Talking Simpsons - Talking Simpsons - Brother, Can You Spare Two Dimes? With Mike Drucker

Episode Date: May 24, 2023

We're closing out season 3 with returning favorite, comedy writer extraordinaire Mike Drucker to share his insights on CEOs and awards shows! Danny DeVito's Uncle Herb returns to the show just as Homer stumbles into the First Annual Montgomery Burns Award for Outstanding Achievement in the Field of Excellence. Can he rebuild his fortune just in time for the debut of the Martin sitcom right after this? Listen along and find out while enjoying pizza box cheese! Support this podcast and get over 150 bonus episodes by visiting Patreon.com/TalkingSimpsons and becoming a patron! And please follow the official Twitter, @TalkSimpsonsPod!

This podcast is brought to you by patreon.com slash talking Simpsons head there to check out exclusive podcasts like talking Futurama talking of the hill the what a cartoon movie podcast and tons more I hardly endorse this event or product Our product. Ahoy, hoy, everybody, and welcome to Talking Simpsons, where discarded pizza boxes are an excellent source of cheese. I'm your host, the pantsless Mickey Mouse fan, Bob Mackie, and this is our chronological exploration of The Simpsons. Who is here with me today, as always? Henry Gilbert, and all a man really needs is an idea and a podcast. And here's our special guest on the line today.

Mike Drucker. I didn't know if I was supposed to say my own name. Mike Drucker. And this week's episode is Brother, Can You Spare Two Dimes? Lady, you just gave me the idea of a lifetime. How do I thank you? Please don't hurt me. Consider it done. This week's episode originally aired on August 27th, 1992. And as always, Henry will tell us what happened on this mythical day in real world history. Oh my God.

Oh boy, Bobby. End of the Road by Boyz II Men tops the charts. Super Mario Kart is released in both Japan and America around the same time. And right after this special episode of The Simpsons, Martin debuts on Fox. Yes, and it should be noted that's why this one is airing a month before Season 4 officially starts. It's to boost the premiere of Martin. They're very invested in the Martin Lawrence vehicle, which it is one of their highest rated shows they've got. Like, I think it's a bigger hit than Simpsons this year and the Simpsons are boosting it up and Martin will air for the next four weeks after this episode of Simpsons airs before the official

season four premiere. I think because that's how they promote it. That's why this isn't season four on DVDs even as well. I mean, it was because of The Simpsons that I was an early Martin viewer. I was first to the Martin table, and he was quite randy. I thought it was too dirty for me. I wasn't even 10 yet. I'm a week away from turning 10 when this episode aired, and I was like, ooh, this seems too dirty for me. I watched the original Martin commercial, which I'm going to plug in in the break for listeners it is him saying like don't we get busy every day i could

imagine me as a nine-year-old seeing that and be like oh that's that's for mommies and daddies that's not i thought tell me more you know what henry you so crazy damn gina that's not why i say that to that i want to pull up more episodes and watch them also because we just did, at the time of this recording, a whole podcast about Little Shop of Horrors, which stars two Martin co-stars, Tina Arnold and Tisha Campbell. Yes, one of the few sitcoms in which the wife got a restraining order from the husband in real life. Yes, in real life. Wait, wait, the actor that played? Tisha Campbell and Martin Lawrence had some rough times. Yes.

He was suffering from, let's say, exhaustion is what we want to call it. Yeah, I remember that. Oh, man, I didn't know there was a restraining order. I believe that they have made up enough to have done reunion stuff together. I think they're on better terms now. But yes, that's why Gina is not in a lot of the final episodes of the Martin show. Yeah, it was quite a big event, the Martin debut. But a big event for nerds was Super Mario Kart changing the game, as it were, on racing games.

I was there. It brought me everything that F-Zero wouldn't. I was not an F-Zero fan, and this gave me Mario characters and weapons. So I was way into this from the beginning. I distinctly remember playing that two-player with my sister, the balloon mode, and just being like, Whoa, it's like she's in a virtual world, i'm in a virtual world and we're both in this world like it blew my mind that the idea of being in like a quasi three-dimensional space with someone else and you're both human and you're splitting probably like a 13 inch tube tv screen

to do this even i mean the technology was so leading edge that even in single player mode your gameplay took up the top half of the screen and that's it and man the visual design sense is like i love it so much it's so colorful it's so fun i know they had to remove all the alcohol for america but even their celebration is great they can pop the champagne but they can't drink it right right though you know what the one i played it some but i did not obsessively get into mario kart until the 64 era of it that's why i played it the most but yeah and two when i was looking at the release dates i am so used to in this time in 92 video games having like a year apart thing for japan and america but it was basically two weeks in between u.s and japanese release dates at least scoring the wiki not a lot of dialogue

in that game and end of the road i mean 90s gave us all the best funeral songs right we have end of the road we have bone thugs and harmony crossroads and we have one sweet day man yeah that's the trio that fills out your whole funeral that's that's opening middle and exit yeah yeah i listened that song a lot i heard a lot of boys to men as a youth i got into them more than other well i guess would you call them a boy band now i feel weird calling a boy band but i really did it's in the name yeah right right right they're top of the charts they actually with this song i often look to what was number one on billboards when doing these history things. But they set a record for the longest.

They break the Beatles record for holding number one the longest with this. But nobody remembers this because this record, it lasts for about two months. And then Whitney Houston's Bodyguard comes out and shatters the Boyz II Men. I mean, I mostly associate Boyz II Men with being a mainstay at middle school dances and just vividly remembering the DJ playing I'll Make Love to You as 10 and 11 year olds were slow dancing with each other. These were Catholic school dances, by the way. Oh, man. Joining us once again is Mike Drucker. Mike, welcome back to the show.

You're last with us for Day of the Jackanapes, the last Sideshow Bob episode. Not the last one, but the last one we covered. Yeah, yeah. That was a super fun episode. Thank you. First of all, thank you guys for having me back. I love being here and doing this podcast. And I really like the episodes you give me.

I feel like you guys give me some real meaty ones, and I always appreciate it. Oh, well, thank you. Well, I mean, this one, especially when i look at your imdb page of all your credits i also saw like you've written for award shows and you're an award winning and emmy nominated writer so i was like well this guy probably has a lot to say about an episode that is kind of about the emmy yeah yeah yeah an episode that if it's about anything it's about the emmys because it's such a funny episode. But as far as a plot, they admit on the commentary, this is a scattershot plot episode. But a hilarious one.

You know, Henry, I was saving this for now. This may shock you, but you and I also have IMDb pages now. Whoa! Because the unworthy art of podcasting is now on IMDb. Yeah! So I am on Podcast the Ride as self. Whoa! Wow.

See? I can't believe this. Thanks to whoever put that on there. We'll have these credits removed, Mike. We'll have them removed. Don't worry. You don't deserve them. I'm writing to the president of IMDB.

No. Well, I hope that Mike doesn't get added. Well, his IMDB doesn't include our podcast on it. No, our podcast isn't there. Oh, okay. Well, good. You can put me there. If you're a fan listening, put it on my IMDB.

When I was on that same IMDB, I was like, right, you've been head writer of shows like Full Frontal with Samantha Bee, wrote on The President Show. And also, though, I missed this until now that you wrote on Mystery Science Theater 3000 Season 13. Yeah, the most recent season I wrote on. I only wrote on two episodes, but it was really, really fun. That is awesome. I said it before. Now you're living all these dreams I had as a kid. One, Drive for Mystery Science

Theater. Two, you wrote canonical 616 Peter Parker dialogue in Spider-Man comics. So the question for Mike is, why are you stealing Henry's dreams? Stop it. These are his, damn it. But I think Henry overall is a happier person than me you know probably has a bigger group of friends than me i mean mine's real i'm gonna die surrounded by strangers i feel like henry's gonna have a lot of we'll have the listeners weigh in who do you think is happiest well dude let's do it well thank you mike but no i mean you're first off yes what do you think of this episode as far as it goes with like its thoughts on award award shows. It's not wrong about award shows. I mean, I'm sure if you're listening,

you've watched this episode, but they sort of create this award show at the last minute because Homer asks for it as part of like a cash settlement because radiation plant made him sterile. They throw this very Emmys like ceremony and it very is like that. Here's the thing that bumped me about the whole bit. And I'd seen this episode before, but watching it now after we talked about it, the fact that he's sitting so high up and he's

set to win would never happen. Like usually if not, they don't fix it where if you're close to the stage, you definitely won. But if they know you're probably going to win, they sit you very close because it takes so much time to get to the stage. And it makes me feel bad that that's's what stuck out to me i've seen some golden globes where they have to walk a long way there's a lot of time killing yeah they need to get their seating chart especially if news reporting is to be taken as true if allegations are true you'd feel like the golden globes would have a better idea of knowing who was going to win based on who paid the most yeah i mean i can't say you're not wrong but i can imply you're not wrong hey i'm just talking about what i read in the newspaper that's all well a lot of this in this episode is their bitterness over losing an emmy for the third season even though

they won for the first two and they would win dozens and dozens more after that it's a little crazy yes mike what do you think of the simpsons being mad they didn't win three Emmys in a row? I mean, I have lost eight Emmys in a row. So I understand being mad when you don't win one. I don't know. The only industry award I've won is I've won two Writers Guild Awards. And I think the first one was like, you go nuts because you're like, oh, my God, like I've actually won this thing for my peers. Like you really do have a moment that is is insane.

And the second time it wasn't like whatever. But you're sort of like, if I lose, that's fine. You know what I mean? Like you're like, I got and maybe that's just me. But I sort of like I got enough of the pie. I was someone hugged me once. I don't need to take all the hugs. But yeah, they have joked that i mean at least

before disney bought the show the show had so many executive producers that that kind of weighed against them when they were up for an emmy because that meant they'd have to pass out a lot of emmys yeah at the ceremony yeah it was gonna cost them a lot of money yeah for sure yeah i think it's just so funny to i actually dug into the variety archives to try to figure out the timeline of this, because here's the complicated timeline of it. If you just went by Wikipedia, you would think that the Simpsons got mad early because the Emmys actually air three days after this episode. So you might think, well, wait, how did they not know? But it was on the earlier Emmys. Technical?

Technical. Yeah, it was, I believe I've heard Dan Harmon call them the shmemmies, which is a funny name for it. But I found the August, an August 7th, 1992 Variety article that mentions there that the Simpsons lost. So about three weeks beforehand, they had lost to to we've talked about it before radio bart loses to the will of it and claymation easter so within those three weeks are able to add in the extra line in this episode calling the ms cars and i do agree with the david silverman theory that because it was up against the first year of ren and stimpy that ren and stimpy and simpson split the in the no votes and so the kids thing

won yeah that makes sense to me also I want to add that the technical Emmys are so much more fun than the real Emmys in the Writers Guild one of the weird rules is like some of the categories switch every other year so like one year you're at primetime when you're at technical one when you're at technical if you're a writer you're kind of like the king of the Morlocks like we're all you know the ah people but like people like oh you're a writer, you're kind of like the king of the Morlocks. Like we're all, you know, the people, but like people like, oh, you're a writer. Whereas when you're at the real Emmys, people are like, oh, that's nice. But it's also very nice because the technical ones give out all the awards for like the people just working on a show. So you like, we'll see someone holding an Emmy and be like, oh, what'd you win? They were like, oh, I won best special effects makeup.

And you'll like talk to them about that. The technical Emmys are so much less pressure. They're so much less freaking out. Like there're so much less like everybody in their seats. You do not leave while we're filming. And it's not that they care less, like the food's still great. It's still a really good time, but it's such a better experience. I mean, I'm proud to go to any Emmys, but I mean the technical Emmys, you just really feel like you're like, oh, these are normal people who are up for industry awards. It's really nice. As a viewer, it seems like people are a little looser, having a little better, maybe enjoying more liquids during the show too. It's extra funny that then Bart actually intros the awards on Fox this year.

I played it in an earlier episode we did, I think in the auto show one. But Bart not only does the intro to the broadcast, it's actually preceded by a pair of season one episodes of The Simpsons. So it's like it's Sunday, August 30th. You're tuning in for the Emmys. And if you come in an hour early, you're getting to watch The Simpsons. Homer's Night Out and Love on the Fast Lane. OK, OK. And last bit of Emmy stuff where I also feel like The Simpsons are being maybe just a tad selfish here. Or just to be sore losers is that in addition to all this grousing that they lost in Outstanding Animated Program,

this is the same year where the Emmys invent the new category Outstanding Voice Over Performance, which is essentially invented for the simpsons and the first people to win it are six simpsons people dan julie yardley nancy and then guest stars marcia wallace and jackie mason right so the simpsons even did win this year but just not the one writers would get an award those darn writers i'm looking it up now and to date The Simpsons has won 34 Primetime Emmy Awards in four categories and has been nominated 78 times in nine different categories.

So that's quite a bit of Emmy gold for The Simpsons. I don't condone their feelings but I do understand because I've definitely been on a show where we were nominated for five Emmys and one small thing won and you're like that's amazing. our show got an Emmy but you're also like man fuck them I should have won right you know you're wrong to feel that

way right I understand yeah yeah and I have one more preamble thing this is a landmark episode it is the first one where Conan O'Brien is a credited producer and he'd be on the show for about 18 months until Marge on the Lamb. That's the last episode he's credited on. So yes, Conan O'Brien has finally arrived, folks. And I can definitely tell he's on the show, especially with certain little scenes that feel like this is a Conan O'Brien act out in the room. Burns telling off his lawyers. I feel like Conan just pitched that screaming at people in the room. It just feels like it. I wasn't there. I don't have that verified, but it feels like it. Absolutely, yes. Now, I do think they hired, we'll have a whole Conan thing,

but I definitely think they hired him, one, because he's an amazing writer, but also he is a great hang in the writer's room. And they all went to college with him and he's their friend. And Bob Odenkirk didn't want to work on The Simpsons. Oh, and also, yeah. We found that out. As we learned from Bob Odenkirk's memoir, he didn't want to do it. And Conan just turned 60.

He's looking great. He is looking great. Is he still doing the beard? I haven't seen him. When he's off television, he grows a beard. I saw a recent pic, no beard. Oh, okay. It comes and goes.

And, you know, on the commentary, too, they mention it's really funny because the boss is on this one james l brooks and that it puts a different feel to the commentary everybody's having fun but even mac raining kind of like laughs when he's gonna say like i think jim you wanted us to do that they're kind of like jal jean is telling his story of working 20 hour days for two weeks on the show and brooks kind of goes like what no he says bullshit yeah you're right he literally spells bullshit on it he looks up from his piles of money that he's counting but consider that al jean is kosher running a show with mike reese it being animated means nobody gets a summer off like you do on live action and they are developing the critic at the exact same time so yeah writing season four doing post-production on season three, and developing The Critic.

I mean... Developing the Krusty show before that, before it became The Critic, right? Yeah, Mike, does that workload sound realistic to you? It sounds realistic in the sense that people do take on those workloads, but they do destroy you. But it is pretty common to be like working on a project while deep into development for another the weird thing is you're almost lucky when you're allowed to do that because a lot of times either through the development itself or through the job they might be like we want your full focus on just this you're not allowed to like work on this

while you're working on this it's weird to say it's almost like a luxury to be able to do a lot of development at once this episode also does feel like the right it we say it every end of a season and this is technically the third to last season production season three episode this definitely feels like it's written by tired people like some parts of it feel a little first draft or just very like uh but again this is a hilarious episode but if you want to like pull plotting, you can say, well, this feels kind of rushed. Like, oh, this plot point just comes in here out of nowhere. And yeah, the story behind the scenes is after Uncle Herb's first appearance, where he leaves on a bus destroyed by Homer. Honestly, he's to blame for it.

But it was James O'Brooks who said he didn't like that ending for herb and he wanted to bring back herb and have him have an american dream rags to riches kind of story a comeback story and additionally like he wanted to work with devito again and bring him back i think that swartzwalter as a writer was given this idea of like yeah it's you know he gets rich again it's an american success story and he turns it into a intentionally satirical like ridiculous fairy tale of impossibility that begins with a hobo yes unbelievably after this episode you'll never see herb again on screen in 2013 he calls homer for a one-line gag and they and they got

devito back but that's it he never appeared again and he goes i'm poor again right yes homer for a one-line gag and they and they got devito back but that's it he never appeared again and he goes i'm poor again right yes homer says hey we don't ignore family ring ring homer i gotta call and tell you i'm poor again and then homer hangs up on him so there apparently uh this is a quote from an interview in 1994 with hank azaria about the show in general but he is quoted as saying the second time Danny DeVito was like yeah yeah yeah let's get it over with he did a great job but he didn't enjoy the process interesting he would go on to be a semi-prolific voice actor I mean he at least be in Hercules right yeah he's in Hercules he's the villain of Space Jam yeah and he's still doing voice stuff I mean he is 78 now and still doing a ton of work all the time.

Everybody loves him. Mike, has your world ever intersected with Danny DeVito? No, I wish so much. He's one of like the three or four celebrities where I'm like, if I met them, I'd actually be like pretty nervous. Have you ever pitched to Jersey Films? Like you have to insist you get to pitch to Danny DeVito. But just think no matter who you are, you'll be taller than him.

So he won't be intimidated. I do remember my ex's best friend always talked about how she was like third cousins with Danny DeVito. Like that was her thing to bring up in conversation. That's interesting. Yeah. I mean, hey, I brag about it, too. It's also funny because De devito and business wise was working less with brooks like devito wouldn't have his career without james l brooks or he'd have a very

different career because he got cast on taxi by brooks and other people but brooks was one of the main guys on it and so without taxi devito who knows where he'd be but at this time DeVito who had done War of the Roses in 89 with Gracie Films he now has launched his own production company Jersey Films and he's about to put out Hoffa and of course when this episode aired Batman Returns still in theaters oh very nice synergy yeah I was just thinking that season three has two sequel episodes it has Black Widower and this one. So I bet a lot of viewers thought, oh, Unky Herb will be back with another crazy invention. I mean, if he came back every year and needed to, like, it was just one year, he comes back and he's lost all his money again.

Next year he comes back, gets all his money back. And also, yeah, by the way, Jersey Films, they have a pretty good batting average. Technically Pulp Fiction, though, yes, that's's a miramax film but they were first on it aaron brockovich get shorty reality bites out of sight super troopers reno 911 ghost world garden state gattaca gattaca yes more on imdb his most recent credit is like a gattaca TV adaptation producer credit. Hey, that's actually pretty cool. Though, of course, he is still, I don't think they've, it's been a few years since a new episode of Always Sunny, but I think he's up for it whenever. He did write a Penguin comic recently too, which I didn't read the comic, but I will

say the blurb I read on it sounded like fanfic by Danny DeVito which is I believe part of the story is that it's basically he writes a new story for the penguin that he played in the movie except this time Catwoman dates him so yeah you know he is the best penguin whoever that new guy was the guy in the fat suit, whatever his name was. Colin Farrell. I barely recognize him as a penguin style character. I agree. Like he wasn't a bad character, but he wasn't the penguin. He was just like a mob bossy guy. Ah, come on.

You're breaking my heart, yeah. Wait, he was like Cockney though, right? He wasn't Italian. He was British at least, right? His Britishness is a recent invention for him. Oh, okay. Would it surprise you I don't remember a lot of that movie? Well, Bob, you better get excited because The Penguin

is coming back in a Max original series in the next year. We took out the HBO. What if they just film it all and burn it? That'd be fun. If that saves some tax money, they will. That's why subscription fees are paying for it, right? Listen, that's happened to a lot of us lately.

Yes, yes. I'm sorry, Mike. I'm not trying to add salt to the wound. Well, right? Listen, that's happened to a lot of us lately. Yes, yes. I'm sorry, Mike. I'm not trying to add salt to the wound. Oh, no, you're not. Well, see, your problem is you're not as famous as Colin Farrell, though. If you were, they probably wouldn't do that. Yeah, I think if I was handsome and talented, I'd be way further along. Also, last year, by the way, that was a year of fat suits. It's like, you know what?

There are heavy actors who could take these roles, but instead they take very attractive people. And they're like, all right, let's put you in Klump's makeup now. It feels wrong to me. It's a shallow halification of our attractive celebrities, right? Yes. I'm still in this thought from a tweet. I forget who wrote it. I'm sorry, person who had this great original thought but it was that they spotlighted the whale in this but they were saying that movies that get an oscar for makeup but not best picture

director have an evil energy and it was like the whale the eyes of tammy faye and monster that was another just like you will believe a beautiful person could be ugly that's the magic of the movie anyway honestly that way dad was like see she's a good actor you know she looked ugly my dad just so aesthetics forward he liked tulsi gabbard for a while oh wow man i don't know if it was about her policies or if it was about that she's conventionally attractive but uh she should star in monster that's the real hey that was a bad joke okay well this episode though begins first speaking of jokes there's a sign that says no jokes that starts this episode what are they the tsa come on people come on folks it sucks being that tsa line being such a funny person who

wants to say a funny thing to your husband while walking in line and you just go like can't even joke in these tsa lines That's the real cancel culture. It is. In this line, everybody's in their underwear except for stupid sexy Lenny walking in naked. I like how Homer, like the direction of his eyes is looking at Lenny's penis. Yeah. Like he looks down and just like, so forgot it was physical today. So Lenny just normally doesn't wear underwear.

He's a free guy. You know, in 92, that was pioneering, I guess. Going commando like that. I like how Homer has to think about it for a second and just like, can I borrow your underwear? He goes, no. He realizes then he wouldn't have underwear. You were saying this is tired writers. There's two scenes that end with a character just saying, no.

Instead of saying something funny, which is kind of a joke in and of itself i do appreciate that but i feel like why do we have to write something i'm tired yep yep they probably circled it for four or five hours just knowing it and eventually like what if we just say no and everyone's like sure okay fine these are the fable 20 hour work days that uh are on the record sometimes those work days are magic and sometimes by the end of it you're like so i don't what if she buys a duck does that make sense and people are like i guess that's pretty put it on the board like sometimes it's magic but sometimes it is a weird

experience that's where that line from the poochie episode where they go like poochie good yeah it's good yeah that's what uh end of a long day is it get us out of work good another joke that homer is very fat he has 104 body fat just like in the previous episode we did about millhouse falling in love a lot of jokes about the writers feeling unhealthy uh working is there a joke up in call the simpsons he's floating in one of those body fat tanks and he's eating while in it right yeah yeah see he just has a chicken leg and we've got away from the pork chops homer's beloved pork chops i also have homers just very again talk about a flat joke that's funny in his flatness homer doesn't have a funny response. He's like, go to hell.

Are they getting in line to cum is what I'm asking. Is this the cum line? You're right. How do they get the sperm? I was never asking myself. We go from this line to them looking at the sperm samples. I'm not trying to be blue, people. This is the show putting these pieces together in my head for me.

Yeah, Homer lists a lot of things. Turn your head that way, cough, spread apart that. Where does the semen collection come in in this? See, it's a tough question. It should be a great day at work for Homer. That question was definitely raised in the room, and they were like, what if we just don't discuss that? We just skip ahead, guys.

You rarely get to see the main character's sperm on screen in a sitcom in such a positive way too especially when we get to smithers this is paving the way to the filth of martin that scared away young henry henry's like i'll stare at a sperm sample but this martin fellow i don't think so well it's clinical in this so yes after hom Homer lazily tells Marge about the very invasive physical that he had. And I love the animation of him. His walk, it's very well observed, like the way he gets the beer out of the six pack. It's good animation. But then we start the next scene with Smithers announcing that Homer is sterile.

He's very hands-on with the employees. He's the one looking at all the sperm. Hands-on, indeed. I don't know looking at all the sperm well i don't know indeed i don't know if he was the milker as it were yes no certainly there is a joke here of the pride at which smithers shows his his semen to burns like he's like if you look at this good sample here and if you listen closely smithers sperm are making little smithers noises yeah yeah yeah they're going and I like that birds is like appreciative it's not like

tawdry it's almost like oh yes oh there's almost like race science where it's like oh those are pure blood sperm it's like very good very good that has to be an $8,000 cell just the cell of Smithers sperm and I want it I want the three-eyed blinky

Homer sperm that's the this episode is full of sequel scenes that you know when you do this like we do you can see jokes build over time of runners and all this and so in i married marge earlier in season three when homer talks about in the past getting a job at the power plant march says but you're that makes you sterile and homer says now you tell me now the sterility is finally coming home to roost here they set it up now it's finally arrived this is when burns is told that he might need to talk to his lawyers and this is also a sequel scene to bark gets hit by a car when he's screaming at his lawyers just a little bit and i had to get the clip because i don't know if I've ever heard Harry Shearer in anything

have this much energy. He is going for it in our first clip here. I'm afraid radiation from the plant is the reason he's shooting blanks. He could sue us for millions. Mother of Pearl, call my lawyers. Before you begin, let me make one thing clear to you. I want your legal advice. I even pay for it.

But to me, you're all vipers! You live on personal injury! You live on divorces! You live on pain and misery! But I'm rambling. Anybody want any coffee? I'll have some coffee. Want it black, don't you? Black like your heart? It's so hard for me to listen to you! hate you all so much i'm sorry it's my problem i'll deal with it please continue if you offer mr simpson a token sum say a couple of thou he'll be

so dazzled he'll sign anything you shove under his nose oh brilliant a cash settlement i could have figured that out you buttoned down maggot you have any cream no yes of course where are my men so great i love that last joke i think harry sure hit those heights when he found out the show was renewed for two more years he was talking to his own lawyers then yeah his anger god it's just so good technically if you think of writing burns correctly this kind of scene isn't correct for burns like he shouldn't have this kind of energy screaming all the time but he should like evil lawyers right yeah yeah but i love this scene though now that you mentioned it bob yes now only see conan o'brien acting this out and doing just saying i hate you all well when we Well, when we interviewed Jeff Martin, he mentioned Conan writer's room game when he

would play the evil boss in a improvised scene that he would just do over and over again of like the scene where somebody says, oh, you think that's funny, do you? Well, so do I. In the game, he would do it. He would just grow it bigger and bigger every time. Like, so you really think that's funny? You really do. And like he would work himself to be like purple in his face.

And then it's finally go, well, so do I. Mike, what makes somebody a good entertainer in a writer's room? Who are the good jokesters in a writer's room? Well, there's a difference between necessarily the entertainers and the jokesters. Like there are people who are great at pitching jokes, but they're not there to perform. They're not going to song and dance. Like there'll be people in the back where it's like, okay, but like, what if it's a modern song, but you do it old timey. And everyone's like, oh, great. Yeah, absolutely. Yes. Like that. And then there's people who kind of like song and dance it. And

both are extraordinarily useful and extraordinarily important. I think in either case, one, it's to sort of like be comfortable with what you're good at, especially in comedy writers room. A lot of people come in thinking they have to like be on and dazzle and be like, I'm the fun of the show. And, you know, some people have the charisma to pull it off and some people don't. And so it's not like you should shut up and not talk, but it's sort of like, you need to sort of figure out like where you fit in. You know, you kind of have to ease into it. Like you don't want to bum rush into it and be like, I'm the new one and I'm going to pitch first.

And it's not like a cruel hierarchy, at least most places I've been. But it's more like you sort of one, you want to sort of figure out what you're good at and be comfortable with it. And two, you don't want it to step on other people. Like if you're the lively dude who's doing bits, you're awesome. If you're the lively one who does a bit in the middle of someone pitching something for the show, you're annoying and it just slows everything down.

I mean, you know, not to do a cliche, but it's timing. It's timing with that sort of thing too, where it's like, I know now is the time to jump in and do a bit. I know when it's not, when we're all frustrated and just want to go home. If I start doing a vaudeville bit, everyone's just going to be mad. So I think honestly, it's kind of just being a good person in the sense of paying attention to other people, not stepping on other people, trying to help the room. That's the other thing is like as much of a cliche as it is when you yes and an idea, it's so much more

valuable than when you know, but it, when you go, oh, but maybe we can make it work this way. Like that makes you a vital person. A lot of people, again, because they want to shine, you know, will be like, well, I don't think we should do that because this, which just pisses people off and makes people not want to work with you. So it's being supportive. You know, you always hear horror stories of rooms that aren't supportive, and that's just because everyone in writer's rooms have giant egos. But it's really if you want to succeed in a writer's room, you know, figure out what you're good at and be okay with that. And make sure you're paying attention to what everyone else wants and everyone else needs because you're not the star of the show. That makes a lot of sense.

But how many people in your writer's room have gone on to host The Tonight Show? Hey, if you're as talented as Conan O'Brien, one day you can host the podcast just like us. Yeah, that's true. You can invent podcasting. He did.

Conan O'Brien did. Yeah. No, but. The Simpsons will be right back. Listen up, America. Comedy has a new face. What up?

And his name... Hey, yo, man. ...is Martin Lawrence. It's me, Uno Nuno. He's got his own style. Your man even do the cabbage patch for you. He's got his own philosophy. I'm romantic, you know that.

Don't we get busy every day? And now he's got his own philosophy. I'm romantic, you know that. Don't we get busy every day? And now he's got his own show. You just make sure I get in free. Martin. What up? A new Fox comedy premiering Thursday, August 27th. Tonight, you're invited to a pre-Emmy party.

Woo-hoo! Celebrate their nine Emmy nominations. Oh my God! With a special full hour of the simpsons then it's the 44th annual emmy awards join the salute to tv's funniest women be there to honor the stars who said goodbye this year and laugh with today's brightest and hottest comedy stars join hosts tim allen kirsty alley and denn Miller. Tonight, beginning at 7 on Fox 5. 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? With apologies to the comments I made to the United Nations, it's Henry Gilbert here, and a big thank you to our guest this week, Mike Drucker. So fun to have him on for all of our questions about the world of comedy writing professionally. And we did all this right before the WGA strike started,

so please keep paying attention to what Mike is tweeting up during that. And, you know, we support our friends all on the picket lines right now to try and get some fair deals out of those fat cats up in Hollywood. So but anyway, please follow at Mike Drucker on Twitter for all those updates and for his many funny tweets. And if you're a big fan of this podcast, you should know the Talking Simpsons is only possible thanks to the support of patrons at patreon.com slash talking simpsons the people who subscribe for five bucks a month get tons of exclusives not only they get to hear every episode of talking simpsons a week ahead of time and ad free you're gonna hear next week's episode right now but also they get tons of exclusives every month we do a new episode of talking of the hill and talking futurama where we cover each of those shows super in-depth just like we do an episode of the simpsons and once

every three months we cover an episode of batman the animated series including a brand new one that just hit the patreon and a giant back catalog of us covering every episode of the critic every episode of mission hill and the many previous episodes of batman please check it all out for yourself once more that's at patreon.com slash talking simpsons but if you want something nicer than a copy of ethan from to call your own then you need to sign up at the ten dollar level at patreon.com slash talking simpsons because that premium level gets you all the things i just talked about at five bucks but you also get our premium once a month podcast what a cartoon movie us going into an animated feature film crazy in depth like an episode of the simpsons meaning usually over five or even six hours long we just

did one of our longest ones ever coming out at the end of this month toy story 4 we go through toy story 4 super-de-duper in depth you are not going to believe all the cool stuff we learned and talk about in that one it was a ton of fun sign up today to hear us talk about toy story 4 it's the start of our summer of pixar movies we've got a whole bunch more coming the rest of the summer and you can hear all of our previous ones the entire five year nearly back catalog of what a cartoon movies reason ones have included for april fools we covered in a live action movie the little shop of horrors musical from 1986 we love that one the month before that we cover the 2000 aardman classic chicken run there's a giant back catalog

covering everything from akira to a goofy movie if you want to hear our longest podcast ever six and a half hours about who framed roger rabbit it's all your fingertips if you go to that ten dollar level so please check out everything you are missing today at patreon.com slash talking simpsons. I'll also say about these long burn scenes, this one and the award bit. Again, this feels like a tired late rewrite where they're like we just cut five pages from this script can we get five pages of burns in here that'll fill fill this up push away herb from coming back you're coming up with the name of the ceremony takes maybe 30 seconds so it's so good and long half the time whenever someone's like i don't understand

why this episode had to like shoot it why is this a bottle episode you're like because they lost a million dollars because it rained one of the days and they needed to lose a day exactly yeah that's something i love learning from commentaries that you know like well the reason this was inside here was because like we lost a bunch of money yeah the reason this episode doesn't have any songs in it is because we blew our budget on music in in the third episode of the season or whatever yeah speaking of money we head somewhere below the poverty line as i get older this scene is funnier and funnier to me because i realized as a kid i was just like oh these are just you know these are parodies of hobos and vaudevillian bums, basically.

But now I see that the social commentary I feel this force welder is doing here is that, oh, you know, all of those unhoused people you see in life, they were all incredibly successful businessmen who had one failure. They instantly became unhoused, which is not anything that happens in real life. I feel like no rich person ever goes from being rich to even like middle class. They never go down a level. Yeah. You like hear about certain billionaires who own websites. Maybe they lose 20 billion in a day. Are they cutting back on, I don't know, like luxury toothpaste? I don't think so. No. The closest I can think of that that probably does happen with is short career professional athletes. Sure.

Yes. Definitely professional athletes, guys like, say, Joe Frazier, even, who get a successful hit, they do have financial problems because these are people who are given a ton of money for a thing that they can only do for a small amount of time and they weren't trained in business so it's easy for a million people to just show up and rip off rocky too explores that fairly well i would say i forgot about that right by four he's got his business pretty sorted out by but yes here this collection of chaplain red skeleton em Emmett Kelly. And then there's two bums that look like James L. Brooks and Sam Simon, I think. Yeah, the James L. Brooks hobo is the guy who was sued by

Disney, which is referencing a real case that we'll cover in Lisa the Beauty Queen, where Disney sued a daycare center for putting characters from Disney stuff on its walls. Reading the case, I now side with Disney, which I feel very strange about, which we're all feeling strange about having to side with Disney when it comes to a lot of things lately aren't we oh for sure i do hope they do hurt ron to say this quite a lot also because his wife loves disney so it will only makes his marriage more unhappy it's so funny what if they're both banned from disney parks is that why he visited tokyo recently so he secretly to go to tokyo disney which is even better i think that was it what yeah he's not running for president yet why does he have to go to tokyo do you see that bubble

where he's like he's like i'm not running yet and you're like oh my god dude he he he became bilbo when he was hungry for the ring also now when i see this hobo camp i'm thinking that well just it existed years before this i'm thinking of the guillermo del turo version of nightmare alley oh yeah which that has several hobo camps in it though these guys were also on that disney thing i forgot that there was a thing where disney they won't let you put any disney characters on like graves either like there was a very depressing story of a child passes away and he wanted Spider-Man on his grave and Disney would not let them do it. Disney blocked it from appearing on a child's grave.

It seems wrong. I say add Spider-Man on and they'll be the bad guys for sanding it off in the middle of the night, right? Yeah. That's bad publicity for them. Yeah. Just saying I just wouldn't have asked. I guess you have to, whatever, if your grave maker man has to. That's what I'm like, just carve Spider-Man.

Don't tell anyone. But yes, we hear the story of how Herb lost his fortune. Well, I used to own a successful car company. My strategy was giving them Japanese names. You guys ever drive a Tempura hatchback? Oh, yeah. Oh, sure. Yeah, I got hit by one of those.

Yeah. Life was sweet. Then I found out I had a long-lost half-brother. Homer? Herb? I let him design a car that would make or break my company. Presenting the Homer. I'm ruined!

Forbes magazine called it the blunder of the century. A little overblown, don't you think? What about New Coke? Hey, I invented that. Yeah, but all that's in the past. Because this is America. And in America, you're never finished as long as you've got a brain in your head. Because all a man really needs is an idea.

Well, I'm licked. Me too. They recycled animation from earlier in the scene. It feels like they had a different joke there. But I like just the other hobos going, well, I'm licked. Me too. They give up immediately. I don't got anything and that forbes magazine is dated to august 1991 if you take the first seasons of

simpsons is happening in real time then a year ago this happened to herb with homer and so it would have been on the news story it would have been the cover of forbes in august 91 you know i was wondering if they brought back new coke at any point, you know, with all the nostalgia stuff. And they did in 2019. It was a Stranger Things tie-in. You had to pay hand over fist to get it. But I am old enough where I can say I had New Coke when it was new. And I remember that

after that, all of the Coke was branded Coca-Cola Classic for many a year, just to let you know, like, it's not the garbage we tried to feed you. Yeah. I never gave New Coke a shot well you were four henry i am an anti-soda person too though i pretty much never were you controlling what you were drinking like at the store definitely if somebody opened a can near me they would have said do you want to try new coke hey little buddy you want to try new coke i probably would have

taken a sip but i don't don't recall doing that no i don't remember i never had new coke but i think i did have crystal pepsi i think that's where my brain started to wake up oh yeah we were entering our teens when crystal pepsi came around oh i was younger yeah that okay and because i read the book sequel to forrest gump gump and company it was never made a two movie and i kind of wanted to because the book is insane in the book forrest does a bunch of other historical crap and one of the things is he invents new Coke in that book. Man, I can't believe when they made some more new Coke that they made such a small amount of it.

You would figure like Stranger Things, like a billion people watch that show. Like you'd figure they'd have made more of it. Yeah, if you went to the online store, you could buy a Stranger Things limited edition collector's pack, which costs $20. And for that, you get one eight ounce glass bottle of coke classic and an eight ounce bottle of whoa okay you actually get the cans of new coke along with it i guess it's like they couldn't legally sell it to you it sounds like it has to be some oh sorry you get two cans of new coke but you're actually buying the classic bottles i see yeah it's such a complicated deal it's like buying weed from an app. It's like, why do I need change back?

I'm buying new Coke. While this is very accurate CEO behavior, Herb is an asshole to me. Like, every time I watch these, I'm just like, well, wait, Herb. It was your company. You asked Homer to build the car. You gave him no oversight and presented the car without even viewing it before you unveiled it. Yeah. Homer ruined your life?

Like, Homer killed your business, Herb? Yeah, we've watched the episode quite a few times now, and we concluded that Herb was at fault. Absolutely. So that's why him in this episode, I'm just like, God, you're an asshole. Like, take some fucking blame for yourself herb jesus but that i guess is why he became a ceo because he blames everyone else for any failure it's funny because in that episode he was like oh i want a family this is what's missing from my life and it turns out no he just wants his money again that's right so there's nothing redeemable about

him clearly he doesn't love this family because after this episode, he never wants to see Bart or Lisa ever again. Even Maggie, who helped him the most in becoming rich again. Speaking of change to dialogue in this episode, this is a big one. So they wrote this one. Well, Nancy Cartwright's on the commentary and she says she has a script from October 91. By the time this aired in August 92 92 the soviet union was no more it officially dissolved december

26 1991 and they wrote a scene where bart when he's going to do the living room olympics he dedicates it to mother russia they decide they got to change that they instead change it to stain master carpets instead which is not a bad choice and he still does a stereotypical kid russian voice too and this is also really good observational behavior of a kid who as a kid you play around on furniture thinking all furniture is indestructible yeah and then when it breaks you have to pretend to your parents that you didn't do it you just like just fell apart like that lamp and i guess it fell over mom i don't know but that's such a sweet sibling moment where they're like totally in sync about the lie like you're like that is actually a

very nice sibling relationship lisa knows to fake crying and then bart puts his arm around her to comfort her yeah and i love the look he gives homer just like are you buying this i know i've become old because i went to a pizza place there's a couch in there you can sit on. And I was eating my pizza and a bunch of teens came in. I think they were on lunch from school. And they just all like butt stomped on the couch together. And I thought that is not good for that furniture. Young man.

You sit like proper gentlemen and ladies, please. But Homer's just upset that the couch is destroyed at prime time when TV'sish stars come out to shine that's a great homerism he's bought into the commercials i mean the newest star is martin that's right they should have re-recorded it to say but i was just about to watch martin debuting tonight it's gonna be so funny it's driving me crazy because i couldn't find it online nobody's uploaded it folks follow daily simpsons on Twitch, the Simpsons History Twitter account, because sporadically on Twitch, the person who runs it will play an old episode as recorded off

TV in its first airing with all the original commercials, but they don't get archived because Twitch wouldn't allow it. It's full of copywritten material. You got to be there when it airs. And when Daily Simpsons has played them once from this season four there is like a handoff segment that's original stuff of like martin or other cast members of martin after the simpsons is over they go like that part he's so funny well you know on martin tonight he's got his own problems it's basically them selling the

next episode of martin to simpsons viewers i love that i love stuff like that but sadly it's also like lost to time i should have looked this up but i would figure they'd be online and easy to see if they were that type of thing should be on the martin dvds of like yeah this is original martin content or on max where martin currently lives i guess it's hbo max right now when i'm saying this but we should just train ourselves to say when it when it becomes max no one will know you're talking about it called hbo max it'll just confuse everybody what was that that sounds like a channel that is too full of prestige like i need something for everyone no one was like hbo max i i don't want that

too expensive for me i didn't care for the HBO part of the equation frankly who wants HBO so then Homer has a series of memories about how he spent his 80s watching TV from the couch his first memories from November 21st 1980 as he is watching the part two well actually it's not part two but it is the resolution of who shot jr complicatedly who shot jr was the season finale of season three of dallas but when they came back from season four they actually killed time with three episodes and it's episode four in the november sweeps when they finally reveal who shot jr it got 90 million viewers it set a record for a non-sports non-politics thing like actual like scripted television it set the record until mash's finale three years later and

the woman homer is hearing say that she shot jr that must be christine shepherd played by mary crosby who was revealed to be the one to have shot jr but all right let's talk about the big thing here though hands across america yep as a kid never heard of hands across america i heard the big hit songs like usa for africa i heard that but i never heard of hands across america as a kid this was when i learned about it as me too when it happened i was four and i chose not to participate so i had my reasons. Yeah. I think also being from Florida, did it extend down there?

It did not. I also looked that up too. Right, right. So it sort of zigzagged across America so it could go from New York to Los Angeles and get as many people. So basically, it was a charity event. To stand in the hand chain, you paid ten dollars minimum to the charity and it was a sequel to usa for africa like it's run by the same people and so it starts in new york and it basically crosses america and as the joke in the episode says there were kind of breaks in it across

america that were represented with like ribbons or chains or other stuff to connect it. I'm reading for the first time here that Youngstown, Ohio, the town I'm from, was a major Hands Across America hotspot. And Michael Jackson was there? Michael Jackson? Yes. Well, I was the four-year-old little boy. I'm glad it was nowhere on the scene. Okay? You could have met Michael. I had blonde hair, Henry. Oh, God. He would have been his favorite that day. My parents knew better. He's from Gary, Indiana, right?

I think so, yeah. That's shocking. I guess there are enough people in Youngstown to hold hands with each other at that point. It did not come down to Florida. The closest, though, I as a kid was living in Arkansas at the time. I moved to Florida when I turned 12, actually during this season of The Simpsons when I turned 10.

But I was in Little Rock, Arkansas, and it says the biggest celebrity there was like Governor Bill Clinton, which is like, yeah, it was a fucking governor. Whoop-dee-doo. Like, that's not a real celebrity. They should have sent a celeb to Little Rock, Arkansas. Yeah.

That's wrong. It happened on May 25th, 1986, and apparently went through Springfield somehow. And then the New York Times in an article later said that after costs that it made $15 million for charities that mainly assisted the unhoused. So, hey, that's nice. And they even had a song, which I have a little clip of the song, and then I have a thing that's hidden on the DVD, a deleted bit of the actors on The Simpsons singing the song from the scene. Hands across this land I love Divide and reform United we stand Hands across America Hands across America. Hands across this land I love.

Divided we fall, united we stand. Hands across America. Black. Did that harmonize? Yeah, that was alright. That was pretty good. A couple of times. We know where Yardley Smith stands. She said, That's great. That's when they were all recording together. It's great. That's so sweet.

Yeah. I believe that was Kogan directing it. It sounded like Jay Kogan. Yeah. Yeah. It's so funny hearing them try to harmonize. I like Dan saying, like, couple times, couple times. That's deleted from the episode, but you can find it on the DVD.

And, of course, it's been a while. I'd forgotten this, that if you didn't see this episode, you probably learned about Hands Across America from watching Jordan Peele's Us. Yeah. Because it was a major plot point there as well you would have had to miss this episode for like 27 years though you tried pretty hard to miss this one then you know some people did but when the us movie came out felt like there was this divide on twitter of people i was definitely seeing some people on social media saying wait this was a real thing looking up hands across america and then the reaction from dorks like me going like um

somebody's never seen the simpsons before if they don't know about this also noted in that scene of the hands across america helen lovejoy is given pink hair it's very distracting so it's like the woman holding marge's hand at first i didn't read it as helen lovejoy but then you can see leaning into frame during the song you can tell it's helen lovejoy but then you can see leaning into frame during the song you can tell it's reverend lovejoy so i was like oh that so that is helen lovejoy they just did her hair entirely it was a cindy lopper era of haircuts and you know what i also love about this is that it does set the simpsons heavily in okay lisa was a little girl in 1986 which obviously the show can't do that now but it's funny funny to think that homer's also watching the berlin wall fall

on november 9th 1989 but he'd rather watch a gomer pile rerun this could be the first gomer pile reference on the simpsons oh no i just remembered the other one todd wanted to watch that he was watching that on tv when ned was trying to figure out why he swears right we still haven't Oh, no. I just remembered the other one. Todd wanted to watch that. He was watching that on TV when Ned was trying to figure out why he swears. That's right. We still haven't seen him, though. Yes. Yeah, we've yet to see him.

We're waiting for it, folks. They also give Tom Brokaw many L's to say. Live and lively liberation lovers, I believe is the word. We then see Homer cry and say that it's going to go back to where he found the couch the curb in front of flanders house which i love that so then we cut back to herb he's trying to think of an idea this kind of is a reset of herb it's not to say he couldn't be an inventor but it's like well by the way you're a car executive like you you may have been a good car executive it's like did he invent cars is he like a car inventor he just invented car names yeah basically every businessman is also a technical genius that

is what the world has taught us they can all invent things yeah every idea they have is great if they're good at selling cars they can build tunnels they can own social media websites. They can sell flamethrowers. They can do everything. Yeah. If you wrote in C++ in 1998, you can pretty much figure out how rockets work without doing any work. You're going to get to Mars tomorrow. It's going to happen. In this case, Herb is also sure like, I'm a great inventor.

I can think of something. So on my first viewing, until they literally say it out loud I could never figure out what he was making like I was like wait what what is this like it makes sense but it was a shock to me in first viewing of like oh a baby translator but you can see it here when he freaks out the lady and sees her frustrated at it not knowing what her kid wants and I tried to look up if there are real baby translators now and all I found, Google is unfortunately unhelpful in this because it just goes like, there are 80 apps called baby translator

and I don't know if they do anything or don't do anything. Well, they just steal your credit card information is what they do. Some of them were like, oh, we can tell when your babies cry what it means. It's like, sure, sure you can. Also, this is like a society changing device if your newborn is sentient and can speak through an intermediary that is really a societal

difference yeah actually it is a huge change to the world and you never see it again in the universe ever yeah every baby should be voiced by dan DeVito in this show, right? I also love the mother's reaction of like, please don't hurt me. He just goes, consider it done. Like he was thinking of hurting her, maybe. But he's like, you know. The way it's phrased where he goes, you just gave me the idea of a lifetime. Which, what is she thinking that is? Right, yeah.

That's true. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, for a second in this episode on first viewing as a child, I thought because the music is ominous later that his plan was to kidnap Maggie. Like that was his plan. Watching it again, it bumped me almost like it gets ominous. And I was like, what is going to happen?

Because I remember it not like being anything bad. But in my head, I was like, does he do something I forgot about? It is a really ominous sting. I think they even laugh at it on the commentary like why is this ominous music here was it an intentional misdirect i think so maybe did elf clausen go into business for himself and just decide so this is when we then cut back to homer and this also just feels like such slapdash sitcom writing just to get to the next joke the idea of homer has to get money so we just have to hand homer money so he can have it for the herb plot

and so yeah and not not to get too inside baseball but this next joke feels like a david merkin joke it's a joke at the expense of just the structure of the show and sitcoms in general where it's like smithers missed his cue homer knows that he has to get in trouble in order for the plot to continue or has to be called into burns's office in order for the plot to continue but the queue is a little off and they're kind of looking around and wondering when will this happen it's so great homer just has to restate it he's like yeah i don't think my life can possibly get any worse finally he's called into the office for his next scene and as he enters the room i love how burns calls him a big virile son of a gun this is where the titular two dimes come in right yes is this

also because they are degenerate gamblers on the simpson staff and they're calling two thousand dollars two dimes oh uh like i guess put a dime on it or whatever would that be a 10 would that be 100 would that be a thousand is a dime okay i believe yes interesting okay actually that's in the mary tyler uh see mike i guess in your writer's room you guys aren't gambling on football all the time like in the classic simpsons no no we're not not at all we're usually just like watching tv and then making fun of people who aren't in the room that's not but who's your book true well what do you do with your bookie then like the bookie you must all have i feel like the two things that aren't in that i have

not experienced that used to be much bigger are hardcore sports betting and cocaine like both i have not found in large supply at all but you know what generations change man you know that cocaine mention that reminded me of something else i wanted to say and i shared it with you bob beforehand there was this in 2011 danny devito interviewed james l brooks at the sf sketch fest which is a great comedy festival in san francisco that we've all been a part of. And they're great. I love that every year, 2011, they did a showing of broadcast news that also had a 90 minute Q&A beforehand with Brooks and DeVito.

And I couldn't see it. I chose not to get tickets because broadcast news is a fine movie, but it's not my favorite or anything. I wish I'd have gone because this reporter's write-up of the event sounds like Danny DeVito was having a really good time and telling a lot of stories that were embarrassing James L. Brooks and one of their main ones was just that DeVito kept saying everybody was doing cocaine back then when he was working on movies but he keeps saying like yeah it was really snowing on that set or we

were all hitting the slopes and james l brooks just apparently had his face in his hands and he's going like uh yes yeah yeah it's so funny to read how much openly like devito like what's devito care he's like yeah we were just getting all fucked up back then to see james l brooks oscar winner trying to keep some level of composure as he was telling all these stories. I wish I'd have been there, but the reporting on it is very fun. It sounded fun. There's a couple of not nice stories told about Shirley MacLaine and Deborah Winger

in there as well. Though he was clear to say like, hey, the movie Terms of Endearment wouldn't exist without those two women in it. But it sounded like it was a tough set but anyways so homer enters the room this is when he finds out he's going to be given an award and again it's harry sheer he's the mvp of this episode yeah in this scene here wait a minute i'm not signing anything until i read it or somebody gives me the gist of it. All right, well, it just explains that you've won... Yes, that's it. Won the first annual, uh, Montgomery Burns, uh,

uh, award for, uh, outstanding achievement in the, uh, the field of, uh, excellence. Don't I get some kind of trophy at a big award ceremony? It's the first annual Montgomery Burns Award for Outstanding Achievement in The field of excellence. Yeah! Don't feel alone Thanks a lot Yes! That was Benita DeWolf

from the Springfield Nuclear Plant Soft Shoe Society. This award is the biggest farce I ever saw. What about the Emmys? I stand corrected. There you go. Take that, Emmys. The director on this one

was Rich Moore, correctore correct yes he talked about hearing that great harry share a line delivery of him improvising the title of the award of course the lines were written but it sounds like the character's improvising he said he spent an entire day laying out like every pose for burns for that scene just to get it perfect and it's great he's perfect a lot of finger twiddling. One, yes, the Montgomery. Like the way he trails off, you can see in his body language, he's like searching for a word

and he goes like, ah, I found it. Like, God, so good. Speaking of award winners, it's Oscar winner Rich Morinow after the show. He's got more Oscars than Al Jean, but not more than James L. Brooks. That's the scale we're using. You've got Al Jean at zero and Jamesames l brooks at five i want to say

i would assume he got definitely two for director and two and then best picture as well and i feel like there's a fifth in there somewhere how do you know got a special award for best title it's an easy to remember title we all remember it i never remember that title like that i only remember it because it's so unmemorable how do you know you it i never remember that title like that i only remember it because it's so unmemorable how do you know you know i feel like that might be his last movie i don't think he's going to come back to direct another one i'm guessing it probably is yeah but anyway yeah the dance number also is great i guess mike how i don't see as many dance numbers these days definitely at the oscars this year there was a really great dance number from the RRR guys.

Yeah, they don't usually have them as much. Or if they do them, it's usually like, here's the dancers from a reality show about dancers. And they'll do like a cool routine, but it's not the old timey like vaudevillie show girly type thing doesn't really happen as much anymore. At least not the award shows I'm allowed into. But they still do like performances and like songs and dances that are kind of corny sometimes it feels like this is a throwback because i feel like award shows have not looked like the family guy opening for a very long time yes yeah what happens we need to see a bunch of people in gold with big top hats jokes like this in the family

guy opening ruined it you don't do chorus line openings anymore and all you see today is sex and violence on tv right true it's true we need to get back those good old-fashioned values i'm not doing any more of this i used to rely on you bob to remember these lines okay but yes the calling the emmys a farce again they lost three weeks before this is why they're mad about it and they wouldn't win another one for a few more seasons until lisa's wedding so that's when they win again i think they get beats it's my other kids shows really i don't think they submitted in seasons four and five they were not even nominated in seasons four and five so i don't know if they submitted anything oh man do you think they withdrew their submission in rage after that could Okay, so I want to say one thing. I love these subtle jokes on the show

where they make fun of bad speeches and bad essay writing and things like that. Just very nerdy jokes about writing. Yes. And I love Joe Frazier's speech because he opens with a bad opener, but it follows up with nothing. You think it's going to be a pivot to a larger explanation of what excellence means in terms of who Homer is but no he just gives the dictionary definition and then says and the winner is Homer Simpson it's such a great gag I always love middle school opening type stuff like that or since the beginning of time mankind has like any any sort of construction like that is always so fun in your writing on award shows Mike have you been involved in any of that patter beforehand? I think I had to do patter once.

And this was maybe like one of my first gigs. Usually you don't do patter. Usually patter is like a whole different team that does it. I think I had to do it for an early gig where I was sort of on that team. It's rough. One, you have the celebrities who themselves are very, very careful about what they're willing to say and what they want to say. And, you know, you find out before an award show, this person doesn't want to present with this person. They want to present

with this person. So you start having to move people around and those people have different comforts. And also a lot of these people aren't, you know, it's not like a role. They're not like spending a day memorizing it. They're like, see it once and they see it again. And they're kind of like, you know, special effects make films. And they, you know, like it's hard for them too. It's a lose-lose proposition. Whenever I write on an award show and people ask about things, I'm always like, the shorter we can make this, the better. Nobody wants this thing to be longer.

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At Electric Ireland, we can help guide you there. You see, our new Net Zero hub has all you need to know about smart meter plans, EV tariffs, solar panels and much more. Making your usage clearer, your trips greener, your home cozier, and your world brighter. Find our net zero hub at electricireland.ie. You know, I heard, stealing a story from a previous guest, but I heard him tell it, Tim Kalpakis, who also wrote for some award shows. He a great comedy writer he talked about how he was assigned

to do patter for snoop dogg and martha stewart on stage he was thinking like okay gotta do something real challenging here he's you know giving that combo he's like gotta do something new with this and he then said that like some person on one person's team came to him and said hey you know what would be really funny is if he suggested to her that he has a special brownie recipe and then tim was like i think forced to write that as the joke he's like i guess i gotta do it and also it killed everybody laughed real hard at it it's it's the thing that he does i mean yeah honestly and that does happen too is does happen too, is you'll write the line and then they'll be like, can I rewrite this? And you're like, yeah, sure.

And like, you know, there's still people who approve it. They're not going to put a racial slur into the prompter. But like, you know, like usually it'll be some, you know, maybe something that is kind of plain or like is very carefully worded to protect themselves in some way or what have you. And you're kind of like, okay, great. You say that. Patter's really about making the celebrities comfortable,

as it should be because patter is just a mechanism to get to the thing people want. The shows would be faster if they just showed up and said, the nominees are, just write them off. But yeah, by the way, that most recent Oscars, the one patter that I really, I do not blame the people who had to say it, but it was so crazy that they had come out the two stars of the upcoming Little Mermaid live action movie. And they start doing patter like they're presenting an award, but they're showing the trailer for their movie. That was crazy.

That was the moment where I was like, oh, this is the Game Awards now. I mean, look, there have been ads and baked in content like that have always been in Oscars. I'm not saying, oh, the Oscars used to be so prestigious. They never do that. No, of course not. Tons of people have presented awards because they have a new movie coming out. But it did feel like a next step was taken to be like, you know what? This isn't even an award. I'm not even just going to joke about my upcoming movie.

I'm going to make you watch this trailer right now. Oh, gosh. Yeah. But anyway, well, this is Joe Frazier here. Smoking Joe Frazier. One of the greatest boxers of all time. In his era, unfortunately, overshadowed by Muhammad Ali. He should be the pride of Philadelphia, but they prefer a fictional white man to one of the greatest boxers of all time,

who happens to be a black man. And he's also a two-time Simpsons guest. He came back in 2011 with the season 17 episode, Homer's Paternity Coot. And I like his little reading glasses. I think in the early nineties, we were getting into the joke of celebrities putting on little glasses to read at award shows.'s true yeah webster's dictionary defines excellence as the quality or condition of being excellent and now the winner of the first annual montgomery burns award for outstanding achievement in the field of excellence don't jinx it the winner homer simpson oh my god him reading the dictionary definition of excellence is funny because he was directed

by george meyer who is a big time boxing fan and so he's directing fraser who as you can hear in the clips he has a small speech issue he's been hit in the head several hundred times thousand times i doubt i would speak very well if i had been punched once by george foreman in my life but yes he's having trouble saying the word excellence instead of excellent apparently took him 20 tries to say it and then after he did it ge George Myers said, that was excellent. And then Joe Frazier did not laugh. He seemingly did not get the joke there. Oh, you mentioned George Foreman. According to Nancy Cartwright's original script, this was going to be George Foreman, but he

might have turned it down. You know, Joe Frazier's funnier to me anyway. You know, George Foreman, you see him in everything. Yeah, I kind of agree. But yes, this is Homer finds out he's worried he's not going to get the award and he gets it they even know to play his theme music of the show and then homer falls off the balcony which that's why he's so far away from the stage it's easy to miss but there are some good mock surprise from mr burns when homer's name is announced oh yes yeah that's

great burns is the best in this episode also me note here they save themselves the trouble the internet archive is one of my new favorite things to do when prepping this because there actually are a few scripts for old episodes like this on there there wasn't for this episode but there was the character model pack for this episode oh wow and the most interesting thing is that they just reused their character models from the 1990 emmys for their outfits so that's why the simpsons are dressed out at the award show it's the same stuff they are wearing when they present an emmy award at the 1990 okay i thought it looked familiar because they've never been more dressed up on the show i know i elisa's little headband, I think, is my favorite of the outfits.

And Mike's an award show attendee. Do you just go with a simple tux? What do you dress up in? Yeah, just simple tux. I own a J. Crew tux because I'm pretty fancy. No, I either squeeze into it or it hangs off me like I'm a kindergarten art teacher, depending on where my body is at the moment. Henry phr phrased the question as what do you dress up in dress and i think you want to say who are you wearing like oh yes uh but yeah i just wear a usual a tuxedo i

don't wear i usually wear one with like a little narrow black tie rather than a bow tie because i feel like you would expect me to wear a bow tie any any like sort of aesthetic thing that you'd expect me to do I just want to not do because there's like I just don't want to do a bow tie uh so yeah a little like thin tie kind of not fancy um but yeah wear a tuxedo these things it's fun I mean it eventually gets hot because you're wearing like a coat and layers and you're in los angeles but it's kind of nice it's nice to dress up every so often i like bart's blazer with a turtleneck i like his look in it it's a good one uh yeah well actually it's funny you mentioned los angeles because seeing homer

seated at the bar with his emmy i think that's probably a lot of people you i mean you see photos from like award show after parties and people have you know the drink in one hand and the award right next to them i was in downtown los angeles for a video game event around when i think the technical emmys happened because you know i'm just walking around to you know meet with friends at a restaurant and then i'm walking by tons of people really dressed up holding emmy awards i was like wow i have never seen an emmy award like in person people are just like seated at a open air bar with their emmy awards right there yeah but yeah homer is feeling a real sadness after his award he's feeling empty instead of which it is a fake award so he probably should feel empty a fake award given just to avoid a lawsuit i didn't even remark on it homer says he'll either read it or someone

has to give him the gist of it meaning lie to him just make up what the award is for yes homer is feeling kind of empty and smoking joe tries to comfort him this is when homer's not even listening like he thinks his couch is more important than the undisputed boxing heavyweight championship there's like three of those three of those yeah it's funny because homer says that i believe it was three belts that made it the undisputed he had to win all three to be the undisputed and it breaks the lineage when somebody in 92 i believe it is riddick bow who breaks that lineage he like drops one of the titles like in a garbage can theatrically at some press event to be like i'm not defending this one so the undisputed championship actually

is over the year this episode air it's now disputed lennox lewis reunited them in the year 2000 and then when he retired there has not been an undisputed men's heavyweight boxing champion since then wow though i mean, I mean, nobody cares. The only thing people care about boxing now is when one of the Paul brothers does it. Oh, yeah, how's Jake Paul doing? You know, he lost a fight to somebody. Oh. The ticket sales have been down.

Now that people have seen him lose a fight, people don't give a shit anymore. I want to see Ron Paul in a fight. I would have liked to see that. Rand Paul, he was the one who got in the fight, though. Yeah, he did get into a fight. A neighbor, well, didn't finish the job. That's all I'm saying. I'm not saying if it's a good or bad thing.

It just didn't happen. It's just a statement of fact. Yeah. Well, speaking of fights and sequel jokes in this episode, originally in the script it was that Barney, like how he knocks out Wade Boggs in the script it was that barney like how he knocks out wade boggs in the softball episode he was going to knock out joe frazier he was going to challenge frazier to a fight and he would win it one of joe frazier's sons who was working with him on the episode

was very upfront that says my dad is not losing a fight to barney on the show and there's also something very funny about like you know what's going to happen and then it just happens i think it's funnier just like he goes let's go outside like all right and then he's instantly horribly yeah yeah uh great visual guy where the door swings out and when it swings back there's blood on it. Yeah. Like, I think they got their revenge later because in season five, Otto knocks out Jerry Cooney with one punch at the casino. Yes. I mean, that's an even funnier joke.

And, like, Jerry Cooney does not have the respectability to say, hey, you can't knock me out. Like, he's not a champion. He's Tim Kaine who got beat up by mike tyson like once or something but hey barney's not even sad about it because he found a peanut at the bottom of that garbage can homer is feeling alone and couchless though first we cut to herb he realizes the fact that all people learn it doesn't matter if you've got a great idea you need a rich family member to give you money to let it happen. As we also learned, sometimes it needs to be an emerald mine. You know, sometimes it's a $2,000 award for Mr. Burns.

Either way, a brilliant idea won't get you anywhere if you don't have the money to make it happen. Sometimes your dad writes for a TV show and then you get to. That's been known to happen. A lot of folks. Sometimes. A lot of folks. A lot of folks. By the way sometimes a lot of folks by the way for everyone listening my dad does not write for television i was calling mike out

we want to be clear we all know about the famous drucker writer room on the johnny carson's tonight show cheers creator steve drucker steve drucker sound familiar my dad people since i do comedy people are like oh are you related to like mort drucker steve drucker sound familiar my dad people since i do comedy people are like oh are you related to like mort drucker the old mad magazine artist no no good no good druckers that's the one famous drucker i can think of other than you of course thank you so much thank you so much i feel like they could have had a funnier headline it's just what herb says out loud like local man wins two thousand dollars like simpsons famous for their great headline gags this feels like tired right late in the season just a statement of fact headline local man wins too i mean i suppose it counts as a joke that why would that be a headline in the newspaper

that he won two thousand dollars so herb decides he needs to go to springfield a fun bunch of visual gags of him trying to hop on cars which ends up on a pillow car they cut a line where he was trying to ask which state springfield was in and then a train whistle silences it but they would reuse that in the larry burns rodney dangerfield episode in season seven homer meanwhile is feeling couch, and this is when he sees an amazing vibrating chair. And Graney says that he bought a chair just like this around the time this episode aired. This truly was the era of vibrating chairs. We had one of these.

It wasn't top of the line, but it was a recliner that had a vibration function. And I was young, and my body didn't hurt yet, so I didn't really understand it. It's like, no. I just feel weird when i'm sitting in this why would you make it vibrate but now i get it sorry mike did you have any vibrating chair stories no but i just like whenever i'd go to like the sharper image as a kid you'd like sit in those vibrating chairs like it always seemed like it was this future that you would never attain with your family i mean it looks like a nice chair i have a good recliner that i barely used but it was a gift from my parents but i mean it was it's like a 600 recliner this this one is two thousand dollars in 1992

money which according to an online inflation calculator is four thousand three hundred dollars in today money this time i took it as what counts as a joke as a good joke as it's a spine melter 2000 and then right below it it says only 1999 so it's the 2000 and it's 1999 and akira at this point in time he wasn't recurring that much but he was the clerk at any kind of trendy establishment like the sushi chef he was the karate instructor and now he is the chair salesman at that their sharper image store still voiced by hank azaria and of course it's for a sulu joe yes which is homer is giving mr sulu a command you get mr scott right yeah that does seem more like yeah i mean you can tell sulu to do this too but you just say like well you should be asking scotty

in the engine why couldn't will Willie be working at this place? And it's also funny that this is so stacked up. It's like instantly a Star Trek joke straight into a long 2001 parody, which is very well animated. Though as a kid, I didn't get this. I didn't see 2001 until they did so many jokes of it in Deep Space Homer that that's when I finally asked my parents to rent it so I could finally watch it. Because I was like, I have to know what these jokes are about. I only saw it for the first time like five years ago in 4K. Oh, yeah. As a kid, I saw it really young. My parents showed us a lot of media, but it wasn't because they were like, we're going to make these kids smart.

It was like, listen, if we're putting on a movie, they're going to watch it. Like they'd fast forward through like anything with like boobs in it. But since I was three or four, I'd see movies where people were like blown apart just because they liked like they were like, it's more fun to watch as a family. So I remember seeing 2001 really early. So when I saw this episode as a kid, I remember being like, I understand. Like it was almost like this moment to me that was like such like a deep cut movie because it was so long ago and who knows who Stanley Kubrick is because I was fucking eight years old and so when you see that you're like whoa I just remember being so impressed by that moment as a kid and he's been

dead for so long now it's crazy to think that Kubrick very well could have seen these things on The Simpsons. I mean, and he was living in the UK at the time, I believe. So he'd have, you know, the UK loves The Simpsons. I think he was just a big fan of TV in general. That's true. I think he shot movies full frame because he knew they'd just be on television. So he shot them with that in mind. If it comes to your town, like it's come to San Francisco several times. If you can see 2001 in 70 millimeter, that's the way to see it. Yeah, that'sisco several times if you can see 2001 and 70 millimeter

that's the way to see it yeah that's how i saw it not 4k 70 millimeter and i was not high thank you very much i only had a few beers and rich moore's team does amazing animation in this like above and beyond you can see why a year later they hire rich more to be the series director on the critic because just this is pitch perfect parody of a film here homer is loving this but marge as marge often does especially in john swartzwell their scripts she is here to let us know that there's no fun to be had. I'll take it. This chair is $2,000. We could buy a whole living room set for that. Marge, there's an empty spot I've always had inside me.

I tried to fill it with family, religion, community service, but those were dead ends. I think this chair is the answer. This money was a blessing. We can't just spend it on some creature comfort. All right, we won't get the chair. Now excuse me while I kiss the sky. Homer's doing an ah-hey-gow there. Now, Henry, the eyes have to cross.

The tongue has to be fully extended. And he has to be actively orgasming. And I see maybe one of those things he's hitting. This is a primordial ah-hey-gow. Look, he's drooling. The tongue's close there. You can see the tongue. I don't know. We need some analysts to jump in and check this out.

You're right. It's not an official ah-hey-gow without crossed eyes at the very least. You're right. Thank you. I want this to cleave like a division between you two. Like this could be the wedge. But Homer is mentioning Hendrix's purple haze here i often have homer thoughts of i feel so empty in my life maybe this expensive creature comforts finally going to be the answer to happiness but for homer it actually is the answer to that happiness bad lesson

well obviously again clearly as a nine to ten year old the joke you are lost on me and i'm just thinking like yeah homer's right yeah this will make you happy herb has found his way to evergreen terrace he looks at two different houses one is the simpson house looking worse than it ever has on the front and he decides you know what gonna try the other house next door and it's so great the meaning of him and ned is so great i got the whole clip here yes oh uh sorry i must have the wrong house oh that's where you're wrong friend aren't we in luck today's our tithe day and we've got ourselves a transient come Come in, my friend. Let us feed and bathe you. Hey, wait a minute. Dad, can I anoint the sores on his feet?

I think it's Mom's turn, son. Aw, no fair. Thanks for the suit. Well, if you ever want to spend the night, Maude and I can sleep on card tables. Onward, Christian soldiers! Marching as to war! They're singing again.

Lousy neighbors. Wish I was deaf. What am I going to say? This is the guy who ruined me. But on the other hand, he's family. So many conflicting emotions. How to express them. Herb?

Man, Homer should punch him back. I'm just really mad at Herb for how he treats Homer in this one. There is a real boomer-ass reference buried in this scene, though, because when Herb pushes the doorbell and it plays a song, that song is A Mighty Fortress Is Our God, which is also the theme of Davy and Goliath. Oh, wow. I missed that.

Wow, that's a good pull missed that. That's a good pull. Man, that's so funny. It's funny also thinking back like how controversial The Simpsons was those first few seasons where people were like, you know, this is anti-family and anti-Christian and you look at them now and you're like, this is such a nice portrayal of a Christian

family. You know what I'm saying? Like, because I remember back then, like, in my neighborhood, like, the very Christian families were the ones who were like, they're not allowed to watch this. They are absolutely not allowed. They make fun of religion. It's great that Ned started as the yuppie next door neighbor. And now by the end of season three, he is the perfect, like, saintly Christian. Like, no, in the real world christians do not do

this but in this yeah is this when they made him incredibly pious this episode in particular it feels like they really leveled up his religiousness definitely the feeling that he doesn't like swearing he is more religious in that episode but this is the next level like anointing the sores on his feet as a competition yeah that's a new level to it for sure yeah that's the joke that nobody can be this perfect but ned is it's a great scene but it's also killing time i feel like they don't have a lot of story to tell once herb gets there which is why he shows up more than 12 minutes into the 22 minute episode with credit it's deep into act two yeah yeah but after saying biden and he

heads over to the simpsons house punches homer goes inside and also herb is back to his first appearance design i think that's so he's not in lower status around the family like if he was in his homeless man design then they'd like feel too much pity for him so he has to get reset visually back to the nice suit guy instead homer is on the ground herb steps over his body and then marge they're asking him how he is and i love him listing all his things and then marge was like i can't complain like he wasn't living out of a trash coat waste disposal unit he was living in a dumpster you know eating out of dumpsters. He was doing better than Otto. Yeah.

You're right. Yeah. Also a sequel scene to the Herb episode because Herb gave them a tour of his mansion when they first arrived at his house. Now he's arriving at their house and Homer's giving a much more reserved tour of his home, including the light switches,

which Moore mentions on the commentary. Like, how exactly do you animate lights going on and off in the daytime in a cartoon every year since it gets even funnier happy new year 1985 the older it gets the better i mean we moved into a new house around this time a year before actually and there were a few mystery switches where i wasn't sure what they did and my parents didn't know either and i always assume that on our roof there was a sign like this yeah right after this episode aired when we moved into our new home in florida moving from the atlanta area to florida jacksonville area there was a button in the house a button there was a button in the bathroom and we pressed that button and we instantly regretted it because a alarm went off and like i can't remember it was

the cops or a security company and they're like this is like a home security alarm people who sold the house didn't tell us about i thought it was a hilarious toilet alarm no it was so crazy yeah it's in the bathroom too right yeah i guess they imagined that so the bad guys break into your house you run and lock yourself in the bathroom and then you press that button so instead it became i was 10 my brother was 7 and our parents had to tell us like you know in certain terms like never press this button like never ever you will be in big trouble if you press that button wow wow the wow. The temptation. It's like that Ren and Stimpy episode. Every time friends came over,

I had to tell them, like, guys, do not press that button. But it was the danger, too, of, like, if you have some trouble making no-good-nick friends and you tell them, like, no, that might look like a fun button or it might do nothing. Seriously, don't press it.

Then it makes them even more wanting to press it to mess with your family was that button ever disabled you know i think it never was a problem ever again i don't remember it ever being pressed i feel like when i was about to move out one day i think i did press it and it did nothing so but yeah just for the longest time it was just the terrifying bathroom button was what it was i wonder if it was like they had like a year subscription and that just like phased out. I should ask the new owners of that place.

I should look up the address, Doc's who's ever at it. Yeah, Doc's. Well, of course, I'm going to put it on Twitter to be like, these people will reply to my phone calls. Like, so tell people at this address, my old childhood address. There's some real ADR voice stuff here. Marge saying the recipe. I think this line is great, though. I bet the old line wasn't as funny.

But Marge saying, I got the recipe from the utility grade beef council. I just love Marge getting recipes from any council. Utility grade beef. Which is right above dog food, I believe it is. I'm not a regular beef eater i don't know the gratings of it until looking it up but like basically if you have utility grade beef it is often from older cows apparently and is usually turned into you know cheap ground beef or put into hot dogs so that marge is like cooking like steak or whatever with utility grade beef. That is very cheap meat that Marge is getting.

Bart asked for some advice. I think of this every time I see an old pizza box. Don't you guys? Absolutely, yeah. I don't check it, but I do get hungry for cheese when I see those pizza boxes. With a little cardboard on top from tearing it off. Do they get that as much anymore

ever since they invented the little table you put in a pizza box? Yeah, I think around this time, the pizza table was a pizza box. Yeah, I think around this time the pizza table was a new invention. Yeah, a fairly new invention. Yeah. Is it harder to get old cheese out of an old pizza box now? It was invented to stop the Noid ultimately.

Then Herb also again I get mad at Herb with these lines. Lisa is right to ask why he didn't write them. I feel like the show is so young the show also feels the need like oh we need to cover why he didn't write them. I feel like the show is so young. The show also feels the need like, oh, we need to cover why he was never in contact when they wouldn't care after this point. But I feel there's a necessity for them to explain this. I mean that he guilts her like, oh, what was I going to sell you? Last night I used a rat for a pillow.

Thanks to your pop. I was like, again, you did this herb like you. He's making Lisa feel bad about it. Yeah. Then we cut to her alone with Maggie in a bedroom and he's making lisa feel bad about it yeah then we cut to herb alone with maggie in a bedroom and he's putting her to bed as he's singing the powell motors theme which i like that powell makes a pow pow powerful car this is when i thought as a kid wait is he gonna kidnap maggie that was my first thought he says you're gonna make me rich again it's dark music

over it then we cut to the family playing Monopoly. I love the overhead shot of the whole family there. And this was right around I was old enough. Well, it actually was that my little brother was now old enough at seven that we could all understand the rules of Monopoly and play a four person family Monopoly. And it really can reveal the cracks in a relationship, in a family relationship playing Monopoly. I was the real Monopoly head in my family. I really got into it. You were the one asking to play the games?

Yes, and I demanded a Monopoly set. My brother was that in our family, but he was so arrogant that we would often team up to destroy him, which really turns out to not be a good family dynamic. But having four other family members team up on him was probably not healthy for a 10 year old no i mean as a 10 year old the hurts i remember monopoly which again it's stupid like this is dumb but i was a dumb kid it was that if me and my brother were competing over real estate and our mom had like the third piece that would complete something we would both be trying to negotiate with her and if she ever sided with my brother even once which you know

i'm sure she was playing fair and just playing the game normally but if she ever made the deal with him over me i'd be like you hate me you always side with it and it got even worse with risk oh no she teamed up if she teamed up against me in risk that really hey it's war buddy yeah it's not pretty and also i mean it hurt more too because typically a risk game is like twice as long as a monopoly game so like half of a risk game is the end game you're like there's two of you left stop are we gonna just be rolling dice for the next two hours just to see uh uh and uh but yes as as the game goes on he lands on ventnor avenue and this is correct one thousand one hundred and fifty dollars is how much it cost on a hotel at ventnor avenue so this is accurate but then

this is when the topic of the $2,000 comes up. That's all I got. Broke again, eh, Herb? Just like in real life. I guess you're just not much of a businessman. Maybe we should play another game. Why are we playing games when we got two grand in the bank? Remember when Dad won the first annual Montgomery Burns Award for Outstanding Achievement in the Field of Excellence?

Well, I think we should invest in a set of the great books of Western civilization. Look at this ad from New Republic for Kids. Each month, a new classic will be delivered to our door. Paradise Regained, Martin Chuzzlewit, or Herman Melville's twin classics, Omo and Typey. Wait, Marge, didn't you want to spend that money on a vibrating chair? That was your idea.

I think we should get a machine gun. We could use it to hunt games, spell out things. For ringing the new year. Well, I really think we need to replace the washer and dryer. How would you like to spend $2,000 to give a broken man a second chance? Nah. I just love numbers. Nah. I just love Omer's, nah. Just nah.

I really like the joke about the book series you get, and it's all the least in-demand books from all of these great authors. The kind you have to Google, like, even now, like, nobody knows Martin Chuzzlewit of Charles Dickens. Again, I had to Google this. I didn't know Charles Dickens wrote Martin Chuzzlewit or omu and typee like according to wikipedia those were herman melville's like biggest hits when he was alive people knew omu and typee more than moby dick at a certain time and apparently you know get this

guys this 200 year old book a little problematic in how it talks about the anthropology of the polynesian people in these. Are you a Goodreads review? Because that's all I see. When I read a 160-year-old book, all the reviews say, I could have done without the sexism. It was written in 1848. What do you want?

I understand at the same time, but also you can't go back in time. But maybe I should ask you to find a way. Figure out how to go back in time right but maybe i should ask you to find a way yes yeah figure out how to go back in time and review like even be like you know what it was hard to stomach me thinking back to that being the way of things yes yes a better way to put it like i wish you know ethan from didn't have some of this stuff what are they going to do what it's also funny all the books lisa lists they're just free online now you can just read all of these for free like the gutenberg project every single one of the books lisa names you can read or if you prefer using the kindle app

these are the type of books that kindle just has for free you don't even have to pay for them you can read omu and taipei right now if you wanted to but don't at least it's like if you haven't read moby dick first like like you said bob what a great smart guy joke that the books are this should be the tale of two cities and moby dick but it's in paradise lost paradise lost yeah instead of milton's much less liked paradise for you also new republic for kids that had to be under the andrew sullivan era of new republic and i feel like lisa shouldn't be reading that or maybe she'd cancel her subscription when the bell curve came out a couple years after this google it or that guy sucks i swear i walked by andrew sullivan in an airport and i wish i'd given him the finger recently i was like uh i shouldn't assume this guy

who looks just like andrew in the Seattle airport is Andrew Sullivan I probably don't want to give the middle finger to somebody who might not be especially if he gets that a lot he's like before you even do it man I'm not Andrew Sullivan I just want to get back to Miami I'm a 60 year old man who stayed in shape and has a beard okay is that a crime now I can see from your body language what you're going to do. I'm not him. I'm also sick of seeing it because if you watch, say, pro wrestling on TNT, you have to watch Goddamn Ants for that Bill Maher show,

and they show clips of Sullivan on it all the time, and I'm so sick of seeing it. Club Random? No, no. Well, I mean real time. Though, of course, I i mean he's one of the best guests recurring guests on club random if you want to watch two men in their 60s get very high and say the exact things you think men in their 60s would say which is things are so different

now and everybody's crazy but me yeah so yes this list of problems of all the things they want for two thousand dollars i feel like in a script that had more time or less tired writers, they would have brought it up in act one. They would not be doing this at the end of act two, saying all the stuff that they'd want or how they spend the $2,000. When I was doing my notes for this last night, the washing machine in my apartment complex broke. It broke.

It didn't even shake around like this one. There's only one no there's two and the other one was already broken and so the second one broke there's one on every floor i live in a three-floor place so i could just go down to floor two which is what i did with my wet laundry walked it down to the second floor i'm gonna say it was sabotage i think so you know they've got a security camera in there. I need to request the footage from my landlord. What if it's your fault in some way? You just put a boot in there and didn't know.

Every time I've asked them for that security footage, that's when they have to admit, like, it doesn't work anymore. The camera's just for show. The camera's just a sticker on the wall. But, yeah, so Homer is then asked to give herb a second chance he just needs 20 minutes of his time and again i just love he goes like oh but this is a quick one but this is another iconic simpsons moment here i want to give you a 20 minute presentation that will change the world 20 minutes oh okay now before I tell you about my idea,

I'd like to show you this. It's drinking the water! Take it easy, Homer. Now, this is an example of how one little idea, carefully marketed... This is the greatest invention in the world. You'll make a million dollars oh homer that invention is out already i'm just using it as an example going back for more that's a great devito noise he's got a lot of great noises in this one just like yeah homer

loves it and i love that this is like, now that we've all had office jobs, I am now used to this very basic presentation thing of like, before I give you my presentation, let me show you this. And just the little toy. Homer thinks this is the invention. He loves it. He will spend a million dollars on it. And you know what? If you right now on amazon you can get drinking birds exactly like this one ten dollars for one or a six pack for twenty seven dollars one for every room there's even one that's like it's a little glass that has it on the corner so it looks like it's like drinking out of your martini glass oh this episode is at the precipice of raffi being the most annoying children's entertainer and then the dawn of barney yeah i mean raffi would still be around for the rest of the 90s but barney we did it in our history barney only just debuted on pbs when

we're talking about the fall of 92 right yeah yeah yeah yeah or wait yeah no that was not a batman look we do a lot of histories a lot of times here folks i also do love hearing nancy's delivery of the long just to say the mr burns award again is so funny and the way nancy does it again is bart that's great i feel like it's a cute joke about how kids will just buy into anything that's presented to them like he's on board with the entire award being sincere and he memorized all of it don't you remember when dad won the montgomery burns award for outstanding achievement in the field of excellence and doesn't miss a beat just says it straight up i also like bart saying like somebody's gonna bilk you out of your money it may as well be your

brother yeah i could tell john swartzwater wrote this because bart uses the word shyster in bilk yeah yes yeah it's true homer has the condition that he wants to be treated like a brother that Herb responds with, nope. And he goes like, all right, then okay, then just give me the drinking bird. Like you said, Bob, not a lot left to do in the episode once the agreement of $2,000 is made. That's why this is a very short third act. We have the design phase of him learning from maggie i love the gorilla mask he puts on i think it's a funny drawing and then i think this is the first on-screen vomit in the show you know there's maybe some silhouetted vomit and off-screen vomit

but i think this is the first time you actually see spit up come out of somebody yeah and you're right this act is four minutes long it's very quick just push it all to the end you know by the time you get to act three people are just on the edge of their seat waiting for martin they don't they don't care how devito does i want to know what's so crazy is he going to explain it is it really me created a flawless baby translation device but that is the fastest part of the episode the least time is spent on the most interesting part of the story it works perfectly the first time he presents it everything's great about it so herb after a little montage has finished his

prototype i like this whole little sequence here now i bet you're all wondering what lies under this sheet not really we peeked inside while you were in the john. Oh. Well, here it is again. My baby translator. Whoa! Marge, you don't have to humor me. Well, it's pretty ingrained.

What do you think, Homer? Herb, this is the stupidest thing I've ever seen. I can't believe we blew 2,000 bucks on it when right now rollers could be kneading my buttocks. Homer, could you stop thinking about your ass? I try, but I can't. Lavish attention on me and entertain me. Maggie, you talked!

You see? It tells you exactly what's on the baby's mind. Maggie! Maggie! Where did you go? Peek-a-boo! Oh, there you are. Very amusing. Well, Homer, now what do you think? I don't know, Herb. People are afraid of new things. You should have taken an existing product and put a clock in it or something.

Homer, every mother in the country is going to want one of these. I have soiled myself how embarrassing in these early years I can definitely tell what is a James L Brooks line or what is somebody trying to write like him what that line would be Marge saying well it's pretty ingrained that does feel like a James L Brooks line his lines are always like a very pithy quote in which the character is a little too articulate for that character. It's hilarious hearing Marge say it, but you're right. It's too smart for how they normally write Marge, but I love like, well, it's pretty ingrained. That's her defense. It's very ingrained for me to humor people.

I just do that all the time. It's just automatic reaction, yeah. Get ready for Las Vegas style action at BetMGM, the king of online casinos. Enjoy casino games at your fingertips with the same Vegas strip excitement MGM is famous for when you play classics like MGM Grand Millions or popular games like Blackjack, Baccarat, and Roulette. With our ever-growing library of digital slot games, a large selection of online table games, and signature BetMGM.com Ontario only. Please play responsibly. If you have questions or concerns about your gambling or someone close to you, please contact ConnexOntario at 1-866-531-2600 to speak to an advisor free of charge.

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not really we look at we looked under it while you were in the john like taking away any tension in this scene i should note too that this is another one I remember us watching because it was that our family in a few months was going to move to Florida. So we were going to go to Florida together to like look at potential homes as a family. And then we were going to miss this episode and I was freaking out about it. And we set it to record on a timer on our VCR. Like we'd never done it before. It was a real risk

and the excitement i felt when the episode was properly recorded and we watched it together as a family like any nerves i had about my life being changed again i would be very depressed later about having to move but i was feeling pretty good watching this episode and it shut off just as martin began yes that's really why we didn't watch it because we set the timer from 8 to 8 30 so i mean i do think it's funny hearing her danny devito's voice translating babies that's a very funny concept yeah though for this to work plot wise they also have to kind of toss out a key thing to maggie maggie never makes noises ever like it's not just that he doesn't say words yeah she never makes noises but she has to make noises for this episode that's a good point and I also feel

one thing that's missing is that Herb can finally confront Abe and that's not on his agenda at all you're right you're right where's my deadbeat father he should get punched in the face right yeah exactly he should be hunting down his dad in town i mean it's not just a random thought because abe shows up at the end of the last herb episode saying you know hot diggity where's that rich son of mine or whatever and then he finds out the truth from homer on the ride back you know we got us a pitch for another episode herb meets abe we can do something there i mean yes like abe as we learned in the first episode, Abe just shoved his kid into an orphanage and never gave him a home he could have because he had had it with a floozy instead of his wife.

And so he was a childhood shame. Like, that's a horrible thing to have done to Herb. Yeah. If he's already this mad at Homer, you've got to think that he would want to kill Abe. And wouldn't that be funny to hear danny devito say that stuff yeah yeah i also do love there you are very amusing we then have a very slapdash shoved in at the last second all adr reusing of a scene from homer alone that's what it's from okay

yeah it's all frankenstein together in homer alone it's the scene where homer is describing their trips together when marge is saying that she wants to go on a vacation by herself and it's homer going marge can i have another sandwich but here it's him saying he still treats me like something he dug off his shoe this again is a very james l brooks i mean it's a smart story device you go back to the bedroom with the family and they re-establish the stakes though if you've forgotten the stakes so entirely re-establish the stakes though if you've forgotten the stakes so entirely when writing it at the very last second you have to pluck out a scene from another episode and put new dialogue in it to explain it feels like that should have been dealt with when you're writing the episode instead of once the animation comes the bedroom

scene is about 19 minutes in yes just to let you know like oh by the way homer feels bad his brother doesn't love him because we didn't have one scene of that after homer gets punched in the face so we go to the baby con the e3 for baby items that's just e3 henry oh damn you heard what i said yeah well now it's over you're pissing on its grave here bob where the where the E3 ain't serving around anymore. Oh, right. It's dead now. It's dead. RIP E3. Never good. That's true. It's true. I like the stuff around it.

The Hooters? Yes. The ESPN stuff. LA Live? Yeah, LA Live. All the best things. No, actually, only one year did I ever get to have fun at a party at E3. Every other year, I was working insanely hard all of the time

and could not enjoy a free drink if I wanted to. It's a twin convention, no triplets invited. We head around. First, we see Dog in a Ball, which that feels like a very John Schwarzwalder idea.

Then we learn that for a time, Professor Frank had a baby and a wife. In the old money episode, when he's asking for enough money to build a death ray, he's like, my wife thought this whole idea was crazy in the first place so in his first few appearances it was established that he had a partner and now we're seeing a child and he says

his wife's going to kill him which now we can create the narrative that oh so he got divorced after this i mean also because we don't see this kid again so he killed a child like frank is yeah yeah and there was going to be a scene but it was cut in which the baby landed in red square in soviet russia and it was a reference to an actual news story in which a teenager landed a cessna plane in 1987 he got four years in a labor camp for doing that man a west german teenager i should say ah i could see why man the land in the middle of red square that's impressive. But again, yeah, they're like, oh, the USSR, it's gone now.

Guess we better just cut this and instead let people assume that Frank killed a child. It's fine. I have a quick clip here of Frank's presentation as well as Herb's instant success. This radio-controlled plane gives your baby the chance to fly, just like my son here. Instant success. i only want to eat candy then that's all you'll get this leash demeans us both i'll take two i'll take a dozen i represent the precious baby discount stores i'll take 50 000 i'm rich again usa usa usa you know we're talking about seeing cheese pizza boxes and thinking about the delicious cheese in there when i see a kid on a leash that's exactly what i think every time and i

know they're necessary for some children some kids are runners yeah i mean they're gonna be in pet cemetery soon enough if they didn't have a leash on them this leash to means is both that has stuck with me forever is like's like, what a smart thing. Whenever I try to sound smart about something, I'm probably just paraphrasing this very smart sounding statement. Yeah. This leash demeans us both. And also, I love that the mom hears, I only want to eat candy.

And when she gets this translation, she's like, then that's all you'll get. Like, oh, since I know a baby only wants to eat candy i better give it candy all the time you know it's funny on the commentary nancy loves playing database so she suggests like hey you should make frank's kid database so that way database could be more on the show again unfortunately mac ranning's in the room he's a real database hater yeah it's so sad database is such a perfect character being a funny characters i love the baby face design of the head of precious baby discount stores like he looks like a huge baby man yeah like he just has such a little like face it's a fun design and yes a great parody

of the ease of the american dream i'm rich again usa usa i didn't understand that joke before the guy does have a baby's head kind of they basically just drew a baby's head on this businessman wow yeah i'm just noticing for the thank you henry thank you sorry to dial us back there he's why they make up the word baby face like i'm used to hearing in a wrestling context which is i'm not gonna explain a twink uh no sort of wrestling twink no no in in pro wrestling a good guy is a baby face this was a term made up a hundred years ago in pro wrestling and they still use it today to mean the heel is the villain and the baby face is the good guy i learned this but how can i forget it i'm sorry just like how you know the word kayfabe i know

i'm sorry that wrestling has ingrained in society so much it's also funny it does read as a parody of the american dream also because you know danny devito pretty left wing by hollywood star standards so he is doing this ironically of like yeah i'm rich again usa usa the ease of it has to be a joke yeah now again for filler we talk about filler having a character give gifts to six different people in the show that definitely kills a lot of time you know it's a parody so it's easier to write the structure's already there yes so it's the end of the wizard of oz here as he's giving out his gifts to everyone. Homer here's a check for two thousand dollars but I also wanted to give you each a little something for believing in me.

Lisa this is the first volume of the great books of western civilization. You'll receive a new one every month from Beowulf to less than zero. Finally a copy of Ethan Frome to call my own. Now Bart I know you're too young for that machine gun you wanted. But I'm going to give you something that will make sure when you're old enough, you can still buy one. A membership in the National Rifle Association. Wow, the NRA. Can I get armor-piercing cyanide-tipped bullets, too? It's in the Constitution, son.

Maggie, who brought me my fortune. I'll give you anything you want in this world. I want what the dog's eating. I'll get you something nice. Now, Marge... Herb, I appreciate your generosity, but I don't need any gift from you. You're too late, Marge.

I got you a new washer and dryer, and I sold the old ones for 50 bucks. Go! Go! Go! Come on, washer! Yes! washer and dryer and I sold the old ones for 50 bucks go you stupid dryer god there's a lot packed in there yeah well first I want to apologize to Mike who's been with us for two hours we're really giving it to these writers on this episode aren't we of course this garbage they're writing is a parody it's still better than anything i'll ever be able to write but no yeah no it has funny moments in this little run though

i love this run i want to repeat this over and over again but like this is some of the best like comedy writing of its era like period but as a plot that tells a story it's loose it's a loose plot it's nice that every character gets a joke that's true to the character yeah i mean boy this nra joke though this is darker every year since this joke happened the joke of that specifically that it's a machine gun like i don't know if the ar-15 existed yet. Like, that's the key point right now. And of course, people say, you know, it's not even technically a machine gun, they say about the AR-15. And it stands for automatic rifle. Well, there you go.

No, it stands for Armalite. Oh, man. I was trying to piss people off. And apparently when they wrote this joke bart wanted armor piercing cop killer bullets not cyanide tipped and the fox censor did not want bart to say cop killer bullets we were coming off of a riot we're uprising however you want to say it that's true yes the la riots after the horrible verdict of the riding king trial that happened so i get but yes when i looked into the history of the cop killer bullets

thing is which is a term for teflon coated bullets that can pierce soft body armor it's a rare time where sort of from the right there was moves for some type of gun control, the lightest gun control, which is a specific type of bullet, could not be sold to people, which you better believe in my Google search on this, I instantly found a pro-gun website that's like the myth of cop killer bullets. And actually, did you guys know that if you just shot a bullet from a regular rifle, it's more powerful and can pierce soft body armor just as easily as a cop killer bullet? Yet those are still on sale. We should not be limiting the sale of Teflon coated cop killer bullets and handguns in some American states.

Basically, it is sort of kind of illegal to buy handgun sized cop killer bullets now. But as you know know just because something is illegal in one state in america doesn't mean you can't just go to another state and buy the same bullet somewhere i think they need a better name you know man i wish i'd have written it down in that guy's article definitely kept saying teflon coated bullets but there was another term he used to instead of to say the cop killer is a misnomer and actually it's used by cops more than anybody it kind of kills everything really if you think about it a child being given an nra membership like oof and i know when i was 10 i probably thought oh man bark gets to have a cool

gun later awesome yes it's in the constitution what a great great line. I mean, yes, Mike, you've probably written many, many comedy pieces on this very idea. Oh, man. Yeah, one of our WGA awards was for our gun special. Yeah. I mean, like, the thing is, like, you know, his whole character is kind of a parody of the American dream. So for him, too, it's like nothing bad could come of this. Like, it's that sort of feeling of, like, if it's in the Constitution, it's like nothing bad could come of this like it's that sort of feeling of like if it's in the constitution it's safe and it was a relatively new idea then of the nra stance of the second amendment means machine guns yeah or any and it should mean bazookas really anything like why i

guess there's all this like fiercely pro-american sentiment from herb which is why lisa's getting the best of the western civilization collection which has different baggage today you're right god you're right well it sounds like andrew sullivan no wonder it was advertised in his magazine you're right man these aren't the classical works of indian fiction or no no now if you hear intellectuals and probably then when you heard him talk about the works of a great western civilization it means white people that's what it's about the kids who got these books are now posting about marble statues and columns on twitter oh my god those people man they're so hard for columns man they what's keeping us from doing this i don't know the entire way the economy

worked do you want to pay an artist like fifty thousand dollars to live with you and do that no yes the business cannot be blamed for it government didn't know it's that we used to be cooler and did that stuff it was just better look what they took from us and shows like a rusty old rain gutter that has a cool like mouth on it or something it's also very funny that mo is running racing competitions between washer and dryers and he's losing money on it he bought him to race him and he bet against the dryer i like they have numbers on them that to me is so fun just that it's like no no i gotta go at number 17 i love hearing barney go like oh washer yeah they're clearly different machines and there's

only two of them but they also have numbers painted on them yes we then have one last bit here of a happy ending which before i play the clip i want to say one of the best bits of animation this episode needlessly so in a way that you don't notice unless you know how hard it is to animate things homer and or go outside homer's walking him to his car they close the door and then they walk to the sidewalk and in the staging of it there's no reason that they couldn't just say all of this standing at the front door they don't need to walk forward to walk forward means that the background has to animate which the line density of that makes it like 10 times as expensive to animate than if they just stood there and i

don't know why they do it other than just to like have a little bit of opulent animation at the end the episode it's a nice out of touch it looks great but i was like if i were to talk to rich more i'd be like why do you even have this camera move? It feels like it could mess up at any moment in it and you got to pay for a retake. They could just stand here and say this. But yes, Homer and Herb have a reuniting here. What do I get? What do I get? It's not another punch in the face, is it? Because if it is, I don't want it.

This is what you get, Homer. I forgive you. You can call me brother and I can do the same. That's it don't want it. This is what you get, Homer. I forgive you. You can call me brother, and I can do the same. That's it? That's it. I see your point, brother. Give me a hug, brother. All right, but I never really hugged a man before. Homer, I bought you the damn chair

that's enough get out of here and we end with a close-up of homer's jiggling sperm and we have to assume the kids broke the chair between seasons in the month between seasons three and four yeah it's never seen again i mean in general if you think about this ending as something that like persists in the universe the simpsons should never have a money problem ever again because uh they have a rich honky herb who will bail them out of anything and who owes them big time yeah i mean also too he pays them back two thousand dollars then basically gives them a nice but not like crazy good gift what like they should own 10 of his company they are

the seed money for it like he's screwing them at his homer needs to take them to court like out of social network his ownership of the baby translator business well he is living the american dream now isn't he that's true now they here's another pitch for a simpsons episode all we're seeing now are these like tetris movie the blackberry movie all these like the air you do one where it's they're making a movie about herb biopic and homer's in it and it's telling the story of how the baby translator business started and and then boom a famous person plays herb so you got a big guest star it could be if chris pine says yes you plug chris pine in there if not hank azaria can just do it but i'm saying you make calls to management we should appreciate executives more i think they're the real businessmen yeah they make it you know michael jordan played

basketball well who cares and also i choose to believe that another couch was delivered later was like a secret third gift yes or sixth gift or whatever you want everybody or that 2000 went to a new couch i mean i do love the constant shots of homer sitting on a broken couch like it's just a funny picture. But you just have to forget the ending of this episode because the couch, like his nice chair is gone. They don't have a rich uncle that they can call on for help ever again. And Danny DeVito's character, save for one line in 2013, will never be seen again either. Which, again, I never get this. Danny DeVito has never been more popular than right now.

And he would be a big guest star to have on a show. And he seems to still be friends with James L. Brooks. It's not like he had a falling out with him or anything. So I don't. It only happened when Jim Brooks will do coke with him again. It's holding out. You're right. They got to have another coke party.

I mean, at their age, a coke party, it's a risk. It's a real risk. I will say, I guess, final thoughts on this one. It's pretty again like you said henry the writers are very tired and ultimately this is made to get us ready for martin and i was so you know it succeeded in that respect but i like this it's one of the novelty sequel episodes that didn't really happen a lot and it still is a novelty to me to see herb come back especially because he never did outside of one phone call

so yeah it's fun still season three it's one of the last class kichu episode we're heading towards the end people so i appreciate everyone that we see from this era so uh yeah i do like this one i give it an a plus on joke writing and acting it's like a c c minus plot driven thing but that's why you know comedies are great because they're funny not always about having like a great plot you know yeah i'd rather watch a comedy with great jokes and a bad plot versus one with a great plot and crappy jokes i agree a true classic and i wish they bring back danny devito every time i hear danny devito making a danny devito noise this episode i'm like god he's so funny.

Just love is like, yeah, why'd you, why'd you, why'd you, like, God. But yeah, that's my final thoughts on the damn bike. I mean, you said it all, man. No, I think I'm sort of the same. I think this episode has amazing jokes and the story is kind of like loosey goosey, you know, it feels its way out, but it's a very sweet episode. Like I'm the type of sensitive person that really likes sort of, like, the sweet emotional core of it at certain times. And I really like that here, especially as someone who has, like, complicated family stuff.

It's like, you know what? These two don't know how to say I love you in any way that's actually healthy, but at least they're trying to. I need to buy my estranged brother a chair. That's where it all begins. Exactly. The healing can start then but thanks for joining us mike please let us know where to find you online and if you want to plug anything and now's your chance sure uh you can find me online at mike drucker on twitter

or at mike drucker is dead on instagram you know what might as well just plug a book i did a book like two years ago for boss fight books about silent hill 2 it's still out there if you want to buy it buy silent hill 2 by boss fight books please you and bob fellow boss fight book oh yeah yeah yeah but yeah boss fight book buddies that's good mine will be out in september about day of the tentacle but this is mike's plug yes yes my plug this is my plug you're a great follow on twitter you're one of the funniest guys out there thank you on twitter even as twitter's going through a lot and who knows where it's at in a month from now but yeah the consistent part of twitter check or no mike drucker is a funny guy thank you so much that's so nice of you and i love you guys on there too oh thank you what a love fest at the end here

just like the episode of simpsons we see but thank you mike thank you thanks again to mike drucker for being on the show please check out everything he does but if you want to check out more of what we do and get these episodes one week at a time and add free please go to patreon.com slash talking simpsons sign up there for five bucks a month you'll get just that but also access to everything behind the five dollar paywall that's over 150 bonus podcasts to date which includes episodes about mission hill the critic and batman the animated series and that five dollars a month will also get you monthly access to talking futurama and talking to the hill and the entire back catalog of those shows as well and it's all happening behind the five dollar paywall at patreon.com slash talking simpsons and there is a ten dollar level as well when you sign up for that you can access all of the five

dollar stuff naturally but you can also access one extremely long podcast once a month, only for patrons of that level or higher. And what is that, Henry? Bob's talking about our monthly premium podcast, What a Cartoon Movie. You get to hear us go super in-depth

into an animated feature film, just like we do in episode The Simpsons, which means often talking for over five or even six hours about said film. Last month,

we did our April Fool's of covering a live- action film where we went super in-depth into little shop of ours the 1986 classic and its amazing director's cut this month we're starting our summer of pixar and it's beginning with a bang with toy story 4 so please if you sign up at that 10 level of patreon.com slash TalkingSimpsons. You can hear those podcasts over 50 previous What A Cartoon movies of everything from Akira to a Goofy movie. We cover so many different films and you get all the $5

things Bob mentioned too. So please check it all out for yourself at patreon.com slash TalkingSimpsons. And I've been one of your hosts, Bob Mackey. You can find me on Twitter as Bob Servo and my other podcast is Retronauts, the classic gaming podcast all about old video games. Find that wherever you find podcasts

or go to patreon.com slash retronauts. Sign up there for two full-length bonus episodes every month. And I also have a book coming out September, which I mentioned, it's the Day of the Tentacle book. So please buy it if you love me. And I know you do. Henry, how about you? You can follow me on Twitter at H-E-N-E-R-E-Y-G.

If you're following me and Bob on Twitter, of course, we also would suggest you follow the official account on Twitter of this podcast at TalkSimpsonsPod. At TalkSimpsonsPod keeps you up to date whenever there's new podcasts on the free feed or on Patreon or other stuff going on in our lives. And you should also check out our official Instagram account, also at TalkSimpsonsPod. And if you want an easy to follow list of all the free podcasts we've released of Talking

Simpsons or What a Cartoon head on over to TalkingSimpsonsPodcast.com Thanks so much for joining us folks we'll see you again next time for season 14's Treehouse of Horror 13 and we'll see you then. How was your day at work, dear? Oh, the usual. Stand in front of this, open that, pull down this, bend over, spread apart that, turn your head that way, cough.