boys. He's a creep. And I have the names of the magazines he didn't buy.

I have Non-Threatening Boys which is my favorite one. There's also Teen Scheme, Teen Spleen, a bloody logo. And there's also Martin Sheen's teen scene, which I guess is a joke. Go ahead. Use that. It's probably something the artists threw in. You're not meant to see that for very long.

I think what hurts this episode just a little bit is that it's just a series of many different scenes. Every scene is like, this is to introduce a new prized possession for this all-encompassing crowd. It's just every time, like, all right, we're taking two minutes to introduce the next thing you'll destroy. Got it, got it. I feel like in this season, Principal Charming was my ideal, in terms of the mechanics of a story, everything worked perfectly. This is just very sloppy. I don't feel like things fit together that well. No, there's a couple things skipped over. You're going to lose out on jokes like

this, Marge. The quilt does come out of nowhere. This one's mine. Keep on truckin'? What does that mean? I didn't know then and I don't know now. I remember finding shit in my parents' box with keep on truckin' shit on it. And all this Ziggy horse shit.

Watching this episode, I did ask my... In the first run, I did ask my mom, what does keep on truckin' mean? She had a better explanation than Mara. She just said, there's this guy named R. Crumb who drew this thing. Mr. Natural, right? At a 45 degree angle.

Which Homer will do in Homerer palooza and he looks like moses a little bit right yeah that's mr natural not to be confused with mr but they couldn't get the rights to mr natural and instead they're just like a yin yang right yeah it's just a dumb yin yang though it also trucking is also in a crappy well i mean it's not crappy it's a grateful dead song it is what it is but truckin' like the do-do man. I'll tell you what makes it even matter. Troy McClure just premiered. Oh, yeah.

And the first time ever he's voiced by someone who's not Troy McClure. You know, Joe, yours is the only show I'll do. As an actor, my eyeballs need to look their whitest. Why'd you do it? A Joe Franklin joke immediately followed. Every clip from that series of clips was a previously used piece of footage. They overdubbed. Yeah, I think it was just filler and probably late, late in the game when they couldn't get Phil Hartman.

Because clearly, Phil Hartman was around, but he was doing all these multiple voices, so maybe they're like, it's not in the budget for just a one-off Phil Hartman joke. We've got to have him do eight voices in the show. He's not in this episode at all, right? So I feel like if they put him in this episode... They would have to credit him and give him money from now until the end of time.

For just one line. Or until 1999. His orphan shoulder would be receiving it right now. My other thought was that they've got Joe Franklin and they've got the Troy McClure show. It would imply that they have cable again. That's all the things they have on cable. Continuity police. I hope somebody got fired over that.

Finally introduced to Tracy Ullman's Miss Winthrop character. Ladies and gentlemen, most of you already know that with a little love and confession, any puppy will grow up to be a cuddly little bundle of joy. Stunt and nonsense taught by charlatans and learned by bloody twits.

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and get insurance that's really big on care. Did I mention that we care? Let me tell you the two most important words you will ever hear in your life. Choke chain. I can't tell whether I love this character or hate him. I do love this British personification. Well, they take, we'll say, his little helper to obedience school because he destroyed the assassin. He also ate a cookie.

That's later. That's way later. Oh, sorry. I didn't remember, yeah. Winthrop is, she's Margaret Thatcher. Oh, for sure, yeah. It's a very clear Margaret Thatcher. I don't know.

I only know to dislike Margaret Thatcher through British comedies of the 80s. You're right to dislike her, Henry. She sounds like a pretty bad lady. I don't even like this episode very much, if you couldn't tell. But one of her lines runs through my head all the time. Like, correct the dog! Correct the dog! Oh, what a nightmare.

I do have that later on. I just have to get to this one. We started the show primarily because we said we can speak Simpsons references as a language. And there's certain weird things that are just part of my vocabulary now. Answering yes, like Mr. Burns. I know what you're talking about. And it's also my

quote of the episode. It's the only takeaway from this episode. The one that we use all the time. Marge and Lisa are at home. Lisa's home from school and they're watching soap operas. Jack, I think the baby might be yours. Oh, I'm sure it is, dollface. But I'd like to see you prove it. You treat me like garbage.

That's because that's the way you love it, baby. Gee, is it always this good? I don't know. I just step in and out. I'm only watching today because Brandy is coming out of a coma and she knows the phony prince's body is hidden in the boathouse. So not too lovely is the response.

Is it always this good? Yeah, always good. So Marge's way of explaining her, oh, I don't watch it all the time. I just didn't know all this thing. That's probably how, like, when I talk to people about wrestling for the first time, I'm like, oh, yeah, I like wrestling. By the way, I think Roman Reigns was better in 2014

and now he's being overpushed and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. For some reason, I definitely had memories of being Lisa's age and staying at home with my mom. My mom works all the time. She was not a homemaker like Marge,

but she would come home for lunch and at lunchtime, she would watch all my children are young all the time. She was not a homemaker like Marge, but she would come home for lunch, and at lunchtime, she would watch All My Children or Young and the Restless, and I'd watch it with her. For me, it was the old ladies in the neighborhood. Yeah, the old ladies did that, too. The old ladies all watched soap operas.

Who would babysat me, and there was this old lady. She watched multiple soap operas a day. But this clip, this is my biggest laugh of the whole episode. Father McGrath, I thought you were dead i was i'll see to you won't get apricot one that's a later one i'm sorry and so another thing search

for the sun is the name of that soap i feel like i'm talking through my pops up every now and i think mo would eventually be a character in like yeah he would be on search for the sun that's right uh one of the fun things One of the fun things I noticed, Homer's in the mall, and he gets pitched on a cookie, which is $1, Homer. Jesus Christ. $1 cookie is pretty good.

But the woman giving him the pitch hasn't really been seen since the first episode. She's the one who gives him his check at the end of Simpsons Roasting on an open fire. She's drawn the same way, but she's in a what, a luau getup? Dress skirt. Bikini top in a dress skirt, which was also

a weird message that it confused me that like, well, if you're drawing a sexy character, I thought the animators wouldn't have put nerdy glasses on her. Like that she's nerdy from the neck up, but in a sexy outfit. Unappealing. Like almost she's nerdy from the neck up, but in a sexy outfit. Like almost all Simpsons characters. Aloha!

Would you like a free sample? The price is right. Malcolm McTamey or not? If you'd like to buy some, they're only a dollar each. Oh, so that's your little plan. Get us addicted, then jack up the price. Well, you win.

I shouldn't have captured that. Like, the amount of crumbs he spits all over. Oh, yeah, they're all over his shoulders. They're on his shoulders. Like, the spread on that is so funny. I do feel like this is a very specific joke in which, like, malls at the time would just have the omnipresent giant cookie place. Like, I think it was called the original cookie for me. The Great American Cookie.

Oh, mine was the original cookie. I can confirm it is still there. It's the was called the original cookie for me. The Great American cookie. Mine was the original cookie. I can confirm it is still there. It's the only thing still on the food court. But who buys a giant cookie? Sbarro's gone. Giant cookies

still there. Wow. Also be the first instance of Homer adding umma to a word. I think it is. Sexamophone.

Oh, boom, a bow. It's not one of my favorite affectations. Trampopoline. Trampopoline. But I also think Homer, when he bought a giant cookie, would eat that giant cookie immediately and would not take it home. He showed a lot of self-control with that cookie.

Perhaps he bought like four cookies and that was the last one. He was like, I'm just too full to eat a fourth cookie. That would make his grief over it even greater, I think. I don't know. This is where we're getting... We've gotten into that before, but when I'm talking about The Simpsons and watching it at the age I was, this is the thing I remember my dad losing his mind over.

And it was all involving the cookie. Because Homer puts the cookie aside and sent his little helper. It goes on like a spree of destroying... He gets it immediately. Homer is off-screen for He gets it immediately. Yeah. Like Homer is off screen for one half a second. Yeah. But he's destroyed the assassin

shoes. He's destroyed. And then he destroys the quilt. And this I remember my dad lost his fucking mind. Come on Homer. I want you to see what your sick little girl did. My quilt! Six generations ruined! Now, Marge, honey, honey, honey.

Come on. Come on, don't get upset. It's not the end of the world. We all love that quilt. But you can't get too attached to... No! My cookie! This is not happening. This is not happening.

This is not happening. I love that part. By the way, there is, I mean, I know there's macadamia nuts, but there's probably also chocolate in that cookie,

so they should get that dog checked out. Dump peroxide down his throat. No, that, now that I watched it as a kid, it definitely made,

I was saying what they wanted me to say. Like, not the quilt, not the quilt. But even though the second you see the quilt, you know it's getting torn up. Oh, for sure, yeah. It is this place for some weird E.T. music. Yeah. Well, that's when they're united over their calluses.

They're both burning their fingers. But then now I feel even worse. Poor Marge. Like, marge suffers more than anybody in this episode she lost something so important to her priceless a priceless thing that she had been waiting her entire life to share with lisa and all because the fucking dog sent his little helper is being they're paying for it to go to obedience school he's not learning anything and just tearing everything else around the house apart.

One of you was the ones with the story of the dog they had to give away? I never gave away a dog. Was that you, Dan? Yeah, I've had a dog that just kept biting us and would bark all the time. And my parents told me, brought it to a farm. We gave it back to the people that adopted it to us, and they found a farm for it, and I believed it at the time, but now that I think about it, no. You've never asked?

No. It was also one of the dogs that, I feel bad saying this, but like I've had like four dogs in my life, and this one was like at the bottom of the... It was just like, this dog was a jerk. He didn't want it. Yeah. Boy, that's funny. I had the opposite thing that happened to me. When I was one maybe two

we had two dogs a Dalmatian named Jenny who I loved and a beagle named Billy that they inherited or somebody gave them and he was a jerk and I was a one year old that like like I think grabbed his tail or something and he bit my face

until scar tissue heals on little kids much faster. And I had a scar over my right eyebrow until like age six. Like Harry Potter. And they didn't get rid of that dog. They didn't. I do like the message we see much later. Some animals are just jerks. Yeah.

Because I never had a dog growing up. My sister was allergic, but one of my friends had a dog, and I dreaded going over. The dog's going to jump on me me I'm going to step in its shit and then one day they're like oh we got rid of that dog I'm like thank god I hope my friend isn't listening but I went over to his house

the dog did nothing but bark at me until I pet it at which point it would pee all over me Jesus Christ so like either I'm standing and being barked at or sitting and being peed on and I'm like dude

I hate your fucking dog I've never hated a dog this much before so the friend of my older brothers who lived like right around the corner from us, they had a dog named Trouble. And that dog would just brood a lot. Like he would run after you,

bark like crazy, was just the scariest dog I've ever encountered, Trouble. So much like those dogs, they decided they are going to get rid of Santa's little helper. We never had a family meeting before. We never had a problem with a family member we can give away before. What are you saying? I'm saying that it's fun to talk and fun to run with the dog.

A, that's a great act break. B, you did not have the context if you haven't seen the episode for what Santa's little helper sees, which is probably pretty accurate. Dogs are more noticing your tone and mannerisms than they are understanding you. This is also how I learned the dog scene in monotone. They'd see in black and white. It does pay off later when he does understand certain things that are being said. That's what the big payoff is.

That's the best plotting of this. You said this is sloppy and it is a bit, but that's the best payoff. That works for me, yeah. I agree. Right after the commercial break. It's so good. No way. You can't give my dog away.

I'll set fire to my hair. I'll rip up all my clothes. I'll put sugar in the gas tank. I've suffered as much as anyone at the paws of this dog. But when I look into his vacant brown eyes, I just can't bear to let him go. I'm sure mom agrees with me. No, I'm afraid I agree with your father.

You do? Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha. It's not just the quilt. He's a nice dog, but he chews up everything. He doesn't obey. He's not even house broken. And we've spent all this money on an obedience school, and I don't see any improvement. All right, all right. He sent

his little helper studies real hard and passes his finals and becomes a perfect dog. Can we keep him then? No. Dad! This is our pet. We can question his integrity and disposition, but we can't question his heart. Are you trying to teach us that the way to solve a problem with something you love is to throw it away?

Oh, please, Chuck. If they're ever going to pull the plug on me, I want you in my corner. I didn't get that pull the plug on me joke as a kid. Definitely did not.

I think it's funny how all the Simpsons men are the same, even the dog. They're all these screw-ups who are too stupid to understand why they're screwing up

and they can't help themselves but this is like right in the area where the show the episodes start to work for me a lot because it harkens back to the Bart gets an F well it becomes more about Bart than this from that point on well but just a loser who's trying and like I don't know

you want to deconstruct why though? no I just said why I'm here drunk at 7 p.m. doing a podcast about this. And I think it's when Bart stops trying so hard is when Santa's Little Helper has a breakthrough, right?

Yes. At the time, this was my favorite line. I think it was in the promos. I said sit. Take a walk. Sniff that other dog's butt. See?

He does exactly what I tell him. Did you notice they were in the section of called Cujos? No. Oh, yeah. It was a quick joke. But then he has to go

to Miss Winthrop in like the same way he had to plead to Miss Krabappel and everybody else. Like, yeah, I'm just dumb. Yeah.

I'm just dumb. He has to do it forcing his little helper in the same season. Miss Winthrop, I was thinking. Good acting there. Oh dear. Since you get paid

either way, would it be a big deal to just let my dog pass? I see. Rubber stamp, thank you very much. Next in line. Is that it? Yeah. Heavens to Murgatroyd. But, perhaps I cling to the old ways like a well chewed shoe as the traditions I was weaned on are put to Definitely hate her.

She's dead. One by one. He'll sit. He'll sit. Come on, boy. Sit. sit. Come on, boy. Sit. Sit. Blah, blah. Blah, blah.

Pull the chain. That's pull the chain. Correct the dog. Correct the dog. Yeah, I like the college graduate who doesn't know how to sit. That's cute. I like that. That makes the scene of him learning, I don't know, the scene is very...

It is a touching scene. The whole show doesn't work for me, but this does. I'm going to miss you, boy. I thought we were going to be pals forever. But we're going to have to say goodbye. Because you don't understand a single word I say. If you just knew how important it was to learn blah, blah, sit. Wait a minute.

You did it. Blah blah blah blah blah blah. Lay down. Shake hands. Stay. Speak. All right. Good boy.

I have goose pimples. It's so stupid. I think's really nancy carwright's performance just like in her breakdown uh playing bart and bart gets enough yeah it just it doesn't i mean that's a bunch better episode but i think that performance really just uh soars above there was a performance from bart last season where like i haven't i just haven't seen him do that in years also desperate please is that bart the genius no no I like I mean like season 26 oh seven we're like but he but seriously hasn't done that in a long

time the joke right before that is so much darker to me now where they're talking to the guy who will adopt him he's just like oh yeah they'd say they can't pull a carpet think dogs can't pull carts but they can impatient people think that but patient people know better. I have to get to this before my battery goes dead.

That's the only reason I'm blowing through these. My line of the show, you're welcome. That's the joke. You son of a bitch. Gold show. Was this not the first time you heard that term? You son of a bitch. I think the first three seasons of The never heard the term you son of a bitch I think the first three seasons of The Simpsons

They swore a lot more just to break new ground And be a little more controversial Like Bastard I was listening to an interview with Bill Burr And he's got an animated show on Netflix called F is for Family which I think was designed For a regular network And so the show is like timid and lame

And then all of a sudden like, fuck. And then right, like the third episode, you just see a sack of balls slamming into a woman. Whoa. And that's like, and he was talking about like, yeah, Netflix is just like, could you just go further? Wow. I didn't know that. Could you just do more, like be more Netflix and like, yeah, do something crazy.

And like, it's in there for no reason. It's so jarring because the show's not like that but yeah the pressure from Fox like you can't say whatever you want but you think it was like you were saying it's a British woman

saying you son of a bitch to a dog to a dog yeah well it took this might just be me but when I was in the fourth grade

we read Babe this was before the movie was made about the pig yeah it was a British book a British children's book about the pig who becomes was a british book a british children's book about the pig who becomes a sheep herder in the and then the teacher had to tell us ahead of time

this is a british book and it uses certain words including describing this main one of the major characters in it the the dog that adopts the pig as a bitch multiple times because it is a dog that had puppies that's what a bitch is i love marge's response to that much later in the show. That feels wrong somehow. I'm cutting all this, Henry. I can't believe you just went there. And I also did not get the Animal House ending as a kid. It would be years before I'd see Animal House.

So just the idea of these people graduated. What do they do after they graduate? I hope it's parodying whatever Animal House is parodying. That couldn't be an original Animal House. Well, then they go more specifically to Animal House and Homer goes to college. It's true. Also, there was a blue-haired dog,

which I don't think ever happens again in The Simpsons. I think dogs just go back to the normal color scheme. No, nor has anything ever painted the wrong color in The Simpsons during the seasons. I like Martin's dog. He's pretty cool. Oh, yeah, Martin was in this episode. I forgot about that.

That's right so uh SLH is saved and I guess we're done talking about um not Dog of Death I was burning clips off because the computer's going dead

so I didn't mean to rush through everything oh no I mean I feel like this is one of the weaker episodes I'm not going to disparage it totally like it has its great moments but I feel like uh if Dog of Death had not existed

it'd be a much better episode that's the one I like a lot more that's probably that's the most fair thing you can say. There's more at stake, I think. There's a better episode

of the same subject matter that happens right afterwards and something that you can probably relate to a little more. Yeah, like getting rid of a dog is kind of a,

you know, like my family did it and I understood it at the time but it's also like, that's giving up. But when your dog is so sick that it requires a multiple thousand dollar surgery,

that's like, you really gotta think about it. Yeah, my friend had to deal with, I've never had to deal with that in my own personal life. My friend did like, $3,000? Yeah, it's like, do I potentially put myself in some debt?

His father referred to the dog as the $5,000 cat for the rest of its life. Oh man. At least it lived a long time. No, no, no, no, of course it didn't. Of course it didn't, but the money was spent. That's the sad thing of like, as a long time. No, no, no, no, no. Of course it didn't. Of course it didn't, but the money was spent. That's the sad thing.

As a kid, I was like, no amount of money is enough to save a pet's life. And it feels like that in the moment. And I've loved every pet I had. I'll have dreams about pets that I lost. What would happen to me if you came in here and tried to take my Amiibos? Like, how much money would I offer? But if a pet only lived, if you got three months or six months out of thousands of dollars, in retrospect, it's very hard to justify for me. Prolonging the inevitable is always a bad bet.

But you don't think about that when they're your pets. No way, yeah. That love gets in the way. So this has been Talking Simpsons. Hopefully you enjoyed this episode more than we did. Next one I think is a little better. So I've been Bob Mackie. I will continue to be Bob Mackie after this.

And you can find me on usgamer.net, Something Awful, and I do the classic gaming podcast, Retronauts. So listen to that, please. Everybody else, jump in. Laser Time, the show that spawned all this stupidity via patreon.com slash laser time, where you can still find exclusively

the first season of Talking Simpsons where we talk about the first 13 episodes. The roughest era of the show. The era of the show people complained about the most until the next 20 seasons. And I'm Henry Gilbert again. That's H-E-N-E-R-E-Y-G on Twitter. And you should also listen to 302010, our new podcast, where if you like us talking about the dates and things that happen,

that's all that show is about 30 years ago, 20 years ago, and 10 years ago in pop culture. I'd like to think of it as like a little portal you shoot to see exactly what's happening that week in pop culture. 30 years ago, 20 years ago, 10 years ago. And also I do Cave Crisis, the comic book podcast. I'm at Dave Rudin on Twitter, and I host the Cheap Podcast, the pro wrestling podcast. There was once a wrestler called the Junkyard Dog. It's really hard to find segues between pro wrestling and the Simpsons. I'm sorry.

Doggone it. Okay. Look how good he is. What? Look how good he is. Me? What about you, Bob? I'm sorry.

No, I just screwed it up. Anyways, we'll be back next week with a better episode, I think. Later. Wow. Infotainment.